The valley and the re-interpretation of its Gangetic connection

It is undeniable that colonial systems of knowledge production (such as gazette, census, linguistic survey, or administrative report) also played a crucial role in the shaping of the discourse of the colonized.Footnote ¹¹ With regard to the valley, there are three points which are important in this regard. Firstly, colonial reports make it abundantly clear that the valley is a part of the ‘north east frontier’ created during the nineteenth century. Administrative and military reports between the 1830s and the early twentieth century provide the evidence.Footnote ¹² Secondly, these reports show a difference in their characterization of the socio-cultural nature of the valley. Whereas the civil/administrative literature focuses on the historical exchanges that the valley shared with its western Gangetic plains in terms of socio-cultural formations, the military reports, which were not available in the public domain, emphasized not only the Gangetic connection but also the connections with East and South East Asia. It is in this background that the most influential historical account of Assam written during the period, Edward Gait's, A History of Assam, first published in 1905 and revised in 1926, stands as an exception. The book clearly demonstrates the close relation that the valley shared not only with its western ‘mainland’ (the Gangetic plains) but also with the East and South East Asian regions. Thirdly, when comparing the pre-colonial and colonial periods, there is a marked difference in the characterization of the socio-cultural features of the valley, that is, the Gangetic vis-à-vis East and South East Asian connection, from within the valley itself. For the pre-colonial period, recent studiesFootnote ¹³ show that socio-cultural systems were premised on the valley as a corridor or highway of migration and settlement for population groups from both the Gangetic plains as well as from East and South East Asia. Thus, socio-cultural systems were only loosely defined, leaving enough room for the dynamism of a crossroad to be accommodated. However, in contrast to the pre-colonial period, the predominant intellectual developments (discourse of ‘Assamese’ identity) during the colonial period focused primarily on the Gangetic connection.

Nevertheless, there were narratives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which were critical of over emphasis on the Gangetic connection. For example, the discourse of Ahom identity, which emerged in the early twentieth century, strongly traced itself not only in the Gangetic influences (read Hinduism) but also in its roots in South East Asia.Footnote ¹⁴ The Ahoms were a group of people who had migrated to the valley from present day Myanmar during the thirteenth century. They settled in the valley and some of their families, through a series of wars and alliances, became a group of ruling lineages which ruled the valley for nearly 600 years, until they were displaced by the British in the nineteenth century.

A further point is the selection of narratives as authentic sources to understand socio-cultural processes. Since the nineteenth century, the wider circulation of the printing press resulted in greater authenticity being accorded to the written or printed word. This was because both the colonial and missionary machinery as well as the emerging middle class assumed this authenticity. Therefore, narratives which were based on manuscripts/texts came to be identified as the primary and reliable form of sources for intellectual (and identity) discourses. In the pre-colonial period, a manuscript/text was interpreted not only on the basis of the written word, but also on the basis of its oral transmission and bodily performance or enactment. But since the nineteenth century, the latter two were left out. Meaning was sought only in the written word. In the pre-colonial period, the multiple influences of cultural systems (from east and west) that played out in the valley were accommodated through the mechanism of the hybrid-text.Footnote ¹⁵ In this process, whereas the manuscript often showed a Gangetic connection, its oral transmission and performance localized the manuscript in the peculiarities of the continental crossroads of the valley.

One way of looking at pre-colonial and modern literature has been that of hybrid-text and mono-text. A hybrid- (or multiple) text of the pre-colonial period includes not only the manuscript or the script but also its transmission and communication through oral and performance mediums. Satyanath has classified it as the scripto-centric (the manuscript component), phono-centric (the oral component) and body-centric (the performance component) of literature.Footnote ¹⁶ In other words, a pre-colonial text comprises all three components. In contrast, a modern literary text comprises only the manuscript. Satyanath's argument can be broadened to argue that the change was not only of literature per se but of the very practice of literature. With regard to the valley, this change in practice played a major role in reinterpreting the socio-cultural dimensions of the valley, with an overwhelming focus now on the Gangetic connection. Literatures of the pre-colonial period of the valley had the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as the content of the manuscript. But in terms of musical genre, the mode of staging these performance literatures, or the larger institutions such as naamghar (based on the morong ghar or community halls found even across South East Asia) of which these literatures were a part, all these factors gave a specific interpretation to the manuscript and its content. But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the question of what was ‘Assamese’ literature was posed, it was only the manuscript and not its mode of communication that was emphasized. Innumerable essays published in two magazines, the Jonaki (started in 1889) and the Bahni (started in 1910), provide the evidence. The characteristic of a continental crossroad and its condition of flux that was accommodated in the pre-colonial practice of literature was now relegated. The widespread ethnic volatility in the valley since the 1920s can be seen as a strong reaction against the almost puritan approach to cultural formation that came about since the nineteenth century through investing in the authenticity and meaning only of the manuscript rather than in its communication.Footnote ¹⁷

