Writing Local History Of Apatanis

Abstract

Kure Chambyo or Kure Conflict of 1949, was the first and the last collective resistance put forth by the Tanii community of Arunachal Pradesh ever since the first time an outsider showed up in their valley in 1889. The attack on the political and military outpost in Kure in the southwest of their valley was easily repulsed by well armed Assam Rifle army. It left one injured soldier and three Taniis dead on the spot and some more who succumbed to their injuries later. What followed is the years of repression by Indian military and administrators in nexus with few local agents appointed by the administrators. The event was neither commemorated nor is it re- told in public life. The archival study conducted during this research reveals that while the field level officials had mis- represented the event in official documents, further the file available in National Archival of India in New Delhi showed the missing alternative pages of the report. There is no available report or any account of the event or the copy of the same report in any of the regional or state Archives- in Dispur and Itanagar. The ethnographers like Critoph Von Furer Haimendorf and Ursula Graham Bower who followed the Tanii since 1940s and wrote extensively about the Tanii, maintained a complete silence on the event. The only published academic work by Stuart Blackburn which talks about the event, locates the event in a wrong time and blames the colonial administrators for the uprising. He also does not talks of the oppression that followed as an aftermath of the event. Whereas, the fact is, that the event culminated very much in independent India and left several painful memories. However, the most challenging aspect of writing the local history of the event was in gathering the voices and narratives. Not only that there are very few people with first hand experience of the Kure Chambyo survived today, but also that many of them were not willing to speak about it. Those who spoke and shared have changed their perspective over time - or at least that is what they tried to impress upon this researcher- in the context of intense socialization and allegiance building process by the state. It is only through more deeper and longer management with their memory recollection and re- telling exercise that one is able to see the layers of meaning those narratives were trying to generate. Many spoke through their silences and many through their retracting and disclaiming strategies. The common thread connecting the narratives was that of sense of pain, fear, shame and dispassion. This thesis looked at these layers of meanings and narratives which were constantly co- created by various internal (socio- cultural) and external (power political) factors. This thesis argues that there are multiple authors who are influencing the speaking of the narratives of Kure Chambyo, and thus, these needs to be stated out or brought forth. As a result of this complex reality of past that is being narrated by people located in present, the study concludes that the templates of past, their experience, remembering and telling is ever shifting. The oral is as complex as the written. This thesis also concludes by asserting for a newer methodological framework that is required to write the history of a community which relies extensively upon an oral repository of their memories. Through an analysis of the oral stories and the oral histories, this thesis identified specific elements of oral tradition practices such as the use of tropes, mnemonics, art and lived experiences- through which Taniis sustains their memory, history and knowledge of their identity. However, the events which are more recent such as the Kure Chambyo event, which are not commemorated, needs more empowering and people centric methodology newline