Thakur, N. 2018. River Song: Caste and Cultural Assimilation Ancient Asia in the Brahmaputra River Valley, Assam. Ancient Asia, 9: 7, pp. 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/aa.159 RESEARCH PAPER River Song: Caste and Cultural Assimilation in the Brahmaputra River Valley, Assam Nimisha Thakur In this paper, the author argues that the lens of assimilation which is often used to understand cultural change within the Mising1 community in the Brahmaputra River Valley, Assam overlooks state developmental initiatives that attempt to pathologize and exploit the reproductive rights of tribal women. This paper specifically focuses on the ideas of menstrual pollution ascribed to the bodies of Mising women embedded in coercive menstrual management and family planning awareness campaigns. More broadly, the paper focuses on state discourses of purity and pollution that shapes the location of the Mising community outside Hindu caste hierarchies despite their adoption of Assamese Hindu religious and socio-economic practices. Introduction been able to acquire. It is in this regard that the concept Adaptation which is generally understood as a process of of assimilation is sought to be studied with special regard change by which an organism or species becomes better to the power structures inherent in state rhetoric on tribal suited to its environment (Oxford Dictionary 2018), is an communities and development. essential mechanism in understanding cultural change. The Misings are a hill tribe descended from the adjacent Aims of the study state of Arunachal Pradesh who migrated to Assam. Post This paper focuses on the location of the Mising commu- their migration to the Brahmaputra river valley in Assam, nity outside Hindu caste hierarchies despite their adoption the Misings have displayed remarkable changes in their of Assamese Hindu religious and socio-economic prac- linguistic, social, religious and economic structures. Fore- tices. As a result, tribal communities such as the Misings most, they have adopted Assamese as their lingua franca have been initiated into debates of purity and pollution due to socio-economic interactions with the majority wherein they face marginalization within the Hindu caste Assamese speaking population (Taid 2016). Second, there paradigm through their location outside it. The author has been considerable ethnic and social admixture with specifically focuses on the ideas of pollution ascribed to the Assamese population as a result of which the Misings the bodies of tribal women (of the Mising tribe) in juxta- have adopted social institutions like marriage, religious position to the menstrual restrictions placed on the body institutions like Vaishnavism and intensive agricultural of dominant caste women, both within the Lakhimpur practices as opposed to their former methods of shifting District of the Brahmaputra River Valley. The question cultivation (Borpujari 1990). Inhabiting the state of Assam raised is how does the lack of menstrual taboos among the as the second largest ethnic group after the Bodos, the Misings get embodied as their pollution? Further, by trac- Misings have sought to overcome their migratory nature ing state developmental initiatives in Assam that attempt through assimilation with the non-Mising communities to pathologize and exploit the reproductive rights of in the region. However, the tribe has maintained its cul- tribal women through coercive menstrual management tural distinctiveness especially amongst the river island and family planning awareness campaigns, this paper will communities through retention of animistic practices in attempt to focus on the ways in which the assimilation addition to Vaishnavite religious practices, tribe specific debate serves the state rhetoric that marginalizes tribal economic mainstays such as weaving and fishing as well communities in India. as particular festivals and modes of attire. As a result, it is essential to understand assimilation spatially. Further, it is Methodology essential to contextualize the assimilation debate within The author’s first academic interaction with the space state narratives of the Mising being Assamese while being was through fieldwork in December 2016 for the Masters denied educational, economic and social accessibility to Dissertation in Archaeology titled Adaptation and resources such as the Assamese Hindu communities have Change: A study of the Misings of the Brahmaputra River Valley. The author undertook fieldwork with the help of an organization Centre for Northeast Studies which had Syracuse University, US recently started a Boat Clinic Program that covered all the [email protected] districts in Assam to provide immunization camps, family Art. 7, page 2 of 7 Thakur: River Song planning awareness and menstrual sanitation awareness community is analyzed as the public space. In opposi- to the river islands. The Mising tribe inhabits the chars or tion, the mainland area of North Lakhimpur town then river islands of the Brahmaputra River Valley. These chars forms the private space inhabited by mostly dominant are semi-permanent