Activist Literature and Protest Aesthetics in Miya Poetry: A Rereading of Betel Nut City
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/ajpr.v24i1-2.753Keywords:
.Abstract
Shalim M. Hussein, one of the founding poets of Miya poetry, vividly captures the turbulence, chaos, and anxiety of life in Assam and its surrounding regions—Dispur, the Brahmaputra’s coastal plains, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, and West Bengal. His seminal anthology Betel Nut City (Red Leaf Foundation for Poetry, 2019) addresses the political and social marginalization of minorities in the region.
The term Miya, once meaning “a Muslim gentleman,” has shifted into a slur used to label Bengali-origin Muslims in Northeast India as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Miya poets—including Hafiz Ahmed, Khabir Ahmed, Rehna Sultana, Kazi Neel, and Abdul Kalam Azad—work to reclaim the term, reasserting their identities as Assamese and Indian.
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