Post-Colonial Identity in North-East India: Perceptions and Challenges

Abstract

 The idea of identity has changed in the academic and the popular milieus. Where identity was examined and perceived as an unchanging entity in discourses that have emerged not so far down the timeline, but present ideas of entity have embraced its fluid nature and have applied this perception to look at various research issues. While this paper is not an attempt at any theoretical constructions, it looks at the changing idea of Identity (National, regional and indigenous) amongst the Assamese ethnicity by looking at its portrayal in Assamese literature to understand the changes in attitude, ideas and perceptions of this community towards other ethnicities of the region. However, Assamese which is a regional language provides certain structural constraints in the reception of the changing ideas and perceptions of identity amongst the Assamese community. This paper also makes an attempt to highlight these constraints and analyse its nature and to offer a rationalisation.