Religion and society of North-East India
- New Delhi Vikas Pub. House 1980
- 122p.
"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