Post-Memory and Dispossession The Expendables of Northeast India in Siddhartha Deb’s The Point of Return

Abstract

Anglophone literature from Northeast India delineates the experiences of marginalisation and violence that have marred the region for decades. Most of these stories relate to the lives of the “indigenous” people who have suffered due to the conflict between state and sub-nationalist forces. Quite recently, a few writers have succeeded in bringing within this discourse the plight of the communities, who are often constructed as “outsiders,” “foreigners” or “immigrants”. These terminologies are used for the “non-indigenous” people who have been domiciled in Northeast India for the past several decades. These communities have also experienced violence, assault and displacement multiple times leading to trauma, fear and otherisation. Siddhartha Deb’s The Point of Return presents the plight of this community caught at the crossroads of partition and violence in their search for a new homeland. By drawing a parallel between nation and home, the essay shows how the immigrants in Deb's novel are permuted to, what Agamben calls bare life. Analysing through the lens of necropolitics and post-memory, this essay argues that the immigrant community which was integral to the colonial schema of governance and then the key to the Nehruvian nation-building project has been turned into an expendable community.