Research and Teaching Northeastern India with Prof. Sanghamitra Misra

In this episode we talk to Dr. Sanghamitra Misra Professor of History at Delhi University. We discuss the possibilities and limitations of research and teaching on north eastern India. In the podcast Dr. Misra highlights the importance historicising colonial tropes and pernicious legacies of primitivism, violence, space, and identity. Her new work focusses on the 18th century and shows how Garo communities are "forged at the anvil of resistance" to the East India Company. She raises a crucial point in this discussion about why so called "hill tribes" were not referred to as peasants in colonial records? Her recent articles and upcoming book elaborate upon the ways through which cotton producing Garo communities were sequestered as hill tribes and their history of agricultural production erased from contemporary memory.Her first book Making a Borderland : The Politics of Space and Identity in Colonial Northeastern India is in its third reprint. The second highly anticipated book is forthcoming. In this podcast our discussion covers old and new research, and a large time period spanning mid 18th century to the formation of the 6th Schedule in the 20th century. We look forward to the second part of this conversation once the new book is published.