‘The Inheritance of Words: Writings from Arunachal Pradesh’ review: Fading voices

Women of Arunachal Pradesh provide a glimpse of their culture and traditions, past and present

Arunachal Pradesh, in the farthest northeast corner of India, is a land inhabited by numerous tribes which, taken together, speak more than 90 languages. Many of these languages are being forgotten as younger generations are taught the lingua franca, Hindi, which opens up the rest of India to them. Each time a language dies, an entire culture dies with it. In case of Arunachal Pradesh, the erasure is all the more absolute since many of the tribal languages don’t have any written script. They have been passed down orally through stories, lullabies, songs, chants preserved in memory. As with many ancient tribes, women serve as the memory-keepers here too. It is therefore rather apt that the stories, essays and poems in this collection are all by Arunachal women, who, whether writing in English or in Hindi translated into English, speak of their inescapable inheritance — of words and loss.