Materiality and Visuality in North East India

Tiplut Nongbri · Rashi BhargavaEditors

Materiality and Visualityin North East IndiaAn Interdisciplinary Perspective

EditorsTiplut NongbriCentre for North East Study and PolicyResearchJamia Millia IslamiaNew Delhi, Delhi, India

Rashi BhargavaDepartment of SociologyMaitreyi CollegeUniversity of DelhiNew Delhi, Delhi, India

ISBN 978-981-16-1969-4 ISBN 978-981-16-1970-0 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1970-0

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Foreword

It is both an honour and a real joy to have been invited to pen a Foreword to thisvery substantial volume onMateriality and Visuality in North-East India. It is also asentimental journey for me personally, as I recall the landmarks in my own voyageof discovery and rediscovery in the developing field of South Asian visual cultures.Albeit a mere bit player in a much larger scheme of things, I continue to relishmemories of those serendipitous moments when I came upon visual images fromdifferent universes and different histories engaged in clandestine conversation witheach other.

The story of the now grandiosely titled ‘Uberoi Collection of Indian CalendarArt’ began in Shimla in the late 1960s when ‘J.P.S.’ and I, newly arrived fromabroad, discovered the gastronomic delights of Shimla’s Lower Bazaar (the world’smost succulent chole-bhature and most soothing jalebi soaked in warm milk). Justacross our favourite watering hole was a so-called ‘glass house’—a framer of familyphotographs and ‘Photos of the Gods’ (to purloin the title of Chris Pinney’s epony-mous study)—which, apart from educative school ‘charts’ and colourful printed‘calendars’, the latter well-thumbed by passers-by, sold useful hardware items suchas buckets and mugs, hammers and screw-drivers, and pegs to tether your goats.Our appetites well-sated, we regularly took to rooting through the heaps of prints topick out pieces that tickled our fancy for one reason or another and, returning home,plastered a montage of prints across the walls of our flat. We congratulated ourselvesthat ‘this was the only art form we could afford to own’ and relished the notorietythat our execrable taste occasioned among the more refined of our colleagues at theIndian Institute of Advanced Study.

And then, across styles and genres, the calendars began ‘talking’ to each other.Secular and sacred imagery converged; goddesses and pin-ups changed places; thenew nation was manifested through myriad signifiers; urban modernity made peacewith bucolic rusticity; divinities endorsed the consumer goods of the new economy;and subversive voices obtruded into respectable mainstream discourse. Meanwhile,guided by littlemore than gut reaction and individual fetish, our collecting continued.The only problem was how to turn this enjoyably eccentric ‘hobby’ into an academicpursuit, i.e. to make social science sense of this visual plenitude.

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Indeed, at the time there seemed to be precious little to go on. To rather exaggeratethe picture (for there are always notable exceptions), Indian art historians appearedto operate in a rarified aesthetic universe of their own, focused on the exquisiteproducts of an ancient civilisation engaging modernity, even as students of folk artsand crafts wallowed in regret for traditions and artefacts on the verge of extinction,or attempted to retool them for middle-class home décor. Film-buffs shored up theirreputations for discriminating taste by policing the divide between ‘art’ and ‘popular’cinema, and keepers of the conscience of Indian social science decried the trivialityof focus on printed or moving images while real-life ‘social problems’ clamoured forattention. Altogether there was little interest in trying to decipher the visual languageand hidden politics of the printed image, or indeed of mass culture per se, except asthe self-evident object of censorious judgement.

If there was one theme that particularly struck me as permeating our emergingarchive of contemporary calendar art, it was the semantic conflation of categories of‘woman’, ‘goddess’ and ‘nation’. It is a theme that has since been richly exploredin the popular arts, folk arts and fine arts of the colonial and post-colonial periods.Inspired, on the one hand, byMarinaWarner’s feminist study of the cult of the VirginMary through European history and, on the other, by sundry anthropological studiesof the multiple forms and traits of the Hindu goddess, I put together a set of colourslides and ultimately a curated calendar art exhibition, which visually connected thesacred and secular imagery of Hindu Goddesses/mythological characters and mortalwomen: the goddess as ‘consort’ in wifely subordination and devotion; the goddessas bride, the bringer of fortune and prosperity; the benign mother and the mothercow; the dangerous and protective mother, guardian of the nation; the blessed sister;the devotee-cum-lover; the vamp and temptress; the woman commoditised in thecompany of the fetishised consumer products of the day; the woman objectified forthe prurient male gaze (the ‘pin-up’ par excellence); and finally, a divine image forwhich I had no language beyond ‘the unity of opposites’, Ardhanarishwara—Shivaand Parvati fused. Needless to say, the idea of the interplay of sacred and seculariconicity and powerful feminine roles that was so consistently attested in our modestarchive of calendar art was not to everyone’s taste, and the 20th century woundup with feminist critic, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, posing the brutal question, ‘Is theHindu Goddess a Feminist?’!

Meanwhile, however, starting around the 1970s in theAnglophone scholarlyworldand stretching across humanities and social science disciplines, the visual studies’scene opened up. There was ‘myth today’ and the mythology of yesterday; struc-turalism and semiology; cultural studies and subaltern studies; post-colonialism andpost-modernism; and altogether new ways of seeing and reading, new categories andstrategies of analysis, new archives of data, and a new pantheon of ancestors. ClaudeLévi-Strauss’s engagementwith Roman Jakobson, theRussian linguist and star of thePrague Linguistic Circle, foregrounded the tradition of Russian formalist criticismand the analytical schema of the folklorist, Vladimir Propp. Roland Barthes rescuedFerdinand de Saussure from relative obscurity and repositioned him at the heart ofthe new interdisciplinary project of Semiology. The British writer and artist, JohnBerger, leveraged Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay on ‘The Work of Art in the

Foreword vii

Age ofMechanical Reproduction’ to explore the class and gender politics of ‘seeing’a work of art under the regime of modernity and Benedict Anderson’s thesis of thedetermining role of ‘print capitalism’ in the making of nationhood became integral tosocial science theory and analytical practices. Around the same time, Pierre Bourdieurecreated sociology as a ‘combat sport’, exposing the social realities of privilege anddeprivation that constituted the habitus of class-based distinction. And feminists ofmany shades joined in, newly empowered. In this distinguished lineage, it wasRolandBarthes in particular who showed the way, from literary criticism to linguistics tosemiology to visual cultures and to the materiality of everyday life through multiplemedia (photography, cinema, fashion, advertising, public spectacle, wrestling, toys,plastic, cuisines, striptease, steak and chips, soap-powders and detergents, etc.): thetrite and trivial, profound and meaningful, benign and hegemonic, and signs andagents of modernity.

Materiality and Visuality in North-East India is an important input into SouthAsian material culture and visuality studies in several respects. In the first place,as its title discloses, it seeks to suture the untidy discursive divide that has existedbetween the overlapping fields of material culture studies (focused on the relation-ships between people and the ‘things’ by which they choose to define their culturalidentity or contest the identities thrust upon them) and visuality studies (focusedon the modes of production, consumption and circulation of visual imagery, andways of seeing and being seen). This gesture is certainly an important means ofreclaiming the subject’s space for self-representation against the objectivising andpredatory power of the colonial/neo-colonial gaze and the beguiling embrace of themodern ‘culture industries’. Secondly, following on from the example of RolandBarthes or, at a more philosophical plane, from that of Theodor Adorno, we see herea significant expansion of the range of visual media and material signifiers broughtunder critical examination—colonial and post-colonial (neo-colonial?) photography,clothing and fashion, product advertising, handloom textile production, digitalmedia,‘indie’ [non-mainstream] comics, and gendered ‘foodscapes’—as we have also seenrecently in such collective endeavours as the Sarai Reader series, or the TasveerDigital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveergharindia.net),all of them excellent ‘do-it-yourself’ kits for classroom exercises in ‘seeing’. In ateasing gesture in a volume focused explicitly on material culture and visuality, theethnic politics of ‘aurality’ (in this case, with reference to the unequal competi-tion of the indigenous musical forms of the Hau-Tangkhul community of Manipurwith exogenous Christian hymnal music), along with the class-based ‘spaciality’ thatseparates bosses and labourers in Assam’s tea gardens, are also subjected to criticalinterrogation.

