Trauma Studies

Memory, Insidious trauma, and Refugee crisis in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015)

Memory Studies/Trauma Studies/Vol15N32023

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Rashi Shrivastava¹, Avishek Parui², Merin Simi Raj³
^1,2,3 IIT Madras, India

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.30
[Article History: Received: 03 March 2023. Revised: 11 Sept 2023. Accepted: 15 Sept 2023. Published: 28 Sept 2023.]
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Abstract

This article argues that refugee crises include complex forms of insidious and latent trauma, insufficiently engaged in dominant discourses of trauma studies which largely draw on Western models and cultural experiences, often overlooking various aspects of postcolonial trauma, trauma due to casual violence and racism, and other forms of everyday marginalization which are interstitial, experiential, and quotidian in quality. Through a historical examination of the America-Vietnam War and its subsequent diasporic subject-formations, we aim to offer an original reading of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer (2015) using a complex framework of memory studies that highlights an interplay of nostalgia, spectrality, and posttraumatic stress manifestations. The study argues how trauma may be examined as a quotidian and experiential phenomenon of slow disintegration emerging from a profoundly political context, and how the medium of fiction offers a unique cognitive, affective, and focal framework to articulate and empathize with the same.

Keywords: Memory; PTSD; Refugee Crisis; Trauma; Vietnam War fiction; Postmemory

Sustainable Development Goals: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Citation: Shrivastava, Rashi, Avishek Parui, Merin Simi Raj. 2023. Memory, Insidious trauma, and Refugee crisis in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015). Rupkatha Journal 15:3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.30

‘I’ll tell that human tale’: Documenting the Wartime Sexual Violence in Jing-Jing Lee’s How We Disappeared (2019)

Gender Studies/Trauma Studies/Vol15N32023

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Ashmita Biswas
Research Scholar, Department of English, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata.
Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.01
[Article History: Received: 13 June 2023. Revised: 04 August 2023. Accepted: 05 August 2023. Published: 11 August 2023]
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Abstract

Sexual slavery as a phenomenon of war was rampant during the Japanese Imperial Army’s occupation of territories before and during the Second World War (1939-1945). These innumerable sex slaves, or “comfort women”, as the Japanese Army had named them, were women (a striking number of them being minors) who were forcefully captured and separated from their families and placed at comfort stations built to fulfill the sexual needs of the Japanese soldiers. While this entire system was created on the pretext of reducing wartime rapes and curbing the spread of venereal diseases, these comfort stations did just the opposite. Studies conducted into these comfort stations reveal how they had become sites of inhuman sexual violence, torture, disease, and death. This paper will look at how Jing-Jing Lee’s historical fiction How We Disappeared (2019) rewrites these innumerable, nameless, brutalized women into the world’s history as victims of a bloody war that had tainted unassuming lives and had snuffed out their existence ruthlessly. Lee’s narrative is scarred by violence committed along gendered lines – illustrating the reduction of the female body to a disposable sexual tool, existing merely to bear the brunt of a war that was not theirs. This paper decodes the politics of gender violence behind Japan’s enforced and licensed prostitution, the nature of sexual violence, the commodification of women’s bodies, the place of women in the socio-cultural context of the era, and the gendered role of women, in what was quintessentially men’s war.

Keywords: Sexual violence, prostitution, sexual slavery, torture, gender violence
[Sustainable Development Goals: Reduced Inequalities, Gender Equality, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions]
Citation: Biswas, Ashmita. 2023. ‘I’ll tell that human tale’: Documenting Wartime Sexual Violence in Jing-Jing Lee’s How We Disappeared (2019). Rupkatha Journal 15:3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.01.

Terroristic Torture in George Orwell’s 1984 and Abdul-Sattar Nasir’s Eggplant Peels

Trauma Studies/Vol 15 No 2

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Bushra Juhi Jani
College of Medicine, Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq. Orcid: 0000-0002-8981-7003. Email: bushrajani@nahrainuniv.edu.iq

[Sustainable Development Goals: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions]

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n2.29
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Abstract
This essay examines the theme of terroristic torture and its effects on both the victim and the torturer in Orwell’s 1984 and Abdul-Sattar Nasir’s Eggplant Peels. Through an analysis of the two novels, the essay distinguishes between terroristic and interrogational torture and explains how the former is often used to achieve an end at the expense of the victim’s well-being, and how the torturer is also impacted by their acts of cruelty. The victim of torture may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. On the other hand, the torturer may experience feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse, as well as psychological trauma and other negative consequences of their actions. The impact of Orwell on Nasir is discerned in the similarities in characterization between the two novels. The characters of O’Brien in 1984 and Dohan in the Iraqi novel are studied as government officials responsible for the terroristic torture of the protagonists of these novels. The essay concludes by highlighting the psychological impact of torture on both the victim and the perpetrator and emphasizing the moral implications of causing pain to others.

Keywords: Terroristic torture, torturers, 1984, Abdul-Sattar Nasir, Saddam’s regime.

Memory, Trauma and Affect: The Implicated Subject in Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North

Global Anxiety/South East Asian Literature/Trauma Studies/V14N4

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Atri Majumder¹ & Gyanabati Khuraijam²
¹Research Scholar, Dept. of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, India, E-mail: atri.cal@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2624-5703
²Assistant Professor, Dept. of Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Agartala, India, E-mail: khgyan79@yahoo.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-6787

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.14
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Abstract

In A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam invades the consciousness of the protagonist to reveal the subliminal enmeshed spaces of the personal and the political. The distance between the traumatic events of the Sri Lankan civil war and the alienated individual who has apparently remained aloof, is obliterated through the refracted memories that have embedded the subject in the matrix of his country’s political history. The individual memory thus coalesces into the fabric of collective memory as the narrative unfolds. The concatenation of the traumatic realities and the sequestered psyche, untethers the individual from its ensconced private sphere and situates it within the macrocosmic and pervasive sociopolitical structure. The transmutation of subjectivity is attuned to the affective sites of collective trauma. The dichotomy of proximity and distance elucidated by the apprehensive reflections of the survivor is symptomatic of the subterranean intensities that elude corporeal presence and agency. The memories of the individual become resonant with the affective (un)lived experiences of traumatic violence, that deconstruct the tension of presence/absence, and consequently reconfigure the preconceived notions of subjectivity. The theoretical framework of this paper would foreground Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of the implicated subject, to limn the trajectory of identities who are indirectly implicated in traumatic legacies. This paper argues that the trauma of the genocidal war and its aftermath is transcribed into affective memories, that bear the potential to reconstitute identity by recognizing and transcending the state of implication.

Keywords: memory, affect, trauma, implicated subject, identity, Sri Lankan civil war

Insecurity and Anxiety in Northeast Nigeria and Boko Haram Agenda Conspiracy Theories: Lake Chad Basin’s Oil and Water Polemics

Human Rights Studies/Trauma Studies/V14N4

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Felicia C. Abada¹, Mary-Isabella A. Chidi-Igbokwe², Chinedu Ejezie³, Nneka Alio⁴ & Emeka Aniago⁵
¹Social Science Units, School of General Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
^2,4Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
³Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
⁵Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. ORCID id 0000-0003-3194-1463. Email: emekaaniago@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 4, December, 2022. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n4.05
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Abstract

In Nigeria and other nations with their territory being part of the Lake Chad Basin, anxiety is high and growing because Boko Haram’s “strident messages exacerbate intra-Muslim tensions and worsen Muslim-Christian relations in the region” (Thurston 2016: 5). In addition, because the agenda of Boko Haram appear jumbled and its sponsors indistinct, curiosity has led to the conceptualization of theories aimed at providing illumination. The study interpretively discusses how insecurity and anxieties in northeast Nigeria resulting from Boko Haram’s insurgency propel the articulation of several conspiracy theories explaining Boko Haram’s emergence, evolution and agenda, and the areas where lack of consensus subsists. The study classifies the theories into three categories, namely, the Freedom Fighter and Soldiers of Faith, Proxy Political Tool, and Islamic Caliphate Quest theories, and examines their suppositions and arguments to highlight the degree of plausibility. Substantially, the study expands the ‘Islamic Caliphate Quest’ theory to include the place of ‘oil’ and ‘water’ as likely variables that illuminate other trajectories.

Keywords: anxiety, Boko Haram, conspiracy theories, Lake Chad basin, oil, water

History, Memory and Trauma in Selected Works of Arupa Patangia Kalita

Gender Studies/North East Literature & Culture/Postcolonial/Trauma Studies/V14N2/Women's Issues

1.8K views

Manashi Bora

Department of English, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam. Email: manashibora@gauhati.ac.in

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-9. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne30

First published: June 30, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract

India’s North East, including Assam, has a history of militancy arising from various socio-political causes. Writers have responded to this aspect of the history of this region by producing works that record and commemorate particular events and experiences for posterity. Of particular significance in these works is the record of the impact of the disturbances on the everyday lives of people, many of whom, though unaware of the main issues being debated, are affected beyond measure by the turn of the events. Arupa Patangia Kalita’s short stories collected in Written in Tears (2015), The Musk and Other Stories (2017), and The Loneliness of Hira Barua (2020) document a momentous phase in the recent history of the North-Eastern region of India especially Assam, marked by student agitation and militancy which mobilized the people around particular issues on the one hand and inflicted sufferings of various kinds on innocent people on the other. A writer is, among other things, a recorder of the experiences of a region who investigates in the form of a narrative the fallout of social upheavals on the everyday lives of people. The proposed paper will look into the aspects of the recent history of the North East touched on by the writer in her short stories using insights from studies on history, postcoloniality, memory and trauma. It will focus especially on the documentation of women’s experiences during that phase from a woman’s perspective.

Keywords: agitation, militancy, poststructuralism, postcolonial feminism

Introduction

Engaging with the events in the history of a region has been a major concern of literature in recent times. There has been a historical turn in fiction writing especially, an exercise in memorialization since the Second World War. The past has been delved into to unearth little-known aspects of it, record individual memories, and find out the genesis of particular problems so as to shape the future. The past, the present, and the future are now seen as inextricably intertwined as a continuum. Alan Robinson (2011) talks about “the present past” (4) and argues that “at any given moment several dimensions of time coexist in present consciousness” (4).

Like other regions of the world, the North-eastern region of India has its own unique history; militancy and violence rooted in various geographical, socio-economic and cultural factors constitute a significant feature of the histories of many of the states of the region. With the signing of various accords, the normalcy of a sort has returned to the region, but the events of the past are stored in the individual and collective memories of the inhabitants of the region and provide the background to much of the literature produced here. As Anne Whitehead remarks, “The desire among various cultural groups to represent or make visible specific historical instances of trauma has given rise to numerous important works of contemporary fiction” (3). A number of writers from Assam writing in English and the regional language Assamese, have recorded the experience of agitation and militancy in Assam in the 1970s and 1980s. Mention may be made of Mitra Phukan (The Collector’s Wife, 2005), Arun Sharma (Sankalpa, 2008), Aruni Kashyap (A House with a Thousand Stories, 2013) and Rita Choudhury (AbirotoJatra, 1981) and Ei Samay Sei Samay, 2007). Arupa Patangia Kalita has carved a niche for herself in the echelon of Assamese writers with her strong portrayals of the social-cultural life of Assam in her works like Felanee (2003), Oyonanta (1994), Written in Tears (2015), and The Loneliness of Hira Barua and Other Stories (2020). She has first-hand experience of the days of agitation and militancy in Assam. In an interview, she has talked about how as a teacher of Tangla College she saw insurgency from close quarters; she was affected by the shooting down of the Principal in front of the college and the death of many students, and the money that the teachers and other government employees were forced to pay to the militants¹.Among the works of Patangia Kalita which look back on the happenings of the past in the North-Eastern region, especially Assam, are the stories included in the collections Written in Tears (2015), The Musk and other Stories(2017), and The Loneliness of Hira Baruah and other Stories (2020). Originally written in Assamese, many of the stories in the collections were translated into English by Ranjita Biswas. The stories throw light on different aspects of militancy in the region, especially its impact on the everyday lives of the common man. Arupa Patangia Kalita is known for her belief in the connection between literature and life as it is lived, and her concern for the underdogs as she was influenced by the Marxist thought of the 1970s. Many of the characters in her novels are people she had met in real life and she articulates the voice of the silent and the strength of the neglected mostly women and the oppressed. This paper aims to analyze how a woman writer looks back on the events of the past, what aspects of agitation and militancy are remembered and recorded for posterity, and what individual and collective trauma people suffered. The focus will be on the experiences of women during times of unrest.

Historiography has attracted a lot of attention from scholars in recent times. Dominick LaCapra (2014) talks about two approaches to historiography; one is the documentary research model which involves collecting evidence and making truth claims based on that. Capra claims that, as opposed to the documentary method, “narratives in fiction may also involve truth claims on a structural or general level by providing insight into phenomena such as slavery or the Holocaust by offering a reading of a process or period, or by giving at least a plausible ‘feel’ for experience and emotion which may be difficult to arrive at through restricted documentary methods” (2014, p. 13). Toni Morrison’s Beloved on the aftermath of slavery falls in this category. In other words, fictional narratives also provide useful insights into the history of a period by making creative use of individuals and collective memories. Although history and memory are seen as binary opposites and history is valorized as the realm of critical rational inquiry and memory is regarded as simplistic and confused, a critically tested memory can serve a useful purpose and light up many dark alleys of the past.

Poststructuralist ideas which have swept across academia have emphasized the histories of the margins —women, blacks, and ethnic minorities. “History from below” has become the buzzword. Postcolonial feminism too lays stress on the stories and experiences of women in the developing or the third world. Ours has been termed the catastrophic age. The field of Trauma Studies which developed in the 1980 and 1990s focused on studying trauma associated with catastrophic events like the World Wars, the Holocaust, anti-colonial movements, civil wars, and militancy in different parts of the world. Dominick LaCapra observes, “Trauma and its causes may indeed be a prominent feature of history, notably modern history which should not be airbrushed or denied” (LaCapra, 2014, p.xi). There is a growing realization that there has been too much focus on studying the experiences of the white western world and that the events of the non-western world need to be recorded so that some link can be established between cultures. Craps and Buelens (2008) talk about “the risk of ignoring or marginalizing non-western traumatic events and histories and non-western theoretical work which may “assist in the perpetuation of Eurocentric views and structures that maintain or widen the gap between West and the rest of the world”(2). The colonial experience and the movements for national independence, for instance, thus got to be written about and the cultures and histories of the non-western world were inscribed. There is an increasing recourse to the anecdote or the story to recover the voice of the marginalized and the abject. Mass movements which often give rise to militancy have weighty causes, but most often the toll that they take on the lives of the people, especially the vulnerable sections, is overlooked. Literature is one of the ways in which the sacrifices and sufferings of communities like women and ethnic minorities can be commemorated and resistance to acts of terrorism and brutality can be built up and this is what Arupa Patangia Kalita does in her collection of stories.

