If you have grown up in mainland India, chances are the first images that come to your mind when someone says “Northeast” are scenic hills, Momo, and maybe a news headline about a protest, inter-community conflicts or perhaps a border clash with the neighbouring countries. The missing pictures here are the everyday lives, the tea stall conversations in Kohima, the lullabies sung in Mizo, the love stories set in the valleys of Arunachal Pradesh, and the kitchen table quarrels in tea estate houses in Assam. The reason so many of us have never “seen” these lives is simple: we have never really read them.
Literature, more than any map or history book, decides who belongs in our imagination, and when the shelves in most Indian bookstores barely carry voices from the Northeast, the silence begins to speak louder than any story could. That silence is one of the quiet engines of ‘othering’, the feeling that “they” are somehow different from ‘us’. That “Sense of Othering” is not always cruel. Sometimes it is a polite smile, a curious question, “Oh, where are you really from?” as if Gangtok or Aizawl were not part of the same country. It is the way a stranger in the capital might compliment your “good Hindi” as though it were an affluent skill. But these everyday moments are fed by something deeper; we do not grow up with Northeastern characters in our textbooks, novels, or films. And when you do not grow up with familiar stories, imagining them as different, distant, or even foreign is easier.
The Northeast’s literary invisibility has long roots. In colonial times, the British treated the region as an exhibit rather than a cultural equal, a storehouse of resources such as tea, oil and coal. Later, policies like the Inner Line Permit (ILP) kept it administratively separate, and the literary circuits of the plains had little room for writers from the hills. Post-independence, the neglect did not vanish. Big publishing houses remained in the metros, seldom navigating here and there, deciding which stories really “sell.” Assamese literature, rich and centuries old, got lost in translation. Folktales from Ao, Mizo, Khasi, Bodo, Nyishi, and Apatani tribes stayed locked in their languages, cherished within communities but invisible to the rest of India.
The Impending Stereotype
In the absence of authentic and varied voices, the mainland imagination is quite limited. The “Northeast” becomes an idea of beautiful mountains, weird food, music festivals and unique-looking people, or worse news flashes about insurgency, conflict and unrest. Without the balance of everyday stories, novels about teenage crushes in Meghalaya, poetry about rivers in Arunachal, dramas about politics in Tripura, the stereotypes often feel like the whole truth. It is not just about misrepresentation. It is about an absence so deep that people fill it with whatever scraps of imagery they can find.
Why Literature Matters: The Evanescing of Oral Traditions
One of the great tragedies here is the slow vanishing of the Northeast’s oral literature. Imagine losing the folktale your grandmother told you about a girl named Tejimola or Bordoisila, the goddess of storms. These tales have been passed from generation to generation for centuries, carrying not just moral lessons but philosophy, gender roles, and ecological wisdom of the locals. Oral traditions need voices, and these voices need listeners. As younger generations move to cities and as stories go untranslated, these cultural treasures are getting lost, not just from the Northeast but from the shared memory of India.
When you see yourself in the stories a country tells, you feel like you ‘belong’. When you do not, it sends an unspoken message: you are on the sidelines. For mainland readers, the absence of Northeast literature means never having to confront the region’s complexity. It can mean writing into an endless void for Northeastern writers, unsure if anyone is listening beyond their state borders. For young Northeastern readers like myself, it can mean growing up without books that sound like home.
The role of publishers and books is notable as well. These esteemed publishing houses need to move beyond hollow words. A single collection of “Stories from the Northeast” is not nearly enough. Instead, the region’s writers should appear in the same catalogues, review columns, and literary conversations as authors from anywhere else in the country. School textbooks can also play an important role. An eighth grader reading an English book where a Khasi folktale is written beside Ruskin Bond’s work, or an Assamese short story is taught alongside R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days. From the edges to the centre, the actual work is not confined to translation and distribution, though both are crucial. It is about changing how we think of “Indian literature.” India’s literary core should be as wide as its borders. A story about the jungles in Nagaland should have as much claim to that core as a novel set in Delhi or Kolkata.
The Broader Picture
The “othering” of the Northeast is not just about food, language or looks. It is about stories or the lack of them. When an entire part of the country rarely appears in the books we read, we somehow end up treating it like an extension and not an integral part. If we truly want to bridge the wide gap, we need more than political will or economic integration. We need the affinity of literature, which lets you imagine someone’s childhood, kitchen smells, and humour. In the end, nations are not just built on borders; they are built on the stories we are willing to tell, and the ones we are willing to listen to.
I am so so sooo much moved by each line of thought and the way words are weaved to perfection. The highlight for me is definitely how beautifully you’ve unpacked the highly underrated power of literature in preserving the culture, traditions and values of our very own land and our very own people which is constantly been overlooked due to the trap of westernization of anything and everything without realizing that certain things are valuable for its legacy and for its traditional touch. Our folklore, our recipes, our folk songs..etc etc..needs to be embraced and endorsed proudly..our things as eternal..not outdated..can never be.
Thank you for giving such a strong expression to this topic.
Loved it!
The Northeast region of India has remained relatively separated from the rest of the country for various historical, political, and geographical reasons. During colonial times, the British viewed the Northeast primarily as a storehouse of minerals and natural resources rather than as an integral part of the nation. Unfortunately, after independence, Indian political leaders also did not put consistent efforts into integrating the region. Due to the difficult hilly terrain and lack of connectivity, leaders visited the area far less compared to other regions of India. Even today, poor infrastructure and inadequate railway connectivity reflect this neglect—for example, Sikkim and Mizoram still have minimal railway links, and many key districts across the Northeast lack direct train connectivity.
India is a secular nation where every region has its own unique identity shaped by people’s interests, histories, and past influences. In the Northeast, this uniqueness is enriched by the presence of numerous tribal communities such as the Nagas, Mizos, Bodos, Meiteis, Kukis, Tripuris, Garos, and many others, most of whom belong to the Tibeto-Burman family. Just as South India, Central India, and North India carry their distinct cultural imprints, the Northeast holds a culture that is deeply rooted in tribal traditions, languages, and lifestyles. However, the interaction between the Northeast and the rest of India has been relatively limited, further widening the cultural gap.
Another important factor in this separation is the absence of adequate representation of Northeast Indian literature in mainstream Indian discourse. The voices, histories, and cultural narratives of the region are often underrepresented in school curricula, popular media, and literary spaces. This lack of exposure contributes to the “othering” of the people of the Northeast, making them seem distant or unfamiliar to the rest of the country. When stories, folktales, and lived experiences of Northeastern communities are not widely shared, it reinforces stereotypes and prevents mutual understanding.
To truly integrate the Northeast with the rest of India, there must be greater focus on improving physical connectivity, increasing political and social engagement, and most importantly, amplifying the region’s literature and cultural expressions. Only by valuing and mainstreaming the voices of the Northeast can the barriers of “othering” be broken and a more inclusive national identity be fostered.
Really loved this piece, Meghna. You’ve captured so well how the Northeast feels “missing” from our bookshelves and classrooms, and how that silence creates distance. The part about oral traditions fading really hit me, it’s not just stories we lose, but entire ways of seeing the world. Totally agree that we need Northeastern voices to be part of mainstream literature, not as a token, but as a natural part of India’s story.