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International audience ; When not imposed, e.g. by the State, territories are mainly defined by processes of identity. In Northeast India the spatial references of identities have experienced tremendous changes. Formerly, the political settings were frequently based on links with a centre more than on belonging to a continuous space. These affiliations were themselves subject to reshaping, specially according to inter-States politics. By contrast, emerging identities give today a large importance to the territorial dimension and more generally adopt the XIXth century's European national paradigms: one people, one culture, one country. So the search for new territories is being impeded by the existence of former modes of belonging. The cultural and linguistic entanglements of Northeast India do not ease the process. Furthermore, tribal belonging itself remains problematic, blurred by the dialectical relationship between clan and space. So clan belonging, spatial belonging and cultural/linguistic features often prove contradictory. This situation is particularly prevalent among the people inhabiting transitional spaces, between plains and hills, "people of the margins", whose history and social morphology is that of brokers between States. We will consider the case of people living at the borders of Meghalaya and Assam.

International audience ; This article reports several findings that run against the conventional picture of Northeast India as a set of sealed ethnic compartments. The adoption of individuals or groups originating from a different ethnicity is far from being a marginal phenomenon and is actually often institutionalized. Through purification rites, people get ethnically converted. The process is often linked to interethnic marriages and facilitated in the long term by the existence of equivalences among the surnames associated with different ethnic groups. Equivalences allow for repeated interethnic marriages while preserving the structural specificities of each social system involved. As people move from one community to another, they adopt new cultural features and a new surname , but on a broader scale, prescribed alliances and relations of exogamy are preserved. The possibility of ethnic conversions opens up several fundamental questions on the ethnic and cultural genesis of the region. And as they are in certain instances manipulated or contested within the political arena, ethnic conversions remain a true contemporary issue.

International audience This article reports several findings that run against the conventional picture of Northeast India as a set of sealed ethnic compartments. The adoption of individuals or groups originating from a different ethnicity is far from being a marginal phenomenon and is actually often institutionalized. Through purification rites, people get ethnically converted. The process is often linked to interethnic marriages and facilitated in the long term by the existence of equivalences among the surnames associated with different ethnic groups. Equivalences allow for repeated interethnic marriages while preserving the structural specificities of each social system involved. As people move from one community to another, they adopt new cultural features and a new surname , but on a broader scale, prescribed alliances and relations of exogamy are preserved. The possibility of ethnic conversions opens up several fundamental questions on the ethnic and cultural genesis of the region. And as they are in certain instances manipulated or contested within the political arena, ethnic conversions remain a true contemporary issue.

International audience ; Ernest Gellner (1983) considered that, like nations, ethnic groups were 'invented'. The analogy is all the more accurate in that the nation-state model, at least in the form it had in nineteenth-century European nationalisms, is the main model pursued by most ethnic politicians. They regard ethnic groups as true nations not only in their nature – homogeneous, specific, and immutable communities – but also in the rights they should be entitled to – an exclusive territory and political sovereignty over it. Nevertheless, the most recent history shows such fictions often becoming realities, in the form of identities that ordinary people sincerely assume for themselves. So, if ethnic groups are invented, or at least 're-invented', two questions emerge: firstly, out of what original elements and by what processes are they shaped? And secondly: how did the social identities look before that, what type of communities did people feel that they then belonged to?

International audience ; Peu avant sa mort en 1775, le fondateur du Népal, Prithvi Narayan Shah, émit la recommandation suivante à ses successeurs : « Ce royaume est une igname prise entre deux pierres. Maintenez des relations amicales avec l'Empereur de Chine. Maintenez aussi des relations amicales avec l'Empereur des Mers [le souverain britannique] ». Pour l'essentiel, malgré les formidables bouleversements politiques qu'ont depuis connus les deux grands voisins du Népal, la situation géostratégique du pays reste globalement identique. Dans sa politique extérieure, l'État himalayen subit même une contrainte beaucoup plus grande aujourd'hui qu'avant la montée en puissance des Britanniques en Inde ( XIXe siècle) et l'intervention chinoise au Tibet (1950). Car auparavant il pouvait se permettre de défendre militairement ses intérêts, en particulier ce qui longtemps constitua sa première ressource : le commerce transhimalayen transitant par la vallée de Katmandou et relayé par une forte communauté de marchands népalais à Lhassa. Par trois fois – 1788,1791 et 1855 – des expéditions népalaises entrent au Tibet, sous des prétextes divers : différends sur la valeur de la monnaie népalaise utilisée au Tibet, menaces sur les commerçants népalais à Lhassa, empiètements sur les cols.

