22 Indigenous People’s Writings and the New literatures in English

Dr. Debashree Dattaray

Definitions

The concept of Indigeneity has to be explored in terms of the marginalized needs of the Indigenous and as one which posits all forms of colonialism in its diverse ramifications. In the seminal conference proceedings of the first global conference organized for literary scholars and social scientists entitled ‘Chotro I’, Ganesh Devy tries to arrive at a working principal for the ‘Indigenous’ as follows:

Recognized as “Aborigines” in Australia, as Maori in New Zealand, as “First Nations” in Canada, as “Indigenous” in the United States, as “Janajatis” in India or as “Tribes” in anthropology, as “Notified Communities” in the administrative parlance of many countries, as “Indigenous People in the discourse of Human Rights, and as “Adivasis” in the terminology of Asian activists, these variously described communities are far too numerous and dispersed in geographical locations to admit of a single inclusive description.

As a matter of fact, organizations such ILO and UNESCO use the term ‘Indigenous’ to represent over a thousand different communities across the world. Given the diversity of Indigenous communities, no official definition has been employed for Indigenous peoples by any UN-body. The anthology on Indigeneity is significantly dedicated to “The indigenous peoples in all continents who know they belong to the earth and not that the earth belongs to them.” (Devy 2009) The concerns of Indigenous performers and scholars are directly related to the destructive presumptuousness, distortion and ignorance to which many of their traditions have been subjected. It has often been predicated on mythical notions of superiority on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender.

Indigenous studies today has been gaining much emphasis world-wide since it promotes and initiates cross-disciplinary research and teaching in a wide range of areas of relevance to Indigenous peoples. It is only possible to forge connections by being sensitive to specific historical and discursive Indigenous practices which in turn, would involve a different construction in reading/ learning/ understanding practices. It is important to ‘listen, internalize, learn, imagine and empathize.’ (Devy 2009) In order to engage with the concept of “Indigeneity’ within the paradigms of research, it is important to begin a process of decolonization. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in the pathbreaking book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, observes that decolonization “is about centring our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes.”

Today, the Indigenous Agenda involves the following salient features:

• To recover ‘lived experiences’ and understand rootedness and fear of displacement.
• To enhance the Indigenous voice and influence in society
• To develop alternate ways of understanding the world through Indigenous experiences

North East India and Indigeneity

The North East today is a profound paradox that simultaneously represents the frontiers of globalization as well as a heritage of Indigenous traditions and cultures. According to Patricia Mukhim, the North East is envisioned as “… a land mass with a geographical area of 2.55 lakh sq. kms., which is a mere seven percent of the country’s total area. The region shares only two per cent of its boundary with India, while the remaining 98 per cent is bordered by the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and China. In terms of their physical features, ethnicity, culture, food habits, and language, there is closer affinity with the people of Southeast Asia than the population of mainstream India.” (Mukhim 2005: 178) Consequently, there is a sense of alienation and isolation from so –called mainland India. Noted political analyst Sanjib Baruah writes: “North-east India is a region where the politics of protective discrimination for scheduled tribes (STs) today raises some of the most difficult issues of justice, fairness and costs on system legitimacy” (Baruah 2003: 1624) Further, issues related to insurgency, militancy and separatism lead to an understanding of the North East which is in constant conflict with notions of peace and harmony. “In the congeries of its complexities and contradictions, Northeast is not only a territory of diverse people and cultures but also an idea constantly evolving in its making. If the past has a rootedness in harmony among communities and cultures, the present is a reality of profound disaffection. The violence that stalks this land is part of everyday life that adds to the fragility of the human condition. In spite of all this, life goes on.”

Writers from the North East

Writers articulate marginality and build a literary paradigm for a North-East discourse. They negotiate the challenge of representing the past from the unspoken but inexorable reality of the present. They contest established hierarchies and attempt a re-visioning of aesthetic theory. Locating trauma, the politics of tradition and continuity, the ecological space, the authors offer culture as a site of struggle and also account for the cultural changes in the North East.

