Exceptions
The ‘disturbed areas’ and ‘illegal migrants’ of today’s India were yesterday’s ‘scheduled districts’ and ‘criminal tribes.’ The line between the past and present is straighter than you think.
nandini ramachandran
Nandini Ramachandran, a lapsed lawyer, is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Most of this essay was written while she was conducting fieldwork in Shillong for her dissertation, a constitutional ethnography focused on the Sixth Schedule. She has also been a book critic for several years, and can be found online aa @chaosbogey.
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