Peu before his death in 1775, Nepal's founder Prithvi Narayan Shah made the following recommendation to its successors: "This kingdom is a yam caught between two stones. Maintain friendly relations with the Emperor of China. You also maintain friendly relations with the Emperor of the Seas [the British sovereign]". Essentially, despite the tremendous political upheavals of Nepal's two major neighbours since then, the country's geo-strategic situation remains broadly the same. In its foreign policy, the Hallayan state is even under much greater pressure today than before the rise of the British in India (19th century) and Chinese intervention in Tibet (1950). Because before he could afford to defend his interests militarily, in particular what was his first resource for a long time: transhimalayan trade through the Kathmandou Valley and relayed by a strong Nepalese merchant community in Lhassa. In three cases — 1788,1791 and 1855 — Nepalese shipments enter Tibet under various pretexts: disputes over the value of the Nepalese currency used in Tibet, threats to Nepal traders in Lhassa, encroachments on the collars. ; International audience ; Peu before his death in 1775, Nepal's founder Prithvi Narayan Shah made the following recommendation to its successors: "This kingdom is a yam caught between two stones. Maintain friendly relations with the Emperor of China. You also maintain friendly relations with the Emperor of the Seas [the British sovereign]". Essentially, despite the tremendous political upheavals of Nepal's two major neighbours since then, the country's geo-strategic situation remains broadly the same. In its foreign policy, the Hallayan state is even under much greater pressure today than before the rise of the British in India (19th century) and Chinese intervention in Tibet (1950). Because before he could afford to defend his interests militarily, in particular what was his first resource for a long time: transhimalayan trade through the Kathmandou Valley and relayed by a strong Nepalese merchant ...

International audience ; The political and ritual disparities in Northeast India offer a valuable testing ground for Edmund Leach thesis on the oscillations between patterns. This area is characterized by an intermingling of politico-ritual institutions which not only differ from one ethnic group to the other but also within each group. No simple correlation between territories, cultures and policies may account for this complexity. The problem will be illustrated by a number of recent data collected among three Tibeto-Burmese speaking groups : the Dimasa, Karbi and Lalung-Tiwa.

International audience ; The political and ritual disparities in Northeast India offer a valuable testing ground for Edmund Leach thesis on the oscillations between patterns. This area is characterized by an intermingling of politico-ritual institutions which not only differ from one ethnic group to the other but also within each group. No simple correlation between territories, cultures and policies may account for this complexity. The problem will be illustrated by a number of recent data collected among three Tibeto-Burmese speaking groups : the Dimasa, Karbi and Lalung-Tiwa.

29 ; International audience ; In certain Himalayan societies, violence definitely plays a central role, defining a privileged context where interpersonal bonds are build and destroyed, individual status assessed, and highest social ideals revealed. So we would like here to try understand what the civilizations of the Eastern Himalayas say themselves about violence: how is violence conceived, represented, where does it starts, where does it lead to?

29 ; International audience ; In certain Himalayan societies, violence definitely plays a central role, defining a privileged context where interpersonal bonds are build and destroyed, individual status assessed, and highest social ideals revealed. So we would like here to try understand what the civilizations of the Eastern Himalayas say themselves about violence: how is violence conceived, represented, where does it starts, where does it lead to?

20 p. ; Le désir de nation constituait l'un des ressorts fondamentaux du mouvement maoïste lancé en 1996. Les représentations maoïstes, telles qu'elles transparaissent de la littérature maovadi, se situent dans le prolongement cohérent du processus deconstruction nationale en oeuvre au Népal depuis plus de deux siècles. L'imaginaire national des Maovadi, les maoïstes népalais,parachèverait l'émergence, ébauchée depuis cinquante ans, du "peuple" comme constituant exclusif du corps social.

International audience ; The role of the Maoists in modern Nepal is problematic as society remains widely based on the Hindu monarchy. Such an issue may contribute in a significant way to the anthropological approach of revolutionary phenomena. In Nepal, the Maoists' discourse on religion reflects conceptions broadly divergent from the materialist philosophy they are supposed to communicate. The absence of any radical rejection of religion is particularly noticeable. The Nepalese Maoism considers that the present society is the product of a process of decadence. The revolution will bring it back to the golden age that preceded the appearance of monarchy and castes. In many ways, this philosophy concurs with the South-Asian religious fundamentalisms. Nepalese Maoism attempts to construct a coherent vision of the world which responds to the paradoxical preoccupations of present society, i.e. criticism of tradition and a search for national identity. ; La position des maoïstes népalais vis-à-vis d'une société encore largement organisée autour de sa monarchie hindoue pose des problèmes qui permettent d'enrichir l'approche anthropologique des phénomènes révolutionnaires. Les discours à l'égard de la religion témoignent notamment d'une vision du monde qui s'écarte très nettement de la philosophie matérialiste que le marxisme népalais est censé à priori véhiculer. L'absence de rejet radical de la religion est particulièrement notable. On tente de le justifier dans cet article en montrant que le maoïsme népalais, partant du principe d'une décadence de la société actuelle, propose un retour à un âge d'or antérieur à l'apparition de la monarchie et des castes. Rejoignant sur de nombreux points les thématiques des fondamentalistes religieux du sous-continent indien, il s'efforce de construire une représentation cohérente du monde qui réponde aux préoccupations paradoxales de la société népalaise contemporaine : la critique de la tradition doit ménager la réaffirmation de l'identité nationale.