“Provincialising English”: Northeast India as an Ethnopolitan Space

Jyotirmoy Prodhani¹  & Dwijen Sharma^{2  
1}Professor, Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University [NEHU], Shillong, Meghalaya, India.
²Professor, Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University [NEHU], Tura Campus, Meghalaya, India.

^{Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 1, 2026. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v18n1.01
Full-Text PDF Issue Access}

Abstract

Obiajunwa Wali predicted in the early 1960s that African literature could only emerge in African languages. However, in the late 1980s, African literature in English emerged as a new canon. Even the debate between Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe over the use of the English language tilted in favour of Achebe. In this context, Simon Gikandi (2014) has argued how English has been ‘provincialised’ in Africa. In India’s Northeast too, there is a similar dichotomy of positions regarding the status of English. The paper examines the position of the English language in the Northeast, where it is not just a means of communication but is essentially a major social and literary capital, spawning what is mostly referred to as the ‘Northeast discourse’. It also looks at how and why the Anglophone literature of the region has evolved into a distinctive legacy and even a canon. Taking both literary and critical texts, the paper attempts to understand the role of Anglophone literature in shaping the distinctive identity and the literary landscape of the multi-ethnic and pluralistic literature of Northeast India.

Keywords: Provincializing English, ethnopolitanism, Anglophone literature, Northeast discourse, identity.