Author 1: Mamang Dai (Arunachal Pradesh)

Mamang Dai (b. 1957; Pasighat, East Siang District, Arunachal Pradesh) was formerly a civil servant. Currently a journalist and a writer from the Adi community, she is the founder of the Arunachal Historical Society. She has written extensively on the cultural history of Arunachal Pradesh and is also member of the North East Writer’s Forum. Her published works include Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, River Poems, Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal Pradesh, and The Legends of Pensam.

In the poem “The Voice of the Mountain”, Mamang Dai etches a landscape which reflects historical struggle for identity. She writes:

The other day a young man arrived from the village.

Because he could not speak he bought a gift of fish

from the land of rivers.

It seems such acts are repeated:

We live in territories forever ancient and new,

And as we speak in changing languages

I, also, leave my spear leaning by the tree

and try to make a sign.

(Mamang Dai, “The Voice of the Mountain”, 3)

According to her, land offers a source of sustenance as well as a source of inspiration. The separation of land and the Indigenous peoples has been a historical truth in and accounts for the devastation and deprivation of many Indigenous peoples. The voice of the mountain reiterates:

I am the chance syllable that orders the world

instructed with history and miracles.

(Mamang Dai, “The Voice of the Mountain”, 4)

Mamang Dai advocates love for all beings and all things as the crucial method for ushering in peace and healing for Indigenous peoples and everyone on earth.

I am the place where memory escapes

the myth of time,

I am the sleep in the mind of the mountain.

(Mamang Dai, “The Voice of the Mountain”, 4)

The inability to listen to the landscape has also resulted in the misuse of the ecosystem, thereby disrupting ecological harmony.

Peace is a falsity.

A moment of rest comes after long combat.

(Mamang Dai, “The Voice of the Mountain”, 4)

Author 2: Temsula Ao (Nagaland)

Temsula Ao (b. 1945), versatile poet, academician and storyteller, is one of the prominent contemporary authors from the North East of India who reconfigures the structural boundaries of literary genres in her work. A retired professor at the Department of English, and the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Education, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Temsula is the author of several volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories and is also the author of The Ao Naga Oral Tradition, published by Bhasha in 1999 and selected as one of the 100 most influential books of the century in a series called, Shangharsh Shatak’. She experiments with multiple genres—fiction, poetry, historical narrative, and memoir—within a single work.

For Temsula Ao, storytelling is a powerful weapon of subversion, of protest, representing the power of man in shaping reality through language. In the poem “The Old Story Teller”, the agency of storytelling offers the possibility of change:

So I told stories

As my racial responsibility

To instill in the young

The art of perpetuating

Existential history and essential tradition

To be passed on to the next generation.

(Temsula Ao, “The Old Story Teller”, 84)

Language becomes a metaphor for potential change. Stories within the fabric of north-eastern folklore provide the theoretical framework of their writing.

Temsual Ao writes:

The rejection from my own

Has stemmed the flow

And the stories seem to regress

Into un-reachable recesses

Of a mind once vibrant with stories

Now reduced to un-imaginable stillness.

(Temsula Ao, “The Old Story Teller”, 85)

The poet also utilizes the opportunity to incorporate oral traditions within the written. She pens the following:

So when memory fails and words falter

I am overcome by a bestial craving

To wrench the thieving guts

Out of that Original Dog

And consign all my stories

To the script in his ancient entrails.

(Temsula Ao, “The Old Story Teller”, 85)

According to the Ao-Nagas, once upon a time, they had a script inscribed on a hide and hung on a wall for all to see and learn. A dog pulled it down and ate it. Since then, all aspects of Ao-Naga life has been preserved in the collective memory of the people and passed down orally from one generation to another. In the poem entitled “The Spear”, Temsula Ao introduces the complex ritual of ‘genna’. A hunter is moved and tormented by the mindless killing of a doe and her new born by his spear. He erects a ‘genna’ around the dead doe. Genna stands for anything which is unclean and sacred and as well as taboo and observed as part of many Naga rituals. He returns home to his beloved and prays for the safety of his ‘seed’ in her womb.