While the supremeMotherGoddess, BharatMata, is ever ready tomanifest herselfin defence of the nation, we can now, without incurring the guilt of apostasy, gobeyond the compass of Anderson’s persuasive correlation of the rise of print capi-talism with nation-formation to critically focus our attention on an expanded rangeof visual and material signifiers of ‘communitas’ at all levels of the social, from themost localised to the national to the global.

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The North-East is an administrative unit of the Republic of India, the adventitiousproduct of the cartographical, historical and geopolitical imperatives of a contestedfrontier area. Notwithstanding the rich variety of sub-regional cultures, the ascribedand self-ascribed identity of the North-East is ever a function of its perceived ‘other-ness’ or marginality vis-à-vis the so-called Indian ‘mainstream’ or ‘mainland’, towhich it is perilously attached. Since colonial times, the many peoples of the regionhave been ‘primitivised’ by the anthropological gaze, exoticised by the tourist’scamera, patronised by the developmental state, and securitised against both infiltra-tion and secession in a notoriously ‘troubled periphery’ rent by internal conflictsand insurgencies. While authors in this volume resist the temptation to postulatean alternative unitary identity for India’s North-East contra these well-rehearsedstereotypes, they succeed in demonstrating a shared determination to be the activesubjects, and not merely the passive objects, of visuality and material culture studiesin the region, in the process casting their nets widely and deploying the most robustanalytical tools that the contemporary social sciences and humanities have to offer.

Patricia UberoiHonorary Fellow & Chairperson

Institute of Chinese StudiesDelhi, India

Preface

This volume is based on the papers presented in the International Conference titledMateriality and Visuality in Northeast India organised by the Centre for North-EastStudies and Policy Research (CNESPR), JamiaMillia Islamia in February 2019. Theconference brought together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds withsimilar academic interests in issues of the visual and the material and its implicationsin the context of North-East India. During the two-day conference, they engaged inproductive, critical and reflexive dialogue on many significant issues to enrich thealready existing scholarship on the region. Noteworthy is that many of the issues thatwere discussed during the conference have a wider appeal and are not restricted tothe geopolitical region popularly referred to as North-East.

This volume is about seeing, knowing and being by revisiting systems of knowl-edge bringing out the combined effect of production, circulation, reception and trans-formation. The chapters in the volume attempt to weave these issues together toprovide the reader a comprehensive picture of different sites and processes in thecontext of North-East India. The volume takes material and visual culture as a base tounderstand the historical developments in the region and builds on these to delve intofurther arguments and discourses with regard to the politics of knowledge productionand dissemination and its implications for understanding the contemporary discur-sive reality and everyday practices in and about the North-East. The contributions tothe volumemove beyond the engagement with the visual and thematerial as ‘objects’of inquiry to be engaged with for their economic and aesthetic values and make amethodological intervention by viewing them as agents of constructing and dissem-inating perceptions, meanings and practices. The use of the analytical categoriesof materiality and visuality makes these essays universal in their appeal, especiallyregarding colonised societies and communities and their transformation thereafter.They underscore the argument that visuality and materiality are embedded withinthe wider frameworks of history, culture and politics and frames of reference createdthrough interaction in different times and spaces.

Only select papers from the conference are included in the volume. This is mainlybecause some papers are either being published elsewhere or the presenters hadother commitments because of which they could not rework on their papers. We arethankful to all the paper presenters and the Chairs who presided over the sessions

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for enriching the discussions, debates and deliberations during those two days of theconference.We are especially grateful to all the contributors who, despite their heavyschedule, cooperated with us to make this book a reality.

An endeavour of this kind would not have achieved its goal without active insti-tutional support. In this regard, we are grateful to Prof. Simi Malhotra, Director,Centre for North-East Studies and Policy Research, for her constant encouragementand support to the conference and our decision to bring out this volume. The faculty,staff and student volunteers of CNESPR and Jamia administration deserve specialmention for their ready cooperation and support to make this project a success, oursincere thanks to all of them. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the Indian Councilfor Social Science Research, New Delhi and the North-Eastern Council, Shillong,for the generous grant extended to the conference, which makes it possible for us tocome up with this book.

Thanks is also due to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestionsthat went a long way to improve the contents of the volume. We are also thankfulto Dr. Alban von Stockhausen for giving inputs for the introductory chapter. Weespecially acknowledge the encouragement and support extended by Prof. PatriciaUberoi. Numerous discussions with her before and during the conference helped usgain critical insights into the theme and make it more robust. We would also like tothank her for graciously agreeing to write the foreword of this book. We are everso grateful to Prof. Christopher Pinney, Prof. Susan Visvanathan, Prof. Willem vanSchendel and Dr. Prasenjit Biswas for being generous with their time in carefullyreading the manuscript and offering us advanced reviews of the book. Their wordshave indeed motivated us in this endeavour. Last but not the least, we express oursincere thanks to the publication team at Springer for the care and patience withwhich they handled the publication of this book. Needless to say, shortcomings, ifany, are entirely ours.

New Delhi, India Tiplut NongbriRashi Bhargava

Introduction

Tiplut Nongbri and Rashi Bhargava

The substantive and methodological shifts in the last three decades with regard to thestudy of material and visual aspects of culture have been referred to as the materialturn and visual/pictorial turn, respectively. These turns are often seen as challengingthe domination of text, textuality and language that was popularised by the linguisticturn in the social sciences. However, it can be argued that one need not necessarilyseparate these or look at them as chronologically placed. Instead, one can transcendthe boundaries between the two turns and utilise their potential in exploring complexphenomena that might require a multi-pronged analysis.

The advent of the material and the visual turn opened up the possibility of notonly looking at the material and the visual anew but also exploring their prospectiverole in understanding how they connect with themes of power, domination and hege-mony to create a discursive reality. Thus, transcending the structural and semioticanalyses, the contemporary focus is to look at them as powerful agents in not onlyways of seeing but also ways of knowing and, consequently, of being. Set against thebackdrop of these newways of understanding thematerial and the visual, this volumeon Materiality and Visuality in North-East India: An Interdisciplinary Perspectivefocuses on issues of symbols, meanings, representations, social, cultural and polit-ical implications of the material and the visual and the dynamics between power,social reproduction, ideological dominance and knowledge production. It seeks tounderstand why some things matter more than the others and what happens whencertain objects and ideas are made more visible than the others.

