In Abor Jungles

Hamilton, Angus

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139192132

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Where they are not Hindus, they are Animists sacrificing to the sun, moon, and earth. (A. Hamilton 1912: 86)…”

Section: Defining Hinduism: the Liberating Momentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Hindu: The cultural politics of writing religion in colonial Assam

Sengupta¹

2021

Contributions to Indian Sociology

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The use of labels such as ‘isolation’ or ‘assimilation’ to characterise tribal communities dwelling in the plains region of British Assam had a discursive history that took no notice of the region’s prolonged tradition of vibrant interfaith transmissions and cultural exchanges. This essay flags a disjuncture between early ethnographic literature on the ‘tribes’ of the plains region of Assam, and their later enumeration in census data from the middle of the 19th century. While census makers in Assam attributed an ‘unusual’ surge in the number of Hindus to proselytisation by Vaishnavite and Brahman priests, and to the erosion of tribal modes of worship, this article argues that colonial enumerative practices were directly imbricated in producing the ‘Hindu’ in a way that was transformative of quotidian relations and processes of exchange characterising the region. The political pressure to possess fixed and singular identities and the growing rhetoric of a muscular Hinduism symbolised by renewed interest in Indological studies, combined to enhance Hinduism’s prestige and symbolic value. Becoming a Hindu was easier now that the definition of Hinduism as a loosely bound corpus of ritually coded behaviour enabled a wide array of practices to be labelled as ‘Hindu’.

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“…Where they are not Hindus, they are Animists sacrificing to the sun, moon, and earth. (A. Hamilton 1912: 86)…”

Section: Defining Hinduism: the Liberating Momentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Hindu: The cultural politics of writing religion in colonial Assam

Sengupta¹

2021

Contributions to Indian Sociology

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“…Named for a derogatory Assamese term for the Adi people, it was instigated after some Adi killed a British political officer, Noel Williamson. As well as administering frontier justice to those accused of Williamson’s murder, the expedition was tasked with assessing Chinese presence in the valley and solving the ‘riddle of the Tsangpo Gorge’ (Hamilton, 2012). It was only successful in one out of three of these tasks: killing Adi.…”

Section: Drawing a Line In The Snowmentioning

confidence: 99%

How dams climb mountains: China and India’s state-making hydropower contest in the Eastern-Himalaya watershed

Gamble

2019

Thesis Eleven

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The dam rush in the upper-Brahmaputra River basin and local, minority resistance to it are the result of complex geopolitical and parochial causes. India and China's competing claims for sovereignty over the watershed depend upon British and Qing Dynasty imperial precedents respectively. And the two nation-states have extended and enhanced their predecessors' claims on the area by continuing to erase local sovereignty, enclose the commons, and extract natural resources on a large scale. Historically, the upper basin's terrain forestalled the thorough integration of this region into both nation-states, but recent technological and economic advances have enabled the two states and their agents to dramatically transformed these landscapes. Many of their projects have perpetuated the interventionist hydrological regimes that India and China also inherited from their imperial forebears. Nevertheless, as with their definition of their borders, neither state has highlighted this historical contingency. Instead, both governments have consistently presented their hydropower projects as shining examples of necessary and benevolent development. Their economy-focused, monolithic development paradigms have, not coincidently, also enabled the systemic sidelining of non-majority cultures, religions and histories. The combination of this cultural exclusion and the nation-states' late integration of this peripheral region has laid the ground for conflict with local groups over the dam rush. Local identities and experiences have evolved around complex religious, cultural and trade networks, many of which were heavily influenced by the now-defunct Tibetan polity, rather than via modern Chinese and Indian nationalist discourses of development. The dam clashes

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“…Everything was put up, therefore, in loads of fifty or sixty pounds' weight.'' 74 It was these crucial assortments of supplies, transported by the coolies on their backs, which largely enabled the British officials and sepoys to travel to the interior areas and enforce their rule. 75 For their labour service the Naga coolies were paid ''4 annas a day and free rations'' for the duration of these expeditions.…”

Section: A R R I E R W O R K I N Fa R -F L U N G a R E A Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Empire on their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderlands of the British Raj

Dzüvichü

2014

Int Rev of Soc His

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In the nineteenth century, colonial officials relied heavily on coercion to recruit ''coolie'' labour for ''public works'' and to provide various support services in the North-East Frontier of British India. ''Treaties'' with defeated chiefs and the subsequent population enumeration and taxation were strongly oriented to the mobilization of labour for road building and porterage. Forced labour provided the colonial officials with a steady supply of coolies to work on the roads as well as carriers for military expeditions. In mobilizing labour resources, however, colonial officials had to create and draw upon native agents such as the headmen and interpreters who came to play a crucial role in the colonial order of things. Focusing on the Naga Hills, this article will examine the efforts of the colonial state to secure a large circulating labour force, the forms of labour relations that emerged from the need to build colonial infrastructure and the demand for coolies in military expeditions, the response of the hill people to labour conscription and its impact on the hill ''tribes''.Besides his dao the Naga carried a spear, iron-spiked at both ends. On his back, he carried his personal property in a commodious conical basket. On the top of that came the sixty-pound load, which he was carrying for the Maharani. 1

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In Abor Jungles

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Becoming Hindu: The cultural politics of writing religion in colonial Assam

Becoming Hindu: The cultural politics of writing religion in colonial Assam

How dams climb mountains: China and India’s state-making hydropower contest in the Eastern-Himalaya watershed

Empire on their Backs: Coolies in the Eastern Borderlands of the British Raj

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