Identity Crisis And The Emergence Of Miya Literature As A Resistance Literature

Abstract

Miya community is a group of people who from several decades are living in the state of Assam. The term Miya is used as a slur to defame the community for their migration. This paper will attempt to analyse the core issues related to the problems of the Miya Community and their impact on Miya Literature. It will also explore the resistance of language that will portray how Miya communities were confined to a fixed language. Modern Miya poets are breaking the barriers of language by publishing their works in their own mother tongue. It also shows a cultural clash between the Ultra-nationalist Assamese groups supported by their biased views against the Miya community regarding the use of language in their works. This project will explore how the Miya community are reclaiming their lost identity with a new wave of poem and literary works. It will also enlighten the defence of local dialects against the majoritarian view to imposing certain languages in a particulate community irrespective of any borders. The biggest achievement of Neo-Mia poets is that they now write in their own dialects, denying the traditional majoritarian language. The poets of Mia literature are making their genre a parallel to Assamese literature. The oppression that Mia literature is facing is giving it a new aggressive tone that talks about the self-identification of the Mia community apart from the dominant Assamese culture and literature.