Creating a homeland also entails the simultaneous creation of homelessness and acts of othering. In
a non contiguous heterotopic ethno-linguistic mosaic that Assam and the North East are, the creation
of ethnic homelands through acts of mapping, creates ethnic conclaves where the other-ethnic and
the non-ethnic is rendered politically and culturally homeless in a space that they have perhaps been
located in for ages. Simultaneously, those of the same ethnic stock for whom the homeland was
created, but outside its mapped purview, degenerate into outsiders in the very land that their ancestors
had tilled and lived in. Thus, the Bodos who are outside the purview of the recently created BTAD have
become outsiders in their age-old homestead, while at the same time they are ineligible for all the
benefits enjoyed by the Bodos within BTAD. Moreover, the sanctity of such abstractions like map
induced homelands is often attempted in the ground through acts like ethnic purging in an attempt
to create insular homelands. Yet, simultaneously the creation of such insular homelands can double
up as some sort of new age reservations, where the population is rendered into some sort of captive
citizens, and where each act of stepping out can be seen as an act of transgression into another’s
land. Maps and the creation of homelands in the North East can represent at any given moment
of time, a combination of these: home and the loss of home, homecoming and exile, confinement
and transgression, centrality and the marginal, opportunity and the loss of it, the friendly and the
inimical, an insider and the outsider, and so on. The neat division into binaries is not possible in single
dimensional terms. The map is no longer a representation of an idea of a place, but also of territory
that is ours, that is not ours but could be/should/must be ours and also of what and who should
be/should not be on the map. Maps have a wide range of referents signifying varying ideological
strands and political strivings. The real problem is the attempt to enforce them in real lived spaces, to
translate the graphic representation into the tangible.
Thus, as cultural subtexts like Bodo Nationalism emerged from larger nationalistic cultural texts
like Assamese nationalism and imbibed a centripetal striving for a greater cultural text, it spawned
newer cultural subtexts. Basically organised around the linguistic identity of the Bodo language, it is
a heteroglottic space that has diverse strands interacting with each other. There is the question of
the script: Roman, Assamese or Devnagiri? Then there are the followers of the Christian faith with
its various denominations, the traditional Bathou7 practices, and the reformist Brahma8 movement.
Thus, there cannot be a single source of cultural control within the Bodo nation, and the range of
voices generates it own heteroglossia. The present centrifugal trends in Assam are the symptoms of a
radical rearrangement and realigning. The proliferation of stock and clichéd rhetorical categories like
linguistic oppression, unequal development, and marginalisation are entering into relationships with
socio-historical and political specificities of mutual transformation through ethno political encounters,
and one witnesses a continuous process of new identities being created, and new demands being
articulated. Perhaps, only after the process of fragmentation reaches an untenable and dead end, the
reverse dynamics of consolidation and a truly federal set up will be set in motion.
a non contiguous heterotopic ethno-linguistic mosaic that Assam and the North East are, the creation
of ethnic homelands through acts of mapping, creates ethnic conclaves where the other-ethnic and
the non-ethnic is rendered politically and culturally homeless in a space that they have perhaps been
located in for ages. Simultaneously, those of the same ethnic stock for whom the homeland was
created, but outside its mapped purview, degenerate into outsiders in the very land that their ancestors
had tilled and lived in. Thus, the Bodos who are outside the purview of the recently created BTAD have
become outsiders in their age-old homestead, while at the same time they are ineligible for all the
benefits enjoyed by the Bodos within BTAD. Moreover, the sanctity of such abstractions like map
induced homelands is often attempted in the ground through acts like ethnic purging in an attempt
to create insular homelands. Yet, simultaneously the creation of such insular homelands can double
up as some sort of new age reservations, where the population is rendered into some sort of captive
citizens, and where each act of stepping out can be seen as an act of transgression into another’s
land. Maps and the creation of homelands in the North East can represent at any given moment
of time, a combination of these: home and the loss of home, homecoming and exile, confinement
and transgression, centrality and the marginal, opportunity and the loss of it, the friendly and the
inimical, an insider and the outsider, and so on. The neat division into binaries is not possible in single
dimensional terms. The map is no longer a representation of an idea of a place, but also of territory
that is ours, that is not ours but could be/should/must be ours and also of what and who should
be/should not be on the map. Maps have a wide range of referents signifying varying ideological
strands and political strivings. The real problem is the attempt to enforce them in real lived spaces, to
translate the graphic representation into the tangible.
Thus, as cultural subtexts like Bodo Nationalism emerged from larger nationalistic cultural texts
like Assamese nationalism and imbibed a centripetal striving for a greater cultural text, it spawned
newer cultural subtexts. Basically organised around the linguistic identity of the Bodo language, it is
a heteroglottic space that has diverse strands interacting with each other. There is the question of
the script: Roman, Assamese or Devnagiri? Then there are the followers of the Christian faith with
its various denominations, the traditional Bathou7 practices, and the reformist Brahma8 movement.
Thus, there cannot be a single source of cultural control within the Bodo nation, and the range of
voices generates it own heteroglossia. The present centrifugal trends in Assam are the symptoms of a
radical rearrangement and realigning. The proliferation of stock and clichéd rhetorical categories like
linguistic oppression, unequal development, and marginalisation are entering into relationships with
socio-historical and political specificities of mutual transformation through ethno political encounters,
and one witnesses a continuous process of new identities being created, and new demands being
articulated. Perhaps, only after the process of fragmentation reaches an untenable and dead end, the
reverse dynamics of consolidation and a truly federal set up will be set in motion.
Comments
Post a Comment