Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya’s novel Yaruingam, written in the 1950s and finally published in 1960, was centred on the Naga movement for self-determination. In the post-colonial period, the novel has often been considered a landmark literary moment of Assamese literature, especially in the writing of political novels. Though focusing on the Naga movement, the novel was also as much about an early postcolonial Assamese literary imagination of “people’s rule.” Today, when questions of identity, democracy, and of the place of people in shaping the sociocultural and political future of North East India have become critical, this article examines how this early postcolonial novel dealt with some of these questions.
