Lakshminath Rabha
Lakshminath Rabha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
English, D.R. College, Golaghat, Assam . He is pursuing the Ph.D. programme
from Department of English, Nagaland University, Nagaland.
Abstract
In the recent times Representation is viewed
as a nuanced expression owing to manifold possibilities of interpretations of
the represented body under the postcolonial deliberation. The process of
representation, when examined under postcolonial lens, is found entangled with the
colonial design of self/other dichotomy for it leads to some fundamental
theoretical questions of who is representing whom and what are the ulterior political
motives involved. A dismal picture comes to the front when this unsettled theoretical
perplexity is stretched further to the praxis of representation of the tribal
in Indian context for it is seemingly through the use of false representation
that the tribal has been reduced to marginality and subjected to perpetual exploitation.
Representation of the Tribal since the colonial period in a caste ridden Indian
society is found to be burdened with many apparent prejudices as the colonial anthropological
texts do not qualify the present-day expectations of authentic representation resulting
in certain levels of discontentment. It is however quite pertinent to observe the
representation of the tribal in fictional narratives as it ostensibly adds a
different dimension to the entire discourse of tribal representation for
fiction does not necessarily require to hold on to certain limitations or
boundaries when placed against the representations made by the Colonial
Ethnography. Nevertheless it is to be noted that if the representation of the
tribal in fiction is not carried out with considerable degree of care and
sensibility, the authorial liberty and flexibility of fiction may culminate in
having a boomerang effect. In the premise of the above proposition, an attempt
is made in this paper to uncover the politics of representation relying on two
select novels- The Legends of Pensam
by Mamang Dai and Paraja by Gopinath
Mohanty.
Keywords: Representation,
Colonial Anthropology, Fictional Narrative.
This paper attempts to make an exploration of the
nuances of representation of Indian tribal in fiction and elsewhere with the
forethought that tribal representation is skewed with certain political undercurrent
leading to the construction and continuation of many dehumanizing stereotypes
on tribal identity. The term representation, though seemingly quite simplistic
and unproblematic in nature, is essentially tinted with innumerable grey areas
that call for further research into the represented body by way of critical
assessment of the flipside of the process of representation for the
representation may take place at different levels, situations and conditions. In
a simpler term, representation may be understood as an act of describing or
depicting something or to symbolize and stand for something as a substitute
with a broader dimension of creating or assigning a meaningful existence to
that represented ‘something’. It is, however, quite pertinent to uphold one
very significant fact under consideration that the act of representation of ‘something’
or ‘someone’ is carried out by some agency which/who is not always an insider
and very likely to be guided by its/his subjective prejudices resulting in a
fallacious representation. Tribal in India and their representation since the
colonial period may be seen as an area of potential discontentment and dispute
owing to the misrepresentation of their life-world and cultural ethos as a
result of acute ignorance and deliberate effort at continuation of certain
stereotypes.
Anthropology as a branch of modern studies in
the colonial condition may be seen as an instrument of the larger colonial
interest to explore the colonized subject better with an intention of paving a
smooth route of European enlightenment into the Conradian darkness of the
‘heathen’ native. Colonial anthropology unquestionably documented and recorded
new findings based on studies undertaken in the colonies but it also
appropriated the evil design associated with the apparent colonial exploits
that contributed to the shaping of colonial economy to a large extent. The
appropriation of colonial enterprise was carried out at the cost of the
misrepresentation of the colonized that involved racial subordination and
depiction as degenerate species that further appropriated the social, political
and economic intervention required for a paradigmatic transformation of the
colonized by way of erasure of their socio-cultural ethos. However, the mode of
intervention, as mentioned earlier, did not have a definite set of norms hence
varied in degree according to the circumstances. Anthropological survey on the
regions dominated by tribal people of India, inter alia, was undertaken by the
colonial administration to study the ‘noble savages’ with a sole perspective of
carrying out their governance in a subtler manner. Needless to mention that the
entire practice was not holistic in nature given the strict adherence to the ‘self/other’
dichotomy of European model designed to assist the colonial enterprise. Establishment and perpetuation of colonial
occupancy required a deeper penetration into the colonial body and therefore it
was necessary for the colonizers to reinforce the difference between the colonial
‘self’ and the ‘other’. Anthropology, as a study of mankind in the general
sense, was a conduit of appropriation of the colonial self, thereby allowing
the legitimacy of situating the self in an authorial position of constructing
the ‘other’ through a reductive representation. The natives became an object of
colonial gaze, or precisely a case study in the anthropological terms, that
followed a preconceived Eurocentric approach of racial superiority at the
subconscious level. Poised and certified as a work of scientific observation,
colonial narratives soon replaced the oral narrative of the native population,
especially the tribal, and confirmed their authorial position with endorsement
of written culture as the only means to justify truth. Colonial representation
was thus guided by the racist subconscious that negated every positive
attributes associated with the colonized reducing their life-world into
ignominious obscurity.
