2026-06-27 –, Room 208 (Seats 40)
Abstract (250 words)
The Indo-Myanmar frontier, historically a porous cultural and commercial corridor, has undergone profound transformation in the contemporary era often described as “post-globalization.” While global connectivity has widened through digital communication and transnational economic flows, physical borders in South Asia have simultaneously hardened due to intensifying geopolitical anxieties, ethnic conflicts, and strategic rivalries. This presentation draws on oral histories collected from Naga, Mizo, and Kuki-Chin communities to examine how borderland residents interpret and experience these shifts. For generations, these communities engaged in free and routine movement across what is now India and Myanmar, sustaining kinship networks, barter trade, shared festivals, and ritual landscapes that predated modern territorial boundaries. Their narratives reveal a layered interplay between memory and geopolitics: recollections of shared ancestry and seasonal migration coexist with lived realities of fencing projects, militarized checkpoints, refugee flows from post-coup Myanmar, and restrictions on traditional livelihoods. These testimonies capture both loss and adaptation, illustrating how long-standing cultural continuities persist amid new forms of surveillance and securitization.
By foregrounding lived experiences, the presentation highlights how global disconnections—driven by political instability, China’s growing strategic presence, insurgency dynamics, and India’s evolving border governance—shape everyday life in the frontier. Ultimately, it argues that oral histories not only illuminate the human dimensions of geopolitical transformation but also challenge mainstream state-centric narratives of borders, sovereignty, and globalization’s uneven retreat in Northeast India. Through memory, border communities offer alternative understandings of mobility, belonging, and regional interconnectedness in a world where borders simultaneously close and global influences deepen.
Indo-Myanmar Borderlands; Oral History; Naga, Mizo, Kuki-Chin Communities; Post-Globalization; Geopolitics; Border Studies; Northeast India; Migration; Militarization; Refugees; China–India Relations; Memory Studies; Borderland Communities; South Asia.
I am a doctorate and researcher in oral history with a passion for uncovering and preserving the stories of individuals and communities. My academic and research training, in conducting in-depth interviews and collecting personal narratives, has developed a unique ability to listen actively and empathetically, drawing out rich and nuanced stories from participants. My interdisciplinary research methodology brings together historic, political, cultural, and social perspectives to explore oral history. This consists of relations between individual and collective memories, oral interviews, and conducting surveys to collect primary data and answer research questions. Furthermore, the main areas of my research are wide theoretical expertise include post-modern war history, political & Cultural changes in India as well as in South Asia.