On the evening of August 10, 2016, cricket frenzied Indians in front of their television sets, laptops, tablets, smartphones, inadvertently witnessed a ‘miracle’: the first Indian female gymnast had qualified for the final vault event at the Rio Olympics. On
Cinema from the North East foregrounds discursive gaps between lived Indigenous practices and non-Indigenous reception of the same, as well as directs our attention to the growth and development of new ways of understanding the world from the
In post-Independence India, the cultural policy vis-à-vis the Northeast emphasised upon the category of the “folk”, implying thereby that the indigenous cultures from the region were to be seen as archaic, stagnant and needed to preserved as such in their
“I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the
At a juncture where a multiplicity of visions, knowledge and information provide a daunting combination of idealism and pragmatism, the “order of existence” as manifest in “religion” puts one in a quandary. On one hand, it seems like a nebulous
The marginality of indigenous languages has been a defining trope that contests universalist assumptions of literary traditions, and also factors in the unique ethnic and cultural experiences which demand critical evaluation. Language has been a powerful tool for indigenous people
Almost a decade ago, when Professor Ganesh Devy first thought of a gathering of indigenous peoples, scholars and activists, he decided to call it “chotro”. In the Bhili language group, chotro indicates a place where villagers gather, a public platform,
As an expression of human behaviour that is simultaneously an exercise in physical agency and a manifestation of the metaphysical, dance may be interpreted as a socio-cultural and political gesture which locates itself in complex and ever-changing semiotic systems. As
Indigenous poets from Northeast India have long been engaged in dialogues that seek self-determination embodied in a desire to articulate a celebration of life in the hills amidst diversity and richness, and to chronicle contemporary realities, often marked by violence.
“What makes a man change his nationality, abjure civilisation and, in the upshot, become a blend of Schweitzer in Africa and Gauguin in Tahiti?“ This romanticised, problematic question about Verrier Elwin (29 August 1902- 22 February 1964) was posed by