During the period, the relation between language and narrative also underwent re-interpretations and re-arrangements. For example, it is undeniable that the modern language ‘standard’ in Assamese (Sibsagar Assamese) hardly differed to the language which was used by the Ahom nobility to write their buranjis or chronicles. But the buranjis, besides recording events, gave substantial space to Ahom genealogy. One of the remarkable features of the genealogies was that the Ahom heroes and spaces they traced their ancestry to, and regularized in their buranjis, were trans-spatial, both trans-region and trans-society in nature, and spread from Myanmar to the Brahmaputra Valley. In contrast to this nature of narrative, or the people and space that they mapped, the narratives that came up in the modern Assamese ‘standard’ from the nineteenth century onwards mapped primarily the relation between the valley and the Gangetic basin/culture. While in the Ahom buranjis, the people and space from Myanmar up to the valley was the present, in the latter case, this relation had changed into the past or history for the valley, while the present came to be located in the valley's historical relation with the Gangetic culture, for example, the emphatic writings of Kamalakanta Bhattacharjee on Assamese culture in several issues of the Jonaki.Footnote ¹⁸

At one level, the change can be considered as a continuity of content. Also, in pre-colonial neo-vaishnava literature, the Gangetic connection was emphatic textually (though as performance literature its meaning can sharply differ, as already noted). Therefore, once Kamrupi was replaced by the Sibsagar variant as the predominant or standard variant, it was not a case of the development of new content but of transference of old content into narratives written in a new language variant. There is little research on this process of exchanges between language and narrative in Assamese; nevertheless, it needs to be highlighted that Kamrupi language and buranji narrative became dialects and relics of the past respectively, whilst modern Assamese ‘standard’ appropriated (or re-created?) a narrative which was new to itself, but had earlier been textually related to the Kamrupi language, now reduced to a ‘dialect’. Padmanath Gohain Baruah, one of the leading members of the Ahom Association (established in 1893), had been consistently critical of ‘caste Hindus’ appropriating the ‘Assamese’ identity and depriving other communities, especially the Ahoms, of any meaningful share in it. However, he too made no reference to the above re-arrangement in the relation between language and narrative.

But this is also where the Ahom Association differed from the Plain Tribal Council of Assam, formed in 1935, comprising the Bodo ‘plain tribe’ community of the valley. The Ahom Association critiqued the interpretation of the ‘Assamese’ construct, but always sought a space within it. It is because the Assamese language, which now became the bearer of order for the valley (as the language ‘standard’ of the valley) and its political identity (‘Assamese’), was centrally connected to the history of the community itself. The Plain Tribal Council of Assam, however, not only critiqued the very concept of ‘Assamese’ but also argued how the ‘tribal’ populations in the valley differed from the ‘Assamese’ construct. The narratives of most of the ethnic groups, such as the Bodos, were preserved and transmitted through the oral and performed modes, either retaining the ‘Hindu’ text or managing without it. The change in the very practice of literature clearly meant a loss of narratives, and in the process, a loss of share/role in the construct of modern ‘Assamese’ identity.Footnote ¹⁹

Three developments have been briefly outlined above regarding the valley since the colonial period. Firstly, under colonialism the valley did undergo a massive spatial transformation (tea plantation, forestry policy and hill-valley relation) and the transformation was part of the colonial design to create a manageable frontier. The quality and extent of change effected in the valley was in inverse proportion to its relative lack in the rest of the region. This inverse relation was central to the colonial policy of making the north east frontier control the valley and thereby to control the adjoining hills without introducing any major change in the collective life of the local population (with the exception of some Naga ‘tribes’). Secondly, colonial civil knowledge made a significant impact upon the emerging middle class ‘Assamese’ discourse. It was a discourse which emphasized the Gangetic connection in the historical character of the valley in a way which was different from its nature in the pre-colonial period. Ironically, colonial military knowledge (which at the time was unavailable in the public domain) did not share the same views on the nature and extent of this Gangetic connection. Thirdly, a fundamental change had now occurred in the practice of literature in the valley compared with the pre-colonial period. The change was from cultural processes being based on a hybrid-text model to one based on a mono-text model. Its effects constitute a core principle in the debate of ethnicity and ‘Assamese’ identity during both colonial, and more violently, in the post-colonial period.

