An Insight into Arunachal Pradesh

No..it’s not just another forum or community as in Orkut or other networking sites that I am referring to. But I am referring to an effort by Rome Mele to bring in together Arunachali under one platform to share their views on Arunachal. And it indeed, is a good effort – I feel.

Going about two years down the line, when I just started blogging, there was hardly any Arunachal specific blog; well atleast not in my knowledge But now, things have changed; when I look around, I feel happy to find blogs by people [from Arunachal], sharing their views on issues of Arunachal, people trying to highlight ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ of Arunachal Pradesh and people trying to bring in the change, which I feel, is a welcome change. And Arunachal Forum is such an effort.

What is Arunachal Forum?

It is a ‘group blog’ (though right now, I presume there is only one author) where the members share their views on issues pertaining to Arunachal Pradesh or in AF’s word ‘Share and Talk-Arunachal‘ and get response/feedback from their readers.

Why join Arunachal Forum as a team member?

Well, in Rome’s own words

This is a healthy start I would rather say, when its about making your views about Arunachal heard. You will be co-managing this blog along with others and hence the good thing that, you don’t necessarily have to post every day or in a fixed routine. Ya we hate that !

So, it would be different than managing your personal blog, where there is this pain to regularly update your blog to keep it going. Here in Arunachal Forum, you don’t necessarily need to. Besides, there is this chance of being getting paid for your efforts, through the revenue generated through Adsense

How do I become a member?

Well, just drop in a line to Rome at rome[dot]mele[at]mail[dot]vinove[dot]com or romele26[at]gmail[dot]com or give him a call at +919953653646. Your account will be created and permission given to start blogging….Happy blogging..

From the 23rd to the 25th May 2008 some 30 scholars gathered in Berlin, Germany for an international conference on “Origins and Migrations Among Tibeto-Burman Speakers of the Extended Eastern Himalaya”, which was organized by Prof. Toni Huber of the Humboldt University, Institute for Asian and African Studies and Prof. Stuart Blackburn of SOAS, London University. The scholars covered areas such as eastern Nepal, Yunnan Province in Southwest China, Burma, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. Particularly for those international scholars working on Arunachal it was the most amazing setting of having the few people working on this remote area gathered in one place. Many met each other for the first time in person.

Prof. Stuart Blackburn from the University of London delivered a lecture on Apatani Ideas and Idioms of Origins. He pointed out that their thinking on origin is dominated by concepts of genealogy and cosmogony rather than geography saying that: “Apatanis really do not think of themselves primarily as migrants from another place but rather as descendents of a particular ancestor [Abo Tani].” The central concept in doing so however is that of the process of differentiation from formlessness to the formation of the natural as well as the social world.

Professor Toni Huber from Humboldt University in Berlin spoke about his fieldwork data on “Micro-Migrations and Our Understanding of Origins: A Case Study from the Upper Subansiri Region of the Eastern Himalaya”. “How do people actually move?” Toni Huber tries to give some answer to this question for a particular area of the Upper Subansiri River valley and a particular time, the 20th century. What he shows by means of historical records and personal interviews of a large number of local people is that whenever people move for reasons such as conflicts or bamboo flowering they also interact with the people they come in contact with and even take wives from there. Adding to that some clans are explicitly exogamous and marry outside their own community. Consequently there is a high mix of people. However he also shows something else very interesting. Those movements are not just downwards along the rivers but also upwards depending on the particular cause for migrations as well as the direction from which the jeopardy comes. Consequently the very widespread belief of a unidirectional migration from Tibet to the South might prove to be much more complicated.

Further, Dr. Alex Aisher from the University of Sussex, England spoke about “Migration Narratives and the Environmental History of the Nyishi Tribe in Arunachal Pradesh” and Mark Post from La Trobe University, Australia gave a presentation on “The Language, Culture, Environment and Origins of Proto-Tani Speakers”. From the Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh Dr. Sarit Chaudhuri delivered a lecture on “Oral Narratives of Origin and Migration and Construction of Identities by the Tibeto-Burman Tribes of a Frontier state of India”. Kerstin Grothmann from Humboldt University reported about her recent fieldwork as did Atsuko Ibata a Japanese student from Delhi University, both are working on societies in central Arunachal Pradesh.

The author is MA student, Department of Anthropology at Heidelberg University, Germany

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