Mamang Dai and Identity Politics

Introduction: The issue of identity in the postcolonial context is a problematic concept which has been further complicated by continuous inclusion of ideas like hybrid nation, constitution of countries with various cultural diversities, migration, transculturation, and other ramifications of the postcolonial phenomenon..The question of identity in the postcolonial world emerged obviously due to the sense of urgency felt on the part of the postcolonial writers to construct their own identity and share experiences from their perspective. Often times their identity appears to be instrumental in accentuating their discourse. In Mamang Dai’s creative writings, the politics of identity has been manifested in myriads of ways. Post colonialism: The term postcolonial refers to the era when colonies of European countries were emancipated from the long colonial rule. Bill Ashcroft and et al in The Empire Writes Back, defines, ‘ more than three quarter of the people living in the world today have their lives shaped by the experience of colonialism.’ After achieving freedom, the people of those colonies were still in dilemma and confusion about their culture and identity. Certainly, they attained political power, but cultural hegemony was still there. In a passive manner, the colonialists still had the control over the culture of the colonized. As a result, the colonized person’s own cultural identity was conflicted with the colonizer’s cultural impact. When a resistance to such cultural invasion formed, it led the generation on a quest to search for their true identity. Such a generation, which was a cultural hybrid experienced identity crisis. Bill Ashcroft and et al vindicated the fact and remark, ‘ all postcolonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination and independence has not solved this problem.’ In this context, he also added that, ‘the binary of local and global problematize national, racial, and ethnic formulations of identity.’ Gradually an ethinc conflict arose among the marginalized and tribal communities to achieve recognition and equal status to the other prominent communities. Postcolonial Identity: In the words of David Hume, ‘We are nothing but a bundle of or collections of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, are in perpetual flux and movement.’ Peter Weinreich explains, ‘ A person’s identity is defined as the totality of one’s self construal in which how one construes oneself as one was in the past and how one construes oneself as one aspires to be in the future.’ According to him, ‘ One’s ethnic identity is defined as the part of the totality of one’s self construal made up of those dimensions that express the continuity between one’s construal past ancestry and one’s future aspirations in relation to ethnicity.’ Jamaican cultural theorist and sociologist, Stuart Hall believed that identity of a person is not a finished product, but an ongoing product of history and culture. In his Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Hall asserts that, ‘Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic, as we think, perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, with the new cultural practices, we should think , instead of identity as a production, which is never complete. Postcolonial identity incorporates myriads of aspects of an individual in the form of race, culture, class, gender, origin, and ethnicity and so on. Edward Said, in Intellectuals in the Post Colonial World, articulates the fact that, ‘ Most of the postcolonial writers bear their past within them as scars of humiliating wounds, as investigation for different practices as potentially received visions of the past tending towards a future.’ Postcolonial Poetics: Post colonial poetics and its narrative techniques and structures shape the imaginative understanding of the postcolonial world. It includes discussions on boundaries, cross cultural communication, subversions and transcending the margin. It also raises pressing questions about, resistance, trauma, and returning to the roots. Post colonial poetics aimed to destroy metanarrative formulated by the colonizers. Such writings also take the resort to various narrative strategies and language to ensure decolonization. Features of the Literature of the North Eastern states of India:The writers of the North Eastern region are politically aware as they had to witness the violence and bloodshed ensuing the conflict between the state and the government. Literature, as the French critic Hippolyte Taine declares, does not arise out of the air, but it is conditioned by what he calls milieu – the physical environment but also political and social conditions.This political awareness has been strongly expressed in their work when they addressed the issues of identity and ethnicity. Linguistic colonialism never diminished the importance of the role of their oral traditions, Instead, they used the acquired language to address the common issues of diverse ethnic groups. The cultures which reflected ingrained colonial consciousness of shared ideas, feelings and beliefs are also shaped by colonial impact, although this impact helped to re-forge their identities. Among tribal communities, where cultures used to be transmitted orally, remembrance is the key element.Folk tradition provides the writers with a range of themes and imagery from customs, places,rituals, names inextricably linked with myths and legends that creates distinctive features of their literature. Oral traditions empower them by offering new awareness of creativity and new language of expression.Ecopolitics is also an important feature used by the North Eastern writers tobring politics