A fourth development also needs to be considered: why did the discourse of ‘Assamese’ identity premised mainly on the Gangetic connection become so important since the colonial period? Two explanations are suggested. There was a major change in the practice of literature in the valley in the form of transition from hybrid-text to mono-text. But it had also to do with the social groups involved in the process. Recent studies show that the social base of the colonial middle class in the valley was rooted in pre-colonial Ahom bureaucracy.Footnote ²⁰ To this may also be added the Vaishnava social elite. In the Ahom system, bureaucracy was constituted by diverse social groups, irrespective of caste or ‘tribe’/ethnicity. Historically, caste was a loosely defined category in the valley.Footnote ²¹ But by the seventeenth century, the bureaucratic and Vaishnava elite adopted a form of Hinduism, importantly without becoming a part of the caste system. In the pre-colonial period, whether due to the relation between the bureaucracy and the people through the paik system (a system of social and labour management of the Ahoms traced to their origin in Thailand), or in the relation that the Vaishnava elite shared with their followers in creating a new category of people (who comprised the main actors in the popular rebellion against the Ahom system in the eighteenth century), the nature and need of relation between those in power and those without, actually prevented a mode of literature which emphasized the Gangetic connection.Footnote ²² With the colonial system, this relation was severed, evident not only in the practice of literature, but also in the nature of popular rebellion during the nineteenth century. In fact, from the practice of literature, it now became more the writing of literature. Therefore, if the Gangetic connection became important from the nineteenth century, it was because the colonial discourse available to the intelligentsia (or the educated middle class) of the valley emphasized the connection. In the new concept of knowledge, the written text had become significant (and as a way of knowing and relating the past). Furthermore, in this new written literature the participation (and therefore the narrative) of those social categories who had historically participated only at the oral or performed level became redundant, best shown by the position of the Plain Tribal Council of Assam. What is important is that these changes were part of the instituting of colonial order in the frontier.

From the preceding discussion, it is clear that the valley underwent a fundamental historical transformation during the nineteenth century. This constitutes its peculiarity vis-à-vis the rest of the north east frontier region. Whereas most of the frontier was ‘Unadministered Territories’, the valley was an absolutely administered territory, given its strategic significance to the rest of the region. In this regard, it can be further added that territory also came to constitute a form of colonial knowledge. The difference between ‘administered’ and ‘un-administered’ territories came to be centred on the discourse of distinction between civilized and savage spaces. The valley (and its tea plantations, now called ‘tea gardens’) comprised the civilized space whilst the surrounding hills comprised the savage.Footnote ²³ The making of the north east frontier used both processes. By the close of the nineteenth century, therefore, a different order was in place in the valley, with an altered political economy and cultural processes. Production and reception of culture, including that of modern Assamese literature, were part of the change. Importantly, in terms of cultural processes, the savage was constituted by the oral whilst the written comprised the foundation of the civilized. This paradigm was part of the nineteenth century's (and much of the twentieth century's also) anthropological framework of demarcating culture in colonial societies, in this case, north east India.Footnote ²⁴

Modern Assamese fiction and the question of the indigenous

The first question can be explained in terms of narrative and its structure in modern Assamese fiction. In any discussion on narrative and its structure in modern Assamese literature, three issues can be immediately identified: the question of the indigenous, the relation between the indigenous and the larger Indian framework, and the question of the ‘Indian’ framework itself. The question of the indigenous is addressed below through a comparative study of two novels: Birinchi Baruah's Seuji Patar Kahini (A Story of Green Leaves, 1958),Footnote ²⁵ and Indira Goswami's Bhikhar Patra Bhangi (To Break the Begging Bowl, 1990).Footnote ²⁶

