"Shapawng Yawng Manau Poi”: The Annual Festival as a Site of Re-asserting Ethnic Identity

Abstract

Festival is one of the significant aspects in human history. Every community celebrates their own festivals with great pomp and show. "Shapawng Yawng Manau Poi” is the annual festival of the Singphos.  This paper intends to identify the said festival as a site of re-asserting ethnic identity of Singphos, especially focusing on how it serves as a place of meeting with the "relatives” from their place of origin and how the event performance inter-related with drawing the lines of being distinct and different. In its overall analysis, the paper sums up that being a site of relating with the origin, drawing the lines of being distinctive, and at the same time being a site of promotion of that distinctive ethnicity, the festival has a great importance in social mobility of Singphos in the current setting. The data collected for the study includes interviews with participants of the festival and a collection of promotional materials (invitations, advertisements, news release and web materials etc.).