North-East India: From an Object of Inquiry to a Subject inInquiry

North-East India has long been an object of study fromdifferent disciplinary perspec-tives. Most of these studies have either addressed problems related to politics, state-making, nation-building, nationalist and sub-nationalist movements, constructionand fragmentation of identities, borders and frontiers or oral history, folk traditions,

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ecology, gender, customary law, etc. With the methodological shifts and greaterawareness of the importance of reflexivity in social science research, one can see aremarkable change in the trend of research in the region with respect to the themes,theoretical approaches, perspectives and methodologies. In the context of North-East India, such a task becomes more poignant given the large body of works thatconstructs the region under consideration as a cognitive and epistemological cate-gory. The construction of a meta-narrative has mostly been descriptive in nature andheavily influenced by historical, social, cartographic, geopolitical, administrative andinstitutional processes that unfolded in different temporal spaces. This calls for anexploration into these various processes to unravel the continuities and discontinu-ities, if any, not only in understanding the self but also in making sense of the socialworld within which it is embedded. The present volume attempts to capture this tran-sition from two vantage points—materiality and visuality. The choice of the themeis partly a response to the methodological shift that is taking place in research in thesocial sciences and humanities in recent years which has taken a renewed interest inthings (aka material culture) as elements for close and systematic scrutiny. The otherreason is the imperative to bring the burgeoning research inNorth-East India, a regionwith an overwhelming repertoire of material and visual culture under one platform.Such a platform could help scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds with acommon interest to come together for a constructive dialogue which is vital to takeresearch in the region forward. Consequently, multiple attempts to not only identifynew concepts, theory, methods, methodologies and objects of inquiry but also inter-rogate the various processes through which they become instrumental in drawing acognitive and epistemological map in a specific time and space need to be mapped.To realise this end, various chapters in this volume engage with issues related to thelarger theme of production, circulation, reception (this includes re-interpretation) andtransformation of knowledge and knowledge systems. They intervene by looking atindigenous narratives, processes and people as subjects rather than objects. Withscholars increasingly moving into topics like myths, metaphors, memories, images,texts, comics, bodily practices, performative traditions and media representations,to name a few, there is much to interrogate, discuss and debate about contemporarymateriality and visuality in North-East India.

The volume, thus, is an attempt to create a space for further explorations into colo-nial and post-colonial knowledge and knowledge systems as they exist in contem-porary discourse. It is foregrounded on the contention: What matters more is a resultof many factors—construction of the ‘self’, of the ‘other’ and how some thingsare made visible and the others ignored. This process is largely located within thedominant frames of power, hegemony and authority not only of people, objects,events and places but also of vision (seeing), perception, cognition and meanings.Some of the fairly recent studies1 involving the visual and the material may offer

1 For an exploration of these themes in the Indian context, one can look at Ramaswamy (2003),Uberoi (2003, 2009), Pinney (1997, 2003, 2004, 2012), Miller (1998, 2005), Brosius (1999, 2005),Freitag (2003), MacDougall (2006), Marcus & Ruby (2011) to name a few who have looked at therelationship between seeing, thinking and knowing.

Introduction xiii

insights in understanding this transition. These studies do not engage with the visualand the material only for their aesthetic, affective and stylistic roles. Rather, theyhighlight their cognitive dimensions (and consciousness) and the implications thattheir construction, interpretation and representation may have on the people’s under-standing of the ‘self’ and the ‘other/s’. The present volume, thus, seeks to interveneby usingmateriality and visuality as conceptual and analytical tools to understand theprocess of knowledge production in the region both by the concerned communitiesand the external observer.

The study of material culture is not new in social anthropology. Some of the majorethnographic works frommid-19th century focused on thematerial world of the soci-eties under study. Material culture of the communities in North-East India has beenthe subject matter of many studies in the fields of history, anthropology, geography,ethnology, ethnography, museology, culture studies, etc., starting from the colo-nial to the post-colonial period. However, most of these studies looked at artefacts,commodities, and objects as mere appendage to the studies of social organizationand social structure. Additionally, both during the colonial rule and the period after,they have been primarily represented2 textually with visuals only complementingthe text. This is hardly surprising given that even today, there is a strong emphasison anthropology as a ‘discipline of words’3 with lengthy note taking clearly estab-lishing the opposition between textual/verbal and visual4 or placing the textual andthe visual hierarchically.5 Although the camera was a necessary accompaniment formost anthropologists, it was primarily seen as a mechanical device that serves asan aid to data collection. Many a time, the visuals presented did not add much tothe narrative and were largely included either as evidence of ‘been there’, or fortheir exhibitionist/ornamental/aesthetic value, or as a ‘metaphor for anthropology’,6

which were further crystallised in the museum settings. Furthermore, it was basicallythe ethnographer who decided on how and what aspect of the native’s life are to bephotographedwith the subjects of the art having little say in thematter. Often, this notonly results in gross misrepresentation of the observed, but also raises serious ethicalquestions in research. The issue of consent, let alone ‘prior and informed consent’,had no place in the research of the time. Although this may seem like a criticism thatis valid only for studies conducted in earlier periods, not many contemporary studiescan boast of a collaborative ethnography either.

In the context of North-East India, the tendency to romanticise and exoticise therich material and cultural heritage of the people by European ethnographers andthe blind acceptance of these representations by the observers and the observed

2 See J. H. Hutton (1921) on Sema Nagas and Angami Nagas, J. P. Mills on Ao Nagas, Lhota Nagas,Rengma Nagas in the 1920s, C. Von Furer-Haimendorf’s work on Nagas till the 1950s.3 One of the most significant exception being Sarah Pink who, for more than two decades now hasworked for a visual ethnography. One can look at Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media andRepresentation inResearch (2001) to beginwith.Her otherworks includeDoingVisualEthnography(2006); Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the senses (2006).4 Mead (1975).5 Hastrup (1992).6 MacDougall (2006).

xiv Introduction

alike have resulted in the persistence of colonial-era stereotypes that not only aretheoretically untenable but also have serious consequence on policies.7 The useof visuality as a conceptual tool can unravel the hidden meanings embedded in therepresentation/misrepresentation, of course, depending uponwhichwayyouperceiveit and avoid the pitfall of presenting them as natural facts. As an analytical tool,visuality is not limited in its application to the study of the media and the aestheticbut extends to everyday practices of seeing and showing, especially those that wetake to be immediate and unmediated.8 Till recent times, studies on North-East Indiafrom the colonial to the post-colonial period have given little attention to visuality asvital in understanding the process of knowledge production and the power dynamicssalient to it.

To address this lacuna, the methodological departure that the book ventures intois to trace the transition of the so-called other from being a passive object of inquiryin the colonial and post-colonial intellectual traditions to an active subject inter-vening in the existing knowledge systems and consequently producing knowledge.It reflects upon the remarkable ways in which certain kinds of knowledge structures,processes and institutions affect the social world the individual lives in. Noteworthyis that production, circulation, consumption and transformation of knowledge areaffected by many macro and micro forces, foregrounding the postulation that knowl-edge systems are constantly evolving. Such a contention allows us to revisit existingforms to unravel the hidden meanings and explore why certain types of knowledgeappear and disappear in different temporal and spatial settings. It, thus, requires arevisiting of historical developments, objects of inquiry and methodological frame-works9 to identify agents, structures and processes of knowledge production. Theconcept of visuality as the ‘regime of seeing and being seen’10 can come handy tolook at the North-East as a site where certain aspects are viewed/represented as moreimportant than others and how a focus on them provides new theoretical and concep-tual understanding of the issues in the region. Furthermore, it allows us to look athow communities in theNorth-East are increasingly employing their agency to createtheir own narratives of their culture, history and society. The question that comes tothe fore is to what degree is this version (about images, food, clothing, music, etc.)distinct from the ones created by the colonial and post-colonial ethnographers or theself-proclaimed ‘self’?

Despite their different disciplinary locations and diverse sites of research, thechapters in this volume are bound by a common attempt to engage with similarquestions. Some of the questions raised include: Can one talk about the materialand the visual as active agents in the production of knowledge, social relations,

7 A recent discussion on the relationship between statist, dominant discourses, policies of the stateand practices of the people is put forth in Sanjib Baruah’s In the name of the nation (2020).8 See for instance, Miller (1998); Ramaswamy (2003).9 Simone Lassig in her work titled The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the HistoricalResearch Agenda (2016) has argued that ‘“knowledge” as a phenomenon touches upon almostevery sphere of human life, and it uses knowledge as a lens to take a new look at familiar historicaldevelopments and sources’.10 Ramaswamy (2003).

