Politico-ritual variations on the Assamese fringes: do social systems exist? Philippe Ramirez To cite this version: Philippe Ramirez. Politico-ritual variations on the Assamese fringes: do social systems exist?. F. Robinne & M. Sadan. Social dynamics in the Highlands of Southeast Asia : Reconsidering political systems of Highland Burma, Brill, pp.91-107, 2007, 1281921467 9781281921468. hal-00763959 HAL Id: hal-00763959 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00763959 Submitted on 12 Dec 2012 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. Politico-ritual variations on the Assamese fringes: do social systems exist?1 Philippe Ramirez [in Social dynamics in the Highlands of Southeast Asia : Reconsidering political systems of Highland Burma. F. Robinne ; M. Sadan (Eds) -- Leiden : Brill, 2007, p.91-107. Pages may differ in the final publication] For its vast cultural diversity and the multiple interactions among its human groups, Northeast India, i.e. Assam and its adjoining areas, may be described as a paradise for the anthropologist. For the same reasons, however, when interpretations and hypotheses have to be considered, when some "order" has to be envisioned, paradise may turn into a hell. The discrepancies between ethnic labels, social patterns and cultural features, the internal differentiations within groups, the overlapping of political and ritual models, all make the social scientist doubt whether any assertion can be put forth, whether any social system exists at all. The recent flowering of ethnic politics in the region adds an additional dimension which doesn't make the task easier. As a matter of fact, the anthropological complexity that characterises Northeast India pertains to a wider Southeast Asian area, which also covers Northern Burma. So it is natural that PSHB is called upon by anyone attempting to find coherence in the great anthropological maelstrom of presentday Assam. The scepticism of Leach, which inspired him to the general idea of dissociation between political systems and "tribes", has the great merit of conjuring essentialism, which always threatens the anthropologist. Essentialism is a pervasive trend in the times of ethnic revivalism in which we are living, and particularly so in presentday Northeast India. The area experiences multiple identity claims, the discourses as well as consequences of which may be usefully analysed with the tools provided in PSHB. The discursive essentialism of ethnic movements sometimes runs up against such obvious cultural disparities on the ground that even hardliners have to admit their significance. Ethnicism assumes a perfect correlation between a territory, language and sociopolitical system. As is obvious to all, correlations with this degree of adequacy are rarely realised in Assam. Nevertheless, one cannot reject ethnic categories too easily only on the pretext that they do not correspond to actual cultural or social entities. Every contemporary anthropologist would agree that is not cultural homogeneity that makes an "ethnic group" but a perception. They are representations through which people feel they belong to a coherent and perennial entity. In this sense, the Assamese ethnic groups, or "tribes", as they are called and call themselves, are real. Thus remains the task of analysing the competing articulations of identity discourses and the "reality" of other domains, a task which was central in PSHB. I will briefly present three cases taken from TibetoBurmese speaking people living at the fringes between hills and plains in Central Assam. These cases are drawn from research that focuses mainly on the historical and anthropological foundations of ritual geography in an area that, before the British Raj, was alternatively or conjointly under the political authority of three main states: the Ahom, the Jaintiya and the Dimasa (or "Kachari"). Some historical background is necessary before proceeding to the anthropological data. From the thirteenth century onwards, a number of warriors of Tai origin, the Ahom, gradually conquered the lowlands of the Brahmaputra valley. There they became acculturated by the former elite, who were Hindu by religion and Assamesespeaking. In Central Assam they faced competition from two hillbased states: the Jaintiya kingdom, which was culturally close to the Khasi, centred on the Eastern Meghalaya plateau and whose authority extended far below the foothills; the Dimasa kingdom, which till the sixteenth century controlled the greater part of southcentral Assam before slowly receding towards the southern hills of presentday North Cachar district. The precious Ahom chronicles, the burañjis, provide valuable testimonies on the relations between the rising Ahom power and the existing states.2 They also give several indications on a number of people and chiefs who lived on the southern