SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Visit to North Eastern Hill University, Friday 25 November

Web page: http://www.nehu.ac.in/

North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Shillong is a rather small university founded in 1974, with students coming from all over the North East. There are about 200 teachers and 2 000 students at the PG level, that is, the masters level. The university, beautifully located in a hilly area covered by pinewood trees, is divided into six schools:

• Education, which is the biggest school
• Social sciences (sociology, political science, history, and law)
• Physics
• Life sciences
• Economics and Management
• Human and Environmental Studies (including anthropology)

Researchers/teachers come from all over India. There are about 50 colleges affiliated with about 30 000 undergraduate students.

Our host, Prof. C. Nunthara (photo to the left) from the Dept. of Sociology (and also Dean of the School of Social Sciences) told us that this department has seven teachers (should be 11 actually) and 90 Masters students. There are about 20 PhD students. M Phil is on the way out and has only few students now.
Some departments have already skipped this level altogether. Initially, Sociology and Anthropology was included in one department, but in 1981, when the university also wanted to develop Physical Anthropology, the two twin sciences were separated. However, research interest and methodology overlap between the two departments today.
The university has a fair number of foreign collaborations in the Physical and Life Science areas, where MOU’s have been forged with Japanese and German institutions. Similar collaborations are much less in the humanities and social sciences.

13 people gathered at the meeting with us, organised by Prof. Nunthara and Prof. T.B. Subba (photo to the right) , anthropologist and Dean of the School of Human and Environmental studies. They represented Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and Philosophy. Other disciplines had not been attracted by the call for the SASNET meeting, maybe not properly informed about our ambitions to network among all the sciences.

The main thrust of research at NEHU is socio-cultural and biological variety in the North East. However, most of the research undertaken is donor driven and relates to environment, health and identity. One interesting combination is medicine and physical anthropology, the latter rather than ‘measuring skulls’, engaging in medical examinations of physiological traits of various people in the area. More specifically:
Political science researchers are engaged in a variety of studies relating to tribal development, ethnicity and identity, and conflict patterns (peace studies). They are also working on regional cooperation and globalisation, and on the conflict between India and Pakistan.
Sociology researchers engage in a vast canvass of social changes taking place, a development they both want to monitor and participate in as active agents of change. Historically a turning point in the social transformation here is the conversion to Christianity and the coming of modern education, which is therefore an object of study. More recently, the conflict between indigenous people and settlers, and the development of delinquency and drug addiction among young people catch their attention.
Anthropology researchers, finally, engage in a variety of studies with an attempt at a holistic approach. They identify with the British social anthropological tradition with fieldwork and social interaction and have no major tussle with the sociologists. In fact, both disciplines take an active interest in the kinship system of Meghalaya and its contemporary transformation. Identity and gender studies are also high on the agenda.

A common complaint is that there is lack of money to study the many smaller tribes of the North East. Donor driven research does not allow for that, which means that the task of ethnographic documentation of these groups remains unfinished. Soon much of their special and unique features may have been lost in the ongoing social transformation.
Prof. T.B. Subha from the Anthropology department informed us that he has a collaboration with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, about the study of identity and its political, economic and environmental aspects. As an example, he tells about the hill tribes who settle in the plains and develop a new identity. Besides Prof. Subha has been involved in a long-standing research collaboration with Dr Beppe Karlsson from the Dept. of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University for the past 20 years. In 1997 Beppe wrote his doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology (at Lund University) about the Rabha community in Assam, and more recently they have together edited a book called ”Indigeneity in India”, which was published in the end of 2005 in London.

Researchers we met at NEHU:
• C. Nunthara, Professor of Sociology, Dean of the School of Social Sciences. Research interest: Sociology of North-East India; Resource conflicts between indigenous people and settlers
• T.B. Subba, Professor of Anthropology. Research interest: Identity, culture and development
• Niklesh Kumar, Professor of Sociology. Research interest: Sociology of medicine, occupations and professions
• L.S. Gassan, Professor of Political Science. Research interest: Government & politics in North-East India
• Dr. Elisabeth Laitflang, Dept. of Political science. Research interest: Tribal institutions in North-East India
• Biswajit Mohapatra, Dept. of Political science. Research interest: Conflict & peace, regional cooperation, information technology
• John Kayina, Research scholar in Sociology
• A.K. Nongkynrih, Reader in Sociology. Research interest: Sociology of Development and Sociology of Entrepreneurship and Management. Besides, he is a facilitator of Appreciative Inquiry and Sustainable Livelihood Approaches. He is also a facilitator of Community Development in the North-Eastern region and is associated with many national and international organizations.
• Immanuel Zargosangvaik, Research scholar in Anthropology. Research interest: Development studies
• Lucy Zehol, Reader in Anthropology. Research interest: Theory, women and development
• Berit Fuhrman, Guest lecturer in Social Anthropology (coming from the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany). Research interest: Ritual healing, social structure and kinship
• Valentina Pakyntein, Lecturer in Anthropology. Research interest: Matrilineality & gender
• Xavier Mao, Dept. of Philosophy