A distinctive feature of the largely patriarchal societies of the third world is women’s association with home, with the inner space. The stories in the collection Written in Tears by Patangia show how the inner space is destroyed by the outside conflicts which leave women lonely and destitute. A number of stories in the collection deal with the destruction of the home. The story “Arunima’s Motherland” is a narrative of how a family pays the price of having a son as a member of an outlawed organization. Not only is a wedding engagement of a daughter of the family cancelled because of this, but the entire family is annihilated by a bomb hurled at their house with the daughter-in-law and her infant son having a providential escape because they happened to be elsewhere at the time of the blast. In the span of a few moments, a wife loses her husband and the protection he provides to the family, an infant loses his father and the love of the doting paternal grandparents, uncles, and aunts. What is very poignant here is the picture of cozy domesticity in the early part of the story —the endearing relationship of the members of the family, their everyday life as they go about cooking, tending to the flowers and vegetable gardens, and preparing the bride’s trousseau in anticipation of a wedding —all of which give way to a gruesome picture of a burnt house with the mangled remains of bodies strewn all over as the daughter-in-law comes back with her newly born son to be welcomed by her husband’s household. Preceding this catastrophe is a phase of acute fear and anxiety as the younger brother of the sought-after militant, who is pursuing his studies in a college, is picked up for questioning and the house seems to be haunted by strange people who have their faces covered with black clothes even as a series of secret killings, bomb blasts, derailments of trains, demands for food and money by the outlaws, and constant army surveillance induce a fear psychosis among the people. The family becomes the butt of caustic remarks by the neighbours who blame them for the army’s presence in the locality. Arunima is pitied by a neighbour for marrying into a family of criminals—“What bad luck that you have to live with this family of criminals!” (28). They are not invited to social functions and no doctor agrees to come to their house to examine Arunima’s aged father-in-law. What is seen in the end is the uncertain future before the daughter-in-law with an infant in her arms. She had ceased to be welcome in her mother’s house as quite some time had passed after the birth of her son and she sensed that her sisters-in-law would be happy to see her gone. What she faces when she returns to her in-law’s house is something she could not have imagined in her wildest nightmares. The author deftly uses contrasts — pitting the warmth of family relationships against the chilling devastation of militancy. Metaphors are also used -of bees building their comb when Arunima enters the house as a daughter-in-law and then of them flying away from the honeycomb before the destruction of the home that Arunima cherished. Women are the givers of life as is put forth by the image of Arunima and her newly born child; it is the cult of violence mostly perpetrated by men that destroys life and relationships.

The other stories in the collection deal with the different ways in which women suffer during times of unrest. Almost all the stories talk about hard-earned money and resources taken away by the militants or the army. The simple villagers are caught in the crossfire between the army and the militants and are unable to decide whom to obey. Teachers are served notices to pay huge amounts from their salaries. There are gruesome acts of violence —the hurling of bombs, blowing up of bridges and vehicles full of people, molestations of women, stillbirths due to the stressful lives of expectant mothers, army atrocities on the villagers who are herded into open fields and punished for helping the militants, and an overall fear psychosis which permeates into the everyday life. “They could not breathe, they could not eat, they could not sleep” (29). It is as though they were suffering a death-in-life existence, an aspect discussed by Amit Baishya in his Contemporary Literature from Northeast India (2019) where he considers the representations of the effects of political terror in the contemporary necropolitical literature from the North-Eastern region.

Women often bear the brunt of militancy and the diktats of the agitationists. They issue instructions regarding women’s dress and Mainao in the story “The Girl with Long Hair” has her hair cut off when she defies the instructions in order to have some fun with her friends. As a result, not only is her beautiful hair chopped off in public view but she is also forced to marry the boy who cut her hair as it is a tribal custom for a girl to marry a person who touches her in any manner. It is the most drastic punishment meted out to a fun-loving girl. Women are compelled to be the bearers of the culture of the community as there seems to be no strict dress code for the males.

The story “Surabhi Barua and the Rhythm of Hooves” deals with the way people who opposed the Assam andolan were harassed. Surabhi Baruah, who works in a college and has leftist leanings, writes articles opposing the movement. She and another of her colleagues, Professor Bordoloi, have to bear the brunt of the students’ ire for opposing the andolan. Students walk out of their classes, there is hooting, and Professor Bordoloi is attacked and injured. Surabhi Barua’s engagement is called off by her fiancé’s family and she is forced to apply for a fellowship and move out of the town. She becomes a liability even to her own family so much so that her own mother does not try to dissuade her from moving out of town. Her story bears testimony to the ways people who opposed the movement were harassed and became socially ostracized.

“Kunu’s mother” is another story that testifies to the vulnerability of women especially women who are without the support of men. After the death of her husband, Kunu becomes the centre of her mother’s world. Kunu grows up to be a beautiful young woman who begins to attract the attention of young men. A particular young man, a militant, enamoured by her beauty starts visiting her house and demands that he be allowed to marry her, sending alarm signals to her mother. She decides to send the girl away to live with relatives. When she returns after leaving her daughter at a relative’s house, she faces the anger of the young man and all the people of the village who told her that if she wishes to live in the village and retain her plot of land there, she will have to abide by the wishes of the community and in this case, that means marrying her daughter off to the young man who wanted her. Kunu’s mother finds herself alone and absolutely helpless, unable to decide on a course of action.

The last story “Ayengla of the Blue Hills” bears testimony to the trauma induced by army atrocities on women. Cathy Caruth (1995) defines trauma as “The pathology consists, rather, solely in the structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it. To be traumatised is precisely to be possessed by an image or event” (4-5). The story is a tragic narrative of a young woman who is happy with her family and who does not understand much about the happenings in the outside world, but as fate would have it, she is raped by the army and the trauma of the incident leaves her crippled for the rest of her life. She becomes frozen in time and is unable to assign the incident to her past and to move on with her life in the present. In spite of the efforts by her husband and the other members of the family, Ayengla does not recover. Her husband marries another woman and starts a new life, and Ayengla lapses into gloom, loneliness, and finally death. Her story shows the damaging psychological effects of oppression, especially when it involves the violation of the body in case of a woman. Another story, “The Face in the Mirror” deals with the impact of an aunt’s rape on a little girl from Nagaland named Zungmila. The rape left her disturbed for the rest of her life so much so that she suffered from periodic fits when she would pour out her hatred for the Indians who occupied their land and could go to sleep only with the help of injections, “mumbling about her aunt and her distended breast” (131).

The stories are based on characters who belong to different communities —Assamese, Bodo, and Naga. The customs, beliefs, and everyday lives of these communities differ as also the problems which give rise to militancy in different places. What holds the stories together are the similarities in the experience of militancy and the sad plightof women in times of unrest. As a woman writer, Arupa Patangia Kalitahas given us a collection of tales that are to a great extent women-centered and represent the myriad ways in which militancy affects women. While women are, by and large, left destitute, helpless, and in a state of mental and emotional shock, there are also positive developments that help them to be self-reliant and earn an income. Mainao in the story “The Cursed Fields of Golden Rice” is forced by circumstances to learn to make snacks, weave shawls etc. and sell them in the market to earn a living. She is helped in her endeavour by women’s cooperatives which supply her yarn and help her to sell her products. Women thus adopt various survival strategies to pull out of difficult situations.

The cultural distinctiveness of the non-western world is also inscribed in the stories even as they record the experience of agitation and militancy. The women belong to different communities and locales— hills, plains, tribal and non-tribal— are part of various customs of the community. “Arunima’s Motherland” shows a typically Assamese household with a kitchen, flower garden and Assamese food cooked with great care by the women of the house. The landscape of the hills is celebrated in “Ayengla of the Blue Hills”. In the story, “The Girl with Long Hair”, the tribal custom of a girl having to marry the man who happens to touch her is alluded to. Names of the characters (Arunima, Zumgmila, Alari), food items and drinks (zumai), articles of clothing (dokhana), kinship terms (mami, bou, khuri), names of places (botabari chowk), ceremonies (ghargochoka) gods and goddesses, beliefs like the belief in spirits and witches, in the afterlife, and a number of songs (e.g. names) locate the stories in the cultural landscape of the North-East. The centrality of western culture is thus undercut by the inscription of the local modes. The patriarchal structure of these societies is borne out by the fact that all the women, whether they are literate and employed or not, are alike victims of different kinds of oppression. Women are associated not with the outer world but with the inner space — the home — which is destroyed by the violence of militancy: “They had helped Mainao set up home. Those evil men had destroyed it within one year. Only a woman understood how much effort it took to set up a home, and now in front of their eyes the beautiful house had disappeared” (“The Cursed Fields of Golden Rice” p.116). It was the ‘jungle party’ that destroyed the house (“The Cursed Fields of Golden Rice” p. 113). After Mainao left for Delhi where her husband had found work, her house was taken over by the outlaws who finished off everything there was in the house. They kept abducted people in the house till they were driven out by the military, but by then there was no trace of the beautiful house that Mainao had set up.

Insurgency and the common people’s miseries resulting from it is a theme that Patangia Kalita keeps returning to in her works. “Two Days from a Phantom’s Diary,” a story included in The Musk and Other Stories (2017) deals with the predicament of individuals suffering untold hardships owing to extortion and exorbitant demands for money by the militant organizations which target the passengers of the buses, as also people making both ends meet with great difficulty. People refusing to pay would be gunned down mercilessly. On the other hand, people paying the terrorists like Chandan Saikia would also be in danger of getting arrested for helping the insurgents. There is mention of residents having to keep a vigil in certain strategic spots like bridges; they are treated by the military as “bonded slaves” (21) who could be slapped and subjected to other abuses by military men. “A Precarious Link” is another story that deals with the miseries of a fruit vendor named Manohar who faces serious economic hardships as the fruits he wants to sell are spoilt due to disturbances related to insurgency and counter-insurgency operations. There are references to bandhs, killings of army men as well as the extremists, bomb explosions, and the difficulties faced by a family in getting medical help following disturbances that turned a “sweet, fresh, fragrant and colorful”(58) town into something “totally putrid”(58) and into a “valley of death,”(64) with the well-to-do escaping to trouble-free places.

The Loneliness of hira barua (2020) is another collection of stories by Arupa Patangia Kalita. Some of the stories here deal with insurgency. The story “The House of Nibha-bou” for instance, narrates what befalls an otherwise happy household because one family member happened to join an insurgent outfit. Much of the story deals with the description of the life of a household centred on Nibha bou, who enters the household as a bride, gives birth to two children, and wins everybody’s admiration because of her skills in running the household with meticulous care. Nibha bou’s qualities are traced back to her childhood – even as a child, she had exhibited great acumen in the orderly arrangement of things and in taking charge of the family matters in case of a mishap like her mother’s ill-health.

The family’s life moved on at the usual pace. The only thing that was disturbing was Nibha’s brother-in-law Bijit’s joining the ULFA when he was sent to study at the university. He used to visit the family after his joining under cover of darkness. Dressed in fatigues and carrying a haversack with a heavy gun, he had become unrecognizable even to his family. There was a rumour that he had become a dreaded militant leader involved in a few killings and was carrying a huge price on his head. His visits stopped after some time and the family members moved ahead with their lives. Nobody could imagine in their wildest of dreams that Bijit’s being in the ULFA would one day spell disasters for the family though they were used to being visited by the security personnel now and then looking for the outlawed.

All of a sudden, on a certain day the family was surprised to see a group of men getting down from two vehicles in front of their house and asking them how much money their outlawed son had hidden in the house. They were asked to hand over the money immediately. When they said that they had no money, the men themselves set about the task of searching every nook and corner —dismantling things and turning the house upside down. The family sits in a corner, terrified and pained by the way their cherished objects were thrown asunder by the unfeeling strangers. The house wore a picture of devastation when the men left. Nibhabou’s father-in-law was in danger of suffering a collapse under the strain and his son had to go out in search of a doctor.

The story “Scream” is a different kind of narrative where the hill functions as a symbol that obstructs the light that metaphorically represents goodness, happiness, kindness, and other positive sentiments: “Who doesn’t want the warm rays of the sun? But the cruel hillock shuts it out and casts a shadow over all” (100). The hill is different in different sections of the story. In the first section of the story, it is the heap of newspapers carrying the news of massacres, bomb blasts, dowry deaths, floods, bandhs, and rape. The narrator says that newspapers, TV, and the radio conspire to build up the hill in front of him and he desperately looks for sunlight. Sometimes, the hill takes the form of extortion threats, of young men swooping down and misbehaving with girls out on a picnic with their professor, or of unfeeling men felling trees to construct buildings. The last snapshot is of the people of a village observing a fast every uruka because on that day the terrorists swooped down on the village and killed innocent people preparing to have the customary feast on uruka night in the month of Magh after a good harvest. While the rest of Assam celebrates, the people of that particular village fast in memory of those killed: “their resentment, their grief, slowly create a dark hill. An angry hill bereft of water, lacking a cool shade under which to rest” (116).

In “The Half-Burnt Bus at Midnight”, a half-burnt bus is being dragged to a garage by a truck — “this terrible bus, destroying everything on its way” (127) becomes the symbol of the destruction that terrorism unleashes. The bus full of passengers had entered an area where a bandh was in force, which resulted in the supporters of the bandh setting it ablaze and killing everybody inside.

III

The short stories in the three collections Written in Tears, The Musk and other Stories and The Loneliness of hira barua look back on a tumultuous phase in the history of the North- East India and record the myriad ways in which agitation and militancy affected everyday life and the coping mechanisms adopted by the people. Many works coming from the postcolonial world, commemorate the strengths of women—their participation in movements for national independence and other causes. But “Written in Tears”, the collection which has the largest number of stories centred on women, focuses largely on the victimhood of women; women are sufferers not only when they keep to the boundaries set for them, but also when they are bold and speak their minds out as in the case of Surabhi Baruah. It emerges that while chalking out programmes of action for various causes, the fallout on different sections of people, especially women and other subalterns, is not considered that resulting in tragic consequences in their lives. Patangia Kalita’s language is lucid and sometimes poetic in its use of images, metaphors, and symbols as the image of the hill in “Scream” which has symbolic significance. Patangia Kalita does not experiment much with style confining herself to the social realist, omniscient narrator mode combining it with descriptive felicity and an eye for detail, but occasionally, in stories like “Scream” and “A Precarious Link” there are some attempts at narrative innovation and the use of the anecdotal, fragmentary, and snapshot mode. The stories are, on the whole, stories of dispossession, economic hardship, forced migration from one place to another, segregation and isolation, destruction of family relationships, loneliness and unforgettable violence to the body and mind especially of the womenfolk. Inscribing human agony in words can be seen as the writer’s attempt to raise voice against brutality in the name of different causes. LaCapra and Cathy Caruth, in their studies of traumatic experience, offer valuable frameworks for analyzing such experience in different parts of the world in different periods of history, while the importance of integrating such analysis with the peculiarities of the local context shall always remain. Third world experience can offer valuable insights into studies of history, memory and trauma.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

Notes:

¹See Bedabrat Bora’s interview with ArupaPatangiaKalita, June 10,2017.youtube. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FItY1cOw_fM >

References:

Baishya. Amit R. (2019) Contemporary Literature from North East India: Deathworlds, Terror and survival. Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, 2019

Caruth, Cathy. (1996) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

Caruth, Cathy. (1995) Ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. The John Hopkins University Press.

Craps, Stef. & Gert Buelens. (2008) “Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels” in Studies in the Novel.Vol.40,No.1/2,Postcolonial Trauma Novels(spring and summer) pp 1-12 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533856. Accessed on 16.12.2018

Kalita, Arupa Patangia. (2015) Written in Tears. Translated by Ranjita Biswas. Harper Perennial,

Kalita, ArupavPatangia. (2020) The loneliness of hirabarua. Translated byRanjita Biswas. Macmillan, 2020

Kalita, Arupa Patangia. (2017) The Musk and Other Stories. Niyogi Books. New Delhi, 2017

LaCapra, Dominick. (2014) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Robinson, Alan. (2011) Narrating the Past: History, Memory and the ContemporaryNovel. Palgrave Macmillan.

Whitehead, Anne. (2004) Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

Work Consulted:

Rothschild, Babette. The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. New York and London: W W Norton and Company, 2000.

Manashi Bora is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Gauhati University. Her doctoral dissertation was on the French feminist writer Luce Irigaray. Her translations of folk narratives of Assam are included in the book Mothers, Daughters and Others: Representation of Women in the Folk Narratives of Assam. She has edited the anthology, A Treasury of English Poetry: From William Blake to Seamus Heaney. She has written critical introductions to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer for DC Books and EC Media, Bengaluru. She has worked extensively in the areas of translation, literary theory, women’s studies, and the literature of North-East India.

