Refusal, Romanticism and Ground Realities in Northeast India

Suraj Gogoi interrogates the tension between ‘theory’ and ‘ground realities’ in writing on the completed yet contested NRC process in India’s North-Eastern state of Assam. Gogoi writes, “the intent of the article is two-fold. First, the article seeks to uncover the ecology of academic work on the background of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in contemporary Assam, which aims to identify 'illegal' citizens in the Northeast Indian state…Secondly… the various grounds of such critique —underground, overground, background, foreground, groundlessness—will also be explored.”

Essays, NRC Essays, commentariesBorderlines CSSAAMEMay 22, 2020NRC, CAA, Citizenship, Ground Realities, Theory, intellectual, intelligentsia, violence

To Think Otherwise: An Interview with Anupama Rao

On the 10th anniversary of The Caste Question, Anupama Rao speaks to Kelvin Ng about the questions that her book addressed and the debates it raised. They discuss how the book shifted the debate on caste from questions of social justice and the state to problems of personhood and Dalit subject formation; the way it drew from writing on slavery, anti-slavery and emancipation; Ambedkar’s anger at the unavailability of the Dalit subject in history; the dilemmas of competing minorities: the emergence of the Dalit subject and the unmaking of the Muslim subject in South Asia; different receptions to the book; the convergence of subaltern thought with global history; and contemporary Indian politics as a contingent and conjunctural process.