Samir Kumar Das – författare

This book explores contesting identities, international politics, migration and democratic practices in the context of globalizing India. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, it looks at one of the oldest migratory routes across a volatile region in eastern India which is fraught with violent claims of separate statehood.The book offers an account of how the ‘North Bengal’ region has acted as a gateway to migrant populations over time and points to why it must be understood as a shifting and liminal space through a study of Bodoland, Gorkhaland, Kamatapuri, Siliguri and the Greater Cooch Behar movements. It shows the region’s politics of identity or quest for homeland not as a means of compensating for the lack or absence of identity, but as an everyday practice of living that very absence, across borders and boundaries, without arriving at any definitive and stable identity, along with impacts and manifestations in democratic political processes. A major intervention in modern political theory – shedding new light on concepts such as home and homeland, space and self, sovereignty, nation-state, freedom and democracy – this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political science, modern South Asian history, sociology and social anthropology, and migration and diaspora studies.

This volume offers an insightful and compelling exploration of the complex dynamics that define governance, identity and power in India’s Northeast. It challenges conventional post-colonial narratives by asserting that the departure of colonial rulers did not precipitate a clean break but instead initiated intricate continuities that continue to shape the region’s societal structures. It puts forward the concept of ‘postcolonial hinterlands’, a nuanced framework for understanding spaces and identities that lie outside dominant national constructs in post-colonial settings. It highlights how the interactions in this framework between marginalized identities and the entrenched nation-state model create a unique emplaced space that forms the basis for the volume’s broader inquiries.The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, post-colonial polities, postcolonialism, and South Asian studies.

This volume offers an insightful and compelling exploration of the complex dynamics that define governance, identity and power in India’s Northeast. It challenges conventional post-colonial narratives by asserting that the departure of colonial rulers did not precipitate a clean break but instead initiated intricate continuities that continue to shape the region’s societal structures. It puts forward the concept of ‘postcolonial hinterlands’, a nuanced framework for understanding spaces and identities that lie outside dominant national constructs in post-colonial settings. It highlights how the interactions in this framework between marginalized identities and the entrenched nation-state model create a unique emplaced space that forms the basis for the volume’s broader inquiries.The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, post-colonial polities, postcolonialism, and South Asian studies.

This book explores contesting identities, international politics, migration and democratic practices in the context of globalizing India. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, it looks at one of the oldest migratory routes across a volatile region in eastern India which is fraught with violent claims of separate statehood.The book offers an account of how the ‘North Bengal’ region has acted as a gateway to migrant populations over time and points to why it must be understood as a shifting and liminal space through a study of Bodoland, Gorkhaland, Kamatapuri, Siliguri and the Greater Cooch Behar movements. It shows the region’s politics of identity or quest for homeland not as a means of compensating for the lack or absence of identity, but as an everyday practice of living that very absence, across borders and boundaries, without arriving at any definitive and stable identity, along with impacts and manifestations in democratic political processes. A major intervention in modern political theory – shedding new light on concepts such as home and homeland, space and self, sovereignty, nation-state, freedom and democracy – this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political science, modern South Asian history, sociology and social anthropology, and migration and diaspora studies.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century autonomy has become one of the major concerns of our social and political existence. The right to autonomous life is now a political, cultural and social call of both the individual and the group – a rare conformity that points to the crucial importance of autonomy in the agenda of critical thinking. Though the notion of autonomy in the modern era was at first applied in a political context, the term was quickly taken up in the context of individual rational persons, their rights and existences. In the wake of anticolonial movements, the term gained new perspectives and meanings which would imply new rights and new responsibilities. It became the emblem of group rights, in particular minority rights. In time the idea of autonomy became not only the standard of rights and responsibilities, but also an issue of governmentality.The present volume is a critical attempt to understand autonomy from both historical and analytical perspectives. An international group of scholars seeks answers that go beyond the thinking of Immanuel Kant or a simple hermeneutic reading of the principle of autonomy. Autonomy, in this collective reading, emerges as deeply rooted in social practices and contentious politics.

​This book focuses on issues of governance and the nature and complexities of social transformation in India’s Northeast -- a ‘problem’ zone for policymakers -- particularly since the early 1990s. While governance is the thread that runs through the volume, the latter at one level addresses the challenges of governing in global times a region historically marked by acute violence, interethnic conflict and insurgency; and at another, traces macro changes in the very forms and technologies of governance. The essays in this volume point to how changing forms and technologies of governing insurgency, development and culture do not remain mere instruments of peace, but define the very nature and content of both peace and conflict and their interrelationship in the region.For the first time in the history of scholarship on the region, the three crucial issues of insurgency, development and culture have been analysed through the lens of governance. This volume, therefore, marks an important addition to the scholarship on the region.

This book examines the making of the Goddess Durga both as an art and as part of the intangible heritage of Bengal.