Pramod K. Nayar in his work Colonial Voices: The Discourses of Empire
(2012) states,“Colonial discourse masks the power relations between races,
cultures and nations. It makes the relations seem natural, scientific and
objective. Colonial discourse therefore produces stereotypes from within
European prejudices, beliefs and myths”(3). Nayar’s argument points out the
politics involved in the process of ‘othering’ of the non-west or in the
construction of what Edward Said defined as the ‘orient’ in his book Orientalism (1995). Corresponding to the
problematic area on which the process of colonial representation of the Orient
is rested, Said argues, “the exteriority of the representation is always
governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could represent
itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the
West, and faute de mieux, for the
poor Orient” (21).
Anthropological texts that may be seen as a
major constituent area of the colonial discourse of representation of the
native, as described by Nayar, conceal the conflict of power that comes into
play in the exercise of colonial takeover of a certain geographical area. The
conflict of power is permeated into every portion of both the colonizer and the
colonized that reveals its effect in every dialogue these two sides tend to
establish. The conflict of power gradually is corroborated into a relation of
power as the colonized is systematically forced to accept both conscious and
subconscious subordination. Relaying of the relation of power may be understood
as an inevitable phenomenon given the racist nature of British colonialism in
India. However, the colonial consciousness is aware of the fact that the
consequences of slight disturbance in the power relation may be the displacement
of the authorial position in the context of colonial condition for the relation
rests on a rather fragile frame. Therefore, the colonial discourse is systematically
fashioned to disseminate every colonial construct on the colonized as objective
endeavor administered with scientific approach for ensuring the appropriation
of colonial hierarchy in the power relation. The stereotypes constructed in the
colonial discourse is fashioned as the grand narrative of understanding the
colonial ‘other’ in the “Manichaean world” as described by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (2001).
Colonial discourse was not always based on the
coercive power of the colonial administration but emerged largely leaning on
the civilizing mission of the colonial mind and submissive acceptance of the European
supremacy by rejection of the ‘native self’ on the part of the colonized. Configuration
and development of colonial discourse takes place much in the similar plane of
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) as explained by Louis Althusser in his seminal essay “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses” (1971). Althusser argues
that state apparatuses are not always repressive in nature for to win the
consent of a larger mass, coercion may not be the appropriate method.
Therefore, the state permeates its power in a subtler manner on the ideological
plane that works on the
psychological level with a view of arresting and controlling the imagination of
the mass and eventually acquires their consent (Althusser 149-150). However, in colonial conditions the consent
of the natives does not hold importance for “the native is declared insensible
to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also negation of
values…he is the depository of maleficent powers, the unconscious and
irretrievable instrument of blind forces” (Fanon 32). The construction of
colonial discourse involves an organized approach of negation, reduction and
finally complete erasure of socio-cultural ethos from the native consciousness.
The blank space of the native consciousness is then filled in with the colonial
pattern of civilization with a mission of refining the heathen culture of the
natives for in Rudyard Kipling’s words it was the burden of the white man to
put an end to the irrationality and inertia associated with the native culture
of the erstwhile colonies.