Introduction xv

practices and ideologies? If so, how does this agency manifest itself in the context ofNorth-East India? Do material objects and visual images perform a pedagogic taskof training our eyes to see things and relations in particular ways; produce specificforms of knowledge; and create a complex of knowledge, perception and practicethat subscribe to certain ideologies? Can materiality and visuality as methodologicaltools help us approach the question of politics of representation? Has globalisationand liberalisation, created a (new?) site where material objects, visual images andthe market are in a dialogical relationship revealing an embodied and discursiveframework in which these operate? The book does not intend to provide final answersto these questions. It, rather, aims to open a dialogue on the possibility of focusingon the visual and the material both as communicative agents (non-human actors) andobjects of knowledge production which would also throw light on the various sitesin which these objects are located.

Materiality and Visuality as an Intervention in Researchon North-East

Since the 1980s, it has been established that material things shape the social world asmuch as they are shaped by it. The studies on material culture conducted during andafter this period questioned the earlier ones which were largely undertaken from thevantage point of formal (what it does) and structural and semiotic analysis (what itmeans)11 where material culture was either considered as analogous to texts formedaround a problem or as models of social worlds representing underlying patterns,social locations and relations. The renewed debates and discussions on materialculture between the 1960s and 1980s argued against considering objects as merethings bereft of meaning. The focus was to look at them as a complex of meanings,power relations and social dynamics.12 In other words, objects could be seen as activeagents in creating material, visual and bodily practices, discourses and perceptionsof our social world.13 The caveat, however, is that not all objects are equally powerfulagents in these tasks. Some are deemedmore important than the other and hence havereceived more attention. Daniel Miller states, ‘… in many cases material culture isbetter identified as a means rather than an end’ (1998, 5).

The present volume does not look atmaterial culture as they appear (or not appear)in a social world or observe and record their utility within a spatial and temporal

11 Refer toDanielMiller’s edited volumeMaterial Cultures:Why Some ThingsMatter (1998)wherein he traces the theoretical and methodological shifts in the analysis of material cultures. One canalso see Marcus Banks and Jay Ruby’s Made to be Seen (2011).12 One can refer to Ian Woodward’s book Understanding Material Culture (2007) to get acomprehensive analysis of various theoretical approaches to the study of material culture.13 This is an idea which is most closely associated with the phenomenological approach beginningfrom Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1945 and is quite evident in Bourdieu’s theory of practice, 1977.

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setting but approaches objects through a theory of materiality.14 Broadly, it can beunderstood as a study of reasons, processes and perceptions not from the point ofview of the observer but from that of the observed highlighting what matters tothem and why. Materiality, thus, is seen as a relational effect,15 that is, it exists inrelation to other objects/actors in a network16/context/structure. It is closely tied toimmateriality and thus, the absence of something is as important in establishing ameaning as the presence of something. As Miller writes, “through dwelling upon themore mundane sensual and material qualities of the object, we are able to unpick themore subtle connections with cultural lives and values that are objectified throughthese forms, in part, because of the particular qualities they possess” (1998, 9).

A similar twist can be seen in the visual turn in the 1990s, whereby it was estab-lished that the visual is constitutive of the social world and not merely illustrativeor reflective of it. Thus, visual images are extremely powerful in transforming theworld they inhabit or come to circulate in. There is a certain power that is attachedto the visual in contemporary studies in visual culture especially with regard tovisual systems and visible culture.17 Thus, alongwith terms like visual culture, visualrepresentations and processes of visualisation, visuality has emerged as an extremelysignificant concept. W. J. T Mitchell (2002) defines visuality as the dialectical rela-tionship between the visual and the social. He argues that the social is as much avisual construction as seeing (visual) is a social construction. Exploring the powerrelations as informing the process of seeing, Ramaswamy describes visuality as the‘regimes of seeing and being seen’ (2003, xiv).18 Her conceptualisation providesus with a possibility of using visuality as a tool to interrogate dominant forms ofperceptions, meanings and identities and the processes that lead to them. NicholasMirzoeff, on the other hand, discusses the concept of visuality along with that ofcounter-visuality. The former is associated with the dominant hegemonic regimesand their discursive reality where the authority through classification, separation andaestheticisation makes its power self-evident. Counter-visuality, on the other hand, isthat of the dominated and the suppressed and their right to claim ‘political subjectivityand collectivity’ (Mirzoeff, 2011). Extending this argument to the present volume,we look at visuality and counter-visuality as aides in interrogating the processes andrealities in North-East India to understand the relationship between the dominant andthe subversive.

14 Refer to Daniel Miller’s edited volumeMaterial Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (1998) andIan Woodward’s book Understanding Material Culture (2007).15 Camila Rudd, 2018 using the actor–network theory sees objects as analytical sites for thecirculation of knowledge.16 One can refer to Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT); 2005.17 Skoda and Lettman, 2019.18 Her idea is an extension to David Levin’s contention that power to control is closely related tothe power to see and power to make visible (1993). Levin engaged with modern understanding ofocular centrism in the context of the Western world. He stated that the western world was drawn tothe authority of sight but he added that we need to critically engage with not only this perceptionof ‘authority of vision’ but also with cultures of vision that inform our everyday lives.

Introduction xvii

In the light of the above discussion, we intend to point out that a study incor-porating materiality and visuality is a study not only in history, culture, politicsof interpretation and representation but also needs to explore and critically engagewith the role of varying apparatuses, institutions, discourses, bodies, and objects increating what we see and know, and how we perceive it. Thus, each chapter in thevolume is a result of an ethnographic encounter where, if it matters to them, it mattersto us. In some cases, given that the authors belong to the region itself, there is anadditional factor, which is, if it matters to me it matters to be explored, analysed andtheorised19 (or the inter-twining of the knower and the known, the viewer and theviewed).

Although the chapters that constitute the basis of this book are set in the ethno-graphic context of North-East India, we do not engage with the category North-Eastsociologically. Rather we take it as a given geopolitical space as used in variousacademic and official discourses to bring out the issues that the region faces despitethe variations, differences and fragmentations within its social, cultural, historicaland political landscape. Thus, the contributors of the present volume have attemptedto reveal the historical, cultural and political underpinnings of the body of knowledgethat posits North-East as the ’other’ and how the region has been engaged with andtransformed in the past few decades. What emerges from that engagement are thenew ways of seeing by the community that these chapters have tried to capture andpresent for the readers. These engagements are at different sites, such as photography,clothing and textile, food, graphic novel, advertising, music, theatre, bureaucracy, teaestates and digital museums. They do so in the context of different geopolitical andadministrative units viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Naga-land in North-East India. Despite the variation, our contributors who are trained indifferent disciplinary backgrounds, namely literature, history, media studies, perfor-mance studies and sociology, are connected by their common quest for subjectivi-ties and inter-subjectivities in understanding the contemporary social, cultural andpolitical landscape of North-East.

Most of these ethnographic inquiries explicitly or implicitly follow Bourdieu’stheory of practice (1977) and seek to explore the habitual ways of being in theworld and experiencing it by highlighting the set of practices in the empirical settingthey explore. Such an analysis begins from a phenomenological perspective thatdraws on a relationship between the objective world and the experienced world20

perceived through and embodied in different social and cultural frames. There is, asDavid MacDougall writes, ‘an interdependency between perception and meaning.Meaning shapes perception, but in the end perception can refigure meaning, so thatat the next stage this may alter perception once again’ (2006, 2). It is for this reason

19 Miller chooses the term ‘matters’ over ‘important’ or ‘significant’ because he contends that itsusage will lead to “more diffused, almost sentimental association that is more likely to lead us tothe concerns of those being studied than those doing the studying. It puts the burden of matteringclearly on evidence of concern to those being discussed” (1998, 11).20 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945.

xviii Introduction

that MacDougall brings in another dimension to the world of knowledge, that ofbeing in addition to that of meaning (2006, 2–6).