sand bars that arise from the river caste Assamese Hindus, which articulates the need to be beds throughout the Indus-Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna guarded and controlled. In this context, the river island floodplains (Lahiri-Dutt 2014). The Brahmaputra River emerges as the ‘contact zone’ (Ahmed 2004) which is seen Valley abounds with these chars which are constantly shift- to be ‘teeming with microbes’ (Prasad 2015: 1). Prasad ing as a result of which residential space is undefined by articulates the concept of contagion as an infection that strict boundaries. The idea of a permanent home is short spreads from the contact zone to other areas. lived as populations migrate from one char to another. Sara Ahmed’s (2004) understanding of ‘contact zones’ There are some that gain permanent status housing sev- and Prasad’s (2015) reiteration of it in context of con- eral generations as a result of which identities are more tact zones of contagion is especially interesting in light associated with a village way of life and the term gaon is of the near inaccessibility of the river island from the used to designate this space, thus making a distinction. town. Ahmed (2004) understands the contact zone as one wherefrom emotion flows. In the context of the paper, Beyond the lens of assimilation this is useful as the point from which contagion spreads The debate on assimilation as a lens to understand cul- outwards. In turn, contagion itself creates boundaries tural change has seen multiple criticisms transnationally between bodies affected by contagion and those that are across disciplines in the social sciences. Foremost, the seen as holding the potential to be contaminated. In this critique by indigenous studies scholars has been that it case, the former alludes to the bodies of Mising women assumes the inevitable need for indigenous communities of the chars whose embodiment of pollution is seen as a to integrate with what is termed- the majority or main- result of the absence of menstrual taboos. The latter then stream culture. This is problematic because it negates refers to the bodies of Savarna2 women (the Assamese the particular historical path through which different Hindus of North Lakhimpur Town) which are regulated ethnic communities interact with one another and articu- through menstrual restrictions. late their own identities. Second, assimilation debates The medical staff of the Boat Clinic express the need to assume that despite hybridity and adoption of cultural contain the idea of contagion embodied by the Misings. practices, indigenous communities in particular do not Their aims of spreading awareness regarding menstrual have a distinct culture. This leads to state measures to management is reflective of colonial discourse on modern prohibit certain cultural practices as has been seen in the hygiene which is seen as the norm for ‘bodily health, moral case of indigenous peoples in Canada, USA and Australia sanctions and cultural prescriptions’ (Prasad 2015: 6) but wherein various cultural practices such as the potlatch also as an embodiment of these norms. This is reflected have been attempted to be banned by the state govern- in the way in which educated Indian thinkers adopted ments (Tuhiwai Smith 2005). This is seen in the case of colonial discourses on health and hygiene in their procla- India wherein tribal communities like the Misings strug- mations of nationalism, self-rule and modernity. Gandhi’s gled for their language to be recognized as a language and ideas on hygiene, the body and Swaraj can be seen within not as a dialect as the Assam state government and the this paradigm. Shailaja Paik (2014) points out Ambedkar federal government asserted that since a majority of them and Phule too who stressed on the importance of hygiene spoke Assamese, Mising was a dialect. Finally, assimilation to Dalit women in their path to self- awareness. Thus, by debates often obscure the process through which cultural wording the benefits of hygiene to the Mising community, change occurs within tribal and indigenous communities the medical staff attempted to internalize hygiene within as a result of which the inherent power structures in the the community. assimilation debate are overlooked (Lawrence 2010; Smith What is the link through which the nation state extends 2005; Tuhiwai Smith 2005). to the unit of the family? This is another question raised In the following sections, the author attempts to trace by Prasad (2015) that is significant in the homogeneity of the ways in which the assimilation debate falls short and hygiene discourse within the family in large part derived the consequent need to move beyond it in tribal and indi- from affective awareness campaigns. Hygiene seemed to geneity studies. be the keyword amongst the author’s relatives in North Lakhimpur Town and the only shield against the fear of con- Contagion and pollution tagion. When the author was attempting to find a family The Boat Clinic program first brought the author in con- to stay with on the islands, there was a constant reiteration tact with the islands.