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Cultural Alienation of the Naga Tribes

By: Kevinguno Nakhro Thou


We have come to a point where we need to make ardent conscious attempt to revive and restore the forgotten culture, in order to sustain the identity of an ethnic community in a fast changing world. The region is considered by many as a dystopian place laden with conflicts, gore, grim and social unrest. Yes, we had our share of tensions and struggles, like any other society trying to be independent, but to define us as a bloody and barbaric place would be limiting us from the so many myriad things the place has to offer.

Photograph by Samrat Sengupta


Nagas are a group of indigenous people holding 16 different tribes under their umbrella. Though anthropologists and Naga scholars have attempted to trace the origin of the Nagas, till now, their origin remains unascertained and shrouded in mystery. Having said that, there are some theories regarding the origin of the Nagas. Some believed that the Nagas came from Borneo in the East and slowly moved towards Northwest, while some believed that the Nagas came from South-East China. All this scepticism and uncertainty regarding the ambiguous origin of the Nagas provides an inconclusive and unclear result. It also reveals to us that the Nagas were oblivious of writing as there were no written documents to trace the history of their origin. Though such is the case, many are of the view and in agreement that the Nagas are aboriginal people belonging to the Mongoloid race of the Sino-Mongoloid and Tibeto-Burman origin, residing in the hilly region of North-East India called Nagaland, a bountiful place with soothing climate and picturesque vista stretched out in the horizon.

Like many other indigenous societies, Nagas too followed the oral tradition. It was in the oral tradition that history and culture of the native Naga peoples were transmitted and preserved. However, with the coming of white men, the Naga society was not to be the same anymore. A time came when the white men taught the hill people to look upon their own tradition as ‘evil’ and ‘pagan’. They failed to appreciate the cultural practices of the native Naga peoples on the account that it was a dark and heathen practice; that in order to be ‘enlightened’, they must abandon their “savage” ways. In the later years, contact with the colonial power drastically altered their lives and the loss was far too outweighed. Gradually, the Nagas started to accept the western culture and began to turn back on their own culture.

The colonizers held themselves on a pedestal level and failed to acknowledge and respect the indigenous culture of the Nagas. The Naga people who were complacently cocooned in their small world looked upon the alien men in awe, unaware of what sea change was to sweep past their land.

For a community that lived in isolation for so long, the intervention of the white men in the hills resulted in serious aftereffect. The villages that counteracted and rebelled against the British power were massacred. Their villages were burned down which resulted not only in the helplessness of the poor villagers, but also the scattering of the village folks. The silencing and loss of so many Naga cultures cannot be left untouched without mentioning the effects of Christian missionaries and the introduction of modern education. The introduction of Christianity has indeed broadened the horizon of the Nagas. It gave access to the Nagas for greater exposure and opened up new frontiers to knowledge. They sealed the stamp on the gory practice of headhunting and beliefs rooted on superstitions. The missionaries also tried to pacify and abolish inter-tribal war among the Nagas by carrying out the message of the gospel on peace, unity and forgiveness. As a result, the Naga society slowly started to enter into a new mode of life, a Christian culture. For the native Naga peoples, their conversion to Christianity was more about gaining respect and recognition, than it was spiritual. In addition, the proselytization of the Nagas into Christianity also resulted in cultural clash.

Many of the Naga scholars agreed that the seed of modern education started to bloom when they began to accept the gospel. It was a revelation for a tribe who were ignorant and literacy devoid. The missionaries wanted to civilize the “savage” and “uncivilized” tribe by slowly planting their ideologies and their ways of life. Slowly, the Nagas started to accept, acquire and don the western principles, ideas, manners, style, beliefs and values, leading to serious cultural loss and identity crisis.

Today, there is a massive decline in our traditional culture. The history of the golden days has taken the shape of just an interesting myth and nothing more. The glorious days of the past only seem like a mystifying subject to the present generation and nothing more. This cultural crisis and disconnection with the past is particularly felt by the ‘new’ generation Nagas, who are sandwiched between the past and the present culture. The generation born after the encounter with the white people began to look upon their past oral tradition and culture as something akin to “savage”, “heathen”, “unwanted” and “uncivilized”. They ‘new’ Nagas have adopted the western lifestyle in full swing, resulting in serious cultural clash. Many failed to acknowledge that the rich cultural heritage of the past is where they draw their origin from and shaped their peoples worldview. Recalling the past lives of our ancestors, what is happening today is that, as an elderly person dies, they take their stories along with them, never to be heard again.