The
Ethnographic texts and government records that came out of the anthropological
surveys classified all the tribal population together on racial ground for the
convenience of colonial administration without making any attempt at
understanding certain cultural, social, linguistic and characteristic
differences that existed within the singular classification ascribed to
different tribes. G. N. Devy in his introduction to the book The Oxford India Elwin (2009) argues,
“The term ‘tribal’ had been in use among European merchants and travelers in
India from the seventeenth century, but it was used in a very generic sense”
(xv). He further opines that the representation of the tribal as a set of
people yet to have touched by the ideas of enlightenment and hence barbaric in
nature in the European sense, further led to the formulation of legislation
called the Criminal Act, 1871 in India (Devy xv). The formulation of the
Criminal Act, 1871 not only characterized the tribal in India as primitive in
nature but also devalued the entire civilization that may have existed before
colonial takeover. In this context Homi K. Bhabha in The
Location of Culture (1994) maintains that the
purpose of ethnographic texts was to “construe the colonized as a population of
degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest
and to establish systems of administration and instruction” (154). Bhabha in
his argument indicates a well constructed roadmap employed by the colonial
administration primarily for appropriating their authoritative position and political
occupancy of a foreign land thitherto inhabited by certain indigenous
population within the map of their colonial administration by way of systematic
and regimented fabrication of the knowledge of the ‘other’. Ethnographic texts
written by the colonial administrators and travelers including the Christian
missionaries became the instrument of appropriation of colonial occupancy and territorial
expansion for it is through these documents the ‘other’ of Europe was fashioned
and ascribed an identity by way of contrasting and comparing how the ‘other’ is
different from the European ‘self’. Fallacious representation of the tribal
during colonial period was more a deliberate occurrence than a chance oversight
for it was always nestled on the frame of racial prejudice on the part of the
ethnographers. Given the fact that the colonial ethnographic texts were fraught
in certain administrative control and racial intent as far as representation of
the colonized was concerned, the rationale of authentic and objective representation
was perceptibly unjustified.
This paper further undertakes to examine the
representation of tribal in Indian fiction for it is a genre where the author
enjoys certain amount of liberty in dealing with the truth that apparently
provides more space and possibility to authentic representation. Fiction is primarily a work of art which entails
its authenticity of expression and treatment of the subject with adequate sensitivity
and sensibility. It may therefore be assumed that fiction writing involves deeper
understanding of the socio-cultural fabric of the tribal by exploration of the
inner dynamics of their worldview with better clarity. Nevertheless, it is
pertinent to note that even the fictions written by European writers during the
colonial period were not free from racial prejudices and served as a supplement
to the construction of tribal stereotypes by stripping them of their
socio-cultural values. In this context Anand Mahanand in Representations
of Tribal India in Fiction (2011) argues:
…the rise of
anthropology and ethnography in the colonial era helped in establishing
fieldwork as a methodology for imperial rule. In this context, it is
interesting to see how tribal India was depicted in colonial fiction and
ethnography. There have been several attempts to represent different tribes in
ethnography and fiction by the Anglo-Indian writers during the colonial period.
These writings on the tribals evoked different kinds of images and feed into
the ethnographical and administrative inputs to colonial discourse. (48-49)
Mahanand’s argument clearly indicates the
inherent political angle involved in the representation of tribal India in
colonial discourse. Anthropology as an instrument of gathering knowledge about
the tribal life-world was designed to serve the purpose of adding further
inputs to the grand narrative of colonial discourse being guided by colonial
interest. In the post-independence era India witnessed several authentic works
of fiction as well as non-fiction by Indian writers that aimed at building the
foundation of Indian literature. Nonetheless, representation of the tribal reality
in fiction was very rare till recently before the arrival of writers like
Mahashweta Devi, Gopinath Mohanty, Sitakanta Mahapatra, Pratibha Ray, Gayatri
Spivak Chakravarty, Temsula Ao, Yeshe Dorje Thongshi, Birendra Kumar
Bhattacharya and until recently Mamang Dai and Easterine Kire. Gopinath
Mohany’s Paraja (2008) and Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam (2006) are two prominent examples of such
fictional narratives that narrate the reality of tribal people as racially,
politically, socially and economically marginalized in their own land in the
face of modernity. Mohanty’s Paraja
is the representation of Paraja tribe of Koraput region of Orissa by an
outsider; on the other hand, Dai’s Legends
of Pensam is an attempt at representation of the Adi tribe of Arunachal
Pradesh by an insider. This paper makes a comparative study of the views of an
outsider and an insider for the purpose of understanding the inner dynamics of
representation of the tribal in Indian context.