Seuji Patar Kahini is considered to be a classic ethnographic account on the Assamese tea plantation world. The novel revolves around the impossible love between Soniya, an ‘illegitimate’ child born of a British colonial planter and a woman worker from the plantation community (who were imported into the valley from central India in the nineteenth century under the indenture system) and a local Assamese youth Nareshwar who worked for a British plantation manager. Soniya, a blonde but growing up as a plantation worker in the plantation community, despite her love for Nareshwar, becomes unable to live with the dichotomy of her racial and social existence. She finally leaves the plantations for good, wandering into the unknown world beyond the confines of the vast spreads of tea plantations. The critical point in the novel vis-à-vis the problem of indigenous, is the construct of the social world and the role of language in such a construct. The social world of the novel is very inclusive. It comprises not only the social world that lies within the planned industrial space of a tea plantation—a world inhabited by management, workers and clerical staff—but also the neighbouring local village populations outside the confines of the plantation space. The worlds within and without the plantation space share a close relation. As a novel written in the 1950s, the perspective was pioneering, predating the current emphasis that the world within and without the plantation spaces were not mutually exclusive, as it was argued for long, especially in colonial discourse.Footnote ²⁷ At a time when plantations were seen largely as enclave systems, the novel depicted a quite different picture, and retrospectively, an insightful one. Furthermore, the novel also clearly indicated that what comprised the indigenous was not only the ‘Assamese’ as had come to be interpreted since the nineteenth century, but also the other social constituents such as the plantation workers, those from mixed parentage or other communities (‘tribes’) inhabiting the valley. In other words, the diversity together comprised the ‘Assamese’ universe.

What clouds the above issue, however, is the choice of language which can communicate or bear in it the diversity that comprises the totality of the ‘Assamese’ universe. The language chosen as the marker of the universe of the ‘Assamese’ was the Sibsagar variant of the Assamese language. There are three notable issues behind this choice of language. The necessity of a ‘standard’ variant was a modern phenomenon, brought about by the shift from hybrid-text to mono-text as a means and storage of information and communication in the different kinds of exchange relations among and/or within communities in the valley. Since the nineteenth century, the growing economic and political importance of the area to which the Sibsagar variant belonged resulted in the standardization of the Assamese language in the form of that variant. The variant since then continues to be the ‘official’ Assamese language. In the pre-colonial period, literary sources indicate that the Kamrupi variant was more widely used. The process of standardization was also connected to the increasing emphasis on the Gangetic connection. In other words, instituting mono-text, colonialism, language standardization and language Sanskritization were a conjoined process. Also, language during the period (as in most parts of South Asia) emerged as a powerful marker of nationalist identity. The question of modern Assamese language, therefore, also became a question of modern Assamese identity and the former assumed (or was provided) the role of marker and bearer of the latter. Lastly, as is already evident, language developed a dichotomy, a conflict, within itself. It became exclusive but stood for the inclusive.

Seuji Patar Kahini was radical in its time. Unlike the belief that was commonly held during the period, it showed that the tea plantation world was not an exclusive enclave system. On the contrary it was an inclusive world comprising a diversity of social groups and their habitation spaces within and without the plantations. However, by the 1950s, the construct of modern ‘Assamese’ had already come under sharp political critique from several social groups (under the broad rubric of ‘tribal’).Footnote ²⁸ Modern Assamese literature, even in the late nineteenth century, did indicate that the larger Assamese universe had an enormous ethnic diversity (for example, Rajanikanta Bordoloi's fictions)Footnote ²⁹. Seuji Patar Kahini was one of the first publications to make a case for it, vis-à-vis the tea plantation world. But what makes Seuji Patar Kahini historical (and similarly most fiction since the nineteenth century) was that it lacked or did not develop a linguistic mechanism which can be a marker and bearer of that diversity as well. It made fiction historical because this failure or absence can be situated in the change in the ways or practice of literature in the modern period. Therefore, in this novel, the diversity communicates in one variant of the language, that of Sibsagar Assamese. This is despite the fact that the languages of the communities comprising the social world of the novel are comprehensible across the valley irrespective of communities. In other words, the constraint vis-à-vis the nature of linguistic use was not related to the possible reception of literature. It was related to problems connected with the very production of literature.

The story in Bhikhar Patra is set in a south Kamrup locale and revolves around the lives of three women of the same family: the mother and her two grown-up daughters, one of whom is mentally ill. The son has left to join the militants/secessionists. The economic and sexual exploitation of lone women in the village is a powerful dimension that the novel explores. The exploitation assumes a larger scale due to the absence of any male member in the family to fight or protect the women against the powerful men in the village, whether they be the village moneylender or the contractor. The novel shows how the absence of male family members can result in the exploitation of women in a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the novel explores how class and regional difference amongst women also make gender a mediated category. The upper class urban women, belonging to an urban ‘feminist’ welfare organization in eastern Assam, and speaking the Sibsagar variant of the Assamese language, are unable to comprehend the Kamrupi ‘dialect’ of the mother of the family when trying to communicate with her in their attempt to assist the family.

