Abstract
In September 2000, the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Front (RPF), in its fight for a sovereign country, imposed a ban on Hindi movies and songs in the borderland province Manipur in India’s Northeast. Recognizing the RPF propaganda as exemplifying an ethnonationalism amongst the Meetei people in Manipur, this chapter addresses the politics of ethnicity, territorial belonging, and nationalism. Unlike other works grounded in the physical landscapes of borderland societies and their connectivity with neighboring communities and countries, this chapter mostly focuses on the symbolic and mental counterparts of the physical landscapes or simply the mindscape and the mediascape of place-based ethnic belonging and its concurrent disconnectivity and connectivity with the Indian state. It shows that while the postcolonial Indian state solidifies its territorial sovereignty over Northeast India through border making, it also enters a tug of war with recalcitrant ethnic groups in the cultural arenas, such as the entertainment world, laden with contending representations of local ethnic belongings and state territorial sovereignty. This chapter is thus concerned with the tension between what the author calls the two divergent “identity geographies”: namely, the Manipuri sense of their ancestral land and the Indian state’s territorial sovereignty over the Northeast.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.