Stuart Hall in
his essay “The Work of Representation” (1997)
suggests three approaches to representation- reflective, intentional and constructionist.
He also suggests in the same essay that representation essentially is dependent
on language for it is language that works as the ‘media’ of representation. The
precondition to a successful representation is the use of a common language so
that the concept of the represented body is conveyed in a meaningful manner and
the existence of the represented body receives recognition with the assigning
of a meaning to it. Language thus holds importance in the process of
representation and construction of meaning. Language, however, adds further
problem to the discourse of representation for meaning or truth is slippery in
nature pertaining to the arbitrariness of language and constant play of
signifier and signified in the sign system. In his essay, Hall is rather
sceptic about the reflective or mimetic and intentional approaches to representation.
According to him it is the constructionist approach that is more relevant as
far as the production of meaning is concerned. Through representation meaning
is constructed in relation to the public and social language rather than exact
imitation of the perceived or guiding something according to one’s intention. Imitation
and intention may be totally private in nature and hence does not necessarily
correspond to the shared reality of the public. A meaningful representation is
possible only when carried out through a sign system that is common to all as
Hall maintains, “…meaning depends, not on the material quality of the sign, but
on its symbolic function. It is because a particular sound or word stands for,
symbolizes or represents a concept that it can function, in language, as a sign
and convey meaning…” (26).
Meaning of a text is never stable owing to the
continuous play of signifier and signified in the process of signification and therefore
‘absolute truth’ is never fixed but perpetuates new meanings and new
interpretations in every reading of the representation. The relation of
representation to language and society further suggests its relation to the
power structure that permeates throughout the society where the meaning or
truth is constructed and given currency. Michel Foucault in his deliberation on
“Truth and Power” in an interview published in the book Power/Knowledge (1980) argues:
Truth isn’t outside
power. Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of
multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each
society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth; that is, the
types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms
and instances which enables one to distinguish true and false statements, the
means by which each is sanctioned, the status of those who are charged with
saying what counts as true. (131)
Foucault’s comment on the production of truth
or absolute meaning and its apparent relation to the power structure calls for diverse
potential interpretation of the preconceived idea of the term tribal and its
representation. The “regime of truth” of a particular society holds the
totality of power in the society as well as the language and it can regulate
the process of representation by virtue of its authority to sanction
recognition to the represented body within its discourse. It is however
pertinent to note that before getting a statutory recognition as par the
dictate of the “regime of truth”, the process of representation is required to
travel through a series of filtration, appropriation and even obliteration.
Representation thus culminates in acting like a perforated sheet that demonstrates
a distorted substitute of the real. The substitution of the real further causes
damage to the entirety of the represented body for the substituted image
seemingly misguides the perception of the audience. Furthermore, representation
may also be seen as an instrument of shrouding certain facts that the “regime
of truth” deems inappropriate and precarious to its interest and hence a false
image of the real substance is presented for display.
Examination of representational politics concerning the tribal
of India under the above discussed theoretical parameter further induces
certain fundamental questions of who, why and how it is conducted for it is
quite apparent that certain political agency comes into play in the entire
process with its vested interest resting behind the unseen patches of the
perforated sheet of representation.
The story of Paraja is set on the life of the Paraja
tribe of Koraput region of Orissa at the backdrop of advancing modernity into
the serene and primordial life of the tribe surrounded by forest and mountains.
Jnanpith awardee Oriya writer Gopinath Mohanty wrote the novel in 1945 (Translated
into English and first published in 1987) in Oriya language in colonial India
but his depiction of the tribal reality strongly commands relevance with its
exploration of the darker areas that remain untouched in the romanticized depiction
of tribal life in majority of the mainstream literature of his contemporary
times. Unlike the colonial European writers, Mohanty offers an insight of the
tribal reality in an authentic manner by focusing upon the predicament of his
protagonists in the face of rapid modernization of the tribal lands. Modernity
makes an inroad into the tribal reality in the form of Sahukar Mahajan
(Moneylender) and a forest officer who introduce two completely new and alien
elements – monetary economy and administrative control to the seemingly
composed and content life of the Paraja without much anticipatory thought on how
it would affect the tribal life. Introduction of modernity and the idea of
modern civil society may be seen as analogous to the negation of tribal rights
over their territory and destruction of tribal mode of socio-economic
sustenance. It is pertinent to mention here that tribal economy was based on
barter system before the introduction of monetary economy and their society ran
on their own system of governance before the imposition of modern administration.
