Fringe Realities

Its sort of easy to sit back,condense the contents of middle-school geography books and dramatic newspaper headlines and imagine that bit of our country in our heads.

Written by PiyasreeDasgupta

November 21, 2009 03:18 AM IST

4 min read

A book tries to present the North East as a region of opportunities and not security problems

Its sort of easy to sit back,condense the contents of middle-school geography books and dramatic newspaper headlines and imagine that bit of our country in our heads. Thick mist biting at hilltops,girls in mekhlas pottering down winding paths and old men swathed in woollens huddling around a fire. The neighbour chooses Puri over Nagaland for a summer holiday for the nth time,because the region means trouble. The North-East,for most of us is as good us frenzied TV journalists gushing about insurgency in the region and pictures of virgin greenery and colourful dresses on Google. Subir Bhaumiks book Troubled Periphery: Crisis of Indias North East (Sage) wants to change exactly that. Through this book,I have tried to make the nation understand the region and vice versa, says Bhaumik. BBCs East India correspondent Bhaumik was born in Tripura and spent not just his childhood in the region in question but has worked in region in the capacity of a journalist for 15 long years. I am not just familiar with the region. I am familiar with the issues pertaining to its neigbours tooBangladesh,Myanmar,China etc, says Bhaumik. I have tried to deal with the core and the periphery in this book. India,like most other post-colonial nations in South East Asia,is facing a set of problems. Identities are being constituted,but there are some who dont accept this master-narrative of nation building. Which of course leads to clashes the divisions the core and the periphery, explains Bhaumik. We are no strangers to the fact that crisis never seems to end in the region,and the North East has always challenged the super-structure of the mainland. And its also true that a greater part of the country distances itself from the issues of the region because they are way to complicated for their understanding,and maybe also because they dont affect the rest of the country at the grassroots level directly. Therefore,though there has been a lot of writing on the issues,they dont deal with issues head-on. You mostly get to read an outsiders point of view in these works. They are either pseudo-fictional or of the academic variety with no connection with the ground realities, he adds.

Bhaumik,on the other hand,for 30 long years has developed a contact base and had interactions with not only people of the region,but also the rebel leaders who academics and writers otherwise have no access to. Thanks to my job as a journalist I have first hand knowledge of how these people think,what are their demands and their take on the policies of the country through long interviews. One has to understand why theres a sustained conflict in the region, says Bhaumik. So the book has been compiled with the rigour of an academic research and but is not so dense as to alienate a reader with passing interest in the region.

To ensure that his message travels to the grassroots level,where all problems stem from,in both the North East and the rest of the country,Bhaumik is sending translated excerpts of his book to vernacular dailies. I know the power of vernacular. English doesnt have the reach of native languages, he says. There are talks of translating the book into Hindi,Bengali and Assamese. The last two are important languages used to communicate in the region. This would ensure that the ideas circulate among the right people, says Bhaumik.

Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram

Tags:

Kolkata talk

Fringe Realities

Its sort of easy to sit back,condense the contents of middle-school geography books and dramatic newspaper headlines and imagine that bit of our country in our heads.

Its sort of easy to sit back,condense the contents of middle-school geography books and dramatic newspaper headlines and imagine that bit of our country in our heads.