NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES-I
State of ethnographic enquiries: Narratives on the Nagas of British India’s North-East Frontier, 1832-1935
Dr. Sodolakpou Panmei
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi
This paper is on colonial knowledge production of the ‘Nagas’ of British India’s North-East Frontier. Its concerns are twofold. The first is the state in which the ethnographic enquiries of the colonial state were undertaken, particularly in the Naga Hills, through military-survey expeditions (1830s-70s), census operations (1872-1931), and official ethnographic monographs (1880s onwards). The second is the way the ‘Nagas’ figured in those projects, or the features associated with it and that of the ‘tribe’: their markers and portrayals in official discourse; gradual makings as administrative nomenclatures; and connotative changes over time. The Naga Hills went through a transition from conquest to occupation (1878/81), which roughly coincided with the growth of anthropology as a discipline in the metropole, and there were shifts not only in the patterns of British administrative practice, but also the ethnographic traditions and targeted audiences. The entanglements of ethnography and governance are considered. A careful contextualisation of the production of descriptive ethnography may suggest against taking an extreme position of perceiving ethnography solely for the purpose of colonial control. This paper is less about identity politics and more about the state’s politics of identification. The highlight is on the part played by the state practices and administrative expediencies in the constitution of the category, ‘Nagas’.
DATE: September 22, Friday, 2017
TIME: 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
VENUE: Room no.324, 3rd Floor, SSS-I, JNU
ALL ARE INVITED