ABSTRACT
While human–animal relations and conflicts have been studied extensively in Northeast India, species extinction has received very little attention. Emerging from literary studies, this entry adopts a biocultural approach to extinction narratives, and analyzes how ghost species, like the extinct or near extinct dhole (cuon alpinus), impacts human communities and lifeworlds in the region in unprecedented ways even after they disappear. Taking the Assamese writer Jehirul Hussain’s short story ‘Raang Kukuror Tupi’ (The Dhole’s Cap, 2000) as the primary locus of analysis, this entry focuses on how species extinction can be considered an ‘attack on the commons’ (Ashley Dawson), both for nonhuman and human forms of life.