To protect my seed

From mindless stalkers Such as me

For now I knew

It was not the spear alone

That caused it all.

(Temsula Ao, “The Spear”, 87)

These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone are a collection of prolific short stories by Temsula Ao that highlight the tumultuous history of human transactions in Nagaland. “The Last Song” tells us the gruesome story of Apenyo and her mother. The young, beautiful singer Apenyo and her mother are brutally raped and killed by a young army captain and his men inside a church which is grazed to the ground.Within the Northeast, AFSPA was first imposed in 1958 in Nagaland as an emergency law which was supposed to be for a year. Almost six decades later, the AFSPA remains effective not only in the Naga Hills but also in other ‘disturbed areas’ across the seven states of the Northeast. For Ao, both the Indian army and the underground outfits have been a source of terror, and ruthlessness for the people of the hills.

Author 3: Easterine Kire Iralu (Nagaland)

Easterine Kire Iralu has written several books in English including three collections of poetry and short stories. Her first novel, A Naga Village Remembered, was the first ever Naga novel to be published. Easterine has translated 200 oral poems from her native language Tenyidie into English. Easterine is founder and partner in a publishing house, Barkweaver, which gathers and publishes Naga folktales. On her first novel, Iralu asserts that the story is “an account of the last battle between the colonial forces of Britain and the little warrior village of Khonoma. Also categorized as historical fiction, this was again the first novel in English by a Naga writer. Before this, Shürhozelie, the literary pioneer of literature in my language, had already written three novels in Tenyidie. So, literature in Tenyidie, my mother tongue, already rich with both oral and written literature, was a source of inspiration to me. ”1 Through her writings, Iralu hopes to transcend the ‘gun-culture’ associated with her community and depict the complex realities of life in Nagaland.

Author 4: Robin S. Ngangom (Manipur)

Robin S. Ngangom was born in Imphal, Manipur and studied literature at St. Edmund’s College and at the North – Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, where he teaches literature at present. A prolific poet, who writes in English and Manipuri, Ngangom describes his poetry as  “mostly  autobiographical,  written  with  the hope of enthusing readers with  my communal or carnal life — the life of a politically-discriminated-against, historically- overlooked individual from the nook of a third world country.”2 His major works include The Desire of Roots (2006) Time’s Crossroads (1994) and Words and the Silence (1988) and along with Khasi Poet, Kynphan Singh Nongkynrih has coedited Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the North East (2003).In “My Invented Land” Ngangom focuses on the nebulous category of home for anyone witnessing the turbulent history of the region. He writes:

My home is a gun

pressed against both temples

a knock on a night that has not ended

a torch lit long after the theft

a sonnet about body counts

undoubtedly raped

definitely abandoned

in a tryst with destiny.

The poem projects the notion of ‘home’ distorted by a traumatic history of discrimination and torture in Manipur. The notion of a coercive identity that marks the common man’s existence within the geographical space of Manipur concerns the poet.

Author 5: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (Meghalaya)

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih lives in Shillong and belongs to the Khasi community. He writes poems and short fiction in both Khasi and English. Nongkynrih’s poetry has been published in two volumes in English and three in Khasi. He works as a Deputy Director of Publications, at North-Eastern Hill  University  (NEHU)  in  Shillong.  He  edits  the  university  newsletter, NEHU News, the university’s official journal, The NEHU Journal, and the first poetry journal in Khasi, Rilum. He was awarded a ‘Fellowship for Outstanding Artists 2000’ from the Government of India, as well as three bursaries for Khasi texts from the Government of Meghalaya. He also received the first North-East Poetry Award in 2004 from the North- East India Poetry Council, Tripura. His major works include Moments (1992), Sieve (1992) and he has coedited Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the North East (2003) with Manipuri poet, Robin S. Ngangom. In the poem, “The Ancient Rocks of Cherra”, the poet juxtaposes socio- political realities to the changing landscape.

