Jalais and Singh: Exploring the Obscure

One of the most exciting waves of current scholarship on South Asia is that which explores post-colonialism and is coming increasingly to appreciate the less prominent peoples and cultures of South Asia. The Yale South Asian Studies Council puts special effort into attracting scholars exploring less conventional South Asian history through a variety of disciplines. In addition to our diverse staff and course offerings, we strive to attract scholars from outside Yale to share information about less-known topics.

Two such innovative scholars who spoke at the Spring Colloquia were New India Foundation Fellow Deepak Singh and Agrarian Studies Program Fellow Annu Jalais. They each discussed their 2009 book publications, on two very different small communities isolated from the Indian and Bangledeshi mainstream. Singh�s and Jalais� work is part of the movement to close the knowledge gap on smaller communities, societies and cultures within the legacy of Indian partition.

Singh was one of the first four recipients of the New India Foundation Fellowship in 2004, which enabled him to do his research towards the goal of producing a book. After spending several years on his research, Singh�s first full-length book was published, titled The Chakmas Between Bangladesh and India. The New India Foundation is based in Bangalore, and was started to promote research into post-colonial India with the goal of broadening the body of modern Indian historical literature. Currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Punjab University, Singh is not sure where life will take him now that this research on the Chakmas is complete. For now he is eager to share his work with the broader community of South Asian scholars, and was happy to be able to come and speak here at Yale. His research interest has long focused on migration and refugees in Northern India, as well as postcolonial Indian politics.

He was drawn to the issue of the Chakmas through the lens of partition. The Chakmas are the largest ethnic group in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but, due to a messy partition of their native lands between East Pakistan and India, they were unable to form a national identity. Singh says that the the Chakmas are now a stateless people living �betwixt and between� realities and countries. His work concentrates on the Chakma refugees in Arunachal Pradesh, where they struggle to find their own identity. They have been excluded from the civil rights the Indian government should provide to all. Like so many others, their plight is a legacy of inefficient partition. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were �traded off� in exchange for a Muslim majority area in Punjab as a result of secret negotiations. Many Chakmas were forced from their land, and into land in Arunachal Pradesh, where the native population feels encroached upon. The natives of Arunachal Pardesh are now demanding that the Chakmas be moved so they can have their land back. While main-stream politicians and those who hold power have made deals to get the unwanted Chakma people out of the way, marginalized people are unable to unite and make their own deals to fight for rights as their interests have been made to conflict.

The story of another people in the post-colonial era with a long historical tradition is being told by Jalais. Growing up in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Jalais became fascinated as a child with stories of the isolated Sundarbar region, the largest preserved habitat of man-eating tigers in Bengal. These unique and terrifying tigers are what generally draw researchers to the Sundarbar, but Jalais went to do her research on the culture and folk-lore of the Sundarbar people. She was first met by surprise by those she was interviewing. �Aren�t we just tiger food for you guys?� One young man asked her.

Jalais is an anthropologist who works on issues of environmentalism and she has focused particularly on wildlife conservation in South Asia. But in the Sundarbar she was compelled to focus on the history of people, on their folklore, their traditions and beliefs. Her focus was not on the tigers, but on the place the tigers played in the lives of the people who have to deal with them. Her 2009 book, Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans, discusses the ways in which Islam can be understood by the present-day tiger-charmers, and the ways in which the relationship between the Sufi saints who cleared the forrest, and the tigers, have formed the ways of the people of the Sundarbans.

The work of these scholars is helping reshape the face of South Asian Studies and expand the base of knowledge off of which scholars can work in the future. By understanding the legacy of partition beyond what it has meant to mainstream politicians and large communities, as well as exploring communities which have been mostly unaffected by modernization, a more complete picture of South Asia can be painted.