ABSTRACT
The focus on socio-spatial relations also enables one to explain processes of region formation. Research based on the discourse of identity has failed in conceptualising the trans-Brahmaputra Valley in particular and north-east India in general as a region. In fact, what they struggle with is how to situate these spatial categories in the context of the Indian nation state. Pre-colonial textual traditions such as the Buranjis or the neo-Vaishnava performance literature, or modern Assamese literature were examples of how mapping socio-spatial relations was at the root in types of language use and narrative strategies in literature. The early phase from the 19th century to the 1950s was marked by different experiments in language use and narrative strategies to map the dialectics of the relations in the making of Assam and Assamese.
