Dimapur, July 19: On July 13, key leaderships and individuals such as village headmen, student associations, coal traders, women traders, teachers, border peace committees, and householders from Naga and Assamese villages gathered at Gelekey town for a community gathering and a feast.
Anthropologist Dolly Kikon, a recipient of the Wenner Gren Engaged Anthropology Award, presented her research to the host community. The meeting was held at the Adarsha Bidyapith School in Gelekey town.
Dr. Kikon shared her experiences about doing research in the Assam-Nagaland foothill border between 2006-2011 and highlighted some of her findings. The location of the meeting was both symbolic and strategic. Gelekey is not only an important coal-trading hub and oil exploration site, but also attracts numerous Naga villages from the uplands to the Atkhel haat, a weekly market that takes place in the outskirts of the town.
Sharing her field note, Dr. Kikon stressed on how the foothill border of Assam and Nagaland is one of the most militarized zones in Northeast India. It is marked by the heightened presence of armed forces and extractive resource activities like oil explorations, tea plantations, and coalmines. The entire area is under extra-constitutional regulations like the Disturbed Area Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958).
Particularly sharing the experiences of women traders from Nagaland in the foothill markets known as haats, Dr. Kikon noted how these weekly markets represented the dynamic, multifaceted, and tangled lives of the residents of the villages in the foothills of Assam and Nagaland. Dr. Kikon’s research connected and expanded the dialogue on gender equality, commerce, justice, and peace in the region. She noted the importance of connecting academic research with the ongoing transformations on the ground, and stressed how they can inform each other in meaningful ways.
The community interaction focused on the everyday experiences of the communities-both Naga and Assamese villages–living in this part of the foothill border. The border town of Gelekey town (in Sibsagar district of Assam) shares its boundary with the districts of Longleng and Mokokchung (in Nagaland).
Thus, villagers from Assam, Phom, and Ao villages attended the community gathering and spoke about their experiences and hardships of living in the militarized landscape. Especially, the plight of women traders from Naga villages became an important topic.
Often, Naga women’s contribution – both in monetary and labour terms – to sustain the households in the foothills of Nagaland is ignored. This is symptomatic of the majority of tribal societies in India’s northeast, which continue to exclude women from positions of power and from decision-making forums.
By focusing on the weekly markets that attract the diverse communities living in the Assam-Nagaland foothill border, Dr. Kikon shared how gender relations and the role of the haats (the weekly markets) produced a specific kind of foothill sociality. She explained the ways in which values, taste, politics, taboos, and passions intersected with trade among various societies living in the foothills.
While the weekly markets emerged as a significant part of the political and cultural intermingling between the hills of Nagaland and the plains of Assam, these relations were not always friendly and cordial. Women traders from Nagaland who went down to the foothill haats often faced several hardships and challenges.
Speaking about the lives of the women traders, Dr. Kikon spoke about how she recorded the lives of women cultivators from Nagaland who sold their produce in the foothills. These women constitute an integral part of the weekly markets along the foothills of Assam.
Naga women traders in the foothill ‘haats’ operated in small groups and lacked collective bargaining power to get good prices. Many items like chilies, cherry tomatoes, herbs, and edible flowers were unevenly priced and unorganized. Some of them used measuring scales to weigh the produce while others used plastic cups or their fists to measure the same items.
Majority of the women were regularly harassed, and in some cases cheated inside these market places in Assam. The meeting at Gelekey underlined the importance of addressing and recognizing hardships of people living in the Assam-Nagaland foothill border.
A group of women traders from Anaki-C village also shared their thoughts. They noted how the absence of infrastructure such as roads and markets in the Naga villages made them dependent on the traders and markets in Assam.
Emer Phom, the president of the Phom women’s collective known as the Bedestha Group said that they had to go down to Assam for their basic needs like medicine, food, and clothing. Speaking at the research interaction, Shingnyu Phom, member of the Border Peace Committee from Yonglok village appealed the gathering to maintain peace in the border areas and the importance of engaging in meaningful community dialogue. Adding to the conversations about peace, Imkong Phom, the village headman from Anaki C village thanked the gathering for the conversations and stressed the importance of understanding and respecting each other’s history.
Kunti Borah Gogoi, an Ahom educationist from Gelekey reiterated the importance of maintaining the people to people dialogue and connection in the border area. She said that such community gatherings were important events in bringing together the Naga people and the Ahom community to reaffirm their friendship and kinship as well.
As a gesture of solidarity and love, she presented all Naga guests with a phulongamusa (a traditional Assamese scarf) each.
Rashmi Saikia and Promud Monuranjan sang Nagamese, Assamese, and Hindi songs for the audience, and a group of children performed a Jhumur dance to conclude the meeting on a musical note. After the interaction, the guests were invited to a community feast.
