The ancient education system of India is a greatly glorified tradition. But this traditional educ... more The ancient education system of India is a greatly glorified tradition. But this traditional education system of India has been the most exclusionary mode of pedagogy which hardly has any parallel in other civilizations of human history. In ancient India Only the 'twice born', the dwijas or the Brahmins had the absolute right over education while some limited access was granted to the wards of the rulers. Manusmriti had given a long list of people who must be barred from education which included the traders, farmers, keepers of animals, widows, and of course the Sudras who were prevented not only from learning the Sanskrit texts, but were also not allowed to read or even hear the recitations of those texts. Severe punishments were specifically coded for the violators of these rules. However, these excluded classes of people could have some access to education during the Muslim rule in the Mediaeval period. One of the highly learned modern men of India Raja Rammohun Ray got his education in this system who became a scholar of Persian and the
The Clarion- International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2019
Orality precedes the written. Stories told orally formed what we call the oral narratives from wh... more Orality precedes the written. Stories told orally formed what we call the oral narratives from which, throughout human history, several epochal texts were produced including the wall paintings, the most significant early derivatives of oral narratives like the Italian paintings of the Saoras of Ganjam in Odisha, which literally means „to write on the wall‟. Walter J Ong while theorising orality divided it into three basic categories- primary, secondary and residual orality. Oral narratives have been the most crucial sources leading to the production of cultural texts for they have not only seminally determined the cultural life of human societies they have also been significantly influential in the realms of religious and spiritual life worlds of the communities. However, history and orality seem to be apparently incongruous, primarily because when orality is largely seen as a narrative based on the slippery terrain of memory, history, on the other hand, is considered a more solemn discipline, a quasi-scientific discourse, what is called „modern historiography‟. „Can history be formed from orally transmitted narratives?‟ However, with the arrival of „metahistory‟ of the theorists like Hayden White the boundaries between literature and history have progressively blurred. Buranjis of Assam is one such tradition of historiography. Orality has not only been recognised as one of the major sources of historiography it has also inspired creative literature in a significant way. The proposed paper seeks to examine the dimensions of the inter-linkages across narratives including orality, history and literature with an accent on the Northeast.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
The paper contains an exclusive interview of Ratan Thiyam (1948), the famous theatre director fro... more The paper contains an exclusive interview of Ratan Thiyam (1948), the famous theatre director from the Northeast and one of the major protagonists of the Theatre of Roots movement in India. The paper also provides the authors’ experience with the place, Imphal, (capital of Manipur state), its people, and its milieu which intimately informed the creative self of Thiyam and his theatre abode—the Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT). Manipur is a state of an enigma for many outside the state, not only in the mainland but even in other parts of the Northeast as well because Manipur is seen as a place that has been a theatre of political turmoil and unrest following protracted militancy, ethnic anxieties and the tumults of identity assertions besides being subjected to the draconian AFSPA for the longest period of time. Against such a backdrop life continues to thrive in Imphal which provides elaborate nuances and contradictions turning the cityscape itself into a space of performance. The int...
Journal of OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, 2021
The paper looks at the crucial transformations of cultural and intellectual history of Assam in t... more The paper looks at the crucial transformations of cultural and intellectual history of Assam in the wake of the Bengal Renaissance leading to the formation of what can be termed as the 'modernist consciousness of Assam' that had kindled a deep sense of emancipation as well as legacies of ambivalences and destabilities, for it had brought in a fresh wind of progressive social ethos and also warrants of defeat to the vernacular syntax of social and cultural mores. The paper problematises the Renaissance of colonial Bengal not only as instrumental in the formation of a new capital of learning but also as an era of shifting and dislocating of the traditional centres and institutions of power and social pedagogy. The paper underlines that Assam is one such state where the ethos of the Bengal Renaissance has been one of its most significant legacies through which had evolved Assam's transformative rationality of modernism and at the same time, quite significantly, had also been a catalyst to engender cultural disquiet and epistemic anxieties.
Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Stusies in Humanities , 2022
The paper looks at the theatre of Ratan Thiyam, his poetics of performance and the impact of the ... more The paper looks at the theatre of Ratan Thiyam, his poetics of performance and the impact of the cultural space of Manipur on his plays. The paper also includes an unpublished interview of Ratan Thiyam
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities , 2022
Though the territory that is known as the Northeast of India is an ancient region in terms of its... more Though the territory that is known as the Northeast of India is an ancient region in terms of its civilisation, culture, and history; the emergence of Northeast as a discursive terrain, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In that, it has significant linkages with its assertions of resistance against the metanarratives of pan-Indian nationalism. In his seminal essay, “The Margin Strikes Back” (2005), Udayon Misra argued how the Northeast, commonly referred to as the periphery or the margin of the mainland, almost soon after India’s independence, had given the first ‘jolt’ to the metadiscursive idea of ‘one nation’ (p. 266). It was the tiny territory of Nagaland that had posed the biggest epistemic challenge forcing a paradigmatic shift in re-defining the parameters of the nation-state. This resistance has also shaped one of the primary categories of Northeast—a space of dissension and resistance. As Misra (2005) pointed out, it was the Naga question that had prompted Jayprakash Narayan, as the head of the Naga Peace Mission in 1964, to recognise the legitimacy of the ‘small nations’ and brought into circulation the idioms like ‘self-determination’ and the ‘urge to preserve’ culture and identity (p. 268) into the parlance of political discourses wherein the notion of ‘the mainstream’ (p. 266) found to have been not essentially central but rather incidental. What Northeast has defied is the singularity of meaning, the essentialist absolutism. This resistance has been one of the embedded cores of the region to deal with the multiplicities of voices inherent to the lay of the land. Notably, on fundamentalism and its growing dominance to assign primacy to the singular immensity of meanings, eminent critic and writer, Pradip Acharya expressed his understanding of the term as ‘ruling out doubts’, and as a contrast, he said, ‘In the Northeast, we celebrate doubt’ (2017, p. 3).