The land is old, too old

and withered for life to be easy.

…

Where the serpent’s death throes

cut deep wounds into the land

lie deep gorges like fiendish mouths

yawning for desperate victims.

….

There is nothing remarkable here

only this incredible barrenness.

Further, he utilizes the opportunity to incorporate oral traditions within the written. In an author’s note, he adds: “Legend has it that the immense gorges of Sohra or Cherrapunjee, the wettest place on earth, were caused by the death throes of the Thlen, a gigantic man-eating serpent that once supposedly stalked its wilderness”

Author 6: Esther Syiem (Meghalaya)

Esther Syiem teaches English Literature at the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong and has been working on Khasi Folk and Oral Literature. Some of her publications include Oral Scriptings (a poetry collection), Ka Nam (a Khasi play), Of Follies and Frailties of Wit and Wisdom (a poetry collection), and The Oral Discourse in Khasi Folk Narrative. She writes in English and Khasi. In the poignant poem on the idea of perceived difference entitled “To the rest of India from another Indian”, Esther Syiem writes:

We have

no Rama

no Sita no

Arjuna

ours, are

differently-named.

….

No one river too sacred

to purify impurities;

none of our gods

bear god-names like yours.

…

But if you should

twist your tongues around ours

as we learnt to twist ours around yours,

you’ll get a taste of

webbed legends.

The poem problematizes the idea of ‘self’ and the ‘other within the discourse of the ‘nation.’

Author 8: Cherrie L. Chhangte (Mizoram)

Educated in Shillong, Cherrie L. Chhangte (b. 1977; Aizawl, Mizoram), received her PhD from the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. A lecturer in English at Mizoram University, Chhangte is a prolific poet from the younger generation of litterateurs from North East India. Chhangte displays her prolific powers in a complete rejection of imposed labels  as follows:

Demythologize me.

I would rather be a person

Than a representative of my tribe;

Individualistic and selfish

With personal quirks,

But also personal needs.

(Cherrie L. Chhangte, “Plea”, 75)

Chhangte foregrounds the effects of a systemic discrimination and rejects stereotypical representations. She asserts her right to an identity of her choice:

Disorient yourself.

Discard the prejudices and assumptions,

Delink the past from the present,

The legacy of customs, tradition and learning.

I would rather be a temporal reality

Than an intangible wisp of memory.

(Cherrie L. Chhangte, “Plea”, 75)

For authors from North East India, articulating polyphonic voices which go beyond the presence of insurgency and terrorism has been of primal importance. As a response to the quietude of post-insurgency Mizoram, Mona Zote states:

That word ‘quietude’ carries a little eddy behind it. … We lost ourselves in the insurgency

– an insurgency that need not have happened, by the way. Something left us. And we have grown a tissue over the wound but the scar is festering untended.

In a scathing diatribe against mainstream responses to the ‘ethnicity’ of North East India, Cherri L. Chhangte interrogates the very concept of India as “Celebrated land of diversity” reflected in “Tourist brochures, colourful and vibrant.”(Cherrie L. Chhangte, “What does an Indian Look Like”, 76). In a bitter indictment of stereotypical identities, Chhangte concludes with the following lines:

I am a curiosity, an ‘ethnic’ specimen.

Politics, history, anthropology, your impressive learning,

All unable to answer the fundamental question-

‘What does an Indian look like?’

– An Indian looks like me, an Indian is Me.