into the centre of investigation on ecological issues and problems. How did Dai used politics of identity in the postcolonial poetics? Mamang Dai is one of the prominent writers of the North-East region in India. She belongs to the Adi tribe community of Arunachal Pradesh. In her lifetime, she witnessed the political unrest and insurgency and the resultant violence, death and sufferings of the common people. It was a region where a continuous tension and conflict between the state and the central government traumatized the people. There were immigrants residing in the community residing in the province, who initiated insurrection and often times it was brutally suppressed. Being a resident of Pasighat, Dai was aware of the scenario and had witnessed violence and bloodshed. The majority of the Adi tribe followed a religion named Donyi polo. People who follow this religion worship deities like Doying Bote, Gumin Soyin, who are mainly associated with various natural objects and act as the protector or guardians of food crops, rain, home etc.People of the Adi tribe follow an oral tradition where the religious observances are led by a shaman called, Miri.The language they use is a non-script language. Language is a vehicle for articulating the growing crisis in an underdeveloped society which is trying to evolve ways to cope with the demands of modernism. The politics of speech has interfered with the relationship between writer and the reading public. Linguistic colonialism proved to be detrimental to the production of creative literature in the tribal languages .It is obvious that a writer faces difficulty, while translating the images, symbols, idioms of his/her native speech into a new language and in that process he/she often fails to grasp the reality. In Mamang Dai’s case the problem of language was very complicated. Firstly, because, she belonged to the Adi tribe who followed an oral tradition and their language was a non-script language. Secondly, during the procedure of nation building, it became difficult to select a particular language for the province, as the people of the region spoke diverse languages. In such a scenario, the most convenient and pragmatic way to solve the problem, was to reject the role of language in formulating cultural identity and use another language, like English, as a medium of communication. But, the people still preferred to remember their glorious past in an acquired language. Therefore, Dai records the ancient legends of the Adi tribe, preserved in her collective unconscious. She uses the English language with lyrical softness emulating the essence of the evangelical chanting of an Adi rhapsodist. Her vibrant use of the language revives the memories of the customs and rituals. She has managed to transcend the linguistic barrier to create a literature of her own by brilliant use of language. If we analyse the poet’s identity, it appears to be multifaceted, as it includes her tribal identity, which is her cultural or ethnic identity and her female identity. Dai wants to re- emphasize her ethnic identity by celebrating legends, mythology, tradition and religious beliefs through her creative writings. Ancient myths, tribal folklores, recur in her writings as well as her affinity towards her ethnicity has been invigorated by the extensive use of symbols like mountains, rivers, valleys, the stars and the sun and the moon. In Small Towns and the River, she writes- ‘only rituals are permanent.’ Dai’s nostalgia for the tribal tradition is also reverberates in lines like-‘Looking at the sad wreath of tuber rose/ or ‘A shrine of happy pictures/marks the days of childhood.’ She conflates antique tales,myths of her ancient tradition which also underlines her concerns about environmental protection. In her interview with Jaydeep Sarangi, she reaffirms –‘ certainly, I am influenced by the oral narratives. Knowing the stories give ma a sense of identity.It inspires my writings.- after all it is a world of myth and imagination….My response to myth / stories is akin to a quest.’ Dai’s narrative strategy articulates the issue of her ethnic identity, to use it for decolonization. The binary of the local and the global is also evident here as, in a manner, Dai eschews her global identity to valorize her ethnic identity. In Small Towns and the River, she mentions about the ‘land of the fish and the stars.’ She also writes-‘When the soul rises/it will walk into the golden east/into the house of the sun.’ Her memories of tribal tradition resounds when she writes-‘ we all want to walk with the gods.’ As her ethnic identity emerges to the surface, her global identity of a journalist or a socialist takes a back seat. The rejection of her global identity can also be interpreted as her resistance to the influence of globalization, or more precisely resisting the invasion of modernization which can also be counted as a narrative strategy on her part to restrain neocolonialism. In Mamang Dai’s writings, her ethnic, cultural, tribal identity emerges as she struggles to emphasize her deep rooted connection to her culture. In her narrative, the struggle to glorify her tribal ethnicity becomes evident. Dai’s narrative strategy evidently valorizes her tribal or ethnic identity, and produces a decolonizing effect. In one of her interviews, she says, ‘I feel attached to the land, its features, rivers, the stories and villages. I am also looking at our narratives and myths.’ Dai also employs autoethnography as a narrative regime by which she validates the Adi community’s epistemic agency and reclaims the human right towards a cultural self determination. Auto ethnography has been also used as it narrates culture through life experiences of the self.