However, what is relevant to the discussion here is the nature and means of discourse of identity and the indigenous speakers in the novel. Similar to Seuji Patar Kahini, Bhikhar Patra Bhangi does not shy away from the fact that the universe of the ‘Assamese’ is composed of social diversity, the former in the locale of a plantation (in the eastern part of the valley of the Brahmaputra) and the latter in the locale of a village in western (‘lower’) Assam, (the western part of the valley of the Brahmaputra). But both novels differ in their treatment of the phenomenon of diversity. And in this, the role of language once again becomes critical. Bhikhar Patra Bhangi employs a linguistic mechanism which identifies social and regional diversity within the larger framework of ‘Assamese’. Thus, the various characters in the novel use their respective ‘dialects’ to communicate with each other. In the process, the areas wherein communication fails, for example, between the members of the women's organization and the mother, also get exposed. The fact that identity, whether seen in terms of ‘Assamese’ or in gender are not homogenous constructs gets communicated through the narrative of the novel. In contrast to Seuji Patar Kahini, Bhikhar Patra Bhangi pushes the limits further by creating literature with the resources available (in this case, through the use of language) in modern Assamese literature.

There can be two ways to address this specificity of the two narratives. In one approach, a historical one, the period to which the two novels belong is important. Despite the fact that even during the 1950s the critique of the loss of ‘indigenous’ narratives in the process of modernization/standardization and Sanskritization (Gangetic connection) of the language existed,Footnote ³⁰ it was only leading up to the 1980s that its politics assumed significant implications. This shift in politics is also reflected in the narrative strategies in fiction. But the extent to which the narratives of indigeneity could be accommodated within the universe of the ‘Assamese’ had its limits too. It is evident in the fact that the referent for the universe in the narratives (for example, the language of the narrator in Bhikhar Patra Bhangi) continued to be the Sibsagar variant of the language. As a result, the dominance of the discourse of modernity and culture which was fundamentally exclusive could not be replaced. The problem, as already noted, lay in the transition from hybrid narrative structure to mono-narrative structure since the nineteenth century. In other words, the problem lay embedded in the very system of modern literature that developed during the period.

Can this problem also be seen as the loss of the ‘subaltern’ voice, as has been argued in some cases of mainland India?Footnote ³¹ The answer can be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The change in the practice of literature from pre-colonial to colonial times, even in mainland India, undoubtedly led to the loss of narrative (subaltern voices) which were earlier an integral part of literature (with the possible exception of ritual Sanskrit literature). However, with regard to the valley in particular, the change was also part of a specific historical development, different to those of most other parts of mainland India. It was the valley's transformation from a continental crossroad to a frontier.Footnote ³² As a highway and destination of migration between South, East and South East Asia in the pre-colonial period, the valley was characterized by social formation which was dynamic but lacked a defined order of hierarchy and power. Therefore, not only the mechanisms of the management of people (paik system) and space (khats) reflected the characteristic dynamism (or condition of flux) and the lack of defined order of hierarchy and power, or even reflected in the lack of a defined concept of people (whether in the buranjis or in the neo-vaishnava literature, such as Guru Charits or biographies of the saints), the feature could also be seen in the production and reception of culture.Footnote ³³ The transformation of the valley from a historical crossroad into a frontier in the nineteenth century fundamentally affected this process. The effect, as pointed out in the introduction, was an attempt to fashion an order out of the existing flux. The instituting of an order was central to the colonial requirement of creating a stable and predictable frontier in the valley, the most strategic geo-spatial component of the entire north east region. In fact, the degree of order that the valley was fashioned into was almost in direct proportion to its lack of order, as far as the rest of the frontier is concerned.

The nature of order that shaped modern Assamese literature was also a part of this larger historical process in which the social groups and regions within the valley also participated. But the voices of those whose narratives could not or were not accommodated into the production of modern Assamese literature were not ‘subaltern’, especially because their voices were significantly present in music and popular theatre—the performance media. In other words, the question of the ‘indigenous’ as a problem (a) is something specific to the practice of modern Assamese literature, and (b) as a system of literature, it is not only related to social groups and their relations of power but also to the historical process of a continental crossroad becoming a frontier, and the Gangetic connection that became overwhelmingly a part of that change. On the question of language and literature as markers or bearers of multiple social narratives (or their failure), production of literature and its critique in reception existed throughout most of the twentieth century. Narrative strategies such as in Bhikhar Patra Bhangi were generally in a minority, but even when in practice, the dichotomy between production and reception of literature vis-à-vis the ‘indigenous’ continued. In the post-colonial period, the emergence of Bodo literature as a critique and testimony to the structural limits of modern Assamese literature to be representative of the valley was only the first of the cases of a ‘subaltern’ literary discourse (early twentieth century) emerging into a ‘major’ mode of doing literature in the valley (by the late twentieth century).Footnote ³⁴