Cultural Differences, Racism and Trauma: A Critical Analysis of Nicholas Kharkongor’s Axone: A Recipe for Disaster

Cultural Studies/North East Literature & Culture/Trauma Studies/V14N2

1.2K views

Munmi Bora

Department of Foreign Languages, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam. Email: munmi.bora92@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne36

First published: June 30, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract

“How do people born and raised in one society manage to live in another society that is culturally different from the one they are used to?” (Sam & Berry, 2006, p. 3). This question is fundamental to the whole process of acculturation. When cultures come together there is always the possibility of conflict. But apart from conflict, processes like assimilation, integration, separation or marginalization are also there as the line separating different cultures is penetrable and not rigid. In this paper, an attempt shall be made to study these concepts and to some extent the problematic side of a globalized world and the related trauma the characters go through in a society culturally different from theirs in Nicholas Kharkongor’s film Axone: A Recipe for Disaster. Though the film is particularly about the Northeast migrants and the racism they faced, it also portrays the universal presence of such bigotry and prejudices that have infected the Northeastern communities as well. This paper is an attempt to understand the sufferings and the hostilities faced by the migrant groups that compel them to return to their ethnic roots. Does retreating to one’s enclosed shell a way out to avoid this conflict? Or is there a way out to establish a meaningful relationship and establish proper communication among people in an environment where different cultures reside together? A close reading of some particular incidents in the film will be done in an attempt to find an implicit solution to reconcile the differences.

Keywords: Culture, conflict, acculturation, racism, trauma, reconcilement

Culture encompasses every aspect of human life. With the onset of colonization, globalization and augmentation of such new concepts, thinkers have placed a critical eye on the concept of culture, as the homogeneity of societies has been doubted with penetrable boundaries and movement of people across the globe. The meeting of cultures resulted in hegemonic relationships and cultural imperialism which created an unbalanced equation among the culturally different groups (Weedon, 2004, p. 3). Moreover, the inception of “hegemony” has tended to serve one group better than the other. Such an imbalanced equation among groups caused the emergence of conflict. Samuel P.Huntington in his book Clash of Civilization and Remaking of the World Order (2011) has forwarded his idea about the source of conflict among the nations which will be cultural rather than ideological or economic in the coming future (p.26). The line that separates the dominant and subordinate cultural groups is penetrable. Thus, we have theories related to acculturation, assimilation, or cultural mixing to name a few.

India, a postcolonial society, is a multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multiracial nation. Multiculturalism, however, has become more an expression of an individual’s apprehension for dignity and respect than a reflection of culture. This remains evident in the treatment and condition of certain minority social groups like the ethnic tribes from the India’sNortheast region in a multicultural society like Delhi. People belonging to such groups are often singled out and are discriminated against by the dominant groups because of certain apparent differences in their appearances, accent, or food habits etc. The case of Northeast people and their condition in a culturally diverse place like Delhi has unveiled some larger issues that are often ignored in a culturally diverse country like India. Vinod Khobragade (2009), substantiating the idea of Harrison that there are many nations within India, has figured out the different nations that constitute India as “North Indian nation (the fair-skinned Aryan), South Indian nation (dark-skinned Dravidian), and more importantly the North-Eastern nation (theellow-skinned Mongoloid)”(p.1162). India is considered as a synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian culture and the fact that Northeasterners belong to the mongoloid race made them ‘the Other’ (Bora, 2019, p.854). Sanjib Boruah (2005), citing William Van Schendel, hasrevealed how the western gaze that looked down upon the hill people as backwardand generally stereotyped as uncivilized as compared to the people of the plains. Such extant practices have not only instigated racial divide but caused the fractured relationship between the Northeast and mainland India resulting in “a cultural gap, an economic gap, a psychological gap, and an emotional gap” (Baruah, 2005, p.166). Writers like Papori Bora (2019) have traced the problem of racial divide to the colonisation era when the imperial power tended to differentiate and discriminate the colonised native on the premise of the inferior race (p. 846). When people from the Northeast region started migrating to the mainland cities with such a history of differences, it made them vulnerable as they faced racial discrimination for their looks, the way they dress, or the food they cook. Ever and again, incidents of racial discrimination against Northeasterners come out. The sudden spike in such racial prejudices during the Covid- 19 pandemic has exposed the dehumanizing treatment a Northeasterner goes through in metropolitan cities. The incident of the Manipuri girl being spat on by an unidentified man and calling her “corona” revealed the racially charged comments and treatment people from the Northeast face (Bajaj, 2020). Again in Hyderabad, entry was denied to two young students from the Northeast region because the guard thought they were not Indian (Das, 2020). In many places, tribal students are asked to vacate the residency citing petty reasons, or sometimes no reason at all. Such racial discriminations remind us of Nido Tania, who raised everyone’s concern when he was beaten to death by a shopkeeper who called him ‘chinky’ and against which Nido Tania retaliated (Pant, 2020). Later the High court cited intolerance for cultural differences as the root cause behind the attack. However, they acknowledged the presence of a ‘racial element’ for which they recommended an amendment in the IPC that would make “racial slurs punishable” (Bora, 2019, p.858). Commenting on the report submitted by the Bezbaruah committee in regard to Nido Tania case, Bora (2019) writes how the assigned committee failed to articulate racism as a problem behind his death substantiating the fact that racism exists in our society as “a problem without a name” (p.849).

This paper brings to light a culturally significant film set in the Humayunpur area in Delhi which is considered a ghetto for migrants from Northeast. The film is about a group of friends from the Northeast region living in Delhi and their struggle to cook ‘axone’ for their friend Minam’s wedding. The film attempts to deal with some of the larger issues like racism and prejudices through the medium of food and how people from Northeast region are almost always on the receiving end of such discrimination. The discrimination is manifested through the vile act of harassment, bullying, physical and verbal abuse, and other such experiences that affected the inner psyche of the migrants and traumatised them. The leading characters like Chanbi (Lin Laishram) and Upasana (Sayani Gupta) played challenging roles that attempt to break the stereotypical images associated with girls from Northeast. The group of friends from the Northeast knew that their owner would never allow them to cook ‘axone’ in the building, so they try finding out tricks to cook it. The struggle they faced to accomplish their goal of cooking their ethnic food highlights some major issues engulfing Indian society. For a Northeastern who has lived outside the Northeast, the obvious point of difference arises when you are cooking something specific to one’s culture like fermented ‘dry fish’, ‘axone’, and ingredients that are more on the noisome side and smell pungent for the neighbours. This paper attempts to discuss such differences and challenges of prejudices and racism the ethnic minorities face in Delhi and the related trauma the characters go through in a society culturally different from theirs. The film also portrays the solidarity the migrant group shares and how they seek out each other to make friends, which helps to overcome the traumatic harassment and create their own space where they can recall and remember their home. The role of stereotypes, prejudices, and the conflict history of the region has fitted the region into the bowl of discrimination. Another issue that is highlighted in this paper is the universality of such bigotry and prejudiced practices which pervades every community and exists even within the Northeastern group. For instance, Upasana (the Nepali girl) is often considered as the ‘other’ among the group of Northeastern friends. In one instance Zorem (her boyfriend) made her realise how she is treated differently by Minam and Chanbi who are closer to each other. In another instance, Minam showed aversion to Zorem being in a relationship with the Nepali girl Upasana. Thus, occasionally Upasana too faces such discrimination within her own friend circle.

People carry their culture wherever they go, consciously or unconsciously. We often tend to carry with us objects that symbolise our culture. Food is an integral part of one’s culture and a powerful lens of analysis. Food is also the space where intercultural exchanges possibly take place. The film Axone by Nicholas Kharkongor uses the food motif to deal with some complex issues like cultural acceptance, preservation, and also resistance in a multicultural world. In this film, food becomes the main point of difference that caused racist treatment towards the group of Northeast migrants who wanted to prepare their ethnic food for one of their friend’s weddings. The owner of the building where the three Northeastern girls (Chanbi, Upasana, and Minam) live, calls their food “stinky” and even threatens to get them arrested if they don’t stop cooking. She further abuses them and condemns their cooking by retorting that her building is stinking like a gutter. The struggle on the part of the migrants to taste and cherish their ethnic food in a foreign land brings forth some of the major issues like racism, casteism, and violation of human rights that have swamped the Indian society. In this era of cultural globalization where local food items are getting equal attention in the global market, the same is not the case with akhuni/axone. It has a distinct smell which makes the food sidelined in the global market. The matter gets worse when, along with the food, the particular community associated with it is pushed into the periphery and is discriminated against and judged with a biased and racist eye. Northeast migrants in Delhi often find it hard to get accommodation and when they get any, they are strictly prohibited from cooking their ethnic food. Despite having multiethnic restaurants in Delhi that reflect, on the surface, the cosmopolitan nature of such big cities, the question arises as to why the migrants then have to live under strict surveillance when it comes to eating and cooking the same ethnic food in the comfort of their home. In the film, we come across scenes where Upasana and Chanbi approach such restaurants serving ethnic cuisine to help them cook their food. The whole façade of multiculturalism has been righty captured in Kikon’s (2015) writing where she points out how ethnic foods from the Northeast region have been subjected to “inclusion without acceptance” (p.323). Naga food has been included in the national culinary map of India but the same food is banned from being cooked because of its strong smell. Instances of police circulating booklets about how cooking and eating smelly food by the northeast migrants have caused chaos in the migrants’ pockets in Delhi proves the non-acceptance of the ethnic food (Dholabhai,2007). Another reason behind the non-acceptance of the tribal food in the mainland delicacies is the ways the dishes are cooked. Tribal food is cooked with less oil or masala segregates it from the mainland delicacies. The importance of ethnic food for a migrant lies in the fact that it invokes the memory of ‘home’ and ‘identity’ and helps to satiate the feelings of longingness for one’s roots in distant or unfamiliar surroundings (Kikon, 2015, p.321). Gopal Guru (2019) in this context has pointed out how cooked food apart from satiating hunger and taste has a “decisive criterion for the construction of cultural identity” (p.156). In the power dynamics to maintain hegemony, food becomes a crucial aspect that carries political underpinnings and becomes a medium through which social hierarchies are indicated and perpetuated. The violent reaction against the food habits of particular social groups belonging to the Northeast region or the Dalits by calling it “dirty” and “smelly” stems from conditioned racism ingrained in the social structure (Kikon, 2021, p. 280). The attempt on the part of the upper caste to homogenise the culinary practices according to the dominant class pushed the minority social groups and their dietary practices into the domain of non-acceptance: “The upper castes have not only prescribed food for themselves, they have designated foods for other castes as well” (Guru, 2019, p.157). Such tendencies have not only victimized the minority social groups but denounced the notion of diversity altogether. Affirming the food practices of the minority groups will not only provide a counter-narrative but a proper presentation of diversified India.

Racist disparities shown towards the dietary practices of the northeast region become a metaphor for how northeast migrants are treated in mainland Indian cities like Delhi. Instances of racial abuse that take the form of violence are apparent in the film. The brutal comments that the landlady pass on one of the Northeast migrants, Bendang Longkumer, about his appearance that he can’t keep his eyes open render it evident that the Northeasterners are mistreated and abused for their looks. The incident that Chanbi, another migrant from the Northeast, faced in the market pushed everything to an extreme. She was slapped by two guys who verbally abused her and when confronted, they did not hesitate to abuse her physically. The two boys unveiled the harassment women face that double up when colors of racism are added. Rachna Chandira (2018) while interviewing Ngurang Reena revealed the general perceptions about northeastern girls that they are “easy women”. Ngurang Reena, a social activist and a feminist fighting against such discrimination states:

When you are in a place like Delhi and you have to always adjust to something new, as a woman, as a person from the marginalised section, so every space you go into makes you sort of political. (Chandira, 2018)

This image of ‘being available’ is also manifested in their non-Northeastern friend Shiv’s fetishism over the Northeastern girl who continuously makes comments like “get me a northeast girlfriend” (Kharkongor, 2019, 1:21:10). Women, in general, and women from marginalized social groups, in particular, are subjected to multiple jeopardies. They become victims of race, class, gender, caste, and whatnot. In a survey carried out by the Centre of Northeast Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, and the National Commission of Women in 2012, 81% of women from the northeast face discrimination daily. They are always viewed through a judgmental lens. This incident that Chanbi faced, traumatizes her to the point of making her numb, incapable to act. Moreover, nobody supported her except one woman who consoled her rather than taking any action. Even her partner Bendang acted passively. Each and every character in the film has a different story of such harassment altogether. For instance, Bendang once had blonde hair for whichpeople nearby the area, where he worked, often made fun of him, and for once when he protested, he was beaten almost to death. The story of Bendang brings back the case of Nido Tania who was beaten to death when he retaliated to such bullying. Continuous discrimination has shaken the self-worth and self-confidence of Bendang. The behavior of Bendang can be related to social anxiety disorder, that is, the fear of negative evaluation, fear of embarrassment that partially comes because of his earlier non-acceptance. The effect of the incident is very much reflected in the behavior of Bendang when he remained numb even when his partner faced the same brutality. He no longer dares to stand for himself or others. Such psychological trauma compelled him to lock himself up in his room, away from everything. On the other hand, we have Chanbi who continuously suffered a panic attack after facing all those racist incidents.

Both men and women from the Northeast are subjected to different kinds of racial discrimination which has its commencement in stereotypical conceptions that the common masses hold against the Northeastern people which further exacerbates the traumatic experiences of the characters. Stereotyping is when an assumption becomes knowledge that common people start sharing about an individual or thing. The stereotypes are generally negative and derogatory, often used to justify some kind of discrimination, oppression, and otherization. The concept of stereotype represents the consensus of the majority of the population about the other person or group. Stereotyping, and at the same time romanticizing the unknown or the half known has caused a lot of problems disrupting proper communication among people in a multicultural and globalized world. The building where Chanbi and Minam live also has some African girls. While they were having conversations about cooking ‘axone’, the African girl commented on how Upasana did not look like one who belongs to the Northeast. Even Shiv, the grandson of the landlady, made the same remark about her look. Her face does not fit the stereotype image people carry about the Northeasterners. This showcases yet another problem of how Northeast India is taken as a homogeneous entity by the outsiders. Women are more vulnerable owing to the gender-based violence they receive. The aspects associated with Northeast Indian Women, likethe way they dress, the bond they share with their male friends, and the independence they forecast in metropolitan cities that stand at odds with most of the women from mainland India become a matter of speculation that finally culminates in presenting them as “loose in morals and sexually promiscuous” (Mcduie- Ra, 2012, p. 71).

In the film Axone, we see how the characters behave in intercultural encounters and respond to acculturation, assimilation, and other such processes. Sam and Berry (2006) defined acculturation as, “The meeting of cultures and the resulting changes” (p.1). Some other terms associated closely with acculturation are assimilation, integration and marginalization, and separation. As forwarded by John W. Berry (2006),

when individuals do not wish to maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with other cultures, the assimilation strategy is defined. In contrast, when individuals place a value on holding on to their original culture, and at the same time wish to avoid interaction with others, then the separation alternative is defined. When there is an interest in both maintaining one’s original culture, and having daily interactions with other groups, integration is the option here. (p. 35)

Bendang trying to sing a Hindi song or Upasana trying to cook a traditional dish of Nagaland ‘axone’, and at the same time learning the language of her partner, are some examples of their attempt to integrate with the dominant culture. They did not adopt a separatist tendency or assimilative tendency but rather wanted to take a middle path where they could keep intact their own culture and at the same time integrate with the mainstream dominant culture. However, integration between dominant and non-dominant cultural groups requires acceptance and mutual accommodation of the larger social network. To live as culturally different people within the same society requires acceptance. The strategy requires efforts from both sides. The non-dominant groups are required to adopt some basic values of the larger society, at the same time the dominant group should accept the needs of the former. However, non-acceptance from the dominant group often pushes the individual to take up a separatist stand avoiding interaction with the mainstream group or minimal interaction. In the later part of the film, we see Chanbi telling Bendang about how he never tried to integrate with people other than his Northeastern friends. What we see in the case of Bendang and his other Northeastern friends is that the dominant group or culture did not accept them and pushed them into their enclosed shell. Bendang’s inaction during the market incident or even locking himself up in his room can be interpreted as signs that imply his separatist tendencies compiled with fear and trauma. P.K. Nayar in his book Postcolonial literature: An Introduction (2008) states, “When the adopted culture fails to see beyond the ethnic identity of the diasporic/exilic individual then this individual has no choice but to retrieve her/his indigenous culture” (p. 205). Thus Bendang and Chanbi finally decided to leave Delhi and return to their native land. The decision taken by them somewhat hints at their intention to remain confined within the comfort zone of their roots and culture. But such a stand might have a different repercussion as such tendencies on the part of the Northeastern group might well further broaden the gap between the dominant and non-dominant groups leading to the continuation of differences besides being detrimental to dismantling the persistent social prejudices. As Lears points out that subordinate groups may participate in maintaining a symbolic universe, even if it serves to legitimise their domination. In other words, they can share a kind of half-conscious complicity in their own victimization (Lears, 1985, p.573).

