Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier
Keywords:
Land relations, Nagaland, Genealogy, Epistemology, Indigenous peoples, India
Abstract
This article contributes to the burgeoning critical literature on Naga lifeworlds by using a heterodox Foucaultian and Marxist framework. The analysis is structured as a genealogy that reinterprets the ways that historical epistemologies have shaped contemporary land relations in Nagaland. Our genealogy draws on place-based interviews to foreground what the history of land relations mean to Nagas today. The discussion sheds new light on (i) the epistemological bearings of gennas on the present-day social realities of Naga-Christianity; (ii) territoriality as an epistemology that reified the village-centered ownership of land; (iii) epistemic ruptures of subjectivation under British colonialism. The paper ends by contextualizing the genealogy of Naga land relations to redress its biased representations and culture of alterity by mainstream media and political outlets in India.
References
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Dzuvichu, L. (2014), ‘Empire on their backs: Coolies in the eastern borderlands of the British Raj’, International Review of Social History 59 (22):89-112.
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Franke, M. (2009), War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas, London: Routledge.
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Kire, E. (2015), When the River Sleeps, New Delhi: Zubaan.
Lawrence R. (2016), ‘Tribalism Gets a Bum Rap’, Anthropology Today 32 (5):3.
Longkumer, A. (2017), ‘Moral geographies: the problem of territoriality, sovereignty and indigeneity among the Nagas’, in A. Dasgupta and M. Mio (eds.), Rethinking Social Exclusion in India: Caste, Communities and the State, New Delhi: Routledge.
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Marx, K. (1976), Capital (Vol. I), New York: Vintage, 177.
Matus, P. (2018), ‘Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method’, Semiotica 2018 (225): 103-127.
Misra, S. (1998), ‘The nature of colonial intervention in the Naga hills, 1840-80’, Economic & Political Weekly 33 (51):3273-3279.
Moatoshi A. (2019), A Treatise on Customary and Fundamental Laws of the Nagas in Nagaland, Chennai: Notion Press.
Ngaihte, T. (2015), ‘Armed Forces in India’s Northeast: A Necessity Review’, South Asia Research 35 (4):368-385.
Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C. B., Norgaard, R. B., and Policansky, D. (1999), ‘Revisiting the commons: Local lessons, global challenges’, Science 284 (5412):278–282.
Poddar, P. K., and Subba, T. B., (1991), ‘Demystifying some ethnographic texts on the Himalayas’, Social Scientist 19, 78-84.
Pruett, G. E. (1974). Christianity, history, and culture in Nagaland. Contributions to Indian Sociology 8 ():.
Sack, R. (1986), Human territoriality: Its theory and history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2.
Saffari, S. (2016), ‘Can the Subaltern be Heard? Knowledge Production, Representation, and Responsibility’ in International Development’, Transcience 7 (1):36-46.
Shikhu, I. Y. (2007), A Rediscovery and Rebuilding of Naga Cultural Values, New Delhi: Regency Publications, 81.
Shimray, A. S. A. (2005), Let Freedom Ring: Story of Naga Nationalism, New Delhi and Chicago: Promilla and Co. Bibliophile South Asia.
Shimray, U. A. (2007), Naga Population and Integration Movement: Documentation, New Delhi: Mittal.
Subba, T. B., and Wouters, J. J. P. (2013), ‘North-East India: ethnography and politics of identity’, in P. Berger and F. Heidemann (eds.), The modern anthropology of India: ethnography, themes and theory, London: Routledge: 193-207.
Takatemjen. (1998), Studies on Theology and Naga Culture, New Delhi: Indian Society.
Tharoor, S. (2016), An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company.
Thomas, J. (2017), Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the Formation of Naga Political Identity, New Delhi: Routledge India.
Thong, T. (2010), “‘Thy Kingdom Come’: The Impact of Colonization and Proselytization on Religion among the Nagas”, Journal of Asian and African Studies 45 (6):595-609.
Tinyi, V. (2017), ‘The headhunting culture of the Nagas: reinterpreting the self’, The South Asianist 5 (1):83-98.
Varah, F. (2017), ‘Situating the Human Relationships with Nature in the Tangkhul Naga’s Lifeworld’, Journal of Human Ecology 41 (3):247-254.
Walden D. (2020, June 9), Capitalism as religion, Current Affairs, https://currentaffairs.org/2020/06/capitalism-as-religion
Wouters, J. J. P., and Heneise, M. (2017), ‘Introduction to Nagas in the 21st Century’, The South Asianist 5 (1):3-19.
