Assamese Literature - Page 2

Linguistic nationalism in early-colonial Assam: The American Baptist Mission and Orunodoi

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Arnab Dasgupta

Asst. Professor, Hansraj College, University of Delhi, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3394-4564. Email: adasgupta@hrc.du.ac.in

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.32

Linguistic nationalism in early-colonial Assam: The American Baptist Mission and Orunodoi

Abstract

This paper will attempt to map the emergence of linguistic nationalism as a direct offshoot of the language debate in early-colonial Assam. In 1836, Bengali was made the language of courts and schools in Assam. Ten years later, the Baptist Mission at Sadiya started publishing a monthly magazine called Orunodoi. Orunodoi gradually became a critical instrument in the effort to reinstate Assamese as the language of the province’s courts and schools. How did the emergent public sphere react to the debate on language? What was the power dynamic between an emergent native intelligentsia, the Baptist Mission and the colonial state in early-colonial Assam? What are the factors that prevented Assamese from being reinstated as the language of courts and schools in Assam until 1873? Was the debate on language merely about imposition of a ‘foreign’ language, or was the discourse more fluid with concerns like language standardisation operating as undercurrents? Can the language debate in early-colonial Assam be isolated as the first assertion of a sub-national identity based upon cultural and linguistic ‘uniqueness’? Through an analysis of some articles published in Orunodoi, read along with private letters and official correspondences of the American Baptist Mission in Assam, this paper will attempt to address some of these questions and recover the context of the debate around language in nineteenth-century Assam.

Keywords:  Assam, Colonial, Print culture, Linguistic nationalism, American Baptist Mission

Identity, Indigeneity and Excluded Region: In the Quest for an Intellectual History of Modern Assam

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Suranjana Barua1 & L. David Lal2

1Assistant Professor in Linguistics, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, Assam, India. Email: suranjana.barua@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor in Political Science, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, Assam, India. Email: davidkani21@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s17n3

Abstract

If Indian intellectual history focussed on the nature of the colonial and post-colonial state, its interaction with everyday politics, its emerging society and operation of its economy, then how much did/ does North-East appear in this process of doing intellectual history? North-East history in general and its intellectual history in particular is an unpeopled place. In Indian social science literature, North-East history for the last seventy years has mostly revolved around separatist movements, insurgencies, borderland issue and trans-national migration. However, it seldom focussed on the intellectuals who have articulated the voice of this place and constructed an intellectual history of this region. This paper attempts to explore the intellectual history of Assam through understanding the life history of three key socio-political figures – Gopinath Bordoloi, Bishnu Prasad Rabha and Chandraprabha Saikiani. Their engagement at the turn of the twentieth century with ideas for the future North-East region in general and Assam in partcular is parallel to the formation of the Indian nation state. Research on the writings and works of these socio-political figures is analysed to address what North-east history can contribute to the intellectual history of India and how essential is it in the field of indigenous studies?

Keywords: Intellectual History; Indigenous Studies; North-East India; Assam; Gopinath Bordoloi, Bishnu Prasad Rabha, Chandraprabha Saikiani

A Critical Review of the First Travelogue written in an Indian language on Assam Udaseen Satyashrabar Asam Bhraman by Ramkumar Bidyaratna

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Bibha Devi

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Indreswar Sarma Academy Degree College, JibanPhukan Nagar, Dibrugarh, Assam. ORCID: 0000-0003-0591-8737. Email: bibhadevi@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.17

Abstract

Travel narratives usually provide ethnographic information about a place and its inhabitants. The travelogue written in 1881 by Ramkumar Bidyaratna gives an excellent ethnographic account of contemporary Assam and Assamese society of the nineteenth century. The travelogue, which was originally written in Bengali, was translated into Assamese by Munin Sarma in 2014.  The book is significant for its prudent comments on various socio-cultural aspects of the Assamese society like – condition of Assamese women, widow remarriage, commerce, religion, etc. As stated in the translated version, Bidyaratna’s travelogue was probably the first travelogue on Assam written in an Indian language. There was an aim behind Bidyaratna’s travel to Assam. From his experiences from his travel to places outside Bengal he had developed a belief that unless one gets associated with another culture, it is natural to have a wrong notion about that culture. His aim was to eradicate misunderstandings between the Assamese and the Bengalis. In this present study, the Assamese version of the travelogue has been used to explore and interpret the socio-cultural milieu of Assam as represented in the narrative. This paper critically reviews the book, firstly, to explore the way ethnographic  information about Assam has been represented in it; and, secondly, to generate an understanding of the progressive thinking of the writer as evident from it.