We have come to a point where we need to make ardent conscious attempt to revive and restore the forgotten culture, in order to sustain the identity of an ethnic community in a fast changing world. The region is considered by many as a dystopian place laden with conflicts, gore, grim and social unrest. Yes, we had our share of tensions and struggles, like any other society trying to be independent, but to define us as a bloody and barbaric place would be limiting us from the so many myriad things the place has to offer. To many, even literature from the region is just a curious subject; mystic or exotic, something like William Wordsworth writing in Tenyidie (the native language of the Angami tribe). And as much as we take pride of our rich and often exaggerated stories, literature from the region is not just about the forest stories- stories of man turning into tiger, or the enchanting moment when the river stops flowing or of the jubilant songs and dances. It is more than that. It is the story of the lived reality of a people. Though there has been an attempt to increase creative writings among students and scholars lately, until now, not surprisingly, there are only few established literary figures in the state as compared to other communities.


Naga writers writing in English is significant because it serves as a medium of channeling the literature from the region with the rest of the world. English is the universal language of the world and pursued enthusiastically by those whose mother tongue is of other languages. English is a link-language and as a language spoken and understood worldwide, it becomes more convenient to express oneself more clearly and build a stronger connection with the rest of the world. Since our ancestors did not know about the language of the colonizers and the art of writing, the first literature ever written about the Nagas were from the cognitive eye of the outsiders. As such, with our literature written in English, we will be able to reach out to more crowds and reduce the rate of miscommunications or misunderstandings. No doubt, English is the language of the colonizers and one may find it unbecoming of a native writer using the language of the colonizer. Nevertheless, writers from the region have adopted the language of the colonizers to make it their own and to voice out their concerns.

The coming in contact with modernity has indeed taken on a massive toll on the outlook and lifestyle of the Naga people, mostly felt by the younger generations. However, one hopeful highlight is that, on such visibility of cultural unbalance among the Nagas, the intellectual lots are slowly heading towards a new spark of effort to restore the traditions. Though neglected for a long time with the aftermath of British power, the oral form has not completely lost its old charm and value like it should have. The conversion of the Nagas into a new religion, i.e., coiled in the Western lifestyle has indeed shattered the Naga culture largely, but did not uproot or break their roots completely. Yes, to a great extent the encounter with Christianity and modernity has altered the way the Nagas led their lives, their point of view and their religion. However, it has not completely obliterated the Naga culture. This is because the intellectual lots are coming to the understanding that that it is time to rebuild the damage that has been done. It is time to deconstruct the idea that anything ‘white’ or ‘westernize’ is the epitome of greatness. Some enthusiastic Naga are slowly waking up from this slumber and sensing the cultural damage and loss are making a conscious effort in literature, art, and socio-cultural grounds to restore and reclaim their culture from total degeneration.

Indeed, the world we live in today is a busy and competitive world and something as old as the oral tradition stands on thin thread, as people are more inclined towards immediate “modern” sources for amusement and entertainment. Considering the fact that no society can forever be shatterproof with the past, it is imperative for a society to undergo change of direction in order to be efficient, prosperous and to keep up with the rest of the world. At the same time, does accepting change mean disregarding the past? The so called road to modernity and betterment has made the Nagas very ‘embracing’ of the western culture, even at the cost of forgetting or discarding their own ‘roots’.

The ancient beliefs and practices are what make up the core identity of the Native Naga peoples. Today, writing has taken precedence over the oral form and many writers from the state have recognized the alarming state of cultural loss and have donned the responsibility to continue to transmit and preserve their cultural identity by scripting it down. In order to understand their history, culture and literature, one has to go back to the oral tradition, as it is the primary source of their original literature. The ‘forgotten’ culture needs restoration. However, it is not to incite the tradition beliefs and cultural practices of a community to create any kind of cultural superiority but an attempt to remember the forgotten cultural values in the face of modernity. By way of saying that, it does not mean one should go back to being primitive. It only means that by way of re-visiting and re-constructing the past, one should be able to respect and appreciate the many folk beliefs and cultural practices of the Naga community and in doing so, curb the misunderstanding that the Naga community is a disoriented, uncultured and inharmonious society.

For a region that has been side-lined for a long time, it is time to create our own space. It is time for the present Nagas to not view their own culture as akin to ‘backwardness’ or ‘invalid’ in the face of advancement and globalization. The ‘new’ Nagas must learn to blend and march with the best of what the world could provide, but in doing so, must always acknowledge and be intact with their roots, for the past plays a huge role in constructing their “Identity”. As the Nagas primarily were of oral tradition, another important factor to go back to the past is that it will provide us accessibility to unearth the many literary treasures that has yet been unknown and unopened to so many.

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