In the final part of the film, we see how the friends ended up cooking ‘axone’ on the terrace amidst nature signifying the fact that nature never discriminates against culture. Love and friendship in particular and human relations, in general, are taken into account to show how this relationship can surpass all other man-made barriers that include our own culture. The friendship of the migrants is a crucial factor in determining their condition in the distant land. Making homoethnic friends, like the ethnic food, compensate for the migrants feeling of missing home (Akhtar, 2011, p. 86). The shared experiences of the migrants in a foreign land bring them together to create a symbolic world where they can feel comfortable. The sense of camaraderie binds the northeast migrants together. Besides, such friendship is not without rivalry but when threatened by the outside force they unite and stand together to overcome the discrimination. Like the homoethnic friendship, heteroethnic friendships develop amongst the migrant groups. Heteroethnic friendship, as Salman Akhtar (2011) puts it, can be divided into two categories- the first one with people who are migrants themselves and the second one with those who are native to the land. In the film, we come across both types of heteroethnic friendships. The first one is evident in the relationship Upasana and Chanbi share with the Black girls. They not only share the same building but share experiences in the acculturation process and go through similar kind of treatment as one situated on the receiving end of racial prejudices that builds connection and form solidarities that embody the genesis of their friendship. The second category of heteroethnic friendship is seen in the relationship the Northeastern group shares with Shiv, who is a Delhiite, which reflects how such a bond can surpass the differences that exist between them. Akhtar’s use of the word ‘native’ comprises not only the original inhabitants of that land but those migrants or immigrants who have assimilated and earned the status of the native. According to Akhtar, most of the heteroethnic friendships are filled with ambivalences because of the mixed feeling they have towards the natives. For instance, the Northeastern group did not like Shiv at first and made weird facial gestures whenever he arrived on the scene. Shiv, on the other hand, made unintentional racial remarks that instigated such hatred towards him. However, Shiv was always there whenever they needed him. He arranged cylinder and cooking space for Upasana and Chanbi, also managed his grandmother who was against cooking any stinky food, and even took Chanbi to the doctor when she got a panic attack. Moreover, Chanbi’s comment that although some are rude, most of them are nice to them, and because of such people they can still live in cities like Delhi, reflects how such mutual love and friendship helped them to tolerate the differences and diversity that exist in multicultural societies. Thus, Akhtar (2011) rightly puts it when he writes about heteroethnic friendships as something that can act as a “bridge to acculturation” (p.91). Apart from these inherent qualities, another way forward is cultural intelligence and tolerance and even learning to respect every culture. Minimum awareness about the diverse culture is the need of the hour that might fill the knowledge gap thereby increasing cultural intelligence. Though cultural intelligence is a concept limited to business, academics, education, and government research, there is a need to adopt the same in a social environment too. How to deal with or behave in a culturally diverse situation effectively is what cultural intelligence means. The concept is more than mere cultural awareness and sensitivity. Cultural learning approaches might help in reducing conflict during intercultural communication:

There is no doubt that one of the most important factors in determining effective communication with members of the host community, and arguably the most central one, is one’s facility to speak their language. (Masgoret and Ward, 2006, p. 62)

An important element of cultural learning theory is language learning; learning the language of the host culture. It helps to establish successful intercultural and interpersonal communication. Bendang’s struggle to learn the Hindi song and failing to do the same is a factor that might have contributed to pushing him into the periphery. Whereas we have other characters who can speak the Hindi language and go along well with others and can even confront the abusers at times when needed to make their stand. For instance, we have Chanbi who confronted the two guys who abused her verbally but Bendang could not even utter a word. Though he has his own traumatic experiences, the language barrier has further broadened the gap. The same kind of cultural intelligence is also seen in Martha, a friend of theirs who married into a Punjabi family. In a conversation with Chanbi and Upasana, while they were complaining about their right to cook their food freely,Martha pointed out how others have the right to not tolerate the smell of the food they don’t feel like.

Nicholas Kharkongor’s Axone, released on Netflix, is indeed a short film that showcases the event in mere ninety minutes but the premise and the ideas it sends through are big. Axone is a balanced film where Kharkongor, in a non-patronising and non-moralising way has presented the lived reality of people from the Northeastwhose stories have not got much scope to get the audience outside the region. Khargonkor did not restrict himself to Northeastern actors but extended his scope to include the brilliancy of Sayani Gupta, Vinay Pathak, Rohan Joshi, Dolly Ahluwalia, and others. The characters, apart from stripping the hard-biting reality of racism also provide comic relief through their humorous interactions. We live amidst multiculturalism and a globalized world where everyone has experienced such a crisis at some point in time. At a time when the Black Lives Matter slogan has shaken the whole United States of America, Axone portrays that India too suffers from this syndrome causing a systemic defect that needs to be addressed with urgency. Though the study mainly focuses on the migrants from the Northeast, it represents every such migrant group inhabiting culturally different regions and facing these issues. In this short film,we have seen how the Northeasterners are looked down upon and are discriminated against, and often projected as the other but prejudices and ‘othering’ also existamidst their own communities. Awareness about the other cultural groups and removing the deleterious cultural practices like bigotry and biases that we hold towards others will help us to communicate better with others. Cultural intelligence, mutual learning, understanding, and other such approaches along with the humane qualities of love, respect, and tolerance will help establish a healthy relationship that would contribute to making this world a better place to live in.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

References

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Munmi Bora is a PhD research scholar in the Department of Foreign Languages, Gauhati University, Assam. Her research interests include cultural studies, Northeast literature and Francophone literature.

The Anatomy of Peace: A Reading of How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency

Human Rights Studies/Indigenous Studies/North East Literature & Culture/Trauma Studies/V14N2

670 views

Abantika Dev Ray

Department of English, Assam University, Silchar. Email: adr1492@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne35

First published: June 30, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract

This paper aims to study the traumatic impact of violence in the late twentieth century Assam, caused primarily by the unresolved conflict between popular ethno-nationalist demands of an independent, ‘Swadhin’ Assam and retaliatory steps of the Centre. The short story anthology, How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency edited by Aruni Kashyap will be considered chiefly, to understand the deep-seated, sometimes ‘belated’ occurrence of trauma on people’s lives, which often resisted representation. Cathy Caruth argues that the belated occurrence of trauma may be linked to what remains unknown/unsaid in our actions and language. Robert Eaglestone mentions that our linguistic registers may prove inadequate to represent traumatic experiences. People’s trauma in Assam was worsened by the disciplinary actions imposed to restrain revolutionary acts. Foucault described ‘discipline’ as a “type of power, a modality for its exercise”. People lived in a panopticon, gradually becoming disillusioned about the cause. Between ideology and peace, they chose the latter. Thus, reading these polyphonic stories using the theoretical discourse of trauma will help to locate the phenomenon in the social, political and cultural history of Assam, to see how people emerged out of conflict by opting for relative peace.

Keywords: Violence, traumatic neurosis, ethno-nationalism, disillusionment.

Introduction

The process of nation-building in post-colonial, independent India faced perhaps one of its greatest challenges from Northeast India. One of the primary reasons for this was the linear direction of the policy-making processes that often seemed to ignore the concerns and interests of the people inhabiting the area since a long time. Besides, in the newly-created northeastern region, there were problems of underdevelopment, poverty and lack of economic opportunities which had been issues of discontent even in the pre-Independence era. Additionally, the attempts of the Indian nation-state to integrate the Northeast into the Indian ‘mainstream’ in the years immediately following Independence were viewed with “antagonism and distrust by the region as a whole and the hill areas in particular” (Misra, 2014, p. 5). The Partition of the country, therefore, did not bring a closure to the problems that plagued the region, since most indigenous peoples within the region began to demand freedom from the ‘colonial’ clutches of the Indian nation-state and also, their own share of sovereignty.

Under these circumstances, the region also witnessed the rise of fringe groups of dissatisfied people whose demands for sovereignty soon came to represent the myriad issues that had been troubling the region. Among the many such groups, ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) was one of the most important ones that not only represented the wishes and aspirations of the Assamese, but also of the indigenous people of the region. Nani Gopal Mahanta (2013) comments that “ULFA represents a mindset, a suppressed voice which is deeply engrained in Assam’s psyche” (p. xvi). Initially, this group upheld people’s views and was supported by common people; ULFA transcended the narrow ethnic appeal of the term ‘Assamese’ and appeared as an alternative voice to that of the Centre’s (Baruah, 2020). Soon however, their activities were overtaken by violence and they gradually lost the initial fervour because of the indiscriminate bomb blasts and killings in the region. The nature of the revolution being primarily violent, people were affected and traumatized severely when retaliatory steps, including disciplinary actions, were taken by the Centre to curb these ethno-nationalistic demands. The violence and trauma arising out of this contention may have led people to choose relative peace – since their support to the cause was gradually beginning to be replaced by disillusionment. My paper aims to study people’s choice of relative peace over ideology, with the help of How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency – a short story collection edited by Aruni Kashyap. It also intends to consider the effects of trauma on common people, which may be said to have primarily facilitated the choice for eventual peace in Assam.

Trauma and Its Manifestations

‘Trauma’, originally derived from the Ancient Greek word for ‘wound’, and referring to a physical injury, later came to signify traces left on the mind by catastrophic, painful events. The implication of the word in recent times has gone far beyond its medical usage, and begun to assume a cultural significance. Its impact is so huge that “over the past few decades, the term has spread so that our entire global culture is sometimes characterized as traumatic or post-traumatic” (Davis & Meretoja, 2020, p. 1).

The years of unresolved conflict between the Centre and the dissatisfied groups of people regarding the central demand of achieving a ‘Swadhin’ or independent Assam turned into a traumatic period in the history of Assam. Consequently, people began to be afraid of secret killings which would supposedly establish peace in the area. In Assam of the 1990s, there were a set of defections, in which amnesty programmes by the Central government looked for the rehabilitation of ULFA cadres and their reintegration into society. These people came to be known as S(Surrendered)ULFA. Sanjib Baruah in his book In the Name of the Nation mentions the testimony of Angshuman Choudhury who points out that this policy “was one of co-opting the surrendered militants into its elaborate security wheel as informants against their former comrades” (Baruah, 2020, p. 131). Choudhury also mentions that the death squad killings in Assam occurred at the height of the Sulfa phenomenon. The government not only held control over the lives of the people in this way but also encouraged the independent ventures of SULFA. Thus, people began to turn against each other – it was quite difficult to determine the motives behind the killings and extortions. People’s experiences of living in this politically charged ambience resulted in immense trauma. Deriving from the idea of Giorgio Agamben’s‘bare life’, Amit R. Baishya (2019) writes that people’s lives in Assam were reduced to bare life during and after this crisis, since “the incessant shuttle between bare life and the centralized mode of the sovereign” defined people’s lives in Assam (p. 2). The trauma of living a bare life, in addition to being victimized by the play of power, was a common phenomenon in Assam during this period.

However, sometimes it took time for the trauma to manifest in people. Davis and Meretoja (2020) write that the manifestation of trauma sometimes happens when the past resurfaces in the present – through “indirect symptoms, silences and repetitive patterns of thought and affect” (p. 3). Cathy Caruth (1996) mentions that trauma “describes an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, the uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” (p. 11). In How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, the first story named ‘Surrender’ (written by Anuradha Sharma Pujari, translated by Aruni Kashyap) explicates this point. Dipok, the central protagonist, has been associated previously with an underground organization with sub-nationalist demands. Although it has not been mentioned directly in the story, yet the references seem to insinuate that he now belongs to the group of nationalists who had ‘surrendered’ to the government. Dipok discloses the whereabouts of one of his former mates to the police. However, this only happens as a resolution of the traumatic experience that he has before – when he is triggered by his wife Sondhya into assaulting her. In an accidental turn of events at the beginning of the story, Dipok slaps his four-year-old daughter and is called an ‘animal’ by Sondhya, which takes him back to his past life as a militant – “just that one word tore him apart like a whip tears away flesh, and it brought out the old Dipok” (Pujari, 2020, p. 3). The years of service in the organization ended in surrender for Dipok, who still deals with its pressure. The use of the word ‘animal’ unleashes the trauma in him, as he is reminded of the wife of a dead high-ranking officer who had also called him the same. The memories of his time in the organization and his consequent surrender, for which he has often termed an opportunist, seem to come alive in his present time and situation. For a short period of time, he turns extremely violent and almost loses track of his actions. It appears that he is a fly caught in a web which he cannot get out of; he is also reminded of how his brother-in-law calls him a ‘Shikhondi’. Eventually, he realizes that it is at home that he can be at peace, and traces his way back to Sondhya. Dipok’s choice of peace is representative of many such people in similar situations, who wish for a life devoid of trauma. That he is killed the next morning by some of his ex-comrades highlights the irony and pathos of the situation, in which siding with the government acts negatively for him.

The inability to speak about trauma and the resultant silence was exhibited in many people across the region. While some of them reacted belatedly, some others withdrew themselves into silence about the incident. Cathy Caruth (1996) calls this experience ‘unclaimed’ since the pain of the revelations is indefinitely deferred, and therefore the truth of trauma can never be accessible. This experience is beyond comprehension; it resists representation and can only be understood as “the unsettling effects on the victim’s grasp of reality” (Dean, 2020, p. 116). Trauma, then, is much more than pathology or simple illness of a wounded psyche; it is a wound that cries out time and again and tells an otherwise untold story. The appearance of the truth in trauma is delayed and may be linked to not only what is known, but also what is unknown in our very actions and language. Caruth mentions the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on human minds. It is the overwhelming experience of a sudden or catastrophic event on the mind, which includes an often uncontrolled, repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other disturbing phenomena. In other words, PTSD reflects the “direct imposition on the mind of the unavoidable reality of horrific events, the taking over of the mind, psychically and neurobiologically, by an event that it cannot control” (Caruth, 1996, p. 58). It is the direct link between the psyche and external violence. According to Caruth, trauma is not simply an effect of destruction but also an enigma of survival. Traumatic experience is a paradoxical relation between destructiveness and survival; it is by recognising this paradoxical relation that one may recognise the incomprehensibility that is at the heart of the traumatic experience. The perplexing nature of survival stands out in these traumatic experiences; Caruth suggests that through these repetitions, one also explores what it means to survive. The direct threat to life is not the root of trauma, rather the missing of the experience forms the basis of the repetition of the nightmare. Caruth states that it is because “the mind cannot confront the possibility of its death directly that survival becomes for the human being, paradoxically, an endless testimony to the impossibility of living” (Caruth, 1996, p. 62).

