Indigenous Studies - Page 5

Language Recognition and Identity Formation in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills

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Mereleen Lily Lyngdoh Y. Blah

Assistant Professor, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, E-mail: mblahs@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s17n2

Abstract

The official use of any language by the administration and employment of the said language by the state whether through educational institutions and administrators as a standard literary dialect, gives it recognition. The Education policy adopted by the British and the choice of English being made the language of instruction throughout the country is made evident in Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 and is reiterated again more than a decade later in the Minute of 1847. From the very beginning English was associated with the administration and the benefits that it would bring but they failed to take into account the people who were unfamiliar with it. The categorization and later association of languages with religion, caste, community, tribe and class is evident in the various census undertakings as the official recognition became a determination of its status. In the Census of 1891, the Khasis and Jaintias are relegated as “two groups statistically insignificant”, considering the population and the number of people who spoke the languages associated with the communities. The use of the Roman script had by this time been, “thoroughly established” by the missionaries. The first few census data and later writings by indigenous writers helped cement the association of language with the community. The use of the vernacular in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, by the earliest missionaries, initially arose more out of necessity and convenience rather than by official decree. The choice and standardization of dialect and script in print however, helped solidify a Khasi identity. This paper seeks to look at the link between recognition of the standard language used in print and identity formation in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills and the relevance of language as a marker of identity today.

Keywords: Standardization, Print language, Language and Identity Formation, Khasi Identity.

Negotiating Representation: The Self and Community in The Story of a Tribal: An Autobiography

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Badakynti Nylla Iangngap

PhD Research Scholar, Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, E-mail: bnylla.iangngap23@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0001-8220-3431

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s17n1

Abstract

Literature as a means of representation and understanding selfhood and identity was oral based for the Khasis prior to colonialism but the coming of education via the proselytising efforts of the Welsh Mission led to the development of Khasi literature by the end of the 19th century. As mode of representation, literature for Khasis became a space of negotiation and of adaptation of foreign modes of expression and representation to reclaim an identity which has been suppressed by the colonial rulers via their discursive practices. This is clearly seen in the trend of the literary production of the community.  The 20th century saw a mushrooming of literary production by Khasi writers, with most of them preferring to write in their own language and about their oral tradition. Interestingly, despite this trend, the first autobiography by a Khasi, B. M. Pugh’s The Story of a Tribal (1976), was written in English. The title of the text itself alerts the readers of the highly politicised term ‘tribal’ as Pugh himself points out in his Preface and along with the fact that it is an autobiography the implication of issues of representation in terms of identity and selfhood cannot be missed. The text is also historically significant because of the author’s articulation of his understanding of identity making in the midst of the cultural and political forces of colonialism and later Indian nationalism especially because it provides a glimpse of the hill state movement that surged in the Northeast immediately after Independence. This text thus gives an eye-witness account of the struggle that the hill tribes of Northeast faced to maintain their political and cultural identity.

Keywords: postcolonialism, literature, representation, self, identity, literature, autobiography

Psychological Landscapes and Mines of the Mind: Narrative and Discourse of Red Displacement, White Settlements and Black Laws in the works of Leslie Marmon Silko

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Babita Devi

Ph.D. Scholar, J.C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad, Haryana, E-mail: babitakpunia@gmail.com, Orcid Id: 0000-0002-9699-864X

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s5n4 

Abstract

This study explores the possibility of foregrounding narratives and discourses from marginalized communities such as that of Native Indians. It attempts to assess the efficacy of articulating subaltern subjectivities as in Leslie Marmon Silko’s works. The article investigates the narrative and informing discourse that propels writing of Native Indian authors who engage with issues like displacement, deviance and behavioural changes in context of the colonial experience. The impact that severed relationships can have on people, the psychological trauma resulting from cultural losses and the intangible changes happening in the recesses of the mind are difficult to quantify, therefore these are conveniently dismissed in mainstream discourses. Yet, the important insights that the subjective perceptions of unquantifiable and intangible losses give is unparalleled and cannot be matched by any scientific claims that may be based on surveys and statistics interpreted within the paradigm of White Man’s discourse. Silko’s narrative offers a bridge to the other side, the possibility to transcend knowledge and information validated by the Whites and glimpse the world so far relegated and marginalized. At the same time, the present study while valuing the quasi- real or semi-fictional qualities of the narrative, the subjective experiences shared and admitting the significance of deep experiences in which the reader is invited to partake of or witness, also undertakes a lexical analysis of Silko’s Ceremony using Voyant Tool to intercept psychological and cultural concerns evoked in the text by studying the frequency of words as they appear in the narrative. The author has often referred to words that have association with land and terrain inhabited by the Natives. This triangulation in research is supposed to be enriching and supportive to the concerns of the authors who many a times use the tools, approach and instruments of West to register their protests emphatically- they use the language of the colonizer, the critical approach of the colonizer and the whole jargon of the colonizer to dismantle the edifice of colonialism. Similarly, this study operates in a way analogous to the text under study by both questioning as well using quantitative research tools to unravel dimensions that may be dear in the given context.

