The Camera as Witness A Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India

The Camera as Witness lifts the veil off the little known world of Mizoram and challenges - through unpublished photographs - core assumptions in the writing of India's national history. The pictures in the book establish the transformation of this society and the many forms of modernity that have emerged in it. It emphasises how 'indigenous people' in Mizoram used cameras to produce distinct modern identities and represent themselves to themselves, consistently contesting outsiders' imaginations of them as isolated, backward and in need of upliftment. The authors demonstrate how mostly amateur photographers used visual images to document a historical trajectory of heady change and continual reinvention, producing distinct modern identities. By virtue of its use of visual sources and its engagement with a wide range of important discourses, this book is relevant for students, historians, social scientists, political activists and general readers looking for a fresh approach to Northeast India.

List of figures; List of maps; Glossary; Acknowledgements; Part I. Becoming Mizo: 1. Introduction; 2. Coming into view: the first images; 3. Adjusting Mizo culture; 4. Domesticating a new religion; 5. Getting educated; 6. Controlling the hills; 7. The trouble of travel; 8. First stirrings of the market economy; 9. Mizos in the World Wars; 10. Mizo visual sensibilities; Part II. Mizoram in the New India: 11. The long goodbye; 12. The emergence of popular politics; 13. Mizoram and the new Indian order; 14. Mizoram comes to Delhi; 15. The search for authenticity at home; 16. Mizo style: cowboys at heart; Part III. Visions of Independence: 17. Famine and revolt; 18. The Mizoram government at home – and in East Pakistan; 19. The Mizoram government – in Burma, China and Bangladesh; 20. A state and its minorities; Part IV. Mizo Modernities: 21. Being cool: the music scene; 22. Being cool: sharp dressers; 23. Studio modernity; 24. Conclusion; Acknowledgement of copyrights and sources; Bibliography; Index.

Joy L. K. Pachuau is Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has contributed chapters in books like Portuguese Presence in India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Religion in Indian History: Ideas, Practice, and Chance and Chin: History Culture and Identity. Her articles have been published in Studies in History and Eastern Quarterly.
Willem van Schendel is Professor of Modern Asian History, University of Amsterdam. He is the author of A History of Bangladesh, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia and The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland, to name a few. He has curated several photography exhibitions, including the acclaimed 'Mizo Modernities'; Festival of the Northeast – Cultures of Peace.