Book Title: But I am One of You
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Co-Editors: Samrat Choudhury and Preeti Gill
The book is a collage of short biographical notes of 19 authors summarising their personal experiences and impressions. It is a broad canvas, but the overall picture is, more often than not the constitutional identity that modern India pledges becomes subsidiary to the more primal racial and communal identities of different linguistic groups. With the primacy of the individual thus overwhelmed, demography superiority becomes a determinant of power, causing unique tensions.
The first four essays are related to Manipur. Indira Laishram, a Meitei from Cachar, who grew up in Shillong, worked in Delhi and then settled in Australia, talks of how she has never been completely accepted anywhere she took residence. Interestingly, this is so even in Manipur, bringing out the faultlines within the Meitei community along differing regional accents and vocabularies. Sometimes these are no more than irritants, at other times hurtful.
Makepeace Silthou, a Kuki and daughter of an Army officer, grew up in cantonments. Schooled everywhere in India, she came to believe she was a global citizen but discovers the India outside the Army’s cocooned world is very different. Veio Pou, a Naga and a lecturer in Delhi University, to his dismay finds that he is never fully accepted into the community of his adopted place of residence.
Teresa Rehman, writes of two sisters of Pangal community (Meitei Muslims). They are married and settled in Assam but their hearts always remained in Manipur, its culture and cuisines. Yet there are bridges never built between them and their ethnic cousins, the predominantly Hindu Meiteis.
Margaret Ch Zama, profiles how her innocent world as a schoolgirl in a boarding school in Assam was shattered by the outbreak of cataclysmic Mizo rebellion in 1966, and the identity adjustments necessary after that. Pratap Chhetri, of the Gorkha community in Mizoram, describes how Gorkhas, who even fought alongside the Mizo rebels, remain aliens in Mizoram. In 1992, five seats left open for non-Mizo students in MBBS courses, had to be abolished because of public protests, making this profession and others, dreams too far for Gorkha children.
Haamari Jamatia and Subir Bhaumik present two aspects of the identity friction between Bengalis and Tripura tribals. Bhaumik takes the cerebral approach and presumes tribal land alienation and inadequate representation in the power corridors as the main cause for this and suggests ways to offset this imbalance. Jamatia brings out the intangible injuries in this seemingly all-pervasive oppression. At one time, tribals had come to see even wearing their own traditional attires in public as primitive and shameful, so much so that in later years, deliberately wearing their traditional costumes in public became their mark of protest.
Ramona Sangma ridicules the exotification of tribals, and talks of how matrilineal tradition amongst the Garos is not the opposite of patrilineal ways. Patricia Mukhim deliberates on the inherently deep suspicion of outsiders amongst the Khasis, making her sometimes unsure if she is an insider or outsider, given her father is an Assamese Muslim.
Vatsala Tiberwalla, a Marwari girl from Shillong with ancestral roots of two and half decades provides another insight. She is saddened by the us-them divide, but implies the blame must be shared. Her community has also refrained from integration, discouraging even their children from fraternising with local peers in schools, ensuring the community remained in their private world.
Abhishek Saha, profiles the ambiguity of the NRC exercise in Assam and the many undeserving traumas it expectedly caused. Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty talks of the absurdity of identity profiling of Northeast communities in India’s metropolises. Rashmi Narzary highlights how non-Assamese communities remain invisible in Assam till they assert their identities violently, as was the case with Bodos.
Easterine Kire makes Facebook friends with a Marwari school friend and the two rediscover their shared past and yet the distance between them. Nona Arhe, profiles the plight of migrant labourers in Nagaland, never allowed to belong there. Ranju Dodum gives a similar picture of Arunachal Pradesh, and explains how tribals see their identity as intrinsic therefore not easy for them to embrace non-tribals into the folds of their community.
The last chapter is co-authored by Karma Paljor and Naresh Agarwal. They discuss the nuances of the insider-outsider divide in Sikkim. A glimpse of what Tiberwalla gave of Shillong also becomes evident. In 1961, when Sikkim was still an independent kingdom, the Chogyal (Sikkim’s ruler) offered all settlers of foreign origin at that time, Sikkim national status on condition they leave the citizenship of their original countries. Nepalis readily accepted the offer, settlers of Indian origin declined.
A shorter version of this review was first published in The Telegraph. The original can be read HERE
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