Keywords: Natives, whites, land, culture Silko

Perpetrator Plays the Victim: The Politics of Representation in the Captivity Narratives of the Whites

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Virender Pal

Assistant Professor, Institute of Integrated &Honors Studies, Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra, Haryana, Email: p2vicky@gmail.com, v_pal@kuk.ac.in, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3569-1289

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s5n3 

Abstract

This paper draws upon and brings into focus an interesting part of the colonial corpus- the captivity narratives. The discoverers of the New World who then shortly turned invaders had to face resistance from the Natives as they embarked upon their conquest, usurpation and assumption of Property in the virgin lands of the continent lying unexploited till the White man set foot on it. To rightfully and legally take that did not belong to the White intruders they had to be morally, culturally and even ethically superior. This question of ‘Might is Right’ is resolved easy through legal systems and machinery on one hand and narratives and discourse and institutions on the other. The Captive Narratives were put to work operating to dub and dismiss the Native. The captive narratives though taken together as a body worked as a device to denigrate the Natives and typecast them so that their extermination would be found as relieving rather than horrendous; as a step towards safety rather than a brutal incursion, they also offered rare insights when not written as part of a strategy but as biographical accounts of Whites held captive by the Reds. Especially, accounts that do  not fall neatly onto the timeline set by the White diverge from popular, touted, dominant accounts that underscore barbaric customs of the Reds. These rare narratives by White people brought up by Natives cast a different light on the Red culture and offer substantial clues that the Red way of life was preferable.

Keywords: New World, Red Indians, Natives, Captivity Narratives, Land,  Federal Laws, representations, colonization

 

“In the mountains, we are like prisoners”: Kalinggawasan as Indigenous Freedom of the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar

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Apple Jane Molabola1, Allan Abiera2, & Jan Gresil Kahambing3

1 Professional Education Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-4568-9038

2 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, ORCID: 0000-0002-8043-8832

3 Social Science Unit, Leyte Normal University, vince_jb7@hotmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-4258-0563

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s4n1 

Abstract

The Lumad struggle in the Philippines, embodied in its various indigenous peoples (IPs), is still situated and differentiated from modern understandings of their plight. Agamben notes that the notion of ‘people’ is always political and is inherent in its underlying poverty, disinheritance, and exclusion. As such, the struggle is a struggle that concerns a progression of freedom from these conditions. Going over such conditions means that one shifts the focus from the socio-political and eventually reveals the ontological facet of such knowledge to reveal the epistemic formation of the truth of their experience. It is then the concern of this paper to expose the concept of freedom as a vital indigenous knowledge from the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar. Using philosophical sagacity as a valid indigenous method, we interview ConchingCabadungga, one of the elders of the tribe, to help us understand how the Mamanwa conceive freedom in the various ways it may be specifically and geographically positioned apart from other indigenous studies. The paper contextualizes the diasporic element and the futuristic component of such freedom within the trajectory of liberation. The Mamanwa subverts the conception of freedom as a form of return to old ways and radically informs of a new way of seeing them as a ‘people.’ It supports recent studies on their literature that recommend the development of their livelihood rather than a formulaic solution of sending them back to where they were. The settlement in Basey changes their identification as a ‘forest people’ into a more radical identity.

Keywords: Mamanwa, Kalinggawasan, Indigenous, Freedom, Basey, Sagacity

Katala vesa: On Revisiting the Hunter

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301 views

Meena J. Panikker

Associate Professor in English, P. A. First Grade College, Affiliated to Mangalore University, Karnataka. Email: dr.meena@pace.edu.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.04

Abstract

This paper attempts a study of: i) how the hunter myth is used in the temple ritual of katala vesa at Vairamkode vela; ii) focuses on how the indigeneity of the ritual is affected by modernization. As the study is related to chronological primitivism, qualitative research methods such as direct observation, unstructured interviews, and personal experiences, common in ethnographic researches, are used.  Taking the aid of the myths related to the hunter, this paper proves that the vitality and the validity of the katala vesa ritual though untarnished, its indigeneity is stained by modernization where the initial goal of such a ritual is no more realized. The ‘hunter’ is largely underrated in the many (eco-prefixed) theoretical discourses related to indigeneity on Indian agricultural architecture, and hence, this study makes a genuine attempt to repair this deficiency.

Keywords: hunter, katala vesa, myth, indigeneity, ritual.

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Anxious Encounters with the (Monstrous) Other: The Yakshi Tales of Medieval Kerala

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Meenu B.

Department of English, Amrita School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita ViswaVidyapeetham, Kochi Campus.ORCID: 0000-0002-9141-3921. Email: beingmeenu@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.39

 Abstract
Stories about monstrous encounters during travel are ubiquitous in every culture. Scholars see them as figurative representations of the cultural anxiety related to traversing the unknown and the encounter with the “Other”. For instance, the early Greek ‘monster-on-the-road’ tales are often read in the context of the expansion of trade among Greek city-states and the Greek colonization of far flung territories which necessitated going beyond the safety of familiar town boundaries. The Indian epics and folktales also abound with encounters of travellers with supernatural/monstrous beings. Whether it is episodes such as the “YakshaPrasna” in the Mahabharata, or the Bodhisatta’s encounter with the Naga and the Yaksha in Buddhist legends, or his encounter with Yakkhinis in the Jataka tales, travel often involved encountering the Dangerous “Other” who had to be defeated/satiated/converted. These early traveller’s tales can be read as records of the anxieties regarding expansion/establishment of the Kshatriya hero’s kingdom where the wild/primitive outside the bounds of civilization had to be conquered/appropriated. In the case of the religious hero, the monster represented a crisis of faith – either he/she was an embodiment of the allures of material pleasure the ascetic had to guard against or a staunch believer of another faith who had to be converted/conquered. All these “forgotten” traditions of travel come together in the Yakshi tales of medieval Kerala where a shape-shifting tree spirit haunting lonely pathways evokes memories of the ancient traveller’s encounter with the wilderness and its corresponding deities. This paper attempts to read these tales from medieval Kerala against earlier Indian traditions of travel as well as the literal and metaphorical crossings of caste and gender borders that travel entailed during the medieval period.

Keywords: monsters, travel, Indian epics, Jataka tales, medieval Kerala, Yakshi tales

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