Mohanty shows how the introduction of money and administrative constrains
robbed every right of the tribal on their land and forest and left them with
nothing but disbelief and discontentment in the modern concept of welfare
society. The Sahukar woos the villagers with his money while the forest guard
uses the law to enforce his power and thus manipulate and pollute the sanctity
of the forest. Mohanty’s novel is a critique of the feasibility of
modernization in tribal land without proper infrastructural transformation and
education. Mohanty’s ironical depiction
of the tribal reality concentrates on the unreasonable manner of imposing
restrictive forest laws on those who do not have the slightest inkling of the
nature of restrictions that have been enforced upon them. The policy makers of
the British government do not seem to realize that the precondition to enforcement
of any law is proper awareness and empowerment of the mass. The novel, however,
presents an opposite circumstance in which new restrictions were imposed on the
tribal to curb their free access to forest resources without any measure to
compensate the loss of freedom that they enjoyed for generations. He observes
that introduction of modernity apparently caused complete destruction of tribal
economy and disorientation of pre-existent social balance.
The novel provides a detailed probing into the
social structure of the Paraja tribe which is based on indigenous political
system of chiefdom. A Paraja man seeks the permission of the village headman
and takes everything that he needs from the forest without having to bother
about taxation. The forest provided all their needs and thus a symbiotic
relation was forged between man and nature. The forest had never been viewed as
a means of acquiring economic profit by the Paraja. However, with the
enforcement of forest laws in India by the British government, restriction was
enforced on free access to forest resources and the symbiotic relation was
completely damaged. Enforcement of Forest Laws may also be understood as
negation of the age old hierarchy of Paraja chiefdom. Violation of the Forest
Laws meant indulgence in criminal offence that led to imprisonment or payment
of a huge sum as fine that eventually contributed to the revenue collection of
the state. Poverty creeps into the lives of the Paraja tribe with the collapse
of their traditional mode of production and economic sustenance and it augments
the germination of greed, treachery and disbelief in a social fabric based on
community living and social cooperation. It, however, served the purpose of
curving out an easy route to drain every resource from the tribal land to the
mainstream society to benefit the outsiders and significantly the state for
“every villager owning a pair of bullock had to pay a ‘plough tax’ for the
privilege of grazing his cattle in the forest, and the Forest Guard collected
the tax” (11).
The main protagonist Sukru Jani and his family
suffer different levels of exploitation at the backdrop of such transformation
of socio-economic condition and end up becoming ‘Gotis’ or bonded labourers of
the Sahukar which symbolically represents the condition of the tribal and their
predicament in Indian context. Like other Paraja man Sukru Jani makes his
living by farming in a small clearing in the midst of the forest and occasional
access to the readily available resources from the forest such as edible herbs
and firewood. However, in an attempt to expand his farmland he starts felling
few trees from the forest unaware of the consequences of violating the Forest
Laws. Sukru Jani is sentenced as an offender of the laws and fined with an
amount that he cannot pay without mortgaging his tiny piece of land. He somehow
manages to save himself from being imprisoned by paying the fine but indirectly
treads into the labyrinthine imprisonment of debts when he asks for loan from
the Sahukar. Illiterate Sukru and his sons do not understand the calculations
of loan interest and thus their service to the Sahukar as Gotis never end. They
serve as ‘gotis’ at the farmlands owned by the Sahukar in the hope of repaying loan
with physical labour as they have nothing left at their disposal for repayment but
they further sink into the pits of debts. Sukru and his sons know that they
have been subjected to exploitation but they have no possible route to escape
the exploitation. The exploitation of the state runs in tandem with the
physical and economic exploitation of the likes of Sukru Jani in a rather
dehumanizing fashion.
Jili, the elder daughter of Sukru Jani,
symbolically represents the symbiotic coexistence of pristine forest and
innocence of the Paraja tribe that receives a major blow due to the onslaught of
outsider’s aggression and greed. Jili becomes the object of outsider’s gaze due
to her gender when the visiting Forest Guard tries to take her advantage for
his apparent sexual gratification. When thwarted that attempt by Jili, the
Forest Guard avenges the insult to his manhood by exercising his power on Sukru
Jani and his family on a stage managed allegation of unlawfully felling the
trees in the forest.