The paper looks at the intimate ethnic dimension in contemporary poetry in Assamese in Assam as w... more The paper looks at the intimate ethnic dimension in contemporary poetry in Assamese in Assam as well as in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The contemporary writings in Assamese has been preeminently characterised by the enduring presence of ethnic voices articulated from the vantages of their respective mores. This recent trend in Assamese writings has provided an extraordinary richness to its narrative as well to its world view and to the universe of its imagination. The paper seeks to critically understand the myriad nuances of Assamese poetry of recent times that has significantly evolved through a complex and enriching reconfiguration of multi ethnic cultural manifestations and negotiations.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities , 2022
This is the transcription of the conversation with Mamang Dai featrued in the Critical Dialogue S... more This is the transcription of the conversation with Mamang Dai featrued in the Critical Dialogue Session (hosted on 28 August 2021 as part of the Rupkatha International Open Conference 2021 (RIOC 2021). The session was coordinated by Dr Deepanjali Misra, KIIT, Bhubaneshwar and Pragati Das, Bhatter College, Dantan. Transcription from the video has been done by Bondita Baruah, Research Scholar, Dept. of English, NEHU, Shillong.
The ancient education system of India is a greatly glorified tradition. But this traditional educ... more The ancient education system of India is a greatly glorified tradition. But this traditional education system of India has been the most exclusionary mode of pedagogy which hardly has any parallel in other civilizations of human history. In ancient India Only the 'twice born', the dwijas or the Brahmins had the absolute right over education while some limited access was granted to the wards of the rulers. Manusmriti had given a long list of people who must be barred from education which included the traders, farmers, keepers of animals, widows, and of course the Sudras who were prevented not only from learning the Sanskrit texts, but were also not allowed to read or even hear the recitations of those texts. Severe punishments were specifically coded for the violators of these rules. However, these excluded classes of people could have some access to education during the Muslim rule in the Mediaeval period. One of the highly learned modern men of India Raja Rammohun Ray got his education in this system who became a scholar of Persian and the
The Clarion- International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2019
Orality precedes the written. Stories told orally formed what we call the oral narratives from wh... more Orality precedes the written. Stories told orally formed what we call the oral narratives from which, throughout human history, several epochal texts were produced including the wall paintings, the most significant early derivatives of oral narratives like the Italian paintings of the Saoras of Ganjam in Odisha, which literally means „to write on the wall‟. Walter J Ong while theorising orality divided it into three basic categories- primary, secondary and residual orality. Oral narratives have been the most crucial sources leading to the production of cultural texts for they have not only seminally determined the cultural life of human societies they have also been significantly influential in the realms of religious and spiritual life worlds of the communities. However, history and orality seem to be apparently incongruous, primarily because when orality is largely seen as a narrative based on the slippery terrain of memory, history, on the other hand, is considered a more solemn discipline, a quasi-scientific discourse, what is called „modern historiography‟. „Can history be formed from orally transmitted narratives?‟ However, with the arrival of „metahistory‟ of the theorists like Hayden White the boundaries between literature and history have progressively blurred. Buranjis of Assam is one such tradition of historiography. Orality has not only been recognised as one of the major sources of historiography it has also inspired creative literature in a significant way. The proposed paper seeks to examine the dimensions of the inter-linkages across narratives including orality, history and literature with an accent on the Northeast.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
The paper contains an exclusive interview of Ratan Thiyam (1948), the famous theatre director fro... more The paper contains an exclusive interview of Ratan Thiyam (1948), the famous theatre director from the Northeast and one of the major protagonists of the Theatre of Roots movement in India. The paper also provides the authors’ experience with the place, Imphal, (capital of Manipur state), its people, and its milieu which intimately informed the creative self of Thiyam and his theatre abode—the Chorus Repertory Theatre (CRT). Manipur is a state of an enigma for many outside the state, not only in the mainland but even in other parts of the Northeast as well because Manipur is seen as a place that has been a theatre of political turmoil and unrest following protracted militancy, ethnic anxieties and the tumults of identity assertions besides being subjected to the draconian AFSPA for the longest period of time. Against such a backdrop life continues to thrive in Imphal which provides elaborate nuances and contradictions turning the cityscape itself into a space of performance. The int...