Beji in ‘What Lies over Here?’ (translated by Stuti Goswami), retreated into silence and became unusually grave after her husband is killed in the violence in Assam. Sorukon, her acquaintance and a surrendered rebel is tormented by the traumatic memories of his time in the organization, wondering if Beji’s husband was among the men killed in the rebellion – which he had also voluntarily been part of: “That night, he couldn’t sleep at all. All through the night, he felt as if he was floating above an abyss of blood. As if a deluge of blood had emerged out of the television screen and swept into their room. Could revolution be so cruel? So brutal?” (Pol Deka, 2020, p. 68). Sorukon wonders if he was initially influenced into joining the rebellion by Bipul who was eventually betrayed in course of the revolution. Bipul’s words were mesmerizing to him, and he was drawn towards the ideology automatically. The story mentions the cracks within the organization that soon destroyed its original attraction. It also talks about how the innocent were targeted in the course of the revolution. Udayon Misra (2014) mentions ULFA’s attack on Bihari brick-kiln workers and Hindi-speaking tradesmen in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh as he writes, “Clearly the ULFA had chosen the softest of targets to put its message across to the state and central governments that it still has the capacity to strike at will and make a mockery of the state’s law and order” (p. 209). Sorukon passes each day trying to recover from the agony of being a rebel once and living an ordinary life now; his young wife Sewali occasionally takes him away from the bane of his previous life, as it were. Disillusionment overcomes him as he thinks of his former comrades who had sided with the police to loot and swindle the wealth of the state. Violence and extortion thus became the order of the day; at some point, it overtook the spirit of the revolution. For Sorukon however, being alive is a reminder of his past and his proximity to death, until he is finally killed, while the rest of his family are away.

It may also be useful to mention Robert Eaglestone’s point about the appropriation of trauma both by the writer and the reader. Since trauma is difficult to be grasped fully, given that it deals with the very subtle and nuanced notions of good, evil, suffering, justice, etc., one should also be aware of the ‘right to write’ or its lack thereof. Traumatic experiences appear to be a ‘limit case’ of language – they have an effect so deep that only to name it means engaging with it. These experiences demand a deeper ethical engagement and thus, trauma becomes difficult to be represented in language. Several people in Assam – both ordinary men and women and surrendered/reformed militants undergo the process, and therefore the silence regarding this is noteworthy. In ‘The Vigil’ written by Jahnavi Barua, a mother is caught between two extremes; while one of her sons is a policeman, the other is a militant. The dilemma that Nirmala faces is representative of many people in Assam during the time. She supplies food to her truant son secretly, and while her other son knows nothing of it, he cannot mention his brother in his family. It is a space that is forever empty and never talked about by either mother or son. However, they hope that the lost son would be back someday and live peacefully with them. It is ironical to note that the very revolution which was a beacon of hope turned into a source of disappointment for many a few years later. It seemed to demand more sacrifices than it initially promised or set out to achieve, and quite often the lives of young people in Assam were at stake in this unfair equation.

Initial Causes and Gradual Impacts of the Revolution

Initially, the problems addressed by the nationalist organizations seemed to be of a legitimate concern for the state. The most prominent of them was that of ‘illegal’ migration from Bengal into Assam after the independence of India, which was a major cause of social concern even before Independence. At that point, even though people kept moving within the land, it was legitimate internal migration that changed as soon as there was an international border in between. However, unlike other nationalist organizations, ULFA had some unique characteristics. Nani Gopal Mahanta writes, “It was the only organization that had representations from all communities, unlike other caste-Hindu or ‘tribal’ organizations” (p.vii). More importantly, it raised the issue of the status of the people of Assam, instead of only Assamese people. Mahanta adds‚ ‘‘At a time when other organisations have taken a bold stand against the immigrants, it has tried to broaden the Assamese nationality by incorporating the immigrants from Bangladesh into the framework of the people of Assam. It has strong anti-India, anti-Delhi stand” (Mahanta, 2020).

Udayon Misra (2014) writes that the “growth of Assamese nationalism has been inextricably tied up with the question of official recognition of the Assamese language” (p. 173). In spite of several nationalities being included in ULFA’s quest for a sovereign Assam, the issue of language gradually began to be considered with more importance, since it was a chief contributory factor to the development of nationalist sentiment and a key marker of one’s identity as an Assamese. This demand for a unilingual identity, in addition to a homogeneous homeland for the Assamese formed a part of the Assamese middle-class quest. ULFA soon realized the difficulties of carving Assamese identity out of a plural and heterogeneous land like that of Assam, which had diverse ethno-linguistic groups. Misra also writes that the process of Assamese nationality formation was ongoing, with the parameters of Assamese nationality expanding continuously to accommodate new “entrants” (Misra, 2014). Thus, there were the na-Axamiyas or the new Assamese, who were the immigrant Muslims, soon to be defined as people of Assam. Moreover, ULFA could not define its stand clearly on the ‘tribal’ question; it also failed to create a common united national platform for its people. Misra comments that this proved ‘self-defeating’ which might have highlighted its inherent contradictions.

There were some secessionist urges in the minds of a section of the Assamese elite even though it was in a rudimentary form. Initially, anti-Bengali feelings arose in the colonial policy of replacing Assamese with Bengali. In some cases, the Hindu-Bengali was also considered superior to the Assamese population in terms of getting jobs under colonial rule, which led some to believe that the Bengali Hindu was a threat to the Assamese society. These sentiments came to be represented in different regional movements, such as the Language Movement of 1960, and the Anti-Foreigner Movement of 1979-85 (Mahanta, 2020). In the post-Independence era, the strong animosity between the two communities grew, and soon, upholding the Assamese language became synonymous with the consolidation of Assamese national sentiment. To this was added the formerly contentious question of ‘illegal’ immigration. If the desire for ‘Assam for the Assamese’ was harbored by many in the pre-Independence era, who expected that Partition would keep Bengalis out of Assam, it was now thwarted by the continuous arrival of ‘immigrants’. The innocuous immigrant Muslim peasant who was previously an ally against the Bengali-Hindu, now began to be regarded with suspicion, since it appeared that if immigration continued from Bangladesh, the national character and language of the Assamese would soon be lost. Thus, these two issues of language and infiltration forged cultural unity across various strata and would form one of the bases of nationalism in Assam.

Muslims who had lived in Assam all their lives also survived the trauma of being categorized/suspected as immigrants. Often, it was difficult to determine which part of the land they belonged to – since the border ran across the houses of many such people. Maryam Bibi in ‘Maryam’, written by Jayanta Saikia and translated by Maitreyee Siddhanta Chakravarty, is a midwife by profession who was born on the Indian soil which gets shifted across the border after the Partition. Her grandfather, Dadajaan had donated money to set up Assamese schools in Mancachar. Ironically, these people lost their nationality and identity in the wake of the Partition. When Maryam hears two men talking about how the land is taken over by Bangladeshis, memories of her youth spent in a united land come back and she wonders what side of the land she is on. She also ruminates about her family back in present-day Bangladesh whom she has to see from the other side of the fence.

In ‘Charred Paper’ written by Nitoo Das, a group of young men and women prepare to stage a protest march in response to the restrictions imposed on student protests. They protest since they think that the ‘Miyas’ are getting bolder. In the course of the story, some handwritten pamphlets and books are burnt, since a raid by the army is imminent and no one must be found in possession of these seditious items – the ‘charred paper’ of the title carries along with it all revolutionary messages and endeavours. However, the process is relentless. If common people had become accustomed to raids and army operations constantly in the 90s, which created a sense of trauma, the protests against the policies of the government and infiltration continued unabated too. There were two groups of people with a very distinct set of opinions – one which was against the immigrants while the other was fairly moderate. Dani-pehi is a staunch supporter of the nationalist movement who wants the ‘Miyas’ out of the state, but her family members realize that even they have ancestors who were born in present-day Bangladesh. The Muslim rickshaw-puller who is belittled by Dani-pehi saves her from a riot-like situation; later in her family, she is shown the importance of peace, of not being involved with a movement that was essentially secessionist and likely to cause animosity among people of the same land. In this story, nationalist supporters fight in favour of the linguistic supremacy of the Assamese.

‘Koli-Puran’, written by Arup Kumar Nath and translated by Anannya Barua, talks of appalling violence as Aafiya, the young daughter of Monsur Miya, is rescued by Koli very briefly in the midst of a riot. Koli does not believe that the Muslims are ‘foreigners’ who should be sent away from the land, so she hides the young child after her family is killed. She faces its repercussions too, as she is threatened to give the child up and her bun is chopped off when she refuses to do so. She wonders how the revolution could butcher someone like Monsur Miya who had to struggle to make ends meet, and how young Aafiya could have a nationality. She is also pained to hear of the deaths of the two young men, Jali and Bhuli, due to no fault of their own. That common people suffer extremely in the rebellion remains an unchanged condition across various strata of the society. In ‘Colours’ written by Uddipana Goswami, one sees the violation of a woman’s body as a result of a love affair she has with a garden labourer. While her own people assault her because of the affair outside their community, her lover Dambaru is killed. The assault makes Deepti join the nationalist forces in her community; however, the speaker is surprised, wondering why she joins the same people who had killed Dambaru. Deepti, on the other hand, is indoctrinated into militant ideology at the Bodo village she had crawled into after being raped. She wonders if she might surrender since co-opted militants are given advantages by the government too. Deepti’s trauma materializes into a kind of resistance; however, her resistance is different from that of the nationalists.

Disillusionment and Failure: Choice of Peace

It has been widely acknowledged that violence and extortion governed the functioning of ULFA, although initially, it aimed to provide a strong anti-Delhi stance. There was also the question of safeguarding Assamese identity using the National Register for Citizens (NRC) which was an important demand in its negotiation with the Centre. Many other regional parties too demanded the same. Moreover, the group’s Bangladesh connection and taking shelter there alienated it from the people. People thus wondered about the reasons behind three decades of violence and bloodshed, if the ULFA’s demands were ultimately reduced to claims put forward by an essentially regional party. There was also a lack of inner democracy and with the military wing having taken over, the party became “ideologically bankrupt” (Misra, 2014, p. 158) with its support base considerably eroded.

Kaushik Barua’s ‘Run to the Valley’ substantiates the quandary of living under the shadow of the gun in Assam. This was a terror that people experienced at being terrorized by the SULFA cadres and the army at the same time. This story, which has been structured like a dialogue with an invisible listener, narrates a meeting between a group of young boys and the local youth with guns who are identified as the SULFA. The men with guns engage in moral policing the boys who express their desire to leave Assam and study in Delhi. Jango protests this and calls the police, but the outcome is worse because he is in turn humiliated and assaulted by these officers who think he has been extorting money in ULFA’s name. Jango stands up to this incapacitating, nameless fear of being bullied by the gunmen and the army when his friends ‘run to the valley’ to save themselves. The story reflects on this cultural and social paralysis in Assam during the late 20^th century, that afflicted several youths at that time. Aruni Kashyap’s The House with a Thousand Stories mentions a similar situation where Prasanta-da tells the narrator Pablo to leave Assam as soon as possible since no good can arise out of a conflict zone. Ironically, the liberation of Assam and its progress seemed to be stalled in the mess of nationalist politics and the retaliatory steps adopted to curb it.

Foucault writes that to govern means to “structure the possible field of action of others” (Foucault, 1982, p. 790). In the equation of power, there is invariably the question of freedom insofar as power is implemented over only those individuals that consider themselves free. People in Northeast India always had an independent spirit. Particularly for the Assamese, the sense of independence was derived from the undefeated and continuous stint of Ahom rule for about 600 years. Thus, the use of power and government diktat came into direct conflict with their wishes and aspirations, and the response to this invariably led to the conflict in the region. In the late twentieth century, it was common for people in Assam to live under surveillance at all times. Gradually, this became similar to living in a ‘panopticon’ at all times – watched and monitored always.

‘Stone People’ written by Manikuntala Bhattacharya and translated by Mitali Goswami, narrates the experiences of the family members of an underground agent who has not been seen since he joined the cause. His sister, who is also the narrator, is now expected to take over the responsibilities of the absent brother. She must also look for him, every time he is seen in the vicinity. His sister mentions other boys who had given up arms and returned home. The search for her brother, on the other hand, is elusive as he constantly seems to move away from them and yet, her parents seem to miss him more with every passing day. As she goes searching for her brother, her bitterness is evident. She also mentions how the dream of a generation had been thwarted due to the movement and also how several such movements have not gathered the response they should have. She is also pained to note that many such young boys and girls are convinced of the revolution, often ignoring their responsibilities to their families. The trauma that many parents face is given a voice in this story: “When people took to the streets to agitate, my father roamed the streets in search of his son” (Bhattacharya, 2020, p. 145). They become, as it were, ‘stone’ people who are just alive, but listless without their children.

There were polarized opinions about the success/failure of the revolution but at large, people agreed that the abysmal condition of Assam had not changed too much during and after the agitation. ‘Crimsom’ is a story written by Ratnottama Das Bikram and translated by Mitali Goswami, which narrates the extortion faced by non-Assamese people in Assam, forcing them to leave the place. Although this family does not belong to Assamyet, they have lived here a long time, perhaps even before the crisis took shape. When ULFA’s meetings are held, they speak of a golden Assam but when the crisis is past SULFA takes over, often demanding money from people. Motilal Jain in the story is threatened and later killed over money, even though he has already made a lot of donations. This bears a tremendous impact on two young children who are friends of his son, Arunjyoti. This story points out that the effects of the militancy were all-encompassing; it affected every section of the population. Despair and disappointment ran through everyone’s minds at the failure of the revolution.

‘Hongla Pandit’, (written in Bodo by Katindra Swargiary, and translated by Anjali Daimari) talks of Hongla Pandit, whose real name is Haragobinda. He refuses to be called anything else other than a ‘pandit’, since he is the first one in his community to pass matriculation and work in the lower primary school. He expects that his son Navajyoti would be as learned as him, and is quite troubled when Navajyoti takes up a Bodo name, Irakdao. His daughter, Delaisri, elopes with a Bihari youth, against her father’s wishes. Thus, Hongla Pandit is extremely surprised when the army tells him that his son Navajyoti is engaged with the Bodo Liberation Organization as an undercover agent. Hongla Pandit never encouraged his children to speak their native Bodo language, but his son was still influenced by revolutionary ideals. The Assam Accord brought the security of the tribal communities to question. Some of these people, like the Bodos, Rabhas, Mishings, etc. who may have acquired a dual identity and considered themselves to be both tribal and Assamese, now felt that only the interests of the Assamese-speaking people would be secured (Misra, 2014). There were, consequently, some nationalistic movements undertaken to safeguard the identities and interests of people in the tribal regions. In this story, the merciless attitude of the army is expressed with poignancy as Delaisri is raped and Hongla Pandit assaulted, for harbouring a militant. It is difficult for Hongla Pandit to grasp the reasons for being victimized but he is aware of the irreversible devastation caused by it.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to portray the crisis in Assam from the perspective of the people. While the demand for ‘Swadhin’ or independent Assam remained a primary demand to the nationalistic organisation, it is also important to remember that the counter-revolutionary steps of the Centre and the consequent changes to the rebellion shifted the aims of the movement to only securing its comrades and retaliating against the Centre. One of the primary causes attributed to its fall is the reliance on the military wing which betrayed its ideological weaknesses and resulted in the growing alienation from the masses. For people trapped between these two contending parties, the revolution may have lost its initial fervour because both the nationalists and the Centre engaged in violence. The stories in this collection show that people at large were in favour of a situation that would address the inherent problems of the region through discussions and peace talks. This was to be achieved some years later in the new millennium.

