People of the Margins Philippe Ramirez To cite this version: Philippe Ramirez. People of the Margins. Spectrum, 2014, 978-81-8344-063-9. hal-01446144 HAL Id: hal-01446144 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01446144 Submitted on 25 Jan 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. People of the Margins People of the Margins Across Ethnic Boundaries in North-East India Philippe Ramirez SPECTRUM PUBLICATIONS GUWAHATI : DELHI In association with CNRS, France SPECTRUM PUBLICATIONS • Hem Barua Road, Pan Bazar, GUWAHATI-781001, Assam, India. Fax/Tel +91 361 2638434 Email [email protected] • 298-B Tagore Park Extn., Model Town-1, DELHI-110009, India. Tel +91 9435048891 Email [email protected] Website: www.spectrumpublications.in First published in 2014 © Author Published by arrangement with the author for worldwide sale. Unless otherwise stated, all photographs and maps are by the author. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted/used in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. ISBN 978-81-8344-063-9 Distributors united publishers • Panbazar Main Road, Guwahati-781001, Assam, India. Tel +91 0361 2638435 Email [email protected] • Akarshan Bhavan, 23 Ansari Main Road, New Delhi-110002, India. Tel +91 9864068121 Email [email protected] Website: www.unitedpublishers.in Published by Krishan Kumar on behalf of Spectrum Publications and printed in India. Contents List of figures ....................................................................................... IX Acknowledgements ......................................................................... XIII Transliterations and orthography ................................................XV Introduction ..........................................................XVII Chapter 1: The Anthropological Landscape of North-East India ...............................................1 Historical States ....................................................................................3 Early anthropological descriptions ...................................................5 Linguistic entanglement ......................................................................6 Racial depictions and socio-cultural continua ............................ 10 The Assamese society ........................................................................ 13 Cultural continua and conversions: Koches ................................. 15 Cultural differentiations and scales: Tiwas and Karbis in the plains ......................................................................................... 19 Diverging social structures: the Mishings .................................... 26 The socio-economic origins of ethnicisation ................................ 27 Chapter 2: Groups and names: ethnicities in the margins ............................................................31 Looking for margins .......................................................................... 31 Surnames identification and ethnic ascription ........................... 34 Mapping surnames ............................................................................ 35 Tribes .................................................................................................... 40 Borderlands ethnicities and politics .............................................. 42 Exploring the margins ...................................................................... 47 Floating ethnonyms: Bhoi, Khasi Bhoi, Khasi .............................. 53 Composite identities under threat .................................................. 57 Chapter 3: Across Ethnic Boundaries .................61 Tribal conversions, clanic continuities.......................................... 61 Surname equivalences ...................................................................... 71 Transethnic exogamies ..................................................................... 76 Adaptive descent modes ................................................................... 87 Chapter 4: Markets, myths and polities: looking for assemblages ................................99 What makes a society: the market, the dog and stinking peas..........................................................................100 Markets as spatial and temporal nodes ......................................102 Markets, sacred groves and megaliths ........................................104 Markets as economic and political assets ...................................113 Connected assemblies ......................................................................114 Connecting hills and plains ............................................................116 Chapter 5: Polities on the margins ................... 119 Naming the hill people ....................................................................119 The discovery of the margins ........................................................126 Frontier polities ................................................................................131 Chapter 6: Webs of rajas, wandering symbols 141 Fish for roots .....................................................................................141 Water princesses and brother rajas .............................................144 Fish girls and wandering boys ......................................................148 Bisokoida: opposing descent modes and political arrangements ........................................................155 Gobha’s buffalo: clans and States .................................................159 Topography and descent rules ......................................................162 The power of purification ...............................................................168 References ..........................................................................................175 Index ...................................................................................................195 List of Figures Figure 1-1: The eight states of North-East India ........XXX Figure 1-2: Major political influences in Assam in early sixteenth century ............................................................4 Figure 1-3: Ethnicities and affiliations to rajas ..............23 Figure 1-4: “Hinduised” monoliths in the submontane belt ..................................................................................25 Figure 2-1: Area of study: administrative boundaries ...33 Figure 2-2: Two surnames distributions ..........................36 Figure 2-3: Ethnicity attributions to surnames by village .........................................................................37 Figure 2-4: Dominant descent types by village ..............39 Figure 2-5: Karbi, Khasi, Tiwa estimates 2001 ................41 Figure 2-6: Forms of multi-ethnicity in the Assam- Meghalaya borderlands ................................................43 Figure 2-7: The polities of Northeastern Ri Bhoi ...........48 Figure 3-1: Examples of equivalent surnames ...............64 Figure 3-2: Entering the arch ............................................67 Figure 3-3: The “Four clans rule” in the Karbi speaking area of Rongkhang. .......................................................69 Figure 3-4: Hill Tiwa Phratries .........................................75 Figure 3-5: A loom in Western Karbi Anglong ................75 Figure 3-6: Endo-ethnic and interethnic exogamies .....77 Figure 3-7: Inter-ethnic marriages and exogamies .......81 Figure 3-8: Dealing with the issues of a Karbi-Khasi couple ..............................................................................84 Figure 3-9: A grandmother chewing areca nut ..............89 Figure 3-10: Multiple descent and residence principles in a village of the margins ............................................91 Figure 3-11: Hill Tiwa kinship terminologies .................93 Figure 3-12: Khasi Bhoi kinship terminology .................94 Figure 4-1: Iewduh market, Shillong ................................99 Figure 4-2: Wednesday market, Umswai .......................101 Figure 4-3: Markets and weekdays in Jaintia & Khasi hills ..................................................................104 Figure 4-4: Megaliths in Nartiang market .....................105 Figure 4-5: Iewduh market, Shillong ..............................106 Figure 4-6: State ritual at Iewduh market .....................107 Figure 4-7: The market’s deity in Nongpoh ..................107 Figure 4-8: The seats of the dignitaries, ............................. Rong Arak market........................................................109 Figure 4-9: A recent pillar at Umden market ...............110 Figure 4-10: U Nongbah Nongtluh ..................................111 Figure 4-11: Connected assemblies ................................115 Figure 4-12: Boundary megaliths