The chapters in the volume take the analysis further by using the concept ofvisuality to interrogate the objective and the experienced world. The meaning of theconcept ‘visuality’ used in the current volume is two-fold: one, an artefact that ismore than just an object but can be seen as embodying the ephemeral, the imaginary,the ideological, the sensorial and the theoretical which is external to the object. Whathappens when the known becomes the knower? Most chapters in the volume workaddress this question. Two, it aims to highlight that seeing and being seen is a resultof power regimes which helps us relook at Miller’s idea of why some things mattermore than the others. As a corollary, it requires to give a form to the invisible andthe immaterial by either looking at familiar objects differently or by turning our gazeon objects that are usually considered to be trivial or not worthy of attention.21Sand(2012) argues that our current understanding of the visual is modern in nature, whichlooks at the Cartesian dualism of mind and body and between the object and thesubject. This becomes most visible in colonial modernity and the ethnographic gazethat the North-East was subjected to and the implications the representations theycreated have on the observed.

Brief Note on the Chapters

Engaging with the twin processes indicated above, Alban von Stockhausen presentshis findings by looking at how people perceived themselves through a frame ofreference created by the colonial forces and ethnographic gaze during and aftercolonialism. Furthermore, he brings forth the ways in which this perception wasintervened and negotiated with. The embodiment of colonial modernity throughphotography and clothing is presented in his chapter where bodily acts become atangible site for understanding the relationship between the visual and the materialwith the temporal and the spatial constructing the epistemological—a reality thatone encounters, experiences and acts upon. Maria Karavoulia points out that thegaze can become knowledge and ideology and hence a frame of cognition (2008,215). In von Stockhausen’s chapter, what we find is how the anthropologists’ gazeis located within the modern framework, which locates seeing as superior to theother senses hence the focus on the visual. He further presents the way in whichthe seeing anthropologist produces the seen as seeing through its visual practicesby focusing on the reception and consumption of these visual practices. Throughhis engagement with the Nagas, he outlines the transition from being an object toa subject through his usage of Bourdieu’s (1977) concepts of habitus and hexis.Comparing the photographic sources of Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf and Hans-Eberhard Kauffman, the author gives us a comprehensive account of how differentstructures were created, inhabited and then established through practice. His chapter

21 This idea is built on Alexa Sand’s definition of visuality (Visuality, 2012, 89–95).

Introduction xix

reveals in significant ways how interpretive studies could benefit from a theory ofvisuality that transcends the observer-observed divide to rework the dichotomy as afluid relationship between the two.What calls to attention is that these images are notjust a representation ofwhat is/was but they also serve as awindow to understand howcertain ways of seeing22 became a predetermined and systematic frame of referenceto establish a way of being.

The two chapters by Avitoli Zhimo and by Alison Kahn and Catriona Child bringforth the significance of collaborative research approaches. The chapter by AvitoliZhimo begins with an engagement with representation and interpretation of imagesof the Naga tribes in colonial writings and the period thereafter. The chapter high-lights the use of photographs by early anthropologists as supporting documents,a proof of ‘being there’ to ethnographic data. This, as the author contends, was areflection of the scientific approach that conceptualised photographs as documentaryevidence especially when representing the ‘exotic, strange and distant cultures’ ofthe ‘others’. Zhimo critically analyses this ‘scientific’ approach of studying natives(both by the colonialists and the anthropologists) and rejection of their subjectivityto create ‘objective’ knowledge, narrative genre of static ethnographic present andexclusion of sensory experience in the first half of twentieth century. Recalling anautobiographical encounter and supplementing it with an in-depth analysis of J.H. Hutton’s monograph on Sema Nagas, the author unravels the complete lack ofreflexivity on the part of those who textually and visually narrativised the ‘exotic’tribes. She ends with affirming the importance of reflexivity possible through collab-orative and ethical visual methodology drawing inspiration from the disciplines ofanthropology, cultural studies and cultural geography.

The question of the invisible is given a completely new turn by Alison Kahnand Catriona Child in their chapter on the museum of the invisibles by revisitingthe embodied forms of unequal power relationships between the exhibitor (colo-nial agent) and the exhibited (colonised people). Through their chapter, they offera holistic methodological approach that embraces the use of digital technologiesin creating a collaborative methodology for a wider multisensory engagement withobjects and the communities they represent. The chapter makes a significant inter-vention in the popular imagination of a museum space by re-imagining historicalobjects in that space as biographical entities, as conveyers of agency, as products of amarket-based economy and as repositories of hidden cultural knowledge. Kahn andChild delineate the processes throughwhichmuseumscontainingNaga artefactswereestablished in different European countries. They, through their project, seek a shiftin the cultural relationship between ethnographic museums and their source commu-nities, one which will reveal the invisible stories connected to the collections andtransform the museum experience for the collector/curator and the source commu-nity as well. Thus, the proposed methodological approach begins with an attempt tore-trace the routes of select Naga artefacts from European ethnographic museumsto Nagaland and back again, in the process exchanging knowledge and collectingnew voices and gleaning fresh perspectives on European collections from source

22 Berger (1972). MacDougall (2006) calls it cultural and neural conditioning.

xx Introduction

communities. Their proposition for a museum of the invisible is founded upon theidea of collaborative and participatory field work, thus catering to the community’saspirations to reconnect with their history and aid in creating a dialogic platform inthe museum space. The chapter brings forth many pertinent issues with regard to thediversity of meaning, validity of perceptions, agency of the visible and the invisible,and ownership over the artefacts displayed. The chapter by Kahn and Child opti-mistically brings out the potential of modern technologies that could prove helpfulto address questions of representation, decolonisation, collaboration, authority andissues of authenticity by including the invisibilised to rectify, modify and update,and share knowledge that have arisen in the twenty-first century. Of course, to whatextent this potential can translate into reality time alone can tell.

It is interesting to note that all the chapters in section one are drawn from the Nagacontext. This, as sheer volume of studies on the Nagas suggest, can be attributed toa comparatively longer history of research among the Nagas. This also enhancesthe scope for the contributors to experiment with new methods of study as well ascritique existing ones.

Shifting the focus on objects as agents of power and hegemony and variedresponses to it by the communities, the two chapters by Prithiraj Borah and RowenaRobinson, and Rimi Tadu give us an insight into the establishment of systems ofpower, authority and hierarchy and their implications, through two vantage points.The chapters trace various mechanisms through which such a task is accomplished.Borah and Robinson’s chapter interrogates the establishment of authority in the teaestates—cha-bagan—of Assam during the colonial period and its continuity in thepost-independence period. The chapter highlights the two major components of thetea-estates: thematerial structures in the garden space, theBungalow in particular, andthe social media practices that highlight visual inscriptions of race and gender on thebody of the (adivasi) minis (female plantation labourers). Borah and Robinson iden-tified the cha-bagan as a gendered space, which is reinforced through the patronageand power of the planter-manager-sahib and the memsahib (wife of the plantationmanager) and made visible through material objects, like the bungalow and the siren,associated with his authority. The plantation labourers, thus, are socialised into a setof behaviour and practices that emphasise the ‘feminine’ and leads to their marginal-isation. The unequal power relations that inhere in the process, however, is renderedinvisible by the romantic and exotic representations of the labourers in advertise-ments and promotions undertaken by the state (tourism) and plantation authoritiesartistically presented through billboards, tea auction centres and product advertising.The chapter concludes by raising questions about the politics of representation thatis so deeply embedded within structures of hierarchy and power that it invisibilisesthe very existence of pain, misery and violence that unfolds in everyday practices inthe cha-bagan.

