https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6473 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:56:55 GMT 2026-04-25T23:56:55Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6510 Title: Managing a Borderland: Eastern Duars and Bhutan relations in Colonial Northeast India Authors: Pathak, Suryasikha Abstract: The East India Company annexed the Ahom kingdom and this led to the modification of existing relations between hills and plains and frontier regions. With the EIC flexing its muscles in the region, the dissolution of earlier power structures, which used to arbitrate over disputes previously, saw the rise in conflict over the narrow space of the foothills and the Duars. This period witnessed increase in skirmishes between the hill dwellers and plains settlers over the control of these strategic paths, the Bhutan Duars and EIC interfered in this to establish their authority over the subject population and territory. Description: PP:09-20 Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6510 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6509 Title: Debating ‘Bongals’: Historicizing Notions of ‘Foreigner’ and Citizenship for Contemporary Assam Authors: Dutta, Binayak Abstract: Recent passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 and the agitations and public debates around it in Assam have reinvigorated the foreigners issue in Assam, a frontier province in post-colonial India. While there is little doubt that creation of post-colonial states in the Indian subcontinent caused extreme violence, displacement and agony, few scholarly works that have located this tension within the larger debates of partition-citizenship interface. Thus despite sustained scholarships emerging on the history and politics of Assam, citizenship question remains a marginally explored area. Though some scholarships in recent times have tried to redeem this gap, but their engagement with contested citizenship in Assam remained limited, largely determined by ethno-linguistic and cultural factors and religious antagonisms. It is important to recover these experiences of Assam both in its longue duree perspective and its recent dimensions, more so in light of recent legal exercises such as the updation and in fact the creation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 through the creative re-reading of contemporary printed texts, parliamentary debates reports and court judgements. The paper seeks to undertake a preliminary attempt at such an exercise. Description: PP:21-35 Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6509 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6508 Title: Tibetan encounter with English in Exile: The Context and the Making of the Book ‘Red Star over Tibet’ Authors: Rajesh, M.N. Abstract: The book Red Star Over Tibet (1974) was the first work on Tibet in English by a Tibetan of peasant background in a world where the monks and aristocrats had predominantly produced literary works. While understanding the idea of exile where the work was written during the beginning of the author’s career, the book articulates an alternate voice of exiled Tibetan in India in terms of social location and in terms of the themes selected. It engages with modernity and English while trying to critique the Chinese invasion without being an apologist for the old order in Tibet. Description: PP:36-50 Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6508 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6507 Title: Framing the (Im) Possible: The Museumisation of Partition Memories in India Authors: Hoffmann, Katharina Abstract: The new Partition Museum in Amritsar remembers the violent past within the frame of the Indian nation. Although the remembrance of partition has been part of popular and public memory cultures for a long time, the violent pasts been split off from the history of independence struggles and the dead and injured have been categorised as sacrifices for nation building. The Partition Museum tells the stories of different layers of violence from different perspectives, mostly from the perspectives of ordinary people. However, the narratives are limited where the continuities of gendered violence, the (de)construction of national identities and the transgression of nostalgic attitudes are concerned. Nonetheless, the mission of the museum is based on ideas of coming to terms with the past, accepting the existing postcolonial nations of the British Raj, and emphasising peaceful cohabitations within and between the nations. Description: PP:51-64 Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.vidyasagar.ac.in/jspui/handle/123456789/6507 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z