Abstract
The author is an immensely respected figure in Assam’s cultural landscape, having presided over the Asam Sahitya Sabha in 2003 and 2004. This book is a compilation of his speeches and articles, delivered and written over several decades, a fact that is both its strength and weakness. One is aware that publishers and authors put in a lot of thought while bringing together a volume of essays that may lack a theoretical narrative which is able to bind the book together. The problematic or ideological frameworks, within which the different essays of this particular book are located, are culture and North-East India.
Datta’s interest in culture is one that is steeped in political engagement and experience, as is clear from the carefully worded introduction. He alerts the reader that the term ‘North-East’ is an unwieldy phrase that perpetuates misinformation and misconceptions about the area and its people in other parts of the country. Datta’s task thereafter is to dispel some of the misreading and bring more light to the layered cultures of the region. It is a daunting task, especially in light of the author’s decision to structure the book thematically. Hence, the reader is presented with four parts to the book: (a) Concept and Perspective, (b) Tradition and Change, (c) Pan-Indian Connections, and (d) Performing and Visual Arts. The author has several disparate essays that are clubbed under these four parts.
This categorisation of the book is mildly disturbing, given the fact that scholarship and research on culture has begun to question the solidity of notions that underlie the issues that the author addresses. This is most apparent in the opening essay where the author attempts to draw out the salient features of the cultural heritage of North-East India for the reader. He writes:
…without in any way detracting from the Indianness of the cultural heritage of this region, one can discern here elements analogous to those in China, Tibet, Myanmar, and even lands further away in the South-east Asian region, such elements have been smoothly and naturally integrated into the local cultural make-up (pp. 3–4).
While there may be an element of truth in the statement, it is in its uncritical, almost repetitious rendition of social history that many contemporary social anthropologists, historians and geographers would find difficult to accept. Datta’s narrative is well-intentioned, but the stages of assimilation that he draws have since been dissected, even discarded in the face of contemporary realities. For instance, his assertion that the caste system is ‘fairly liberal’ (p. 10) in Assam has long been challenged by sociological studies, as also by writers of fiction.
Datta is on firmer ground when discussing folklore. Although there is a fair amount of speculation about the meaning and implications of material from different contexts (mainly Assam and Manipur), he does a close analysis of some of the myths of origin of different communities. In his search for a coherent structure and relationship between communities, he alludes to the various ways in which oral and literary traditions have merged in keeping alive certain myths. His discussion on myth-making around the 17th century Ahom king Gadadhar Singha (Supatpha’a, in Tai) is one such lively area where the author alludes to the multiple ways in which communities imbue meaning to particular figures from the past. This is also the moment when Datta’s work engages with historical research and creative non-fiction efforts of his peers and contemporaries. This is even more commendable when one considers the fact that much of this generous concession to other disciplines as well as the earnest effort to link different communities through their folklore comes at a particularly difficult political moment in the region. The essays in this first section almost read like wishful and old-fashioned paeans to a civic identity that transcends the straight-jacket of identity politics in the region.
It is the section on ‘Pan-Indian Connections’ that is most intriguing in its intent. Drawing on his own engagement, as also from historical research, Datta seeks to explain the universalism of the Vaishnavite movement in the Brahmaputra valley and its dialogic relationship with heterodox forms of Islam through metaphors and fables. These issues could have taken a different epistemic turn, had the author engaged with similar interpretation of culture and society around the South Asian neighbourhood. Anthropologists such as Edmund Leach and Stanley Tambaiah had thrown considerable light on the manner in which certain mores and myths were used to create order in hill and valley societies in Southeast Asia. However, one gets a sense that Datta has an unenviable political project, where he seeks to temper certain (Indian) nationalist readings of culture with his own dose of diversity offered in and from the Brahmaputra and Imphal valleys.
In the end, one sees the need for an engaged reading of the various cultures in North-East India. However, one is not sure if the publishers have done justice to the author’s sense of commitment and political engagement with issues he raises in the book. Datta’s significance as a public intellectual would have warranted a better, perhaps longer editing process that might have rescued some of the content of the book. Even if one were to overlook the various typing errors that have made their way into the book, one cannot help but feel that a more diligent editor would have pushed the book in different, more interesting directions.