Religion and society of North-East India

"Religions and society of the tribal peoples of North-Eastern
India" is a very wide subject, or to be precise, consists of two
very wide subjects, even though inter-related. I am glad this
seminar is being held under the auspices of the Department
of Philosophy, and not of Political Science, and I trust that
the discussions will be free from passion.
Some questions have been posed in Professor Miri's letter to
the invitees: how do changes take place in the religions of pre-
literate peoples? Is it possible to discover something like an
underlying structure for such religions?—something like Noam
Chomsky's concept of syntactic structures of language in the
human mind:
(a) Is it possible to discern a historical and social
pattern in the relationship and confrontation between such
religions and the so-called more organised and doctrinaire
religions?
(6) Does a religion represent a form of life which is, in
some strong sense of the term , “autonomous”??
These are important questions, mainly in the sphere of
philosophy and history of religion, but the answers to them
would have relevance also to our concept of secularism, which
falls in the realm of political thought. For the rest, the focus of
the seminar has been left undefined, maybe, in order to promote
wide-ranging discussion, leading to emergence of certain
specific subjects for more intensive study and exploration.
Religions and society of the tribal peoples of North-Eastern
India have certainly received very little academic attention
in recent times. Many of the standard studies on these