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The Newsletter | No.77 | Summer 2017 Bulging biceps Ports of the Ancient Japan Museum in urban India Indian Ocean SieboldHuis Michiel Baas Dr Richard Fynes Summer Exhibitions The Study | 10-11 The Review | 26 The Portrait | 56 theNewsletter Encouraging knowledge and enhancing the study of Asia 77Heaven’s authority THE RAPID URBANIZATION of India’s Northeast frontier is one of the most crucial transformations the area has witnessed, yet urban environments are rarely part of imaginations of the frontier, unlike the stereotypical images of plantations, jungle insurgency, spectacular topography, and colourfully dressed ethnic minority communities. In the Focus section of this issue we explore the Learning to to Learning cities of India’s ‘unruly borderland’ as crucial sites in their own right, and as love the city in love Northeast India Northeast sites in which to experiment with different ways of researching the region. Festival goer in Arunachal Pradesh. Image reproduced under a creative commons license courtesy of Tauno Tohk on Flickr. 2 | The Newsletter | No.77 | Summer 2017 Contents 3 From the Director THE STUDY 4-5 Bengali settlers in the Andaman Islands: The performance of homeland Carola Erika Lorea 6 A user-centred reinterpretation of the Siebold incident Radu Leca The Focus 7 An unholy brew: alcohol in pre-Islamic Java Jiří Jákl 8-9 Chinese export paintings in Dutch public collections: Learning to love the city A shared cultural visual repertoire Rosalien van der Poel in Northeast India 10 -11 Bulging biceps in urban India: A middle class goes to the gym 29-31 Introduction by Duncan McDuie-Ra Michiel Baas The rapid urbanization of India’s Northeast frontier is one of the most 12 Special feature: The Opinion South Korea: The corruption that built its economy crucial transformations the area has witnessed, yet urban environments Michael Rock are rarely part of imaginations of the frontier, unlike the stereotypical images of plantations, jungle insurgency, spectacular topography, THE REGION and colourfully dressed ethnic minority communities. In this Focus 13-15 News from Australia and the Pacific section we explore the cities of India’s ‘unruly borderland’ as crucial 16-17 News from Southeast Asia 18-20 News from Northeast Asia sites in their own right, and as sites in which to experiment with 21-23 China Connections different ways of researching the region. 32-33 36-37 THE REVIEW Bengt Karlsson discusses the nostalgia hanging over Mona Chettri considers the infrastructure-driven 24 Late Imperial China’s maritime Shillong: a former colonial hill station and now the growth of Chungthang in north Sikkim alongside boundaries and beyond capital of Meghalaya. Within overlapping forms of the enduring presence of the armed forces deployed governance and all the associated problems of rapid to monitor the border with China. At the centre of Robert J. Antony urbanisation on a limited amount of land, Karlsson the town, between an enormous hydropower dam 24 Building Filipino Hawai’i considers the best way to think about contemporary and various army barracks, is a Sikh Gurdwara (temple) Shane J. Barter and Rayen Rooney Shillong, settling for analysing it as a ‘tribal city’; one built by the armed forces and currently at the heart unable to come to terms with the present in favour of contentions over cultural history, space, and 25 Speaking of the self of memories of the past. ‘belonging’ in Sikkim. Niroshini Somasundaram 26 Ports of the Ancient Indian Ocean 34 38-39 Dr Richard Fynes Lallianpuii uses an account of print media in Mizoram Opposition to dog meat sales from a government and surrounding Mizo speaking areas to situate Aizawl determined to make Dimapur (Nagaland) more 27 New reviews on newbooks.asia city, the state capital, as the centre of the transnational ‘city-like’ and activists concerned with animal 28 New titles on newbooks.asia Mizo world. Bucking the trend of a global downturn welfare exist alongside the persistence of impunity in print circulation, demand for daily print media for the armed forces in their treatment of humans emanating from Aizawl can barely keep up with supply, in Dimapur and beyond. But, Dolly Kikon wonders, revealing the need for news produced close to the if sales are to be banned what will become of the corridors of political power – from the Mizo metropolis. traders, mostly women, who peddle the meat THE FOCUS in Dimapur’s markets? 29-40 Learning to love the city in Northeast India 35 Guest Editor: Duncan McDuie-Ra R.K Debarmma begins his account of Agartala, the 40 capital of Tripura, with protests for an indigenous state Three dynamics have shaped the history of and the demonization of the protestors by the state. Dibrugarh in upper-Assam: capital, calamity, and This sets up an account of Tripura as a settler colonial counter-insurgency. These dynamics produce what state during the British period and especially after Sanjay Barbora refers to as a ‘counterintuitive urban THE NETWORK Partition of South Asia in 1947. Agartala is the main transformation’, evident in the tea gardens in the city 41 The Visual Documentary Project arena where spatial contests between settlers and centre, the oil installations and gas cracker plants 42-43 ICAS Book Prize 2017 indigenous communities play out, making it a settler on the outskirts, and the ‘silent social relations’ colonial town. of the city’s multi-ethnic population. 