Special Centre for the Study of North East India
School of Social Sciences – Building I
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Writing Identity in North East India: Reflections on the Colonial Category of ‘Old Kuki’
Ngoru Nixon
School of Law, Governance and Citizenship
Ambedkar University Delhi
Abstract : The question of identity in North East India remains as a critical issue particularly because of its given centrality in the very articulation of political imaginations. This tends to invariably engender a contestation of identity. Interestingly, the popular narrative of contestation in North East India assumes as well as feeds on the idea that the identity of some people/groups is more or less settled/stable than the others. In fact, what is even more interesting to note is that no other communities or groups have been more vociferously subjected to the narrative of the ‘instability’ of identity than those (viz. Anal, Chothe, Lamkang, Maring, Monsang, Moyon, Tarao) living in Chandel District (now bifurcated into Chandel and Tengnoupal districts) in the state of Manipur. The point of contention regarding the aforementioned communities or groups pertains to their identification with the ‘Naga’ identity. Critics, problematizing their identity as Naga, refer to them as part of ‘Old Kuki’ category and ipso facto, how these communities were originally part of the larger Kuki identity. But what is less dwelt upon or even occluded in the writings of the critics is the simple fact that the category of ‘Old Kuki’ is a colonial construction. How has the colonial category of ‘Old Kuki’ then come to be transformed into a matter of irrefutable fact about the identity of those communities as belonging to larger Kuki identity? The ‘missing’ narratival act of this transformation is what the paper seeks to address. In making this destabilizing intervention, the intention of the paper is not to assert or establish the ‘true’ identity of those communities in question- whether they are Naga or otherwise? The aim rather is to unravel the the constitution or suturing of the category of ‘Old Kuki’ in colonial writings which has, in fact, provided the basis for the proliferation of the narrative of the ‘instability’ of the identity of the aforementioned communities in the contemporary time. In all, argument of the paper is that the perceived vacillation of the identity of these communities, rather than their own making, is due to the discursive practices and interjections orchestrated from without.
DATE: November 16, Friday, 2018
TIME: 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
VENUE: Room No.324, 3rd Floor, SSS-I, JNU
ALL ARE INVITED