Rimi Tadu looks at official photographs taken between 1950s and 1970s duringdifferent state events in the frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh. The author arguesthat these photographs can be seen as narratives of subjugation, domination andhumiliation during state-making and nation-building exercises embodied in variousdiscursive and performative practices. She focuses on the nuances of the narrative

Introduction xxi

frames of the official photographs to understand the unequal and undocumentedrelationship that exists between the newly established Indian government in theregion and the local communities. Her contention being that the way of seeing,which finds vivid reflection in the photographs, led to a certain way of being ofthe administered and the governed when ‘ruled by outsiders’. She regards these aslucid evidence of statist/power socialisation, discipline and allegiances that wereproduced by bureaucratic rituals, performances and traditions introduced in the post-independence period. While these sets of practices have led to an ‘emotional andpsychological’ integration of the ‘stateless’ people into the newly established statesystem, it has also served to create a discursive framework of being in that system.

Investigating the space for negotiations within structured social dynamics andpower relations, Chapters 6, 7 and 8 offer discussions on the agency not in abso-lute terms of resistance and subversion to structures and norms, rather through anexploration of how individuals/communities become desiring subjects and inhabitnorms accordingly.23 Thus, the other chapters in this section bring forth the nego-tiations and tactics as employed by the people themselves unravelling their agency.Pamyo Chamroy’s chapter explores the changes in musical practices among the Hau-Tangkhul community of Manipur. He analyses in detail the factors that contributedto the transition from Hau-laa, a traditional musical practice that is primarily oral innature to the Hymn, a western import embodied in a written text. Highlighting thecontinuities and discontinuities between the rich oral and musical traditions of theindigenous communities and the hymns as popularised within Christianity, Chamroynarrates the trajectory of how musicking has changed among the Hau-Tangkhuls. Inaddition to the much discussed processes like colonialism and conversion to Chris-tianity, Chamroy explores the significance of the youth dormitory (Longshim) insustaining the Hau-Laa practices before the advent of Christianity in the region. Hefollows this with an analysis of the establishment of the church and its various prac-tices which helped to institutionalise the hymn in the predominantly tribal society.By positing musicking as an act with multiple connotations and using it as a site ofhis inquiry, the author seeks to show howHau-Laa is not onlymulti-sensorial but alsoserves as a window to the life world, history and collective memory of the commu-nity. In comparison, hymn which has now become an important part of people’s lifeunfolded in the space of the church and gradually permeated into almost all spheres oftheir everyday lives. BothHau-Laa andHymnoccupy important spaces in the culturalcanvas of the Hau-Tangkhul community, fulfilling different but equally valued func-tions. While the hymn has become the most significant feature of present forms ofHau-Tangkhul Christianity and musicking, Hau-laa is a remnant of a cherished wayof life in the distant past that is long gone, a reminder of an erstwhile musicking anda symbol of their ethnic identity. Hence, it is important that one employs new ways

23 The idea resonates with Saba Mahmood’s idea of agency. She stated, “Indeed, if we accept thenotion that all forms of desire are discursively organized (as much of recent feminist scholarshiphas argued), then it is important to interrogate the practical and conceptual conditions under whichdifferent forms of desire emerge, including desire for submission to recognized authority”. (2005,14–15).

xxii Introduction

of investigation to explore these socio-cultural, historical and collective/communityactivities and narratives.

Joy L. K. Pachuau utilises recorded images and texts (debates in a monthly Mizoleh vai) from the colonial to the post-colonial period, primarily engaging with theconstruction of identity gleaned from the historical trajectory of attire among theMizos and the debates that surrounded it. This history, as Pachuau points out is deeplywoven with the strands of colonial and missionary interventions, while the contextitself enabled Mizos to express agency in sartorial self-expression highlighting thesubjectivities involved in the much taken for granted costume of the Mizos. Thoughher main focus is on clothing (‘frames through which people were understood’) andthe changes it undergoes over time, her analysis extends to the body and its ‘imagemaking’24 whereinMizos established themselves as subjects by actively participatingin choosingmaterial object (attire) and embodiment (appearance). She not only takesinto account clothing and images but also traces its gendered connotations and variousprocesses and factors that lead to it. Hence, the chapter on the history of clothingamong the Mizos is not just an account of the changes in attire, but it brings outthe relationship between perception, vision, appearance and meaning providing thereaders valuable insights into the Mizos’ world of knowledge and perception of theself (‘sartorial self-expression’) as individuals and as a community. The chapter isespecially relevant because of the lesser number of ethnographic inquiries amongthe Mizos as compared to the Nagas.

In the next chapter, giving us an insight into consumer practices, Natasha Nongbrilooks at visual representations of tea in print advertisements from the popular Englishdaily, the Times of India, during the 1940s to demonstrate how topical contexts andexigencies like World War II were exploited to increase consumption and embracenew consumer groups. Using advertisements as visual and material aids, the chapterbrings out the process by which the practice of tea drinking gained ground amongIndians, particularly in the last decade before independence. Adopting a variety ofthemes from war to welfare to productivity, the colonial advertisers left no stonesunturned to transform tea drinking among Indians into a plebeian and essentialcultural practice. However, Nongbri argues the consumer is not a passive entity whoblindly buys the things thrust upon him but an active agent who uses his thinkingpower and preferences to select the product that he or she needs and wants. Thechapter also reveals that hidden behind the glossy advertisements on the merit of teawas the pertinent fact that tea was a product of colonial exploitation of the colonisedsubjects’ land and labour power and the denial of rights over their resources throughthe promulgation of draconian laws, such as the Assam Land and Revenue Regula-tion, Act, 1886, and the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, Act, 1873 (Inner LineRegulation or ILP in popular parlance), which gave the British uncontrollable powerover the people and areas they administer. The chapter not only gives the reader anopportunity to look into consumption as constituting an intrinsic part of the modernmarket economy but also in re-imagining the object-subject relationship from two

24 MacDougall uses this idea in the context of photography and contends that whenwemake images,we tend to invest them with desires and heightened responses (2006, 3).

Introduction xxiii

perspectives. One, by highlighting the role of visual representation as a marketingtool- selling a product is contingent upon creating a want for it; and two, by tracingthe transition of the consumer from a passive object under colonialism to a conscioussubject in the context of an expanding market economy.

The four chapters in the section on Imagination, imagery and identity underscorethe fragmentations within subversive representations and resistances. It reminds thereader of thefluid nature of identities and the complexnature of the processes involvedin identity formation. In chapter nine, Pooja Kalita turns to food/foodscape (prac-tices of preparation and consumption of food) to bring out the process by whichwomen are marginalised in contemporary Assamese society and delves into thequestion of politics and aesthetics of representation and invisibilisation of certain‘others’. She shows how the Assamese identity, what she terms ‘Assameseness’, iscreated and sustained as much through gendered and class understanding of culi-nary practices as through material and visual objects that animate the bodies ofthose preparing the meals and the spaces in which they are located. Interrogatingthe popular perceptions of authentic ‘Assameseness’, Kalita unravels the role ofself-proclaimed cultural ambassadors, the market and popular media in producingthese images and popularising them. She further highlights the disjunctions betweenthese images and realities that unfold in different spheres. Focusing on the restaurantspace, she argues women who are usually taken as emblems of ‘Assamese’ culturalproduction, reproduction and preservation are reduced to the ‘others’ when it comesto employing them in the restaurants that claims to serve authentic Assamese cuisine.Paradoxically, an ‘authentic Assamese’ illusion is manufactured in that very space ofthe restaurant through images of women presiding over their domestic kitchen spaceandmaterial objects that are reminiscent of the traditional and cultural understandingof ‘Assameseness’. Like Borah and Robinson, Kalita’s chapter exposes the reader toan arena wherein the attempts to create new kinds of representations many voices getmarginalized and muffled within the contemporary economic, political and globalframes.

