Table Of ContentOral Traditions, Continuities and
Transformations in Northeast
India and Beyond
Northeast India is home to many distinct communities and is an area of
incredible ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity. This book explores
the shared cultural heritage among the highland and river valley commu-
nities of Northeast India and mainland South East Asia, including South
China, through oral traditions. It looks at these shared cultural traditions
and suggests new ways of understanding and interpreting the heritage of
Northeast India. Oral traditions often bring forward an unexpected twist
in understanding historical and cultural links, and this volume explores
this using local knowledge and innovative engagements with oral traditions
in multiple ways, from folklore and language to performative traditions.
The essays in this volume examine how communities build new meanings
from old traditions, often as a recognition of the tension between conserva-
tion and creation, between individual interpretation and social consensus.
They offer interesting parallels on how oral traditions behave in different
socio-economic contexts, and also examine how oral traditions and mem-
ory interact with the digital world’s penetration in the remote areas.
This volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of Northeast
India, sociology, sociology of culture, cultural studies, ethnic studies,
anthropology, folkloristics, and political sociology.
Surajit Sarkar is Associate Professor and coordinator of the Centre for
Community Knowledge at Ambedkar University, Delhi, India. He has been
a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at University of Durham (UK),
the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden (Netherlands). Sura-
jit is also an award-winning documentary film maker and video artist for
theatre and dance productions. He has created multimedia installations in
museums and galleries in India and abroad.
Nerupama Y. Modwel is Principal Director, Intangible Cultural Heritage
Division, INTACH. She has led a number of research and documentation
projects on performing traditions, folklore and oral narratives, studies on
tribal communities across the country, and cultural resource mapping of
heritage cities like Varanasi, Prayagraj, Patna and Gaya. She has worked on
a number of publications on the intangible heritage of India, and guided the
development of a Virtual Experiential Museum at Varanasi. Previously, she
taught at Delhi University, India and Rajasthan University, India.
Oral Traditions, Continuities
and Transformations in
Northeast India and Beyond
Edited by
Surajit Sarkar and
Nerupama Y. Modwel
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH)
The right of Surajit Sarkar and Nerupama Y. Modwel to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-8153-9616-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14243-0 (ebk)
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: Oral traditions in Highland Asia: a view from
Northeast India 1
SURAJIT SARKAR
1 From marginal zone to borderland? Ethnographies, histories
and politics in Northeast India 13
ERIK DE MAAKER
2 “Buluotuo Culture”: the Zhuang oral traditions
as performance 25
SOMRAK CHAISINGKANANONT
3 Northeast India and Southeast Asia: rediscovering
a cultural lineage through folklores 35
SAJI VARGHESE
4 The uniqueness of storytelling on Malay folk tales 52
ROSLINA BINTI ABU BAKAR
5 The Khasi oral traditional forms of communication 68
NATALIE JO-ANNE DIENGDOH
6 Integrating oral narratives in linguistic study of speech
communities: a case study of Angami Naga (Kohima village) 80
KELHOUVINUO SUOKHRIE
vi Contents
7 Pottery technology in Garo Hills: an ethnoarchaeological
interpretation 91
QUEENBALA MARAK
8 Constancy and change: a study on the traditional and
colonial built forms of the Khasis 109
AIBAN S. MAWKHROH
9 Health, spirits and modern medicine in Northeast India 124
N. WILLIAM SINGH
10 Role of women in the making of Boro culture:
from knowledge production to empowerment 136
DHARITRI NARZARY
11 Elwin as the presenter of the Tales of the Tribes films 148
TARA DOUGLAS
12 Old links: new content: reconnecting Northeast India
and Southeast Asia 156
FALGUNI RAJKUMAR
Index 167
Notes on Contributors
Roslina Binti Abu Bakar is a Senior Lecturer Faculty of Modern Languages
and Communication, University Putra Malaysia, Selangor (Malay Lan-
guage Department), Malaysia.
Somrak Chaisingkananont is a researcher at the Princess Maha Chakri
Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Taling Chan, Bangkok, Thailand.
Erik de Maaker works at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and De-
velopment Sociology, Leiden University. Dr. Maaker is a member of the
Asian Borderlands Research Network. (http://www.asianborderlands.
net)
Natalie Jo-Anne Diengdoh teaches at the Department of Cultural and Cre-
ative Studies in the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong.
Tara Douglas has completed her Professional Doctorate from Bourne-
mouth University (UK). She is a co-founder and secretary of the Adivasi
Arts Trust.
Queenbala Marak is a faculty in the Department of Anthropology,
North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. She has published over
40 research papers in different Indian and international journals.
Aiban S. Mawkhroh is a practicing architect. Aiban has done extensive re-
search on ‘Meaning in Khasi house-form’. He was the General Secretary,
Meghalaya Tourism Development Forum from 2005 to 2010.
Dharitri Narzary teaches history at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and
is designated with the University’s Centre for Community Knowledge
(CCK).
Falguni Rajkumar is presently the Chairman, Board of Governors, Rajiv
Gandhi Indian Institute of Management, Shillong, and former Secretary,
NEC, Government of India, Shillong.
N. William Singh teaches at the Pachhunga University College, Mizoram.
He is a UGC JRF fellow and DAAD (Deutscher Akademisher Austaus-
chdienst German Academic Exchange Service) fellow.
viii Notes on Contributors
Kelhouvinuo Suokhrie is pursuing a PhD from the Centre for Advanced
Studies of Linguistics, University of Delhi.
Saji Varghese is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy in
Lady Keane College, Shillong.
Preface
The collected papers in this volume are drawn from a conference held from
1 to 4 February, 2016, in Shillong, Meghalaya, and developed by their au-
thors as contributions for this volume. The conference – Oral Traditions:
Continuity and Transformations, Northeast India and Southeast Asia – was
co-organised by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Division of the Indian
National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Centre
for Community Knowledge, Ambedkar University Delhi.
The 4-day conference brought together 50 scholars from five countries
namely, India, Thailand, Malaysia, the UK and the Netherlands, along
with heritage activists and museum curators belonging to local communi-
ties from the region.
Apart from acquainting the audience with new knowledge on communities
that has emerged after the introduction of multi-disciplinary studies in the
field of cultural heritage, the presentations described innovative approaches
to working with communities, and studying intangible and tangible c ultural
heritage through oral traditions.
The sessions were designed to include various themes which helped the
participants to engage with oral traditions in multiple ways, from f olklore
to language, and performative traditions; from gendered tales found in
material cultures to ecological traditions and stories of origin. The pres-
entations made by researchers from Southeast Asia revealed insights into
how oral traditions are transforming under different socio-economic
contexts.
Northeast India is a region that falls outside the classical Indian c ultural
framework. Set between China and India, the region is called a “shatter
zone” by political and cultural geographers, denoting a cultural area domi-
nated by two or more neighbouring regions. The indigenous tradition of the
region is a result of many processes of cultural flows, migrations and move-
ments of communities, and their local histories. Its isolation from South
Asia, colonial geo-political influences in the 19th and 20th centuries, the ad-
vent of Christianity, and the introduction of education and c ommunity-led
reforms have all served to give the region a special identity.