The indigenous and ‘Indian’

The internal conflict in modern Assamese literature was not only about the indigenous and its treatment. It is also found when situating the indigenous in the context of the ‘Indian’. One of the classic texts in this context is Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya's Iaruingam (People's Rule).Footnote ³⁵ The novel is set in the Naga hills, among the Tangkhul ‘tribes’. The novel is based on the author's personal life spent as a school teacher among the Tangkhul Nagas in the 1940s. The novel has not one but two protagonists, Reishang and Phanitphang. The novel traces the development of their divergent and conflicting political ideologies in the context of Naga nationalism in the north east Indian frontier. Between the two of them is the character of Jiban, the Assamese school teacher who marries and settles amongst the Tangkhuls, but dies in the fight between the forces that the two protagonists represent. Reishang joins the electoral politics of ‘Indian’ state system, as typified by the idealism of Gandhian nationalism, and Phanitphang becomes a leader of militant Naga nationalism, which seeks an independent Naga nation state in the hills. The Naga hills adjoin the Brahmaputra Valley, spreading into Myanmar. The character of Jiban represents a humanist consciousness that seeks human progress and dignity but is unable to make a choice of either politics because, as the novel implies, institutional politics suffers from a certain deficiency of humanist consciousness. Therefore, his death in the crossfire symbolizes the death of an ideal human spirit in the face of institutional politics, and it also indicates that Naga nationalist politics is located within the Naga communities and an outsider, however well meaning, cannot escape making a political choice.

However, the novel itself does not make the political choice; it is an exploration of two political ideologies vis-à-vis the question of people's rule. This exploration is also set in a context when modern political thought begins to influence ‘tribal’ communitarian relations. It is not wrong to say that Jiban represents the author's own dilemma (the author himself having been a school teacher in the area) and the dilemma of the narrative in having to make the choice between the Indian state system and Naga nationalism over the question of people's rule and its meaning.

One of the basic themes that the novel engages with is the relation between the indigenous and modernity, as it shaped the hills in the 1930s and the 1940s. The question of the nation was only one factor in that relation. There were other factors, such as Christianity and ‘tribal’ life, and the Second World War and its impact which also shaped both the thought and social life of the hills during the period. Nation and nationalism was part of the larger process of change that the hills were experiencing. The novel deals with the indigenous as a set of given anthropological frameworks of social existence, namely the ‘tribal’ life of the Nagas. Against this framework, the factors and processes of modernity are introduced. Modern political thought such as anti-colonialism and nationalism, or exposure to war and the Japanese army (World War II) or unfulfilled social relations (for example, in the life of unwed mother Sarengla, who bears a son by a retreating Japanese soldier and finds refuge from the associated stigma as a nurse in a hospital), or the way Christianity was received differently by the people, whether as a means to create nationalist unity across ‘tribal’ and village loyalties or as a challenge to their traditional way of life, or even as a means of bringing modernity to the hills, they all are placed in the narrative as interactions between the indigenous and modernity. Since the novel is set in the 1940s and engages with a period of tumult and change in the hills, it does not treat any dimension of change as natural or automatic. This is also reflected in its treatment of the question of nation. Both Indian nationalism and Naga nationalism find equal space and significance in the narrative. The moot question that is placed between the two kinds of nationalism is how to approach the issue of people's rule, and also how to achieve people's rule, through Gandhian non-violence or through revolutionary violence. The novel does not align itself with any one approach on the question of people's rule.

On the question of the indigenous and the nation in Iaruingam, two further points can be made. They are: the position of the author as an outsider to the social and political milieu under discussion; and the question of production and reception of literature written in the Assamese language. Both points are related. The novel does not take a political position on the change that the hills were undergoing. In fact, the lack of the narrator's position on the change is what constitutes the narrative of the novel, an ethnographic account of social and political change. The lack or refusal of the author to take a position can be traced to two factors: the author's own experience as a school teacher in the hills in the 1940s and reporting it as he saw it; and as a non-Naga, he ought only provide an account without taking any position. The two situations can be clearly seen in the character of Jiban, the school teacher from Assam who married and settled among the Tanghuls, and who later was killed in the crossfire between the two protagonists, Reishang and Phanitphang. In other words, the futility of neutrality in polarized debates between tradition, modernity, indigeneity and nationalism was amply demonstrated in the life and death of Jiban.

