[Assam] for info: Sanjib Baruah's lecture

[Chan Mahanta]

I recommend it strongly. Just finished reading 
Baruah's Post Frontier Blues. His analysis is 
thoughtful, cognizant of realities both historic 
and present  and his recommendations  make 
eminent sense.

For all those who are agonizing over the issue of 
B'deshis in Assam and the contiguous region, and 
are looking for a humane and realizable solution, 
ought to attend. It will be very informative.

But to those who are mired in Hinduttwa-badi 
rhetoric and are unable or unwilling to recognize 
reality, it might be disappointing.

cm














At 11:02 AM +0100 8/10/07, utpal borpujari wrote:
>The Hienrich Boll Foundation, India Habitat 
>Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan and Zubaan are 
>pleased to invite you to the first lecture in 
>the series Partition: The Long Shadow
>
>at Gulmohar, India Habitat Centre, Vardhaman Marg, New Delhi
>
>at 6.30 pm on 17 August 2007
>
>
>THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NATIONAL SPACE
>
>Contested Legality and Citizenship Practices in Post-Partition Northeast India
>
>by Dr Sanjib Baruah
>
>The shadow of the Partition of 1947 looms large 
>on the contemporary life of Northeast India in 
>one distinctive way.  On the one hand, the new 
>international border dividing India and East 
>Pakistan/Bangladesh is seen as inviolable. On 
>the other hand, the partition could not change 
>the position that the region acquired in 
>colonial times as a frontier. The flow of people 
>from one of the subcontinent’s most densely 
>populated areas, to a relatively sparsely 
>populated region open to new settlements, could 
>not suddenly be turned off.   The border remains 
>extremely porous till this day, and there is an 
>extensive blurring between citizens and 
>non-citizens.  Viewed through the lenses of 
>actual practice of citizenship, rather than 
>legal fictions, what we have in many parts of 
>Northeast India arguably, is a flexible 
>citizenship regime -- a flexible approach to 
>voting where people can vote despite 
>indeterminate citizenship status. Focusing on 
>Assam, the paper will examine the politics of 
>how this regime has come about. While the 
>discourse of illegal immigration dominates 
>headlines, given the routines of illicit 
>trans-border activity, the political aesthetics 
>of everydayness has framed competing 
>perceptions. Despite obvious tensions in this 
>regime, it points to the reality of an actually 
>existing transnational space that the trope of 
>inviolable borders cannot handle. The region’s 
>future political stability in the long run, I 
>argue, will depend on an ability to develop 
>institutions and practices that are in line with 
>this reality, rather than policies that seek to 
>unilaterally enforce border control.
>
>Sanjib Baruah is Professor of Political Studies, 
>Bard College, New York. He holds concurrent 
>professorial appointments at the Centre for 
>Policy Research, New Delhi and the Indian 
>Institute of Technology, Guahati.  He is the 
>author of Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New 
>Policy Framework for Northeast India (Washington 
>D.C.: East-West Center, 2007), Durable Disorder: 
>Understanding the Politics of Northeast India 
>(Oxford University Press, 2005), and India 
>Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of 
>Nationality (Oxford University Press, 1999).
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone 
>who knows. 
><http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTEydmViNG02BF9TAzIxMTQ3MTcxOTAEc2VjA21haWwEc2xrA3RhZ2xpbmU>Try 
>it now.
>
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