‘Savaging’ the ‘illegible’? And other questions against ‘Zomia’ — from Zo country. скачать в хорошем качестве

‘Savaging’ the ‘illegible’? And other questions against ‘Zomia’ — from Zo country.

Tawnsuanlal Valte, PhD Scholar, University of Hyderabad. Abstract: In conventional historiography, the highlands that constitute the Indo-Myanmar borderlands have been categorized and treated as a ‘Frontier’. More recently, the interventions of scholars like Schendel and Scott have popularized concept-metaphors like ‘Zomia’. The former reduced the ‘frontier’ inhabitants to a ‘state of nature’, of savagery, primitiveness and of being outside civilization/state. Scott inverted this by attributing highlands as ‘zones of refuge’ from the interstate wars, periodical displacements, corvee labour, taxation, etc. Here, ‘Zomia’ represented a political choice, to stay outside the state, rather than being primitive or ignorant of the state. By centering the perspective from 19th century (1800-1900) ‘Zo country’, my argument here is in two parts, or more specifically, in probing two interrelated questions: To question the legitimacy of ‘highlanders are stateless’ assumption that both dominant narratives follow - Is ‘savage-ness’ a question of legibility? Are there alternate ways of understanding pre-early colonial highland polities? What implications might they have on contemporary understandings of Indo-Myanmar borderlands?