Displaced Colonial Archives of Northeastern India: Ethnographic Documentation by Colonial Administrators 1 0

Abstract

Northeast India's indigenous communities were influenced by the complex power relations, exchange of cultures and socio-political developments during the colonial period. Inspired by antiquarian interest the British officials and ethnographers began to understand and record the region's distinct cultural heritage, indigenous rituals, agricultural practices and social systems.
This ethnographic documentation sometimes reflected imperial viewpoints and intentions, though it provided information.
Displaced archives are a serious obstacle to modern historiography and cultural studies since they are physically and contextually fractured. Local access and research are hampered by the migration of these documents to institutions in UK. Furthermore, a critical re-examination of the interpretive frameworks utilised by colonial ethnographers is necessary. Digitising these
archives would facilitate interdisciplinary approaches to researching the history of various communities in Northeastern India and assist academia worldwide, particularly in Asia. This research will attempt to understand the process of displacement and fragmentation of archival records on Northeast India and its impact on historical research. It would also attempt to analyse the methods of archiving undertaken in the past, the documentation content, and their influence on the history of Northeastern India. It looks at the procedures used by British administrators, the kind and the extent of their records. The influence of the colonial archives can be seen in the historical understanding of Northeastern India. The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of the past of the Northeastern region by examining the colonial documents and their historical and contemporary implications and emphasise on the current initiatives to recover and reframe these lost archives and reinterpret these documents to
investigate the nature of the displaced colonial archives