Keywords: Travelogue, ethnography, Assam, culture, Assamese

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The Self and the Other in Jnanadabhiram Barua’s Bilator Sithi (Letters from Abroad)

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Nandini Kalita

Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Email: nandinik970@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.16

Abstract

Jnanadabhiram Barua’s Bilator Sithi (Letters from Abroad), a travel narrative in Assamese depicts the author’s life in England at the beginning of the twentieth century. It consists of a series of letters where Barua attempts to understand the specificities of a culture that appears foreign to him. The narrative highlights the complex negotiations that the author has to make as a colonized subject in the colonizer’s land. I want to look at how these negotiations were shaped by the dominant discourse of imperial superiority. What are its implications on the subject’s sense of the self? What does encountering foreignness entail in this particular context? Travel writing has often been associated with the expansion of European imperialism. I plan to examine if this genre undergoes a change of perspective in the hands of a subject of European imperialism. How does the relationship between the self and the other play out in this text? Who is the other in Barua’s narrative? I want to probe deeper into how the construction of the other in this case is influenced by the popular notions about Assamese identity.

Keywords: Travel Writing, Self and Other, Identity, Colonialism, Recognition, Modernity

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Looking In (/): A Case Study of Northeast with Special Reference to Tripura Buranji (1724)

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Bhaskar Jyoti Gogoi

Ph.D Research Scholar, English & Foreign Language University, Shillong Campus, Meghalaya. bhaskargogoi@hotmail.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.15

 Abstract

In the context of Assam, travel writing is an area which offers immense possibilities. Particularly, the pre-colonial period of Assam contains various neglected travelogues like the anonymous Loss of Ter Schelling (1682), Bartholomew Plaisted’s Journals (1767), James Renell’s Bengal Atlas (1779) and his Journals (1764-67) as well as John Peter Wade’s An Account of Assam (1800). These travelogues not only are precious testimonials to the political, social and economic demographics of the period but also offer valuable insight into early Anglo-Assamese relations. Even travel narratives written in the vernacular provide critical insights about various ethnic communities residing in Northeast India. The improvement of communication networks in the seventeenth century, like trade routes and river passageways, facilitated the greater movement of travellers to and from the Northeast in various garbs like that of the explorers, invaders, missionaries etc. A pioneer amongst travel texts in Assamese is Tripura Buranji (1724), written jointly by Ratna Kandali Sarma and Arjundas Bairagi, the two Assamese envoys of King Rudra Simha (1696-1714) who were sent to the court of Ratnamanikya, the King of Tripura in 1714 to seek assistance for the proposed invasion of Bengal. Owing to this event, there were various correspondences and envoys being sent to and fro from the Ahom court to the King of Tripura. The two envoys mentioned here undertook the journey to Tripura on foot accompanied by escorts through Cachar and the foothills of Lushai Hills (present day Mizoram) to the capital of Ratnamanikya. The most striking fact about the travelogue is that its authors supplemented their account of the diplomatic missions, either on their own accord or on the instructions of their Government, by their observations on the resources, topography, customs and history of the country which they visited and of the territories which they had passed. Such a compilation was expected to extend the bounds of knowledge of their countrymen and facilitate the prosecution of similar missions in future. It also marks the importance of the realization of such archiving and documentation of travel as early as the eighteenth century. This paper offers introspection into this medieval narrative and presents a comparative viewpoint with Bartholomew Plaisted’s Journals (1767), written around the same time period. This would offer us a comparative viewpoint vis-à-vis the insider and the outsider’s narration of/about the Northeast.

Keywords: Assamese travel, eighteenth century, Tripura, diplomatic mission

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Travelling Identities, Bodies and the Poetics of Difference: Travel Writing in Assamese Literature

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Shibashish Purkayastha

PhD Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. ORCID: 0000-0002-1630-0038. Email: shibashish.purkayastha@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.14

Abstract

The purpose of this article shall be to trace a historical trajectory of the development of travel writing as a distinct genre in Assamese literature. In Assam, the germ of travel writing dates back to the nineteenth century in which European travellers wrote extensively on their visits to North East India, which were exotic accounts of their encounters with an alien culture. The first Assamese travelogue was Jnanadabhiram Barua’s BilatarSithi which was serialized in the Assamese monthly Banhi in 1909 which, for the first time, narrativized a non-westerners account of his travels to the United Kingdom in a series of letters. However, the genre of travel writing in Assam seemed to attain its growth and maturity in the days following Independence. In the late 1980s, the travel writer, as a move away from merely offering descriptive sketches eulogizing their travels, started looking back into the nuances of the self as a site of imaginative and critical reflections. The onus of this article shall be to trace the growth and development of travel writing in Assamese literature and shall then move on to reviewing some of the important travel narratives of Assamese literature which seem to problematize our understandings of the nation, identity, body and the gaze. Additionally, it shall also examine whether these travel narratives attempt to expand the discursive and generic boundaries of the form of postcolonial travel writing. Through close readings of select travel narratives, I argue that they posit a poetics of difference by attempting to engage in a dialogue between their encounters with foreign cultures vis-à-vis, the nuances of everyday material realities of the life of the traveller.

Keywords: agency, travel, history, identity, body, empathy

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