The ULFA has insisted that its change of violent policies to relatively peaceful ones has been made in ‘‘deference to the wishes of the people of the state as expressed in the Jatiya Abhibartan or civil society conclave of 2010” (Misra, 2014, p. 226). The civil society has welcomed the recent peace negotiations and “suspension of violence” (Misra, 2014). There are also some within the civil society that did not want the peace process to mean a general amnesty towards ULFA. For those who had lost their families in the crisis, there had been a unanimous view that the killings by ULFA and the state were mistakes that seized almost thirty years of the political and social history of Assam. Nani Gopal Mahanta writes that there is a need for a political system that nurtures, as it were, sub-nationalistic and sub-regional identities (Mahanta, 2020, p. 316). Ironically, the aim of these sub-nationalistic identities has been to replace the concept of the nation-state altogether. If the question of ‘national identity‘ had to be reconsidered, then it was also true that the sub-nationalistic groups failed to proceed beyond the narrative of colonialism. The political space of India, therefore, needs to be restructured by “providing substantial degrees of provincial or regional autonomy” (Mahanta, 2020, p. 316). It also calls for a dialogue between the two parties that could effectively reduce the problems and create a harmonious ambience. Therefore, the people’s wishes to shun violence intensified the need for peace talks in the international scenario, to bring about the much-coveted and necessary condition of peace in the region.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

References

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Bhattacharya, M. (2020). Stone people. (M. Goswami, Trans.). In A. Kashyap (Ed.), How to tell the story of an insurgency (pp. 142-180). HarperCollins.

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Davis, C. & Meretoja, H. (Eds.). (2020). The Routledge companion to literature and trauma. Routledge.

Dean, C. J. (2020). Witnessing. In C. Davis & H. Meretoja (Eds.). The Routledge companion to literature and trauma (pp. 111-120). Routledge.

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343197

Kashyap, A. (Ed.). (2020). How to tell the story of an insurgency. HarperCollins.

Mahanta, N.G. (2013). Confronting the state: ULFA’s quest for sovereignty. Routledge.

Misra, U. (2014). India’s Northeast: Identity movements, state and civil society. Oxford University Press.

Pol Deka, S. (2020). What lies over here? (S. Goswami, Trans.). In A. Kashyap (Ed.), How to tell the story of an insurgency (pp. 59-85). HarperCollins.

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Abantika Dev Ray is a PhD Research Scholar at the Departmentof English, Assam University, Silchar. She is also engaged as a Guest Lecturer in English, in the Departments of English and Commerce at Scottish Church College, Kolkata, West Bengal. Her áreas of interest include Postcolonial Studies, Literature from Northeast India, and Indian Writing in English.

“Transgenerational Transmission of Chosen Trauma”: Locating Micro-Experiences in Macro-Historical Eventsand the Quest for Cultural and National Identity in Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone

North East Literature & Culture/Trauma Studies/V14N2

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Suganya V.¹& Dr Padmanabhan B.²

¹Phd Research Scholar, Department of English & Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. E-mail: suganya.efl@buc.edu.in, Orcid Id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0989-2653

²Assistant Professor, Department of English & Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. E-mail: padmanabhan@buc.edu.in, Orcid Id: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-126X

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-11. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne28

First published: June 26, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract

Micro experiences of people immensely influence their personal narratives and play an undeniable role in reflecting the effects of macro-historical events. The narration of individual experiences contributes to the transgenerational transmission of historical memory and its collective experiences to posterity. Interweaving the micro experiences with macro-historical events promotes the construction of ethnic, national and cultural identities. Such individualistic narratives help in the construction of both the personal and cultural self for the macro-historical formation. This paper aims to interpret the select short stories from Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone for manifesting transgenerational transmission of the memories of Naga insurgency incidents and the collective traumatic experiences through the micro experiences of the characters. The storytellers in the select stories such as “The Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” situate themselves as historical subjects to relay the stories of protracted armed conflicts, political instability, and civilian causalities that occurred in the Indian state Nagaland during the years of insurgency. Hence, through careful analysis, this paper provides the relevance of transgenerational transmission of chosen trauma and the role of storytelling technique to preserve and transfer the endurance of the past through narratives.

Keywords: transgenerational memory, chosen trauma, Naga identity, oral narratives, Nagaland

I hear the land cry,

Over and over again

‘Let all the dead awaken

And teach the living

How not to die’

Temsula Ao

Introduction

This paper aims to demonstrate the significance of storytelling for the transgenerational transmission of Naga insurgency memories as chosen trauma for establishing Naga identity as rendered in “Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” from These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone. It also highlights the necessity of transferring the Naga cultural history to young generations and the role of personal experiences in reflecting the collective sufferings. Previous studies focused more on sexual violence against women during times of conflict, patriarchal biases and how the traditionally established patriarchal structure silences the agony of women in the Naga community, as expressed in These Hills Called Home (Arora 2019; Pou 2020a; Maut 2020). Besides, few studies have concentrated on the portrayal of ethnic and broken identities, postcolonial identity, revival of lost identity, the theme of insurgency and the role of literature in carrying the Naga history in These Hills Called Home (Longkumer 2014; Kamal 2019; Gogoi 2019; Borkotoki 2014). Therefore, this study critically analyses the characters as historical subjects and the individual’s role in transmitting the historical truth to posterity through the storytelling tradition of Naga culture.

The Naga people in north-eastern India encountered multiple perilous circumstances and precarious living conditions during the ruthless implementation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in 1958. Since their protest for Naga national identity, they experienced diverse security threats, including sexual harassment, civil causalities, kidnapping, violence, and demolition of public and private assets. The contribution of North-eastern literature is significantly influential in communicating collective, cultural and individual tribulation and representing tribal cultural values, history, beliefs and tradition. Temsula Ao, in her narratives in These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone, instils the micro-experiences of Naga people in the characters to reverberate the macro-historical realities of Nagaland. She highlights the wrath and inefficiency of the armed forces in distinguishing the insurgents from the common people and their punitive expedition to punish innocent people for helping underground leaders. As a result, Ao (2006) once stated that the Naga people are “restricted from their routine activities, demonstrating to them that the ‘freedom’ they enjoyed could so easily be robbed at gun point by the ‘invading’ army” (p. 11). She continues to situate her characters as historical subjects and invests the themes of violence, memory, trauma, vehemence, vulnerability, homeland, and history in the narrative to promote the transgenerational transmission of Naga culture and the traumatic experiences of insurgency to the posterity. The stories in the book are intertwined with history, ethnic elements and fiction in order to reflect cultural authenticity and retain and render the richness of storytelling technique. By implementing oral aspects in the narrative structure, Ao engenders cultural rebirth and imparts new status to her community and the woman folklore. She also explains that during troubled times, “there are no winners, only victims and the result can be measured only in human terms” (2006, p. x). “The Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” are the two redolent stories, like other stories in These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone, entrenched with the facets of orature which stir cultural consciousness and further exude civil unrest, indignation, exploitation of power, human rights violations, cultural and historical ignorance of younger generations in the community.

The Story of Pain

“An Old Man Remembers” is a poignant story about the jungle life of Sashi and his friend Imli. Sashi recounts the violations of human rights that happened during the Naga insurgency to his grandson Mao. Sashi debilitates through time, and his memory is fraught with the experiences of his early years. He prefers to live alone after his wife’s death and conceals his darkest life history in the jungle with his friend Imli from his family members. Therefore Sashi’s remembrance of the past is a solitary activity. As a result of withholding the past and resistance to sharing the truth behind the history, Sashi’s grandson Mao unknowingly questions him like a murderer:

“…‘Grandfather, is it true that you and grandfather Imli killed many people when you were in the jungle? Old man Sashi was completely taken aback by the question”. (Ao, 2006, p. 92)

Sashi and Imli were the Naga freedom fighters who fought to preserve their people’s lives during the troubled times of ethnic violence. Through his question, Mao marks them as killers instead of freedom fighters because Sashi has never attempted to share his past life. Thus, Sashi understands the validity of Imli’s words that the inevitable responsibility of older generations is to transfer the history and their experiences to the younger generations through his grandson’s question. Ao posits through her narrative that the memories of younger people will be the next historical and cultural agents obliging to preserve and transfer the cruelty endured by their ancestors to attain cultural individuality and political freedom in the homeland: “Imli had often told him that the young had the right to know about the people’s history and that they should not grown up ignorant about the unspeakable atrocities that they, the older generation had witnessed”. (Ao, 2006, p. 93)

Sashi believes that the past would always be pointless to the youngsters of his community, and it is already dead. Now, he regrets it because “…his grandson was hurling a question at him from the other side of history” (Ao 2006, p. 93). He, thereby, recognises the responsibility of telling and imparting the past experiences and endurance to Mao. Eventually, he musters up his courage and energy to relay the historical truth to his grandson Mao who had misunderstood his own community’s history. The act of Sashi implies that if people fail to pass on history, the future may misrepresent or alter the truth of a historical event. So, history is created not to die but to traverse through generations and to reverberate its role in their collective identity because “When one’s history is abolished, one’s identity ceases to exist as well” (Laub 67). Thus, Sashi gives re-birth to his dead past experiences. The question of Mao acts as a motivation for Sashi to unload his traumatic experiences that happened during the struggle for Naga sovereignty with underground groups through remembering: “I should tell you these stories because only then will young people like you understand what has wounded our souls” (Ao 98).

Sashi realizes the necessity of sharing the historical moments with young people like Mao and prepares himself to relive the intense pain of physical and emotional suffering experienced during the insurgency. Temsula Ao implies through her narrative that Naga history does not reflect the regular day-to-day life incidents; it unfolds the incidents containing solid emotions, feelings and struggles, and it is the crucial source for who they are as a group. Therefore, history should not be a static memory; it should be an active element to impart cultural and human values to own people. Sashi conveys to his grandson that Imli, and he witnessed the chaotic condition of people in their village at their young age. They have witnessed the cruel incident of Imli’s father being caught up by the army and beaten to death. At that time, they were children and defenceless; hence they had to leave Imli’s father to the mercy of God in order to protect themselves from the soldiers. Sashi relays the incident to Mao with great agony and feels guilty.

“It was the sentry and some soldiers wearing heavy boots and helmets were beating him up…I realized why Imli was behaving in this manner: the inert man on the ground was his father … Imli began to whimper like a hurt animal” (Ao 99).

Sashi and Imli were held as hostages by the insurgent groups for several months while attempting to escape from the Armed Forces. And then the groups recruited them to revolt against the Indian army. The violent intervention of the Armed Forces forced Sashi and Imli to enroll themselves in underground activities such as spying, collecting food and other essentials from the village people. They are also involved in combats to protect the village people, “And do you know? We were not yet sixteen when we became such ruthless killers” (Ao, 2006, p. 108).

The protracted conflict between armed personnel and underground Naga soldiers resulted in severe economic consequences and civil casualties. The Naga people were subjected to terrible experiences and forced to find shelter in the jungle in order to save the lives of their families. The army exploited their special powers by committing physical violence, plundering the villages, uninformed raids and rape (Arora 2019; Srikanth and Thomas 2005). Therefore, young people like Imli and Sashi began to revolt against the army. They were the victims-turned insurgents who worked for the underground Naga groups to protect their people. American Psychiatric Association in a report state that “a traumatic event is one in which an individual experiences, witnesses, or learns that a close associate has experienced an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury or other threat to one’s physical integrity” (2000, p. 463).

Witnessing the distressing event of Imli’s father being brutally attacked evoked feelings of fear and helplessness, marking it as a traumatic experience for them and aroused hostility towards the Indian army. Moreover, the inability to protect Imli’s father from the violators created a deep feeling of guilt. Herman (2015) explains that “feelings of guilt are especially severe when the survivor has been a witness to the suffering or death of other people. To be spared oneself, in the knowledge that others have meta worse fate, creates a severe burden of conscience” (54). Similarly, Sashi has been living with immense guilt for his inability to protect the older adult, Imli’s father. Yoder (2015) elucidates that trauma cannot be limited to the individual; it can be exposed at the collective and cultural levels. Sashi’s encounter with devastating incidents during his young age is not only the representative of the individual psyche but also the representative of collective Naga psyche and Naga historical moments. K B Veio Pou (2018) claims,

“Those were the days when villages in remote parts pof Naga areas bre the burnt of the onslaught of the Indian soldiers who would mercilessly lash out at the innocent Naga villagers to avenge the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Naga underground”. (“Charting a Space of Their Own”, para. 38)

The eruption of conflict between the Indian army and the insurgents forced people to live in fear and led to protracted internal displacement. The unanticipated spate of random bombing, gunshots, rapes and killings forced them to move from their villages and live in dark jungles. Sashi remembers that after the entry of the Indian army into his village, people left the place and shifted to the safe places in the wilderness. The village has been demolished and stands as a symbol of the death and suffering of the Naga people. Ao narrates the cruel sufferings of the people as,

…youth was a seemingly endless cycle of beatings, rapes, burning of villages and grain-filled barns. The forced labour, the grouping of villages and running form one hideout to another in the deep jungles to escape the pursuing soldiers, turned young boys into men who survived to fight these forces, many losing lives in the process and many becoming ruthless killers themselves. (Ao, 2006, p. 93)

In the Guideline Principles on Internal displacement, the Office of the High Commissioner for the Human Rights (OHCHR) explains the factors causing displacement as,

People forced to flee or leave their homes – particularly in situations of armed conflict – are generally subject to heightened vulnerability in a number of areas… They also remain at high risk of physical attack, sexual assault and abduction, and frequently are deprived of adequate shelter, food and health services.

The people of Sashi’s village abandoned the place due to the high risk of physical violence, abduction, uninformed raids, forced labour and humiliation. Many young people sacrificed their lives for the well-being of their community and involved in underground activities against the armed forces. It takes years to restore normalcy in their homeland. In the present day, Mao, Sashi’s grandson, lives a comfortable life with adequate essentials owing to the sacrifice of many people like Imli and Sashi.

Human memory is very much vulnerable and can corrupt an individual’s past experiences with time. Instead of restoring accurate information, it may reconstruct and provide a summary of the events. Several studies have discovered that human memory involves constructive processes and relays the interpretation of the past (Bartlett 1932; Conway and Pleydell 2005; Nelson 1993). However, Kolk and Hart state that: “some memories are fixed in the mind and are not altered by the passage of time, or the intervention of subsequent experience”. (1995, p. 172)

Thus, Sashi remembers the past vividly even in his old age, and he can still recollect and reflect on the social condition of people during the period of insurgency. Manzanero and Recio (2012) state that remembering traumatic experiences may differ from person to person. Some can vividly recall past traumatic situations, and some remember their past in a fragmented manner. Therefore, Sashi’s remembrance of the past indicates that the emotionally charged events are retrievable because he continuously recalls through nightmares and remembers the people associated with the event. However, his memories of the past negatively influence and make a high emotional impact on Sashi’s cognitive processes.

After all these years, he can remember and narrate the incidents in elaborative and evocative ways, though he tries to forget them. Remembering and re-telling the past are highly effective methods for alleviating the agony of the past (Ringel and Brandell, 2011). But Sashi, in “An Old Man Remembers,” believed that “…the bad things will go away if one does not talk about them” (Ao, 2006, p. 93), and thereby his pain is excruciating and immutable. If the victims of war, violence, and abuse cannot cope with traumatic situations, they may undergo severe cognitive effects that affect their day-to-day lives. The inability to handle the trauma engenders relentless post-traumatic reactions, thereby the memories of them continue to be active and perturb the individuals’ consciousness in various forms, including flashbacks, hallucination, avoidance, insomnia and nightmares (Horawitz 1993; Erikson 1995; Manzanero and Recio 2012). In “An Old Man Remembers,” Sashi could not recover from the physical and psychological wounds inflicted on him and his people. The long-term remembrance of traumatic experiences and his failure to handle the trauma submerged for years disturbed his psychosocial well being. Ao portrays the condition as,

Though he was making a valiant effort to lead a normal life as a common villager, he could not hide the inner turmoil from his wife who would often shake him awake when he groaned and moaned and sometimes even shrieked in his sleep. Many times he would wake up crying and screaming because of his bad dreams… (Ao, 2006, p. 94)

Even after the declaration of the ceasefire, Sashi struggles to return to normality like other people. Unconsciously, he cries and mourns by thinking about the past, which results in nightmares. Throughout his life, Sashi suffers from psychological trauma and has been mourning the past privately. Herman (2015) states “Remembering and telling the truth of terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims”. (1) Sashi’s attempts to narrate his past involve a robust meaning-making process and mitigate the prolonged grief. By recounting his life history to Mao, Sashi looks back and relives past experiences to locate his micro life history in the macro Naga cultural history. His life history is not an individual’s experience; it is the experience of the whole of Nagaland.