Journal of OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, 2021
The paper looks at the crucial transformations of cultural and intellectual history of Assam in t... more The paper looks at the crucial transformations of cultural and intellectual history of Assam in the wake of the Bengal Renaissance leading to the formation of what can be termed as the 'modernist consciousness of Assam' that had kindled a deep sense of emancipation as well as legacies of ambivalences and destabilities, for it had brought in a fresh wind of progressive social ethos and also warrants of defeat to the vernacular syntax of social and cultural mores. The paper problematises the Renaissance of colonial Bengal not only as instrumental in the formation of a new capital of learning but also as an era of shifting and dislocating of the traditional centres and institutions of power and social pedagogy. The paper underlines that Assam is one such state where the ethos of the Bengal Renaissance has been one of its most significant legacies through which had evolved Assam's transformative rationality of modernism and at the same time, quite significantly, had also been a catalyst to engender cultural disquiet and epistemic anxieties.
Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Stusies in Humanities , 2022
The paper looks at the theatre of Ratan Thiyam, his poetics of performance and the impact of the ... more The paper looks at the theatre of Ratan Thiyam, his poetics of performance and the impact of the cultural space of Manipur on his plays. The paper also includes an unpublished interview of Ratan Thiyam
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities , 2022
Though the territory that is known as the Northeast of India is an ancient region in terms of its... more Though the territory that is known as the Northeast of India is an ancient region in terms of its civilisation, culture, and history; the emergence of Northeast as a discursive terrain, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In that, it has significant linkages with its assertions of resistance against the metanarratives of pan-Indian nationalism. In his seminal essay, “The Margin Strikes Back” (2005), Udayon Misra argued how the Northeast, commonly referred to as the periphery or the margin of the mainland, almost soon after India’s independence, had given the first ‘jolt’ to the metadiscursive idea of ‘one nation’ (p. 266). It was the tiny territory of Nagaland that had posed the biggest epistemic challenge forcing a paradigmatic shift in re-defining the parameters of the nation-state. This resistance has also shaped one of the primary categories of Northeast—a space of dissension and resistance. As Misra (2005) pointed out, it was the Naga question that had prompted Jayprakash Narayan, as the head of the Naga Peace Mission in 1964, to recognise the legitimacy of the ‘small nations’ and brought into circulation the idioms like ‘self-determination’ and the ‘urge to preserve’ culture and identity (p. 268) into the parlance of political discourses wherein the notion of ‘the mainstream’ (p. 266) found to have been not essentially central but rather incidental. What Northeast has defied is the singularity of meaning, the essentialist absolutism. This resistance has been one of the embedded cores of the region to deal with the multiplicities of voices inherent to the lay of the land. Notably, on fundamentalism and its growing dominance to assign primacy to the singular immensity of meanings, eminent critic and writer, Pradip Acharya expressed his understanding of the term as ‘ruling out doubts’, and as a contrast, he said, ‘In the Northeast, we celebrate doubt’ (2017, p. 3).
The paper looks at the intimate ethnic dimension in contemporary poetry in Assamese in Assam as w... more The paper looks at the intimate ethnic dimension in contemporary poetry in Assamese in Assam as well as in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The contemporary writings in Assamese has been preeminently characterised by the enduring presence of ethnic voices articulated from the vantages of their respective mores. This recent trend in Assamese writings has provided an extraordinary richness to its narrative as well to its world view and to the universe of its imagination. The paper seeks to critically understand the myriad nuances of Assamese poetry of recent times that has significantly evolved through a complex and enriching reconfiguration of multi ethnic cultural manifestations and negotiations.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities , 2022
This is the transcription of the conversation with Mamang Dai featrued in the Critical Dialogue S... more This is the transcription of the conversation with Mamang Dai featrued in the Critical Dialogue Session (hosted on 28 August 2021 as part of the Rupkatha International Open Conference 2021 (RIOC 2021). The session was coordinated by Dr Deepanjali Misra, KIIT, Bhubaneshwar and Pragati Das, Bhatter College, Dantan. Transcription from the video has been done by Bondita Baruah, Research Scholar, Dept. of English, NEHU, Shillong.
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the Rupkatha International Open Conference 2021 (RIOC 2021). The session was coordinated by
Dr Deepanjali Misra, KIIT, Bhubaneshwar and Pragati Das, Bhatter College, Dantan.
Transcription from the video has been done by Bondita Baruah, Research Scholar, Dept. of
English, NEHU, Shillong.
the Rupkatha International Open Conference 2021 (RIOC 2021). The session was coordinated by
Dr Deepanjali Misra, KIIT, Bhubaneshwar and Pragati Das, Bhatter College, Dantan.
Transcription from the video has been done by Bondita Baruah, Research Scholar, Dept. of
English, NEHU, Shillong.