(Cherrie L. Chhangte, “What does an Indian Look Like”, 76)

Beyond North East India: “Adivasi”

The 67.7 million people belonging to “Scheduled Tribes” in India are generally considered to be ‘Adivasis’, literally meaning ‘indigenous people’ or ‘original inhabitants’, though the term ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (STs) is not coterminous with the term ‘Adivasis’. Scheduled Tribes is an administrative term used for purposes of ‘administering’ certain specific constitutional privileges, protection and benefits for specific sections of peoples considered historically disadvantaged and ‘backward’. However, this administrative term does not exactly match all the peoples called ‘Adivasis’. With globalization, the hitherto expropriation of rights of the indigenous peoples as an outcome of development has developed into expropriation of rights as a precondition for development. In response, the struggles for the rights of the indigenous peoples have moved towards the struggles for power and a redefinition of the contours of state, governance and progress.

Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (Jharkhand) is a medical officer with the government of Jharkhand. His stories and articles have been published  in Indian  Literature, The  Statesman, The Asian Age, Good Housekeeping, Northeast Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, Earthen  Lamp  Journal, Alchemy:  The  Tranquebar   Book   of   Erotic   Stories  II and The Times of India. He is the author of a collection of short stories entitled The Adivasi Will Not Dance and a novel, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey. He received the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2015. The Adivasi Will Not Dance is a collection of powerful stories that deal with the socio-political realities for ‘adivasis’ in Jharkhand, in particular, but which is true for many Indigenous communities within India. Troupe-master Mangal Murmu’s refusal to perform for the President of India and to be beaten down reflects on the limitations of agency permitted to the ‘adivasi’. The elderly Panmuni and Biram Soren move to Vadodara in, only to find that they must stop eating meat to be accepted as citizens. Talamai Kisku of the Santhal Pargana is a migrant worker in West Bengal who is compelled to sleep with a policeman for fifty rupees and two cold bread pakoras. The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey is the first novel written by Shekhar and revolves around the village of Kadamdihi and the Santhal community therein. A powerful experiment in language and myth, it tells the story of the family of the Baskeys and a history of troubled homelands.

Conclusion

Today, the Indigenous writer seeks to speak for herself/ himself irrespective of stereotypical renditions in popular culture and histories. Indigenous criticism demands that the process of colonization/ neo-imperialism and its far-reaching impacts in the past to the present day be interrogated and explored by Indigenous peoples themselves. They have been engaged in dialogues which seek self-determination embodied in a desire to articulate literary theories and practices from an Indigenous perspective.

Reference

• Ao, Temsula. “The Old Story Teller” in Tilottama Misra edited The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry And Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011, Second Impression 2013)
• Ao, Temsula. “The Spear” in Tilottama Misra edited The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry And Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011, Second Impression 2013)
• Baral, Kailash C. “Articulating Marginality: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India” in Margaret Ch. Zama edited Emerging Literatures from Northeast India: The Dynamics of Culture, Society and Identity (SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi: 2013)
• Baruah, Sanjib. “Protective Discrimination and Crisis of Citizenship in North-East India” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 17 (Apr. 26 – May 2, 2003)
• Chhangte, Cherrie L. ““What does an Indian Look Like” in in Tilottama Misra edited The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry And Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011, Second Impression 2013)
• Chhangte, Cherrie L. “Plea” in in Tilottama Misra edited The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry And Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011, Second Impression 2013)
• Dai, Mamang. “The Voice of the Mountain” in Tilottama Misra edited The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India: Poetry And Essays (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011, Second Impression 2013)
• Devy, G.N., Geoffrey V. Davis and K.K. Chakravarty eds. Indigeneity: Culture and Representation, Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2009.
• Mukhim, Patricia. ‘Where is this Northeast?’ IIC Quarterly, Monsoon – Winter 2005.
• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, (Dunedin: London and New York and University of Otago Press, 1999)
• Zote, Mona. January 1, 2011. ‘Building the universe of the poem.’ The Hindu. http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article1020727.ece Accessed 20/03/2017.