parrying the other

Parry's account builds on previous works such as that of Shakespear (see previous post). Without doubt, these accounts preserve for us data that is informative and accessible where other such written sources were unavailable. Nonetheless, critical restrospection must delve beyond their face values to attempt—speculative, no doubt—at conjuring backgrounds that are broader, synchronistic, and analytical in order to account for the discursive regimes underlying their narrative constructions. Though sounding more esperanto than plainly communicative, such projects might inform and instruct the stories and narratives we make about both ourselves and our proximate "Others."

N. E. Parry, A Monograph on Lushai Customs and Ceremonies. Shillong: The Assam Government Press, 1928.

This 130-paged account of customs and cultural procedures dealing with folk in the Lushai district along with a glossary of colloquial terms replays the western knower-native as object binary. Parry is clear on why he undertakes this compilation: it will be of use to officers and chiefs engaged in the administration of justice in the district (Introduction). Precolonial social configurations were altered to accommodate allies in the Lushai wars. “Vacant” lands were allotted to such allies who then constituted a new set of landed chiefs in addition to the chiefs from precolonial times. Texted and readily accessible knowledge seemed necessary because of the reshuffling of land related practices and chieftaincy, their attendant privileges and also modes of restitution in cases of infractions on these privileges.

Although the title of the book suggests a compilation of the Lushais’s modes of social organization and structure, colonial agency is privileged and inscribed as the final arbitrator in the execution of administrative procedures. For instance, in describing the position and role of the chief, his authorization of a new hamlet requires ratification by the Superintendent (4), and also the prior requirement of the Superintendent’s permission when compelled to shift village sites owing to the exigencies of cultivation (5). Other customs and ceremonies documented include marriage customs, divorce, inheritance, sacrifices and feasts. In writing such varied and previously un-documented practices, the resultant written history is privileged with an ontological power to provide assumptions on how the real social and natural worlds are constituted; and hence may also be administered.

Reminiscent of what Bernard Cohn identified as the “historiographic modality”[Colonialism and It’s Forms of Knowledge, 5] in the colonial mode of knowledge production, the collection of data in Lushai Customs codifies and reinstitutes the ruling practices and customs of previously non-literate community. Effectively, the knowledge of the history and practices of the Lushai community provided the resources for building the colonial state.