44-45 Leiden University’s new Asian Library 46-49 IIAS Reports 52 IIAS Announcements 53 IIAS Research and Projects 54-55 IIAS Fellowship Programme THE PORTRAIT 56 Japan Museum SieboldHuis Summer Exhibitions The Newsletter | No.77 | Summer 2017 From the Director | 3 Connecting new forms of knowledge is a case in point, with a number of joint events like the The release of this 77th issue of the Newsletter coincides with the tenth edition CMU-IIAS roundtable on universities’ social engagement, or a plenary roundtable where prominent Southeast Asian of the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), which will take place intellectuals reflect on their efforts to promote democratic rights in their country. ICAS 10 will have a distinctive Chiang in July in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in collaboration with Chiang Mai University. Mai mark. The challenge here is not just to move away from the stale academic convention model – usually held Such occurrence is an opportunity to reflect on ICAS, its constant departure in international chain hotels offering the same standardized recipe for a repeated entre soi among disciplinary and from the conventional academic conference model into a large-scale local-global country-focused colleagues. It is about relocating Asia and knowledge-making processes within living communities clearing house, and its pioneering facilitation of decentralized intellectual and realities, in Asia or outside. In 2019, ICAS will return to Europe, to where it began; exchange platforms in Africa, Latin America and the Indian Ocean. Through in Leiden, in The Netherlands. As in Chiang Mai, we will seek to confer the event with a local – Dutch and European – its collaboration with ICAS, IIAS continues to work as a global connector and ‘feel’, with as an overarching theme, “Asia and Europe, Asia in Europe”. With our host partner, the University of Leiden, incubator of new forms of knowledge. we will not only seek the participation of ‘area studies’ aca- demics but also members of different sectors of knowledge Philippe Peycam as well as non-academic contributors from all over Europe and beyond. We hope ICAS 11 will bring new light to the complex history of interactions between the two regions. ORIGINALLY ICAS as a network-based programme may Three parallel evolutions further set ICAS apart from Another way IIAS and ICAS are facilitating a confluence of have in some way matched the traditional convention traditional academic gatherings: its transformation into localized ‘connected knowledges’ in and with Asia resides in model developed in the United States in which hundreds of an open platform serving an increasingly diverse range of collaborations they have initiated with a number of networks panels and meetings are organized in parallel, in one location, participants, institutions and sectors of knowledge on Asia; in regions other than Asia, Europe and North America. Here during a four-day period. To these discussions and their its efforts to anchor its biennial events in the very local too, ICAS plays a critical role in decentring the landscape of rigidly structured format were added a number of customary intellectual, social and political context in which they are knowledge on and with Asia. One way to do that has been activities such as ‘keynotes’, an exhibition area, etc. Efforts held; its engagement – with IIAS – in favour of the establish- to diversify the language basis of ICAS Book Prize (IBP), in were, however, deployed from the outset to encourage ment of new academic networks. collaboration with new partners. From ICAS 10 onward, the presentations from different disciplines or country focus into Perhaps the most challenging of our efforts is to continue IBP will award publications in Chinese, Korean, French and dialogues by grouping individual papers in thematic panels to transform the ICAS biennial events into dynamic forums at German languages, alongside English. This collaborative effort or by promoting unusual side events. The ICAS Book Prize which collective collaboration around shared ideas and projects also led to the support for the establishment of the first pan- (IBP), for instance, was from the start organized around prevails over the atomization of individuals into competing African independent academic network on Asia, the African broad interdisciplinary bases (‘Social Sciences’, ‘Humanities’) academics.1 One way to achieve this involves introducing sectors Association for Asian Studies (A-ASIA), and the organization of instead of the traditional geographic or disciplinary compart- of knowledge situated beyond institutionalized academic the A-ASIA maiden conference in Accra, Ghana in 2015.