foothills of the Brahmaputra valley and whose allegiance gradually shifted from the Jaintiya and Dimasa to the Ahom. Thus, on the fringes of its dominion, the Ahom sovereign (swargadeo) recognised a number of petty kings, the rj povli, who begged for his protection and were required to assist him in war. These chiefs, significantly called dntiyliya rj ("kings of the margins"), generally controlled the lower portions of the routes linking the hills to the plains via a number of marts at the bottom. These small dominions played a "bridge and buffer role", which has to be kept in mind when considering the shaping of local cultures and identities.3 The first example that I will explore pertains to the people who call themselves Dimasa ("Sons of the large water"). Numbering around 100,000, they speak a BodoGaro language and live in the hills bridging Meghalaya and Nagaland. In British times they fell under the label "Kachari", which covered a fair portion of the TibetoBurmese speaking groups of the 92 plains, including the people who today refer to themselves as Bodo. These Dimasa display a kind of anthropological strangeness in their descent system which is dual, combining male clans and female clans respectively passed on by men and women. Dimasa conceive of themselves as the descendants of rulers and subjects of the Dimasa kingdom. Ahom chronicles attest the existence of "Timisa kings" (khun timis)4, who ruled over a large area of Middle Assam, initially from Dimapur on the Western foothills of presentday Nagaland. They were driven by the Ahom towards the south to their present habitat where in 1540 they founded the Hedamba kingdom. Despite the scarcity of data on this kingdom, the archaeological vestiges in successive capitals (presentday Dimapur and Maibong) indicate a fair level of economic strength and centralisation. From at least the eighteenth century, the kings and the elite went through a process of Hinduization, apparently under the influence of the Bengali brahmans attached to the court. Following the final invasion of the area by the Ahom in 1745, the kings and part of the commoners settled further south in the plains of Cachar. Culturally speaking, presentday Cachar Dimasa can hardly be distinguished from the Bengali majority and they seem to make little attempt politically to assert their identity. In the hills, however, Dimasa remained demographically dominant whilst cohabiting with HmarKukis and Zemi Nagas. As a scheduled tribe, they obtained the creation of an "autonomous council" in 1952 and of an autonomous district (NC Hills) in 1972, where they benefit from special reservations. In some ways, Dimasa people of North Cachar Hills face few problems when dealing with their identity. They share a fairly high linguistic and cultural homogeneity, all claiming their link with the former Hedamba kingdom. In comparison to their neighbours, their society can be described as a "sealed society". The status of Dimasa is strictly acquired by descent: a Dimasa is defined by his descent from both a male clan and a female clan, adoption within a Dimasa clan is impossible, and union with a nonDimasa forbidden. In the latter case, such an act exposes the whole community to impurity (gushu) and it generally results in ex communication. Nowadays, Dimasa girls may on rare occasions be allowed by their patriclan to marry a foreigner after being purified in their clan sanctuary, but even in this case, any offspring will be denied Dimasa status. Finally, under the special provisions conceded by the Indian State, matrimonial affairs, like other "customary" affairs and land issues, legally fall 93 within the authority of the autonomous district council. This judiciary autonomy reinforces the "exclusive identity" of Dimasa. This does not mean that the internal order of the society is the object of a consensus among Dimasa. Put simply, despite the harsh protective measures enforced towards external influences, Dimasa society has indeed recently experienced dramatic changes in its cultural, economic and demographic features. Among others, the decline of shifting agriculture (jhum) as the main source of revenue and the shift from the villages to the towns have deeply transformed the mode of living and the human geography of the area. These changes have necessarily resulted in inconsistencies that have provoked debates between conflicting views on "tradition". A few years ago, the autonomous council was asked to rule on the exact meaning of the word which refers to the main Dimasa ritual institution, the daikho, which for the moment we will only define as a "worship circle". The debate pertained to the concrete case of a priest attached to a daikho who had planned to move his home to another location, and intended to shift the place of worship as well. Some of the follower lineages strongly objected to this.