However, Iaruingam is an Assamese novel, and its treatment of the debates noted above had relevance for the intended readership. If the novel is contextualized in the post-colonial period readership, three issues are noteworthy. They are a critique of the construct of ‘Assamese’, a critique of the Indian nation-building project in the north east region, and conceptualizing the indigenous (later ‘ethnic’) vis-à-vis the nation. The first point has already been discussed.

The critique of the Indian nation-building project in the north east region had already become a contentious issue by the 1950s in Assam on the grounds that the frontier received little development assistance and mainly existed as a neo-colony for ‘mainland’ India, and due to its location was seen as an international buffer for India.Footnote ³⁶ It also argued that, by deploying deliberate policies on language and ethnicity, and consciously following a road to sever the historical ties that the Brahmaputra Valley and its adjoining hills had previously shared,Footnote ³⁷ the role of bridging the valley and the hills as fulfilled by the Assamese language would be broken by the introduction of Hindi.

The third point of conceptualizing the indigenous vis-à-vis the nation, was also linked to the debate regarding the first two points. The only difference on the Naga question was that the indigenous itself also stood for the nation (Naga nationalism) and not as indigenous within the larger national framework as in the case of the valley. If Iaruingam has to be situated, it is in this context. Therefore, Iaruingam, despite being an Assamese novel but on the Naga question, was an engagement with the larger issue of the construct of people and the discourse of ‘Assamese’ identity that has affected the valley and the north east region throughout the twentieth century. Iaruingam explored that problematic through a case study of the Naga question.

The other narrative dimension of the novel is the nature and role of language. In a similar way to Seuji Patar Kahini, Iaruingam deals with social diversity, but Iaruingam also deals with the larger question of discourse and politics of identity connected to that diversity. However, again in a similar way to Seuji Patar Kahini, it also uses entirely the Sibsagar variant of the Assamese language to bind the narrative together. This is despite the fact that Nagamese (the language in which communication among Naga ‘tribes’ takes place generally) is comprehensible to the Assamese readership.

Therefore, when discussing the question of the indigenous and the nation, is it possible to say that both novels exhibit the same problems with text and narrative? The answer is ‘No’. In Seuji Patar Kahini, the indigenous is neatly structured into the construct of the ‘Assamese’ through the role of language, and because the language in question is already factored in to the Gangetic connection, the larger ‘Indian’ framework is implied as a logical corollary. But in Iaruingam, the indigenous is pitted against multiple factors operating at the same time (due to the context of change), and the contestations between the indigenous, Indian nationhood and the discourse of Assamese identity vis-à-vis space and people do not necessarily get neatly structured into the totality of the narrative, despite the homogenizing role given to language in the text. In other words, whereas the narrative in Seuji Patar Kahini remains in conflict with itself in a more covert way, in Iaruingam, the conflict is far more significantly overt. Notably, this embedded conflict that a narrative carries within itself is not to be found in Naga literature dealing with the national question, for example, in Temsula Ao's These Hills Called Home.Footnote ³⁸ Traditional Naga literature was primarily oral, and it did not use a written script. Furthermore, different Naga communities used different languages, communication among them being carried out in Nagamese, a pidgin Sibsagar variant of Assamese. Thus, in the twentieth century, English became widely accepted as the language of literature because it could be used for written literature and also a language for inter-community or ‘tribal’ communication, thus creating unity across differences. Therefore, the indigenous could be unified into a Naga nation, which could then be pitted against the Indian nation, the former as positive and the latter as oppressive. Fictions such as These Hills Called Home could relate with clarity on the question of the indigenous and the nation precisely because it could use a language (English) which was free from these dichotomies. A text like Iaruingam is more peculiar to the valley and not to the rest of the north east India region. Its peculiarity lies in the challenges to construct a narrative which needs to transcend regions or communities but lacks the linguistic tools with which to execute this need.

Modern Assamese fiction and the paradigm of Indian nation

One of the distinctive features of pre-colonial literary practice in the valley was its hybrid narrative system in which the scripto-centric component was largely based on the ‘Indian’ (Gangetic connection) influence whilst the phono-centric (oral) and the body-centric (performed) components were based on influences from East and South East Asia. This mode and content of producing literature was peculiar to the valley and not to the adjoining hills of the region. In the modern period, the transformation from hybrid narrative to mono-narrative resulted in the overwhelming visibility of the ‘Indian’, or Gangetic connection, in literature. The shift in the practice of literature from hybrid to mono-narrative could apply to many other kinds of literature across South Asia.Footnote ³⁹ However, what is important here is that the shift also brought about a fundamental change in the content of narrative, and this change in nature and meaning of content differed across regions in South Asia. Thus, analysis of the mode alone (as is found in Satyanath) does not necessarily explain the nature and impact of change or the historical specificities of which it forms a part. As discussed here, the problematic is not the change in the practice of literature per se. The problematic is the historical change in the nature of a given region, and how production and reception of literature of the region both reflects and engages with that change.

