Fragmented Memories

Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India

Autor: Saikia, Yasmin
Editor: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822334255
eISBN Pdf: 9780822386162
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2004
Mes: Novembre
Pàgines: 352
DDC: 954/.16200495919
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

Fragmented Memories is a beautifully rendered exploration of how, during the 1990s, socially and economically marginalized people in the northeastern Indian state of Assam sought to produce a past on which to base a distinctive contemporary identity recognized within late-twentieth-century India. Yasmin Saikia describes how groups of Assamese identified themselves as Tai-Ahom—a people with a glorious past stretching back to the invasion of what is now Assam by Ahom warriors in the thirteenth century. In her account of the 1990s Tai-Ahom identity movement, Saikia considers the problem of competing identities in India, the significance of place and culture, and the outcome of the memory-building project of the Tai-Ahom.

Assamese herself, Saikia lived in several different Tai-Ahom villages between 1994 and 1996. She spoke with political activists, intellectuals, militant leaders, shamans, and students and observed and participated in Tai-Ahom religious, social, and political events. She read Tai-Ahom sacred texts and did archival research—looking at colonial documents and government reports—in Calcutta, New Delhi, and London. In Fragmented Memories, Saikia reveals the different narratives relating to the Tai-Ahom as told by the postcolonial Indian government, British colonists, and various texts reaching back to the thirteenth century. She shows how Tai-Ahom identity is practiced in Assam and also in Thailand. Revealing how the “dead” history of Tai-Ahom has been transformed into living memory to demand rights of citizenship, Fragmented Memories is a landmark history told from the periphery of the Indian nation.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Locating Tai-Ahom in Assam: The Place and People
Part One: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Identity: Indian, Assamese, and Tai-Ahom
- 1. Identification in India
- 2. Colonial Origins of Ahom
- 3. The Memory of the Local: The Stories the Buranjis Tell
Part Two: Tai-Ahom: A Language and Culture of Emotion
- 4. Rationalizing a History
- 5. Performance and Politics of Tai-Ahom
- 6. There Was No Plot in the People's Struggle
Conclusion: The Past and Present: Connecting Memory, History, and Identity
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index