Book on human rights issues in Assam

In a novel effort, Anandaram Dhekial Phookan College of Nagaon in Assam has come out with a book on the issues of human rights titled "Insurgency, Counter Insurgency and the issues of Human Rights".

Edited by Arindam Borkataki and published by principal S U Ahmed, the book has a collection of specially-written articles by eminent teachers, observers, government officials and rights activists among others.

The book, funded by UGC, discusses a significant phase of Assam`s social history in the recent past taking the cardinal issue of human rights as the focus.

"In Assam, the biggest challenge before human rights doctrine lies in addressing a situation where the matters of culture have shifted to the site of political struggle. It is amid an interpretation of politics and culture in the construction and articulation of identities to establish affirm and perpetuate boundaries between the self and the other, both contextually and strategically," writes researcher Kaustubh Kumar Deka in one of the essays.

"One needs to take a critical perception on studying the meeting point of the state and the society while dealing with situation like Assam, where simplified state identifications and complex social identities rarely coincide but often clash," he feels.