Bringing forth the narrative of othering and possibilities of subversion to highlightthe importance of aesthetics and reception, Samarth Singhal’s chapter analyses thevisual metaphor of momo25 used in a graphic novel by a Mizo artist named C. Sailo.Through his engagement, Singhal highlights visual stereotyping which might lead toxenophobia (he calls it ‘appearance-based xenophobia’) and its manifestations. Themetaphor of the momo is often used against people from the North-East to underlinetheir otherness because of their Mongoloid features which makes them appear closerto China and South-East Asia than India. Singhal draws our attention to the tiltedway of seeing through objectification of the human body, especially of one who isphysiologically different resulting in discrimination, name-calling and exclusionarypractices. The chapter engages with the artist’s perceptions by looking at the satireembedded in the novel which attempted to highlight social construction of visionwith regard to certain objects, people and places and the discursive practices that it

25 Momo is a snack/dish that is quite popular in India subcontinent. It is a kind of steamed dumplingthat originated in East and SouthAsia. Singhal describes it a “ubiquitous Delhi snack” in his chapter.

xxiv Introduction

gives rise to. Singhal considers this piece of art as critical as defined by Ranciere(2009) but questions whether it can really lead to ‘world transformation’. In responseto this, he contends that the attempt at subversion made by the artist might fallshort of bringing about any drastic change in appearance-based xenophobia becausethe conventional form of this expression, graphic satire might get entrenched informal economy of circulation, reception and hence signification thereby limiting itssubversive potential.

Taking the narrative of subversion forward, Rakhee Kalita Moral explores thechanging trajectory of meanings and metaphors that have come to be associated withAssam as an ethnoregion within the larger geopolitical space and national imagery.She argues that meanings and symbolisms are tied inextricably to visual representa-tions and motifs forming a ‘visual regime’ which capture both aesthetic interest andepistemological thought on how we may reimagine the landscape and its peoples.The politics of that imaginary is what compels her discussion and the need to chart thetransition from how Assam has normatively existed in the mindscape of North-EastIndia and how that gathers meanings and signification for others over time and intothe present moment. She further argues that the archetypal story of the pastoral findsre-imagination in a space that is suddenly terra nuova, and not the dark obscure land,in the changing history andmaterial transformation of allegories of India’s northeast.Further, such refashioning of the space and those who inhabit the terrain enable aconstruct of the generic meanings of the everyday and symbolisms that imbricatepast and present, highlighting the relationship between history, culture, politics andidentity.

The chapter by Thingminao Horam on textile practices of the Tangkhul Nagasprovides an interesting insight into the dual use of objects as an agent of hegemonyand resistance. Exploring the complex web of socio-cultural and political identitiesthat go into the making of textiles, her chapter not only traces events and meaningsthroughmaterial culture but also lays out a framework to understand the constructionof identities through contemporaryweaving practices among the Tangkhul. AlthoughHoram’s chapter focuses on the communicative potential of textiles with regard tothe expression of identity, it socially contextualises them by focusing on institutions,people, space and technology. This, the author argues, requires attention not onlyto production, circulation and consumption practices but also to embodiment ofthese textiles to create a visual impact. A study of textile with focus on its motifs,patterns and colours has to be complementedwith an engagementwith theweaver andwearer of the dresses since it throws light on how and what they think of themselves.However, what happens when this system of signification is controlled? Answeringthis question,Horamprovides insights into another aspect of politics of representationwhere surveillance emerges from within the community through an organised groupof women to ‘re-tell history’ in order to form new and/or reinforce existing socialand political relations in a society.

Introduction xxv

Some Reflections on New (?) Ways to Seeing

In the beginning of this introduction, we outlined a set of issues that the contributorsto this volume have engaged with. These engagements are located at various sites,spaces andprocesses,wherein each chapter has raised asmanyquestions as it has triedto answer. One theme that runs through this volume is that of the relationship betweenseeing, knowing and being, i.e. perception, meaning and experience. Through theuse of the analytical tools of materiality and visuality, the chapters have delineated amethodological shift in addressing questions not only of ideology, power, dominanceand hierarchy but also of production, circulation and transformation of knowledge,questioning the long-standing view that knowledge sets reflect reality. They call intoquestion issues of interpretation and representation, thereby making it imperativethat they should be contextualised within the changing set of processes and realities.As the chapters demonstrate, it is important that seeing, knowing and being are seento be as much a product of existing frames of reference as they are of changingpolitical and economic processes. Thus, what we see through these chapters are notonly colonial and post-colonial knowledge sets but also liberalisation-globalisationparadigm and the percolation of digital technology leading to state discourses andinterventions. The volume thus is a conversation between these varied structures,processes and events that have affected the way we think about the ‘self’ and the‘other’ creating new and often conscious forms of seeing and hence, suggesting thatseeing and being are not fixed but are constantly evolving.

It is the interrogation of this process of evolving and transforming that the volumeconcerns itself with.What we get is a dialectical relationship between ways of seeingand ways of being in the context of North-East India which is a product of varioushistorical, socio-cultural and political encounters. The chapters also lucidly bring outthe fragmentary, contradictory nature of this dialectics as is demonstrated in differentethnographic encounters, giving the readers an insight into the fluid nature of beingand knowing.

xxvi Introduction

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Contents

Part I Objects, Images and Meanings: MethodologicalInterventions

1 Negotiating the Visibility of ‘Habitus’ of ‘the Nagas’ and theirPhotographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Alban von Stockhausen

2 ‘We Were the Others’: Visuality in Colonial Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Avitoli G. Zhimo

3 Conversation Pieces: How Digital Technologies mightReinvigorate and reveal the Social Lives of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Alison Kahn and Catriona Child

Part II Material and Visual as Vehicles of Power and Hegemony:Adaptations and Negotiations

4 Mai-Baaps and Minis: Spatiality, Visuality and Materialityin Assam’s Tea Gardens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Prithiraj Borah and Rowena Robinson

5 Mapping Power and Domination: Studying State Makingin Arunachal Pradesh through Old Official Photographs . . . . . . . . . . 73Rimi Tadu

6 Hau Laa and Hymn: Musicking Dynamicsof the Hau-Tangkhuls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Pamyo Chamroy

7 Sartorial Matters: A Brief History of Attire in Mizoram . . . . . . . . . . 105Joy L. K. Pachuau

8 Representing Tea, Creating Consumers: Tea Advertisingin Late Colonial India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129Natasha Nongbri

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xxx Contents

Part III Imagination, Imagery and Identity: Representationsand Subversions

9 Food is Not Just ‘Food’: Analysing Gender in the AssameseFoodscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153Pooja Kalita

10 Tilted Views and C Sailo: A Study of Satire in ContemporaryIndie Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169Samarth Singhal

11 Reimagining the Pastoral: Metaphors and Meaningsof the Everyday in Assam and India’s Northeast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183Rakhee Kalita Moral

12 Weaving Resistance and Identity: Politics of ContemporaryTextile Practice of the Tangkhuls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201Thingminao Horam

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Tiplut Nongbri is currently Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair Professor at the Centrefor North East Study and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Shehad taught Sociology at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School ofSocial Sciences, JNU. She was the founding director of the North East India StudiesProgramme, JNU. She has published widely. Her research interests include familyand kinship, studies of tribes and marginal groups, environmental sociology anddevelopment issues.

Rashi Bhargava is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology,Maitreyi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi (India). She has a Doctorate inSociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interestsconsist broadly of politics, ethnicity, identity construction and civil society in theregion of North East India. She is also interested in issues of methodology andtheory. In the past, she has taught at the Department of Sociology, Hindu Collegeand Kamala Nehru College of University of Delhi.