Women – The Least Weapon

During times of conflict, women remain the most vulnerable and defenceless. The conflicting groups target women as their least weapon to defile the nobility of a community because women are considered innocent, unarmed and fragile. Physical abuses and exploitations affect them psychologically. Naga women are also not exempted from the experiences of the cruelty of conflicts and war. Arora (2019) mentions,

Physical violence, forced arrest, custodial rape, torture and sexual assault become a way of official functioning in states under AFSPA. In such a situation, women become vulnerable targets of state sponsored violence. Their bodies are sexually assaulted and marked by the terminology of violence, shame and honor. (p. 4)

“The Last Song” is the heart-wrenching story of Abenyo and her mother Libeni, who are physically maimed during turbulent years. The story renders the predicament of women in the hands of marauding soldiers who have sexually assaulted the mother and daughter as a punishment for paying taxes to the insurgents. Ao brings life to the unheard voices through her narrative.

“….even though by the time of the fourth one mounted, the woman was already dead. Apenyo, though terribly bruised and dazed by what was happening to her was still alive…there were witnesses to their despicable act, turned to his soldiers and ordered them to open fire on the people who were now lifting up the bodies of the two women. (A0, 2006, p. 28,29)

The abrupt intrusion of soldiers collapses the villagers during the ceremony of opening a new church building. Men are kicked out and physically assaulted by the soldiers. Apenyo and her mother Libeni have become prey to the cold-hearted soldiers. “During those days, the villages were often burned down, their people tortured and women sexually harassed” (Pou, 2018b). Another significant event that manifests the superficial beliefs of the community is that their own people disavow burying the inert bodies of Apenyo and Libeni in their graveyard. Because the people believe that, “the deaths of these unfortunate people were considered to be from unnatural causes and according to tradition they could not be buried in the village graveyard”. (Ao, 2006, p. 30) Apenyo was praised as the nightingale of their village, and she brought tranquillity to their soul through her melodious singing. However, because of the intense fear about the armed personnel, the villagers could not protect the victims. Their profound suffering, during the darkest history of the village, was not acknowledged faithfully; instead, the villagers buried their maimed bodies outside the graveyard and “no headstones would be erected for any of them” (Ao, 2006, p. 31). Ao represents that the old beliefs and traditions are still active, even though they follow Christianity. People believed that what happened to Apenyo and her mother was a humiliation to the entire Naga community. The villagers wanted to remove the incidents from the history of their village to preserve their community and cultural dignity. Pou (2018) states,

“Sexual violence against women in war and conflict has been seen as one of the biggest crimes against humanity. It is not just a humiliation of the community but violates an individual’s rights to live with dignity. Yet, time and again, “rape” has been used a weapon in war”.

Therefore, Apenyo and Lebini are dishonoured by their own people. Herman (2015) states,

“When the cry is not answered, the sense of basic trust is shattered. Traumatized people feel utterly abandoned, utterly alone, cast out of the human and divine systems of care and protection that sustain life”. (p. 52)

The real recognition for their sufferings and pain lies in acknowledging their agony as collective suffering and not as individual victims of an unfortunate event. The anguish of the two women was not treated as collective trauma because the villagers failed to acknowledge their pain as part of the Naga history. The experiences of men, such as physical attacks and forced labour, were portrayed in history as heroic deeds, but women’s experiences were not properly registered in history because they believed that such incidents bring humiliation to their community. Ao brings to light the patriarchal structure of Naga society which treats women with much discrimination and inequality. She voices to the voiceless

An old woman narrates the story of Apenyo and Lebini to the younger generation calls the day the Black Sunday of the village: “She tells them that youngsters of today have forgotten how to listen to the voice of the earth and wind” (Ao, 2006, p. 32). The author implies that the new younger generation is oblivious to their own historical incidents. They do not lend their ears to recognise and experience past incidents and historical truth. The older woman influences young people through the storytelling technique by creating awareness about the past. The older woman and her interest in telling and retelling the experiences of Apenyo and Lebini acknowledge the struggles of women during the armed conflict.

Storytelling and Transgenerational Memory

“The history of the Nagas has turned into folklore, passed down from generation to generation through the oral tradition of storytelling.” (Gupta 2020)

The storytellers in “Last Song” and “An Old Man Remember” situate their memory in historical and cultural contexts to understand the past, experienced and witnessed by the older generations. During storytelling, “Individuals are active agents taking actions and engaging in interactions with others in their cultural environment”. (Alea & Wang, 2015, p. 5)

They intend to impart unfortunate incidents and cultural significance that persuade the listener to establish a bond with their history and cultural values. They instil the historical and cultural meaning of their past experiences and the salient elements of remembering and preserving cultural continuity. Through her narrative structure, Ao insists that storytelling is an authentic prerequisite and an inevitable medium; thereby, the younger generation does not rely on outside sources that may misrepresent their history. Temsula Ao describes,

“The inheritors of such a history have a tremendous responsibility to sift through the collective experience and make sense of the impact left the by the struggle on their lives” (2006, p. x).

“All human cultures have narratives…that encode shared beliefs from which they derive coherence and group cohesiveness that has been both the glory and the bane of human existence throughout its history.” (Nelson, 2003, p.127)

The narratives of “Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” encode and decode the shared experiences of people “whose pain has so far gone unmentioned and unacknowledged” (A0, 2006). Through storytelling, the Naga historical truth and cultural individuality traverse transgenerational people and establish the necessity to preserve the past for determining the cultural and political identity. Hence, by the act of storytelling, the individual memory turns into transgenerational memory for the travel of past to future generations.

Chosen Trauma and Group Identity

Volkan’s (2001) proposal of ‘chosen trauma’ helps readers to understand the insurgency trauma as the crucial component of Naga identity.

“… the large group suffered loss and/or experienced helplessness, shame and humiliation in a conflict with another large group. The transgenerational transmission of such a shared traumatic event is linked to the past generation’s inability to mourn losses of people, land or prestige, and indicates the large group’s failure to reverse narcisstic injury and humiliation inflicted by another large group, usually a neighbor, but in some cases, between ethnic or religious groups within the same country.” (Volkan 2001, p. 87)

The subjective experiences of thousands of people in Nagaland are interconnected by the protracted armed conflict and human rights violations. The members of the Naga group have begun to share their memory “to maintain, protect and repair their group identity” (Volkan, 2001, p. 79). By representing Naga insurgency incidents as chosen trauma, they reflect the collective suffering of ancestors during the armed conflict. The oral tradition of storytelling helps significantly to represent the chosen trauma of Naga community “in order to support the group’s threatened identity” (Volkan, 2001, p. 79)

Conclusion

The paper has identified the elements of oral narratives and the lived experiences of Naga people in the short stories “Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” of These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone by Temsula Ao, that contribute to the transgenerational transmission of chosen trauma for the construction of collective identity of Naga people. The select stories unveil the tropes such as protracted armed conflict, violations of human rights, trauma, memory, internal displacement, feelings of guilt, sexual assault and superficial belief system prevailed in the Naga society. The story of Sashi in “An Old Man Remembers” asserts the faith that sharing traumatic experiences with others can alleviate the intensity of pain. The interpretation of select stories in this paper reveals that narrating the ethno-cultural experiences to young people is significant to preserve and pass on the historical truths in order to avoid the misrepresentation of the past. Accordingly, Temsula Ao states that through the storytelling tradition, Naga people communicate the troubled times of ethnic violence and endurance among the community and beyond in order to define their individuality. Therefore, storytelling functions as cultural memory to keep the past as present and creates a bridge to link the past with the future. Ao locates the characters Sashi, Apenyo and Libeni as historical figures in the narrative structure to represent the collective sufferings of the Naga people during the insurgency through personal narration. Thus, an individual’s memory turns into transgenerational memory through the commencement of sharing. The portrayal of the troubled years of Nagaland manifests the disruption of the cultural patterns of Naga people and its significance in forging the Naga identity. In this regard, Temsula Ao, through her writing, offers a cultural and historical recreation to the events which are unacknowledged and never mentioned in mainstream literature and history for a prolonged period of time. To conclude, the micro experiences of the characters in the stories “Last Song” and “An Old Man Remembers” reverberate the macro-historical realities of Naga people.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

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Suganya V. is a PhD Scholar in the Department of English & Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. She currently works on her thesis entitled “Narratives of Memory, Trauma, and Resilience: Contextualising the Facets of Historical Revisionism and Identity Reconstruction in the Select Contemporary Irish Novels”.

Dr. Padmanabhan B. is working as Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. He is teaching post graduate students and guiding research scholars. He is pursuing research in the fields of cognitive approaches to literature, memory studies and digital humanities.

The question of the ‘foreigners’ in select fictional narratives from Assam

Assamese Literature/Memory Studies/North East Literature & Culture/Partition Studies/Trauma Studies/V14N2

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Rimi Nath
Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. ORCID ID 0000-0001-9366-5498. Email: riminath664@gmail.com

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 2, April-June, 2022. Pages 1-9. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n2.ne25

First published: June 25, 2022 | Area: Northeast India | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Themed Issue on Literature of Northeast India)
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Abstract

In this age of metamorphosis of cultural transition and assimilation, in this age where everyone in one sense or the other is a migrant, the issue of identity can never be resolved. Iain Chambers (1994) holds that migrancy “calls for a dwelling in language, in histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutation” (p. 5). ‘Home’ sometimes becomes a provisional location as it fails to provide assurance and security; and hence, in many instances, one witnesses an individual’s desire to break free, to migrate. Memory and narratives can be seen as symbolic ways of making homes, of negotiating different and competing allegiances. Jahnavi Barua’s novel, Undertow, Arupa Patangia Kalita’s novellas and stories like ‘Face in the Mirror’, ‘The Half-burnt Bus at Midnight’, stories from the Barak Valley of Assam like Moloy Kanti Dey’s ‘Ashraf Ali’s Homeland’, Amitabha Dev Choudhury’s ‘Wake Up Call’, Arijit Choudhury’s ‘Fire’, among others, provide multiple perspectives on the question of identity. The paper seeks to delve into select fictional narratives from Assam and analyse the question of ‘foreigners’, keeping in mind the current discourses on the issue of migration, especially the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

Keywords: Assam, identity, migration, Bangladeshi, foreigners

Introduction: The question of ‘foreigners’

Assam has been through different phases of ethnic nationalisms and the region has been through different phases of inclusion and exclusion geographically, ethnically and culturally. Assam has been grappling with the issue of ‘foreigners’ for a long time and the question of Bangladeshis, in particular, has become the most crucial factor in Assam’s politics. Terms that are used to describe Bangladeshis in Assam are: settlers, Bongal, bohiragoto (outsider), bideshi (foreigner), illegal migrants, illegal immigrants, invaders, Bengali peasantry, land-hungry Muslims, land grabbers, Mia Muslims, undocumented migrants, etc. (Shamshad, 2017, p. 59). In the book, Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in South Asia (2016), Partha S. Ghosh highlights how the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migrants is a “subject on which everybody seems to be knowing so much, still they know so little, largely because of the unavailability of hard data” (p. xii). There are assumptions, fragmentations, doubts, fears and lost/ forgotten documents that heighten the confusion.

Nandana Dutta, in the introduction to Questions of Identity in Assam (2012), points out “that existing interpretations of migration and nation did not and could not do justice to the location” (p. xx). When Assam was made a part of the Bengal Presidency in 1905, the fear of loss of identity because of the demographic changes, crept up, and the Bengali speakers were seen as the ‘other’. Bodhisattva Kar (2011) highlights the forgotten history of Bengali racism, on the other hand, during the partition of Bengal in 1905 where the Bengalis saw the Assamese as the ‘other’ (p. 45). Assam’s position as a separate province was restored in 1911, with the unification of Bengal. The Muslim League demanded that Assam be a part of East Pakistan. Assam, as a British colonial province, included Sylhet while prior to 1874, Sylhet was a part of Bengal (Baruah, 2015, p. 82-83). In 1947, Sylhet became a part of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) except for a portion of it (a part of Karimganj subdivision in Barak Valley) which remained in India. Sanjib Baruah (2015) highlights that for Assam “the meaning of partition has been unfolding slowly over decades through a torturous process” (p. 81). The British colonial rule encouraged the settlement of Muslim East Bengali peasants in Assam while Partition instigated massive movements. Many people migrated to Assam in 1965, during Ayub Khan’s regime in Pakistan, and Assam also sheltered refugees during and after the Bangladeshi Liberation War of 1971.

Shamshad (2017) lists five distinct phases of the anti-Bengali and later anti-Bangladeshi discourse in Assam. “The Bengali officials presented the immediate face of colonialism” (p. 253) and the anti-colonial, anti-Bengali discourse ensued from the fear of the Assamese elite – of loss of power. The second phase started with the fear of territorial loss which crept up with the arrival of the Bengali cultivators brought in by the colonial officials. The potential loss of demographic dominance during Partition is listed as the third phase. The tussle for language supremacy in the 1960s/70s is the next phase and the fifth phase is the Assam movement (1979-85)” (p. 253). The language issue in Assam created riots during the 1960s and 70s, where “the Official Language Movement of 1960 and the Medium of Instruction Movement of 1972…were based on the ‘Assam for Assamese’ ideology. The Bengalis of Barak valley had protested against it” (Ghoshal, 2021, p. xv). Weiner (1983) highlights that during that time Bengali Muslims had much to gain by siding with the Assamese (in securing their stay) but with the Assam Movement, this alliance faltered, where the “Bengalis in Assam – both Hindus and Muslims – became ‘foreigners’ to the Assamese” (Shamshad, 2017, p. 77). Shamshad (2017) highlights how gradually the Nepali migrants completely fell out of discourse and the only migrants who were considered ‘illegal’ were from Bangladesh (p.101).

The difficulty of identifying illegal immigrants persists and the question of rehabilitation or granting citizenship becomes complex and ambiguous. Neither the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act (IMDT Act) nor the Assam Accord could bring any resolution to the ‘foreigners’ issue. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) also has its shortcomings and pitfalls. The detection and repatriation of ‘illegal foreigners’ is an ongoing process as a recent news report states that “till October 31, 2021, as many as 1,42,206 illegal foreigners have been detected in the State. Among them, altogether 29, 663 were pushed back till December 15 of this year”. (The Assam Tribune, 2021, p. 1)

Shamshad (2017) points out that with Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) entry into Assam’s politics “Assam’s anti-Bengali ethnic nationalist discourse” changed to “anti-Bengali Muslim ethno-religious discourse” (p. 254). The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP)-BJP coalition further strengthened it. In Chatterji’s Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship in Majoritarian India – The Story of Assam (2021), we find a strong criticism of the Hindutva ideology and the writers voice their fear about ‘absolute nationalism’. The agitation in Assam against illegal immigrants has targeted Hindus as well; but with the changing political scenario, largely the Muslim population begins to get targeted:

“In Assam, the NRC and Foreigners Tribunals have commenced the political segregation of “national subjects” and rights-bearing citizens from “invaders” without rights. A disproportionate number of persons who are alleged to be “foreigners” and “illegal persons” are Muslims. “Miya” Muslims, from marginalised social classes are the principal target.” (p. 56)

We have seen the state changing its response to changing political scenarios. The recent development, i.e., the fourth amendment of the Citizenship Act in which the intent has been to grant citizenship to people who have fled religious persecution from neighbouring countries (including Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Zoroastrians), the Hindutva orientation of the government came under scrutiny amidst mass agitation. The anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) movement was based on the “Assamese” people’s “fear of demographic swamping…and raised, once again, questions about their citizenship rights” (Goswami, 2021, p. 1). While some saw NRC and CAA as discriminatory, especially against the Muslims, many saw CAA as discriminatory while they supported the NRC. The Hindus who have lived with the stigma of being illegal migrants in the region did not see the situation working in their favour either. The majority of the population did not seem to be aware of the historicity of the documents. NRC and CAA also saw opposite reactions from the general masses of the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys. The Bangladeshi issue has been a matter of much contestation heightening the difficulty of coming to any negotiable position.

