"Living & Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)" seminar by Dr. Rakhee Kalita at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 2nd December 2011
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Event Details : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to ‘Living and Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)’ seminar by Dr. Rakhee Kalita, Cotton College, Guwahati.
Assam’s encounter with political violence in the recent past is synonymous with the thirty- year insurgency led by the United Liberation Front of Assam( ULFA) in which its youth and significant sections of civil society have directly and indirectly found themselves enmeshed. That the unrest swept into its wake the Assamese middle class and, more notably, a band of young women from semiurban and rural backgrounds is a reminder that the idea of ‘freedom’ and whatever it connoted in the ideology of ULFA did stoke and impact the imagination of the people to some extent. The present paper looks into the peculiar phenomenon of female participation in armed violence and how the gender dynamic played itself out through the ensuing rise and fall of the rebel outfit and its articulation of a separate destiny for the state in its uneasy relationship with the powers at the center. And while the insurgency over a period created its own set of heroes and martyrs it perhaps needs to be noted that the women of ULFA have remained vague and peripheral and sometimes an embarrassment to both the outfit as well as the government in the context of addressing their basic grievances and in terms of rehabilitating them in the time of negotiated peace and conflict resolution. I argue that a probe into the woman’s question in ULFA’s armed struggle is necessary to recover some of the voices of these mostly invisible women that throw up important issues regarding the actual workings of power and hierarchy within the organisation against its aspiration towards equality and freedom.
Speaker : Dr Rakhee Kalita is Associate Professor of English at Cotton College, (Gauhati University), Guwahati, and has been keenly involved in conflict studies in the northeast of India. With several publications to her credit and linkages with various institutions and research groups in the area of gender, development and contemporary concerns, she is currently researching the role of women in Assam’s movement of armed violence and resistance. Her major interest is Cultural Studies and she teaches courses in Literary/postcolonial theory, Race and South Asian literature at the graduate and post graduate level, besides supervising PhD programs in Northeast Indian literary history, gender and diaspora cultures.
Related Events : Talks
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library ( NMML ), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Details : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to ‘Living and Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)’ seminar by Dr. Rakhee Kalita, Cotton College, Guwahati.
Assam’s encounter with political violence in the recent past is synonymous with the thirty- year insurgency led by the United Liberation Front of Assam( ULFA) in which its youth and significant sections of civil society have directly and indirectly found themselves enmeshed. That the unrest swept into its wake the Assamese middle class and, more notably, a band of young women from semiurban and rural backgrounds is a reminder that the idea of ‘freedom’ and whatever it connoted in the ideology of ULFA did stoke and impact the imagination of the people to some extent. The present paper looks into the peculiar phenomenon of female participation in armed violence and how the gender dynamic played itself out through the ensuing rise and fall of the rebel outfit and its articulation of a separate destiny for the state in its uneasy relationship with the powers at the center. And while the insurgency over a period created its own set of heroes and martyrs it perhaps needs to be noted that the women of ULFA have remained vague and peripheral and sometimes an embarrassment to both the outfit as well as the government in the context of addressing their basic grievances and in terms of rehabilitating them in the time of negotiated peace and conflict resolution. I argue that a probe into the woman’s question in ULFA’s armed struggle is necessary to recover some of the voices of these mostly invisible women that throw up important issues regarding the actual workings of power and hierarchy within the organisation against its aspiration towards equality and freedom.
Speaker : Dr Rakhee Kalita is Associate Professor of English at Cotton College, (Gauhati University), Guwahati, and has been keenly involved in conflict studies in the northeast of India. With several publications to her credit and linkages with various institutions and research groups in the area of gender, development and contemporary concerns, she is currently researching the role of women in Assam’s movement of armed violence and resistance. Her major interest is Cultural Studies and she teaches courses in Literary/postcolonial theory, Race and South Asian literature at the graduate and post graduate level, besides supervising PhD programs in Northeast Indian literary history, gender and diaspora cultures.
Related Events : Talks
"Living & Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)" seminar by Dr. Rakhee Kalita at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 2nd December 2011
!["Living & Partly Living: Notions of Freedom, the Politics of Violence and the Women of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)" seminar by Dr. Rakhee Kalita at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 2nd December 2011]()
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Friday, December 02, 2011
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