Scholars deliberate NE issues at JNU
Source: The Sangai Express / Ninglun Hanghal
New Delhi, February 26 2014 :
About a hundred scholars and academicians converged at JNU here today for a conference on "State and Society in North East India" .
Organized by the North East India Studies Programme (NEISP) JNU, scholars, academicians of /from North East India, and other parts of the world including Tokyo, Germany and Cambridge participated in presenting research studies and analyses.
Director of NEISP, Dr Bhagat Oinam told The Sangai Express that the coming together of the three set of scholars/ academicians, those rooted in the region, with an everyday experiences of day to day politics, with those scholars based outside the region is to look at the NE on a larger paradigm of the Indian State and the global forces.
The participation of international scholars is to add to that dimension of how NE is located at this juncture.
The conference is to enrich this debate.
The three day conference which will continue till February 28, would deliberate on subjects ranging from landscape, to kingdoms, imperialism, natural resources, governance, language, law, gender economy, identity etc.
Berenice Guyot-Rechard, Faculty of History, Cambridge University in her argument pointed out that the Second World War was a critical juncture in NE India's socio-political and cognitive landscape.
She finds that while there are literature on military history about the battle of Imphal and Kohima, there is very little on the WW II in Indian historiography which is predominantly a narrative of freedom movement and episodes such as Quit India movement or the Bengal Famine or the Indian National Army.
Her paper presents a interesting perspective on how the region became a unlikely spot for global conflagration and brings out a perspective of understanding of the role and impact of WW II from the theatre of China-India-Burma people, and not from the general 'Allies' or 'Japanese' perspective of WW II .