Rethinking ethnographies on Garo Hills

Abstract

This chapter of the Handbook of Highland Asia analyses how ethnographic knowledge production relating to a geographic area that in the course of the expansion of the colonial state became known as Garo Hills, resulted in the emergence of racialized colonial ethnography in the identification of the Garo ethnic community. Garo Hills received its boundaries as much from it initially being evaded from colonial conquest, as well as by its later inclusion as an exclusionary area. The borders drawn in the early colonial era, have continued to shape ethnographic knowledge production, not in the least since these have also gained significant political clout. As ethnicities are increasingly turning into political communities, these increasingly shape the lives of the people who ethnographers are studying. This holds for ethnographers coming from outside, but presents itself as a reality equally to growing number of ethnographers deriving from the region itself.