To consider the citizenship debate, reports that show Indians giving up citizenship provide another perspective. According to a report published in The Wire, from 2016-20 just 4,177 persons were granted Indian citizenship – where “for every one person who has been granted Indian citizenship in the past four years and more, 145 persons have forgone their citizenship” (Bhatnagar, 2021, para. 2). Also, the statistics that four out of ten applicants were granted citizenship and that maximum applications came from the citizens of Pakistan are also data that need to be considered and evaluated at the national and regional levels.

Analysing Select Fictional Narratives from Assam

Fictional narratives from Assam provide different perspectives on the question of ‘foreigners’. Telling or writing a story can, to a large extent, help in the process of negotiation. Narratives can be a form of travel, which can traverse the distance between communities or societies in their exploration of inner journeys. In Jahnavi Barua’s Undertow (2020), the question of foreigners and the agitation against them is highlighted as an overpowering consciousness. The novel touches upon the turbulent times of the Assam movement, of how “the state had been thrown into chaos” (p. 17). The central character, Rukmini, has marched on the streets too. Rukmini ponders upon the bandhs in Assam (which has been absolute) where everything “came to a grinding halt” (p. 19):

“No one challenged the protests because everyone supported them, understood the need for them. Nothing so complete was possible without deep feeling. The people were gripped with an urgent desire to fulfill what the Boys had begun: to make the government do its duty; to expel illegal aliens, instead of arming them with citizenship and voting rights.” (Barua, 2020, p. 19)

“Four years now and the Agitation – it was aptly named, the movement the students had launched in 1979 – showed no signs of abating. The people of Assam had not lost hope or courage or energy yet. They spilled out onto the streets in their thousands when summoned by the student leaders – the Boys, as they were affectionately called – to picket and demonstrate and protest, and stayed indoors with windows closed and lights out when ordered to by the same leaders.” (Barua, 2020, p. 17)

The question of illegal immigrants in Assam has been quite complex because of the political, historical, and geographical reasons, as highlighted in the introduction. There have also been cases of people acquiring documents illegally facilitated by communal sympathy, corruption or carelessness on the part of the officials. It is difficult to demarcate illegal immigrants from ‘original’ inhabitants and “as a result, neither the Assamese Bengalis nor the Assamese Muslims could fully identify themselves with the Assam agitation” (Ghosh, 2016, p. 224). What the character, Rukmini, refers to as “so complete” may not have actually been absolute. Through her research, Shamshad (2017) also studies how the Assamese and Bengali Muslims saw each other:

“The ethnic Assamese representatives of the civil society who were interviewed in this research did not express any hostile views or see the Bengali Muslims/ Bangladeshi migrants as an economic or security threat.” (p. 253)

Shamshad (2017) highlights how “the exercise of violence is a constant factor in the process of ‘Othering’” (p. 250) – violence that is state induced and also the ethnic flare.

In Jahnavi Barua’s novel Undertow (2020), when Rukmini decides to marry Alex (an outsider from Kerala) “she felt like a traitor” (p. 19) adhering to the insider-outsider tension in her consciousness. She has been a traitor even to her mother who accused Rukmini of betraying “state and race and family” (p. 19). Rukmini realises the pain of being treated as an outsider when she herself receives such treatment from Alex’s family. Rukmini’s daughter Loya, who is raised in Bangalore, is surprised to see how “strong a subject it (politics) was in life here” (p. 86). Loya comes to know that “the illegal migrants had been received with open arms by the government, which, sensing the opportunity for a vote bank, had even issued them with citizenship papers” (p. 86-87). Loya also comes to know about Robin Koka’s grandson, who, being fascinated by the revolution against foreigners, joins the insurgents, the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam). In Assam, the anti-colonial discourse surged with the ULFA, where India was seen as the coloniser (Shamshad, 2017, p. 254). Since its inception in 1979, the insurgent organisation emphasised on the national liberation of Assam. They maintained that “the question of ‘secession’ is a mistaken one since ‘historically’, Assam has never been a part of the Indian nation and its location within the political map of India has to be explained simply as a fact of ‘colonial occupation’” (Kar, 2011, p. 57).

It is interesting to note that in Barua’s Undertow (2020) Loya questions the idea of a ‘foreigner’. When her grandfather tells her about the Ahom dynasty – “a race of princes from the Shan state of Burma” (p. 148), she insists that they are migrants, to which her grandfather remarks: “Isn’t everyone, in the beginning?” (p. 148). Her grandfather tells her about their assimilation,

“Yes, but they settled down. Assimilated. Converted to Hinduism from Buddhism and married our local girls. Why, they even gave up their old Tai language” (p. 148).

The statement raises questions like if forsaking religion or language can be the only way an immigrant may be accepted? What are the grounds of assimilation? Can the ‘foreigners’ of Assam ever assimilate? Can assimilation not happen if cultural/ religious/ linguistic differences are respected? Will Kymlicka in Politics in the Vernacular (2001) highlights how minority nationalisms are not always illiberal, pre-modern or xenophobic and questions, “…is it permissible to adopt illiberal policies in order to create conditions under which civic forms of minority nationalism can emerge?” (p. 277). There are no definite answers. The sad disappearance of Loya towards the end of the novel, when a blast rocks the Bazaar in Guwahati, shows the futility of violence. Loya embodies both the elements of an insider and an outsider (her father being an outsider from Kerala and her mother from Assam). In her disappearance, both the insider and the outsider become victims, where symbolically violence consumes all.

The plight of the refugees, their lost homelands, their trouble and brutal torture – are mainly captured in the stories from the Barak Valley of Assam. The stories also highlight how threats to life and livelihood lead to migration from Bangladesh as “the migration of the uprooted refugee families was primarily for seeking refuge and a national identity” (Ghoshal, 2021, p. 37). In Arijit Choudhury’s ‘Fire’ (2012), the protagonist, Mahendra Das, faces the consequence of not supporting the Assam Movement, the “cruelty meted out to innocent people, be it murder or arson” (p. 63). According to Mahendra:

“Spotting a Bengali-Hindu or a Muslim or a Nepali, immediately branding him ‘foreigner’ and inflicting torture on him is inhuman and unjust. Even if one is a foreigner that does not mean that he should be driven away or his house and belongings should be burnt down – Mahendra would never support this.” (p. 56)

In the story, we see that the nearby villagers (who are Bengali-Muslims) are called Bangladeshis although they have never been to Bangladesh. Mahendra’s house is set on fire by the people of his own village, who consider him to be a traitor, “an agent of the Bengalis!” (p. 56). Within the imagined nation/state, battle lines are drawn, as Siddhartha Deb in his novel, The Point of Return (2004), describes the nation as a fortress where “new battle lines were being drawn and fresh groups of people were being defined as outsiders, borders bristling with barbed-wire teeth” (p. 221).

When Ashraf Ali moves to Assam (to Karimganj) from Bangladesh as a child, in Moloy Kanti Dey’s ‘Ashraf Ali’s Homeland’ (2012), he feels happy –

“When? When did they cross the border? Why was there no wall anywhere? It was merely like a stroll from one street to another. Is this how the two countries were divided then? Ashraf seemed to be in a trance. Hindustan, Bharatbarsha. It’s not a separate country – rather an assurance that promises supply of food.” (p. 119)

The ‘shadow lines’ that borders are highlighted in his sentiments. When Ashraf Ali is marked as a foreigner amidst the Bangladeshi row, the fate of his family becomes uncertain. They are deported and their destiny remains unknown.

Fear and discrimination incite the surfacing of nostalgia for a lost or ‘imaginary’ homeland. In another story ‘Wakeup Call’ by Amitabha Dev Choudhury (2012), the narrator’s family has had to flee Bangladesh in the 50’s in order to survive. The narrator struggles to come to terms with his own identity as a foreigner as he cannot think of any place as his home other than where he is, i.e., Assam –

“Yes! This is my homeland, my own soil. Eternal! Embodiment of my soul! My beloved nest of tranquility! My dream! My memory! My identity!” (p. 148).

The fond memories or stories of a lost homeland linger but that place is no longer home. In any tale of migration, there is always a contestation between humanitarian support and nativist backlash. Partha S. Ghosh (2016) asks the much-debated humanitarian questions, “Is not it, once again, the question of refugees’ rights, and not state doing a favour to them? Minorities in Pakistan or Bangladesh were not responsible for the Partition of India.” (p. 220)

During the Assam Movement, there were numerous attacks in places like Barpeta, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, among others. In the larger backdrop of the anti-foreigners protest, the Nellie massacre happened. Samrat in Insider Outsider(2018b) writes: “The danger in any tale of victimhood is the obverse: victims on the one hand and villains on the other” (p. ix). In her stories, Arupa Patangia Kalita (2015) highlights the communalisation of the Assam movement. In the story ‘Face in the Mirror’ Kalita writes:

“In August, a young girl took many bullets in her body, her body was perforated by gaping holes. She had come from outside the state, looking for the body of her husband, crying and beating her breasts in sorrow. In March, a talented professor had committed suicide. 1991. The killings that defied counting.” (p. 138).

The protagonist of the short story shows her displeasure when her cousin’s husband, “a leader of Assam’s andolon, agitation” (p. 142) becomes angry as she praises her Muslim house help, Zamila. He tells his wife, “I now know why your sister is so fond of Bangladeshis” and then addressing the protagonist, he says, “You know Baidew, don’t indulge these people. You were talking about cleaning the bedpan etc. If you allow them to enter the house, they will even lick your feet…Keep an eye, if nothing can be done about them we’ll kill them all” (p. 146). The protagonist ironically smiles and says, “We’ve heard that people of Assam should forget about humanity. This is the time to forget humanity.” (p. 146)

As a writer, Arupa Patangia Kalita, often gets targeted for her stand against the brutality of the movement. This resonates in another story, ‘Surabhi Barua and the Rhythm of Hooves’, where the protagonist Surabhi Barua –

“Became one of the few who stood against the Assam agitation. She wrote a few articles, saying again and again that this overwhelming sentimental outlook would stand in the way of constructing a strong Assamese national character.” (Kalita, 2015, p. 194)

Expressing her viewpoints calls for trouble as it calls for trouble for “a section of intellectuals who had to pay a heavy price for protesting against the unreasonable dictat of the so-called separatist leaders” (Biswas, 2015, p. 215). Kalita’s writings, thus, make a strong comment on the meaninglessness of jingoism, xenophobia and mindless killings.

The writers discussed above, both from the Brahmaputra and the Barak valleys of Assam, bring to light the humanitarian ground relating to the question of the ‘foreigners’ in Assam. They are able to transcend the ethno-religious boundaries in raising their voice against atrocities and mindless divisions. In a world where border lines are rigorously drawn, the writers highlight the necessity of preserving borders from encroachers while at the same time they talk about the futility of violence. There is empathy and perceptiveness regarding what it actually feels to be an ‘outsider’.

Conclusion: Between Memory and Forgetting

Citizenship continues to be a contested domain in Assam. There is a jostle between the ideas of nationalism and globalisation. Colonialism continues in the form of subjugation: “the domination and denigration of the Hills, the delegitimation and chastisement of Bhati, the inauthentication and vilification of the ‘settlers’” (Kar, 2011, p. 54). This subjugation leads to ‘othering’ that brings in the question of authenticity. The search for authenticity has been crucial in any societal formation (province/ state/ nation). However, we can question if there is anything called authentic identity or if authenticity is a desire. In Assam the question of foreigners versus authentic citizens has been the reason for the region’s political and social volatility. The definition of ‘Assamese’ still remains a matter of debate and contestation. A recent report states how a sub-committee formed by the State Government in 2006 to formulate the definition of ‘Assamese’ as per Clause 6 of the Assam Accord still could not come to a conclusion after seeking views from different organisations and bodies as only a few organisations could submit their views in this regard (The Assam Tribune, 2021, p. 1). It is difficult to resolve the politics surrounding migration. The Assam agitation while initially upholding the agenda of safeguarding Assamese identity in the face of the fear of ‘foreigners’ soon degenerated “from an anti-foreigner agitation to an anti-non-Assamese agitation by turning its wrath against even the domestic migrants from other parts of India, mostly Bihar” (Ghosh, 2016, p. 223-24). Kar rightly says, “territorial nationalism can never abolish its mythical other – colonialism – which always threatens to lodge itself within the very claims of nationalism” (Kar, 2011, p. 57). Memory and narratives, in this regard, can provide multiple perspectives while trying to negotiate different and competing allegiances.

“Memory is also about what you decide to remember, so that you can make sense of what has been irrevocably lost” (Deb, 2004, p. 192). Memory, which operates within the realm of forgetting, distortions, manipulations/ modifications, partial memory, selective memory, representation and narration, plays an important role in the process of negotiation. Memories help in reshaping boundaries and, hence, help in the process of negotiation. Collective memory, especially that of trauma, is difficult to erase. But then there are questions asking if amnesia will reduce the effects of trauma or if it is justified to forget the trauma, if it is necessary to carry the burden of trauma or if forgetting the history of violence will lead to its repetition and if acknowledging the memories will lead to a kind of resolution? In the book, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (1998), Martha Minow writes – “To seek a path between vengeance and forgiveness is also to seek a route between too much memory and too much forgetting” (p. 118). Forgetting is also a very important part of memory and hence narratives play an important role in developing perspectives, as Benedict Anderson asserts, “all profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives” (Anderson, 1983, p. 204).

Any one kind of reading or interpretation will be grossly inadequate while dealing with such a sensitive issue and this paper does in no way want to preach or put across a one-sided view of the question under discussion. However, the paper wants to highlight the dangers of a lack of understanding and how across North-East India, as Samrat points out, “it will take only a little communal foolishness for a return to the bad old days” (Samrat, 2018a, p.171). Nationalism needs to be rethought and reinvented towards a more inclusive society where the aspirations of the masses are respected, the history of turmoil taken into consideration, where collective self-reflection, telling and re-telling of stories are encouraged. Most importantly, the political and media-hype that create fear-psychosis need to be regulated, systematic brain-washing that incites hatred needs to be avoided and the perspectives of “not only marginalised women but also other vulnerable segments like the indigenous and immigrant populations” (Goswami, 2021, p. 7) need to be heard and considered – where people are allowed to express their opinions without the fear of persecution, attack or marginalisation. Literary representations can help in negotiating different positions and standpoints – of memories, tales of loss, of place, of identities. They can be a means of cross-cultural travel, bringing revisions as well as a cultural revival and harmony.

Declaration of Conflicts of Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

No funding has been received for the publication of this article. It is published free of any charge.

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Dr Rimi Nath is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Her research interests include Indian Writing in English, South Asian Literature, Partition Studies and Diaspora/ Migration Studies. Her research papers have appeared in various journals and also as book chapters – the recent one is from Routledge, in the book Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature: Traversing Resistance, Margins and Extremism (2022). She has been a member of various review boards of books/ journals. She is also engaged in creative writing and writes poems, haiku and short fiction. Her collection of poetry, Kushiara and Other Poems, was published in June, 2021 (Dhauli Books).

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