In the later part of the novel, Jili again
becomes the object of the Sahukar’s sexual desire that causes her social
exclusion from her own society. The Sahukar agrees to pay the bride price for
Jili when confronted by the village council which also explains the Sahukar’s compliance
to the customary rules of the Paraja at that particular moment. But at the end
the Sahukar blurts out his evil design in a fit of anger when he says, “Yes
Jili! And isn’t there another called Bili at home still? Bring her to me. I’ve
taken the land; I’ve taken one sister; and I shall take the other too, I shall
take your wives…I shall make you sweat out your lives as gotis” (372). The
compliance of the Sahukar to the customs of the Paraja in front of the village
council on the first occasion may therefore be understood as a trope for calming
the angry mob of the villagers which was necessary for the complete execution
of his plan of capturing the entire tribal land with his business of money-lending.
The novel also focuses on the construction of
a road into the villages of the Paraja tribe as a means of communication with
the external society. Construction of a road is without any doubt a development
in positive direction for it promises better accessibility to the remote areas.
However, in the novel Mohanty seems to be rather sceptic with such development
for a road may also be seen as a means of extracting natural resources from the
tribal areas. Furthermore, the road also brings more outsiders such as
construction workers, road contractors and money regulated market indicating a
bigger threat to the sustainability of the tribal society. For example, the
road contractor uses his money to lure the girls from the village for his
ulterior motive of sexually exploiting them. Both the daughters of Sukru Jani
succumb to the allurement of the contractor and end up losing their dignity for
money. It is pertinent to mention that in Paraja society young man and woman
have the freedom of choosing their partners in the youth dormitory of the
village. Mohanty observes:
In the centre of the
village was a hut which served as a dormitory for all the unmarried girls in
the village, while little way off was the men’s dormitory. It was an ancient
Paraja custom for all unmarried boys and girls to sleep in their respective
dormitories, rather than in their parents’ homes. (Mohanty 14-15)
It is in the dormitory where Jili meets her
beloved Bagla before marriage without social restriction. But their meeting
does not turn into physical intimacy and they maintain the sacredness of their
love despite all the freedom of transgressing the social norms. While on the
later occasion when Jili comes into contact with the contractor, she is overtaken
by money induced greed. She submits herself to the contractor not out of love
but for the money that would ensure availability of food at home during the
absence of her father and brothers who are serving as Gotis at the Sahukar’s
house.
Like other Paraja people, Sukru Jani and his
family led a self-sufficient and content life with the sense of pride and
honour identical to every tribal society by the side of the forest that yielded
everything that they needed. However, their sense of pride and honour is
completely trampled upon with the imposition of certain restrictions on the
access of the forest and their independent movement that came at the pretext of
modernity and social change. Monetary economy robbed everything from the Paraja
tribe including their dignity rendering them with poverty and servitude.
Padma Shri
awardee writer, journalist and former civil servant Mamang Dai’s novel The Legends of Pensam, published in
2006, narrates the oral myths of Adi tribe juxtaposing against rapid
modernization in Arunachal Pradesh. The novel interconnects three episodes of
different stories with a loosely connected line of continuity and employs magic
realism to convey the reality of the tribe. Her choice of magic realism in
narrating the stories of her tribe is apparently deliberate for the reality of
the tribe from the easternmost frontier of Indian nation state may not be
considered analogous to the reality of mainland India and as such the
techniques employed by the mainstream writers in the depiction of reality may
not do justice to the reality of her community. Tribal gods and demigods are
recurrently mentioned in the narrative and made a part of the tribal life-world
by way of drawing a semblance of the two contradictory worlds of real and
unreal. The intended purpose of the technique employed by the writer may be
understood as a statement of disapproval of the homogenization of the tribal or
the Northeast as a singular entity. The cultural loss and negotiation that
occurred in the context of Northeastern tribal communities of India under the
rubrics of colonial representation and encounter with the majoritarian cultures
of the mainland India in the postcolonial condition calls for a new pattern of
representation. Colonial representation based on empirical knowledge of the
anthropological study seemingly finds itself at loss to comprehend the
significance of certain socio-cultural habits of the tribal due to the approach
espoused on the dichotomous relation of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. One cannot
agree more that the colonial ‘self/other’ binary still holds relevance in the
representations of the tribal in India given that the ethnic and linguistic
minority seldom finds any room for proper representation in a majoritarian
society.