It is evident that modern Assamese narrative could not have escaped the overwhelming presence of the ‘Indian’ in the very constitution of its discourse. It is also in sharp contrast to the discourses in the hills, wherein due to the nature of transition from the oral to the written in literature, narratives could easily escape any embedded ‘Indian’ (Gangetic) connection. This is despite the fact that in the pre-colonial period, there is evidence that Vaishnava and Shakta sects reached these communities, especially those who had settled in the foothills along the valley.Footnote ⁴⁰ Therefore, if modern Assamese language and narrative developed a structural compulsion on the ‘Indian’/Gangetic connection, were there also attempts to challenge it or push its limits in literature? To employ more classical terminology, did content seek to stretch the limits of form in this regard?

It is undeniable that there have been such attempts, but they have been few and far between. One such example, as shown above, was Iaruingam. In recent years, there has been an increase in production and reception of such literature, for example Harekrishna Deka's Bandi Footnote ⁴¹ (Prisoner) or Anuradha Sarma Pujari's No Man's Land Footnote ⁴² or Anurag Mahanta's Aulingar Zui (A Spring of Ash).Footnote ⁴³ All three texts have achieved both popular and critical acclaim. One common narrative focus in all three texts is a critique of the Indian nation state and its role and operation in the north east India frontier. They also critique the condition of continuous violence that control life in the region. Importantly, though all the texts are in Assamese, they deal with subjects that are common to the entire frontier region, and not merely to the Brahmaputra Valley. Bandi is based in the valley, No Man's Land is situated in the Meghalaya-Bangladesh border and Aulingar Zui is situated in the Nagaland-Myanmar border. In that respect, modern Assamese literature has certainly graduated from being the literature of the valley to being literature of the entire north east Indian frontier region. Two points deserves mention here. Firstly, through the political critique of the larger Indian nation paradigm as it operates in the frontier, it has liquidated the role of the embedded cultural quotient of ‘Indian’ (the Gangetic connection) in the discourse of identity that predominated in earlier modern Assamese fiction. In other words, the new literature show that shared cultural heritage or history is insufficient to politically justify the Indian nation-building project in the frontier. But secondly, despite the above achievement, modern Assamese literature is also becoming increasingly ghettoized ethnically, most ethnic groups of the valley disassociating themselves from the discourse of Assamese identity based on the Sibsagar variant of the language. Thus, despite the political change in the nature of narrative in contemporary Assamese literature, it inescapably remains confined to the narrative structures (in literature) which are primarily exclusive in nature. In other words, modern Assamese literature can become inclusive only when it is freed from the modern Assamese language, which precisely is also the problem. It is a problem which is deeply rooted in the change from practice of literature in a dynamic condition of flux of continental crossroad to a condition in which the dynamism was sought to be framed into an order in the valley, with its impact on the practice of literature.

It is also this feature which distinguishes it from problems of narratives in other literatures which exist based on the framework of region. For example, with regard to modern Palestinian literature, it has been argued that inclusion or exclusion (of groups) as narrative strategy in literature is evident.Footnote ⁴⁴ However, it is also shown that the choice of inclusion or exclusion of people or voices in literature is based on the concept of Palestine as a political spatial formation that lies at the heart of a given literature. In other words, in a classic Marxist framework, it is ideology determining the narrative structure of a text. But in the case of narrative in modern Assamese fiction it is not merely a case of ideology (which is crucial) but also one of the instruments of literature that are available to create literature, instruments which are equally crucial in inclusion or exclusion of narratives (and voices). Further, ideology alone does not explain the given nature of the instruments of literature that became available in the period under discussion. It can only be understood in the larger framework of transformation of a continental crossroad into a frontier—the historical process of formation of a given region itself. The contradictions in or from these instruments are not because they bear remnants of the past vis-à-vis the new order (of culture), as Macherey argues in the case of Jules Verne's writingsFootnote ⁴⁵; rather the contradictions emerge because the past—the hybrid narrative—could not be retained or accommodated (as was done in popular music or theatre) in the practice or mode of creating literature when the valley as continental crossroad changed into a colonial frontier.