Wouters, J. J. P. (2018), In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Wouters, J. J. P. (2019), ‘Religion, Politics, and the Problem of Secularism among Upland Nagas’, in M. Carrin (ed.), Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia Online, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2665-9093_BERO_COM_0320341
Yonuo, A. (1974), The rising Nagas: a historical and political study, Delhi: Vivek Publishing House.
Zetsuvi, K. S. (2014), Traditional culture of the Angami Nagas, Dimapur: Heritage Publishing House.
Zou, D. V. (2005), ‘Raiding the dreaded past: Representations of headhunting and human sacrifice in north-east India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 39 (1):75-105.
Alcoff L. M. (2013), ‘Focault’s Normative Epistemologies’, in C. Falzon, T. O’Leary, and J. Sawicki (eds.), A Companion to Focault, London: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 205-225.
Alemchiba, M. (1970), A Brief Historical Account of Nagaland, Kohima: Naga Institute of Culture.
Angelova, I. (2017), ‘Colonial rule, Christianity and sociocultural (dis)continuities among the Sumi Naga’, The South Asianist Journal 5 (1): 20-45.
Ao, T. (2005), These Hills Called Home: Stories from a Warzone, New Delhi, Zubaan.
Ao, T. (2014), On being a Naga: essays, Dimapur: Heritage Publishing House.
Aosenba. (2001), The Naga Resistance Movement: Prospects of Peace and Armed Conflict, New Delhi: Regency.
Changkiri, L. A. (2015), Socio-Cultural and Political History of the Nagas, Dimapur: Heritage Publishing House.
Dzuvichu, L. (2013), ‘Roads and Raj: The politics of road building in colonial Naga Hills, 1860s-1910s’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 50 (4):474.
Dzuvichu, L. (2014), ‘Empire on their backs: Coolies in the eastern borderlands of the British Raj’, International Review of Social History 59 (22):89-112.
Feder E. K. (2011), Power/Knowledge, in D. Taylor (ed.), Michel Foucault: Key Concepts, New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1974), Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, Paris: Gallimard, (trans.) by, A. Sheridan (1979), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1976), Histoire de la sexualite, vol. I: La Volonte de savoir, Paris: Gallimard, (trans.) by, R. Hurley (1990), The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, New York: Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1977), ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in D.F. Bouchard (ed. and trans.), Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, New York: Cornell University Press, 139-164.
Foucault M. (1980), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, (trans.) by, C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper, New York: Pantheon.
Franke, M. (2009), War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas, London: Routledge.
Garland, D. (2014), ‘What is a ‘history of the present?’ On Foucault’s genealogies and their critical preconditions’, Punishment & Society 16 (4):365-384.
Gutting, G. (1994), ‘Introduction Michel Foucault: A User’s Manual’, in G. Gutting (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10.
Hammer, R. (2017), ‘Epistemic Ruptures: History, Practice, and the Anticolonial Imagination’, International Origins of Social and Political Theory 32 ():153-180.
Hannum, H. (1990), Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Harvey, D. (2017), Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, London: Profile Books.
Hazarika, S. (2018), Strangers No More: New Narratives from India’s Northeast, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company.
Imsong, M. (2011), God, Land, People, Dimapur: Heritage Publishing House.
India Today, (17 Aug. 2019), PM Modi wants Naga talks to conclude in 3 months, won’t dilute state’s special rights: Nagaland Gov RN Ravi, Accessed at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pm-modi-wants-naga-talks-to-conclude-in-3-months-won-t-dilute-state-s-special-rights-nagaland-guv-rn-ravi-1581733-2019-08-17/ on Jan 3, 2022.
Jacobs J., Harrison, S., Herle, A., and Macfarlane, A. (1990), The Nagas, London: Thames and Hudson.
Jamir, C. (2020), Christianity in Northeast India, London: Routledge.
Jamir, N. T., and Lanunungsang A. (2005), Naga Society and Culture: A Case Study of the Ao Naga Society and Culture, Lumami: Nagaland University Tribal Research Center Department of Sociology.
Kapai, Y. (2020), ‘Spatial Organization of Northeast Indian: Colonial Power Structure and Hills-Plain Relations’, Indian Historical Review 47 (1):150-169.
Ketholesie. (2015), ‘British administrative policy in the Naga hills’, International Journal of Languages, Education, and Social Sciences 17 (1):1-4.
Kikon, D. (2005), ‘Engaging Naga Nationalism: Can Democracy Function in Militarised Societies?’, Economic and Political Weekly 40 (26):2833-2837.
Kikon, D. (2006), ‘Educating the Naga Headhunters: Colonial History and Cultural Hegemony in Post-Colonial India’, in B. Sautman (ed.), Cultural Genocide and Asian State Peripheries, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kikon, D. (2009), ‘The predicament of justice: fifty years of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India’, Contemporary South Asia 17 ():271-282.