Here, modernity is presented through the
symbols of road as the machinery of institutionalization of the structure of
power of the state in tribal areas. She offers a critique of rapid
modernization making its inroad with the construction of a concrete road and
the seemingly disastrous consequences it causes to the pristine natural
environment and content life of the tribal. The road is not considered as a
good omen as Larik, son of Togla gives vent to the frustration of the tribal as
he puts it, “This one terrible road is all they have managed for us in fifty
years! And what does it bring us? Outsiders. Thieves. Disease. Will this road
bring us good health? A new school?” (156). The words of Larik reverberate in a
cacophonic note in the narration of the serenity that pervades the hilly
terrain but serves the purpose of breaking the slumber to face the reality in a
clearer sight. The construction of road rightly represents the milestone of
development and administrative presence of the state but it inversely may also
be understood as the conveyance of external elements that swarm the tribal
lands for potential exploits. A road opens new opportunities for trade and
commerce but proportionate economic benefit of both the sides is seldom
ensured. Political activism, public awareness, better health services and
prospects of better education among the general public is hardly visible in
spite of the easy access of the remote mountains of Arunachal Pradesh. The new
generation of Arunachal Pradesh like Larik find themselves caught in delusion
and uncertainty at the backdrop of disproportionate distribution in terms of
basic amenities. The road that promises development fails to address the
expectations of the indigenous population and instead turns out to be the
channel of extraction. The road in her narration symbolizes the intrusion of
external forces with gradual enforcement of power and economic takeover through
the negotiation between tribal life-worlds and modern agencies. In this
negotiation, tribal right to its land and forest is exposed to a greater risk
for the idiom of modern administration and development is completely alien to
the tribal. Dai tries to explore the condition of marginality and exploitation
meted out to the tribal at the backdrop of massive corruption and propagandist
developmental progress in tribal areas.
Mamang Dai delivers an eco-critical reading of
tribal reality and digs further into the fundamental problem of structural failure
of the design of introducing modernity to a society that is based on the bedrock
of coexistence with nature. In a story narrated by the character named Hoxo, in
the chapter titled “Small Histories Recalled in the Season of Rain”, he tells
the oral narrative of the harmonious co-existence of man and spirits in “a
green and virgin land under a gracious and just rule” (42). It was a society
based on mutual understanding and respect of the symbiotic relation that humans
established with nature and spirits. But humans started felling the trees out
of greed causing damage to the balance of the two parallel worlds and the
delicate thread of relation was broken resulting in a massive change in the old
order of the society. Hoxo further laments that “the canopy of shelter and
tradition had fallen” with the destruction of the forest (42). The story
narrated by Hoxo insinuates that the knowledge of ecological balance was a part
of the tribal tradition but this knowledge became irrelevant in the greed
induced rat-race of growth and development of human civilization. Apart from
telling the unpleasant truth of marginalization of the tribal, she also
narrates the myths and cultural beliefs of the tribe by reinforcing the shared
experiences of her people where the supernatural elements command certain
importance and thereby become an integral part. For Mamang Dai the shamans,
demigods and paranormal occurrences are not constructs of fictional romanticism
or parts of the colonial occult but the very reality that the tribal inhabits
and therefore cannot be left out of the representation.
Authentic
representation of the tribal in Indian writing is getting momentum of late as
many writers within the tribal community have started voicing their lived experiences
in fiction and other forms of representations. Representation unquestionably
calls for further examination on merit for it is always vulnerable to different
layers of prejudices pertaining to the temporality of fixity of meanings. Both Gopinath
Mohanty and Mamang Dai engage in an objective depiction of the tribal reality
by acute denial of colonial romantic rendering and bring forth certain issues
hitherto unattended or deliberately ignored. Their projection of tribal reality
is not based on the colonial gaze enmeshed with the self/other binary but a
depiction of the shared reality gained from first hand experiences that further
call for exploration and examination of the political agency involved in the
process of representation.
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