Factual Errors on North East India's discourse

The colonial ethnographers and Christian missionaries were the earliest scholars who represented tribal culture with their European terms and pronunciations. Numerous literatures on tribal cultural history were produced by colonial ethnographers and Christian Missionaries like A.Z Makenzie, JH Hutton, J.Shakepear, N.E Parry, J.H Mills, J.M Lloyd, J.H Lorrain. Habitually, colonial and missionary’ terms/terminologies were ethnocentric in nature.

In recent period, some scholars (trained indigenous) feel the burden of these ethnocentric terms and various efforts have been made on the decolonization of these local names/ terminologies.In case of Mizoram, colonial names have been changed - Lusei, instead of Lushai, Maras instead of Lakher and Aizawl instead of Aijal. However, in many of the recent discourses (including official discourse) made by non locals both at the national and international levels are extremely ignorant on local language/terminologies. The capital of Mizoram, Aizawl is misspelt as Aizwal in news papers, academic discourses and even at airports. There has been repeated failure to run a correction, even after being asked.

This is also evident in the academic field. For instance, one of the most popular referee’s journals of Modern Asian Studies in 1987 writes “The Negroids, who came from south and south-west China, are the present Nagas of Nagaland.” (B. P. Singh; North-East India: Demography, Culture and Identity Crisis, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2. (1987), pp. 257-282.) Surprisingly, the editorial boards (including some Indian professor) has failed to notice that the Naga tribes belong to the mongoloid group of Tibeto-Burman. No correction was made even in the continuous issues. Such an ignorance has for a long time dominated the North East discourse scenario which damages image of the people and their culture. Naga Students’ Federation (not the insurgency groups) who had forbidden a non-Naga to write on Naga history without their prior approval clearly indicates how people contested against such academic imperialism. (Prabhakara, 2003).

it would be nice to hear your responses regarding this issue. What we can do to make it better for accurate representation? etc...


Photos:
http://www.travelmadeeasy.in/northeast-main.jpg
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