The current issue of Yendai is conceived around the theme of discrimination, specifically narrated in the context of political and humane experiences of discrimination of Northeast India and its people. Discrimination is a frequent occurrence in everyday living, and one can talk about it at various levels of human interactions. It can be an outcome of things as complex as fraudulent democracy, geopolitical trappings, and things as intimate as one’s rituals and habits. Frequent occurrences many tend to dismiss acts of discrimination in the garb of intimacy and harmless jokes, leading to silence and passive acceptance on the part of the one that is discriminated against. It is when discrimination acquires a discernible political tone that it is contested and debated.
How do we think and debate discrimination? Especially when discrimination is conjoined with a vast category, the Northeast? History of colonialism, the process of formation of the Indian nation state, a different racial stock, and differences in culture are often quoted and asserted. Poets, writers, students, and university faculties in the current milieu have become alive to the state of discrimination, although it is agreed that much is remained to be discussed. There are university faculties that are dedicated to the study of Northeast India. A few universities consider it imperative to have a moral agenda, such as establishing a redressal cell for the Northeast students. Where is this wind of change leading the Northeast people, and their position vis-a-vis things and people that are not Northeast? Do the Northeast people feel that such moral agendas are mere accessories? Can these agendas create adequate information and understanding? Is it even right to cluster the eight northeastern states in a single entity? Reflect on the bewilderment of an Assamese-speaking student (that does not understand Meiteilol) feeling lost and excluded amidst a group of Meiteilol speakers. It is an easy hypothesis. Moreover, it is not solely the Northeast against the rest of India. Even within the Northeast, there are several imprints of discrimination. Any deliberation on discrimination is incomplete unless we ask ourselves: what are the ways in which we perpetuate discrimination amongst ourselves? These are a few thoughts to be amplified in the future. We will also debate the logic of calling ourselves collectively, the Northeast rather than each of the eight states in isolation. John Donne’s ‘No Man is an island entire of itself’ seems fitting here. No Northeast state seems like an island or a solitary hill in itself!
The contributors address various facets of discrimination (both personal and political) and their outcomes. In Yuimi Vashum, discrimination takes on the form of cultural presumptions and gendered stereotypes, followed by a state of both mental and physical isolation. In the experience of many like the poet-narrator, it is hard to shed off such associations. Does the solution lie in homecoming? In Tanti’s poem ‘No Nation for Atheist’, discrimination takes the form of a critical malaise of contemporary India, namely, religion. What would it mean to be an atheist in a country like ours? Are they traitors or seditious lives? Is curbing on freedom of religion or a belief in the non-existence of a godly entity an outcome of discriminatory practices? Soibam Haripriya’s review of Tarun Bhartiya’s Unaddressed Postcard from Khasi-Jainta Hills (2021) captures the variegated emotions of the people of faith and historical memories that accompany religious conversion. It is difficult to see converts as victims. The review brings out the intertwining of the black-and-white aesthetic and a sense of historical time that moves in the present even as it is in the past, which the reviewer terms “timelessness”. Bhartiya’s work is indeed a fest of emotions conveyed in monochrome.
Kazi Neel’s poem ‘Ei Shor Amare Ki Dise’is set in the form of a complaint, but it is also an edict. In everyday living, we might not ruminate on who builds our homes and cities. We usually reserve those musings for a more philosophical time, when we feel sympathetic and perceptive of the pains of others. In very recent memory, we were forced to think about the labours that had built the city – where do they go in times of global crises? Do cities with their public buildings and parks and gated lanes, accommodate their builders? It is a poem that stirs our conscience and smug political correctness. Inequality based on labour relationships and then embedded in city cartographies also emerges from discriminatory practices. Ultimately all forms of labour are severed from their craft.
Aparna Sharma’s essay ‘‘Learnings of Culture from the Northeast’’ is an instructive piece that opens up a range of discussions on culture — authenticity and innovation, cultural preservation and manipulative narratives of development, indigenous wisdom and technology. Underlying her essay is a question – how do we do culture? Transcending the narrow defines of the authenticity of culture, the author espouses a more democratic understanding of culture as a movement that is evolving even as human technology and social sciences evolve. A most effective argument against the insistence on authenticity is the ‘living’ character of culture that is constantly in a state of ‘formation’, which the author accomplishes by drawing from the tradition of British cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who interpreted culture as a ‘way of life’. Shama quotes an example from her work in Assam, wherein the women weavers creatively interpret handloom motifs rather than confining their skills to traditional designs. In a cautious criticism of the Look East Policy, the author also forwards the need for the sense of culture derived from organic sources like the ecology of the region. There is a modest hint that the impending loss of cultural histories can be countered by valuable objects of material culture.
Shanthalembi Lisam’s essay “A Northeasterner’s Reflection on India’s Equation” calls attention to various narratives surrounding the geopolitics of the Northeast and the challenges posed in representing the region. The author questions the instrumental ideology of keeping the Northeast as a conflict-prone, underdeveloped region. The greatest merit of the essay is a critique, with a diagnosis at the end, of the forms of political representation in the region. There is a suggestion for an overall transformation at the constitutional level. Ethical corporeality of the local representatives towards realising emancipatory politics is also stressed.
The Northeast will stay in the academia and cultural imagination of various fields. One task is to reimagine3 the easy assumption of the Northeast as a singular entity.