Table of Contents: Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Glossary of Non-English Terms
INTRODUCTION
Overview
Boundaries and Transferability
PART 1: BOUNDED SPHERES, BOUNDED IDENTITIES
CHAPTER 1: CIVIL SOCIETY, DEMOCRATISATION AND HUMAN SECURITY
The Ascendancy of the Third Sphere Model
Why civil society?
Euro-centrism and Critical Civil Society
European origins
Non-European perspectives
Critical civil society
Civil Society in India
Human Security
Origins
Applying Human Security
Analytical and normative elements
Development and insecurity
Civil Society and insecurity
A critical starting point
CHAPTER 2: COLONIALISM, STATE FORMATION, AND IDENTITY IN NORTHEAST INDIA
Drive-in Anthropology
Creating Tribes and Hill Tribes in Colonial Assam
Colonising the frontier
Tribals and non-tribals in colonial India
Tribes as savages
Hill tribes: the most savage savages
Tribes and production
Migration into Meghalaya
Segregation
Tribes and missionaries
The Persistence of Colonial Categories: state formation and the further politicisation of identity
Reproducing ‘tribe’: the so-called ‘tribal problem’
Reproducing the ‘hill tribe’: the division of Assam
Dividing Assam
The Hill State Movement
The APHLC
Embedded Identity
CHAPTER 3: THE ‘OUTSIDERS’ DISCOURSE: POLITICAL POWER AND ETHNICITY IN MEGHALAYA
The Hegemony of Identity in Meghalaya
Causes of influx
The scale of influx
Perceptions and narratives of influx
i) Hegemony of non-tribal culture
ii) Religious differences
iii) Economic domination
iv) Land
v) The ‘Tripura Syndrome’
vi) Bangladesh: the Malthusian nightmare
(vii) Inter-tribal tensions
Identity, Power and Inequality
i) Tribal elite
ii) Urban middle class
iii) Bureaucracy
iv) Approved NGOs
v) Ethno-nationalist organisations
Insecure identity
PART II- MARGINALITY AND VOICE: THE INSECURITY OF CIVIL SOCIETY 56
CHAPTER 4- CONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTAL INSECURITY: THE POLITICS OF DEGRADATION AND IDENTITY
Approaching environmental insecurity
Degradation and insecurity
Environmentalism in national and local contexts
Environmental Degradation in Meghalaya
i) Changes in land ownership and usage
ii) Deforestation
iii) Jhumming
iv) Mining
Uranium Mining, Coal Mining, and ‘outsiders’
Uranium in the West Khasi Hills
Opponents and proponents: identity insecurity and economic insecurity
Towards final approval
Coal mining
Mining, Power and Contestation
i) The ‘outsiders’ discourse
ii) Control of profits
iii) Lack of voice
iv) Construction of Meghalaya
Ethnicising the Environment
CHAPTER 5: THE MYTH OF EMPOWERMENT: GENDER, INSECURITY, AND IDENTITY 81
Approaching gender and insecurity
National and local contexts
Gender and civil society in the Khasi Hills
a) Service providers
b) Activist civil society actors
Gender-Based Insecurity in the Khasi Hills
i) Land, forests, and gender
ii) Gendered poverty
iii) Violence Against Women
Gender Politics in the Khasi Hills
i) Misrepresenting matriliny
Framing matriliny
Contesting matriliny
ii) Ethnicising Gender: the ‘outsiders’ discourse
iii) Access to political spaces
The local context- dorbars
The national context- the 73rd Amendment
Contesting Power: recovering agency
Rally against VAW
The State Women’s Commission
What has been gained?
The role of networks
Towards Transcendence?
PART III- TRANSCENDENCE: BRINGING BACK THE POLITICAL
CHAPTER 6: TRANSCENDENCE: RE-THINKING CIVIL SOCIETY, RE-INTERPRETING HUMAN SECURITY, AND RE-IMAGINING MEGHALAYA
Re-imagining Civil Society
Identity
Power
Contextualising inequalities
Re-interpreting Human Security
Insecurity and identity
Overcoming binaries
Competing insecurities
Re-Imagining Meghalaya
Diversifying the tribe
Legal categories
Agency
(i) Anti-national
(ii) Anti-modern
Transcendence
New Spaces
(i) Linkages across spaces
(ii) Linkages within spaces
Re-politicisation
CONCLUSION: UNCOVERING NEGLECTED NARRATIVES OF INSECURITY
APPENDIX 1: LIST OF ORGANISATIONS CONSULTED
REFERENCE LIST
Films
Newspapers
Publications
Index |