Kikon, D. (2021, December 6), How the culture of AFSPA murdered the Naga Coal Miners. RAIOT: Challenging the Consensus.https://raiot.in/how-the-culture-of-afspa-murdered-the-naga-coal-miners/
Kire, E. (2015), When the River Sleeps, New Delhi: Zubaan.
Lawrence R. (2016), ‘Tribalism Gets a Bum Rap’, Anthropology Today 32 (5):3.
Longkumer, A. (2017), ‘Moral geographies: the problem of territoriality, sovereignty and indigeneity among the Nagas’, in A. Dasgupta and M. Mio (eds.), Rethinking Social Exclusion in India: Caste, Communities and the State, New Delhi: Routledge.
Martemjen. (2017), Biodiversity Conservation, Indigenous Knowledge and Practices: A Naga Perspective, Chennai: Notion Press.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1975), Collected works, New York: International Publishers.
Marx, K. (1976), Capital (Vol. I), New York: Vintage, 177.
Matus, P. (2018), ‘Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method’, Semiotica 2018 (225): 103-127.
Misra, S. (1998), ‘The nature of colonial intervention in the Naga hills, 1840-80’, Economic & Political Weekly 33 (51):3273-3279.
Moatoshi A. (2019), A Treatise on Customary and Fundamental Laws of the Nagas in Nagaland, Chennai: Notion Press.
Ngaihte, T. (2015), ‘Armed Forces in India’s Northeast: A Necessity Review’, South Asia Research 35 (4):368-385.
Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C. B., Norgaard, R. B., and Policansky, D. (1999), ‘Revisiting the commons: Local lessons, global challenges’, Science 284 (5412):278–282.
Poddar, P. K., and Subba, T. B., (1991), ‘Demystifying some ethnographic texts on the Himalayas’, Social Scientist 19, 78-84.
Pruett, G. E. (1974). Christianity, history, and culture in Nagaland. Contributions to Indian Sociology 8 ():.
Sack, R. (1986), Human territoriality: Its theory and history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2.
Saffari, S. (2016), ‘Can the Subaltern be Heard? Knowledge Production, Representation, and Responsibility’ in International Development’, Transcience 7 (1):36-46.
Shikhu, I. Y. (2007), A Rediscovery and Rebuilding of Naga Cultural Values, New Delhi: Regency Publications, 81.
Shimray, A. S. A. (2005), Let Freedom Ring: Story of Naga Nationalism, New Delhi and Chicago: Promilla and Co. Bibliophile South Asia.
Shimray, U. A. (2007), Naga Population and Integration Movement: Documentation, New Delhi: Mittal.
Subba, T. B., and Wouters, J. J. P. (2013), ‘North-East India: ethnography and politics of identity’, in P. Berger and F. Heidemann (eds.), The modern anthropology of India: ethnography, themes and theory, London: Routledge: 193-207.
Takatemjen. (1998), Studies on Theology and Naga Culture, New Delhi: Indian Society.
Tharoor, S. (2016), An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company.
Thomas, J. (2017), Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the Formation of Naga Political Identity, New Delhi: Routledge India.
Thong, T. (2010), “‘Thy Kingdom Come’: The Impact of Colonization and Proselytization on Religion among the Nagas”, Journal of Asian and African Studies 45 (6):595-609.
Tinyi, V. (2017), ‘The headhunting culture of the Nagas: reinterpreting the self’, The South Asianist 5 (1):83-98.
Varah, F. (2017), ‘Situating the Human Relationships with Nature in the Tangkhul Naga’s Lifeworld’, Journal of Human Ecology 41 (3):247-254.
Walden D. (2020, June 9), Capitalism as religion, Current Affairs, https://currentaffairs.org/2020/06/capitalism-as-religion
Wouters, J. J. P., and Heneise, M. (2017), ‘Introduction to Nagas in the 21st Century’, The South Asianist 5 (1):3-19.
Wouters, J. J. P. (2018), In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Wouters, J. J. P. (2019), ‘Religion, Politics, and the Problem of Secularism among Upland Nagas’, in M. Carrin (ed.), Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia Online, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2665-9093_BERO_COM_0320341
Yonuo, A. (1974), The rising Nagas: a historical and political study, Delhi: Vivek Publishing House.
Zetsuvi, K. S. (2014), Traditional culture of the Angami Nagas, Dimapur: Heritage Publishing House.
Zou, D. V. (2005), ‘Raiding the dreaded past: Representations of headhunting and human sacrifice in north-east India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 39 (1):75-105.
Published
11-Jun-2023
How to Cite
Pongen, O., & Bosman, M. (2023). Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier. The South Asianist Journal, 9, 23-42. Retrieved from http://www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk/article/view/6965
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