Contributors

Prithiraj Borah IIT, Bombay, India

Pamyo Chamroy Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, NewDelhi, India

Catriona Child The Kohima Institute, Kohima, Nagaland, India

Thingminao Horam Special Centre for the Study of North East India, JawaharlalNehru University, New Delhi, India

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xxxii Editors and Contributors

Alison Kahn Director Cultural Heritage, Education and AI Think Tank; VisitingFellow in Digital Learning Systems and Tutorial Fellow in Museum Anthro-pology, SDS-Group (Research); Loughborough University; Stanford University(CA) Overseas Program, Oxford, UK

Pooja Kalita Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi, India

Rakhee Kalita Moral Cotton University, Guwahati, India

Natasha Nongbri Department ofHistory, JankiDeviMemorial College,Universityof Delhi, New Delhi, India

Joy L. K. Pachuau Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi, India

Rowena Robinson IIT, Bombay, India

Samarth Singhal Department of English, University of California, Riverside, USA

Rimi Tadu Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India

Alban von Stockhausen Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern, Switzerland

Avitoli G. Zhimo Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi, New Delhi,India

Abbreviations

A.I Artificial IntelligenceA.R. Augmented RealityAASAA All Adivasi Students Association of AssamAFSPA Armed Forces Special Powers ActICOMOS The International Council on Monuments and SitesIPR Information and Public RelationITA Indian Tea AssociationITCC Indian Tea Cess CommitteeITMEB Indian Tea Market Expansion BoardMHIP Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm PawlNEFA North-East Frontier AgencyRSS Rastriya Swayamseva SanghST Scheduled TribeTBCA Tangkhul Baptist Churches AssociationTSL Tangkhul Shanao LongUNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationVIP Very Important PersonVVIP Very Very Important Person

xxxiii

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 ‘Group of Nagas, Marauding tribe. Cachar’. c. 1840–60.attr. E.T. Dalton (In: Watson and Kayne 1868: plate 38) . . . . . . . 7

Fig. 1.2 ‘Captain Butler and his Party among Nagas’. Print,handcoloured, 1874. (PRM Acc. No. 1910.45.18) . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Fig. 1.3 ‘Mr. and Mrs. Clark on the porch of a house with Nagapeople’. Photograph attributed to James Buckingham, c.1880. (PRM Acc. No. 1998.219.3.3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Fig. 1.4 ‘Portrait of Lokok and his daughter’. Ao Naga, Ungmavillage. 1926. Photograph by J.P. Mills (SOAS Acc. No.PP MS 58/02/K/07) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Fig. 1.5 Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf photographing Konyakdancers. Wakching village, 24th April 1937. Photographby Hans-Eberhard Kauffmann (Kauffmann Archive, LMUMunich, Photo No. 42–08) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Fig. 1.6 Konyak dancers standing in a row on a large rock.Near Hungphoi village, 1937. (SOAS Archive Acc. No.PPMS19_6_NAGA_1968, 067_21) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Fig. 1.7 Two Konyak men staging a mock fightfor the ethnographer’s camera. One spear is beingthrown with the pointed end facing the thrower. Wakching,1st May 1937. (SOAS Archive Acc. No. PP MS19_6_NAGA_2695, 088/34) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Fig. 1.8 ‘Thangkholal, Thado-Kuki und ein Kachari’. Photographerunknown. Kohima, Spring 1937 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Fig. 2.1 A close-up photograph of a Sumi woman (Hutton 1921a) . . . . . . 27Fig. 2.2 The Daughter of Chief of Philimi village (Hutton 1921a) . . . . . . 28Fig. 2.3 The tempered photograph of Kakughali advertising

a cellular service as seen on a hoarding (2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Fig. 2.4 The original photograph of Kakughali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Fig. 5.1 Official VIP visitors greeted by the locals standing in rows . . . . . 79Fig. 5.2 An Apatani traditional house visited by VIPs. Posters

of Nehru and other national leader hanging on top . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

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xxxvi List of Figures

Fig. 5.3 A VIP and his family visiting Apatani village,while Apatani men, women, and children also gatheredin their front verandah to watch them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Fig. 5.4 Opening day of a bathing Ghat somewhere near Hanguvillage. Boys and girls were being bathed nakedin front of the VIPs and their children and the public,to demonstrate how cleanliness and hygiene are beingtaught to locals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Fig. 5.5 The VIP sitting on temporary constructed darbarwith Political Presents piled in display on one side . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Fig. 5.6 The VIPs distributing the Political Presents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Fig. 5.7 Group of young Nyishi girls dancing for VIP guests in Ziro.

The locals in far background separated by volunteersin uniform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Fig. 5.8 An inauguration of water supply tank for a villageand a visibly nervous Apatani elderly woman with herhands clasped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Fig. 7.1 Mizo women in ‘traditional’ costumes and a Cherawperformance. Picture was taken from an online travelcompany advert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Fig. 7.2 Photograph of a division of the Labour Corps in France.Sainghinga is second from right, sitting, 1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Fig. 7.3 Sainghinga and friends in uniform in France, 1917 . . . . . . . . . . . 111Fig. 7.4 Sainghinga, most probably taken in the early 70s, in a puan

and coat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112Fig. 7.5 Depictions of various tribes of the Lushai Hills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114Fig. 7.6 A dapper Challiana, early 20th century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115Fig. 7.7 Some of the early mission workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Fig. 7.8 Men in the styles of the 1960s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118Fig. 7.9 Kaithuami, one of the first nurses in Mizoram, 1923 . . . . . . . . . . 119Fig. 7.10 The Mizo Choir, 1929 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119Fig. 7.11 The puanchei worn at the wedding of Hrangzuala

and Thangzuali, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121Fig. 7.12 A choir in the 50s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124Fig. 7.13 Jawaharlal Nehru with a cultural troupe during Republic

day celebrations, 1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Fig. 7.14 Two family pictures for comparison. Top taken in 1931,

below taken in the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Fig. 8.1 Ad—11 o’clock tea peak production, TOI, Oct. 16, 1941,

p. 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134Fig. 8.2 Ad—Soaring production, TOI, Feb. 11, 1943, p. 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . 135Fig. 8.3 Ad—Tea for optimum production and fatigue, TOI, Aug.

17, 1944, p. 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136Fig. 8.4 Ad—Mid-morning investment, TOI, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 6 . . . . . . . . 137Fig. 8.5 Ad—4 o’clock tea, TOI, Jun. 5, 1946, p. 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

List of Figures xxxvii

Fig. 8.6 Ad—Tea and industrial output, TOI, Jul. 18, 1946, p. 3 . . . . . . . . 140Fig. 8.7 Ad—Fatigue factor, TOI, May 10, 1945, p. 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141Fig. 8.8 Ad—Tea and man hours, TOI, Jun. 7, 1945, p. 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142Fig. 8.9 Ad—Tea, man-power and output, TOI, Apr. 12, 1945, p. 6 . . . . . 143Fig. 8.10 Ad—Tea and growth of industrial welfare, TOI, Jun. 27,

1946, p. 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144Fig. 8.11 Ad—Factory canteen, TOI, Jul. 17, 1947, p. 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145Fig. 8.12 Ad—Tea and war, TOI, Dec. 11, 1945, p. 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146Fig. 8.13 Ad—Tea in peace, TOI, Nov. 6, 1945, p. 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147Fig. 8.14 Ad—Tea in peace, TOI, Feb. 14, 1946, p. 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148Fig. 8.15 Ad—Tea and nation-building, TOI, May 14, 1949, p. 5 . . . . . . . . 149Fig. 10.1 Cover, C Sailo, momosapiens: an evolution story . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Fig. 10.2 ‘momo-sapien?’, C Sailo, momosapiens: an evolution story . . . . 174Fig. 10.3 ‘mom-ooo!!!’, C Sailo, momosapiens: an evolution story . . . . . . 175Fig. 11.1 A time to sow …and time to think. Springtime promises

Courtesy: Vikramjit Kakati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186Fig. 11.2 Young couples headed to bihu rehearsals in a village

in Assam Courtesy: Vikramjit Kakati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193Fig. 11.3 Weaving dreams at her loom …a woman in the uplands

of NE India Courtesy: Vikramjit Kakati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196