APPENDIX 1 Bibliographical Essay.pdf

APPENDIX 1
Bibliographical Essay
In and around Nagaland University, in north-east India, there are people who
comment wryly on the importance of the Naga peoples in nurturing European
anthropology in the early twentieth century, while they themselves are only
now able to set up their own department in the subject.1
They point to colonial
government officials, missionaries, scholars and other travellers who wrote
extensive ethnographies, with one, Hutton, becoming professor of social
anthropology at Cambridge University, another, von-Fürer-Haimendorf,
establishing the subject at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London, and others known for their publications and association with
academic institutions, including Elwin, Mills, Balfour and Kauffmann. Political
unrest and Indian Government restrictions on movement in the region
thereafter reduced the possibilities for research, and a long lull ensued with few
scholars able to enter the area, although some research theses in Britain were
based on secondary sources (Needham 1950–51; Valentine 1974; McDonaugh
1978; Gray 1977 [also 1986]; and West 1984, 1992). It was during this period
of reduced research activity that the fieldwork for this book was begun and has
since been continued. It is thus intermediary between the early period and a
recent rekindling of interest among Naga themselves and outsiders, following
a relaxation on research restrictions in Nagaland. It is relevant therefore in this
commentary to place the work in this scholarly trajectory since its findings
cover a period of increasing Naga consciousness of their role and status in what
has come to be viewed as accelerating globalization.
In the decade 2000–2010, the renewed interest amongst travellers and
ethnographers has been directly related to the opening of access to Nagaland
to international tourists from the year 2000. As if to underline the sometimes
uncertain line between ethnography and voyeuristic tourism, it was then that
the Nagaland state government celebrated the first year of the new millennium
by combining statehood commemoration on 1 December with a touristic event
called the Hornbill Festival which showcased diversity in the heritage of
various Naga groups (and the Kachari community) in the form of songs,
dances, food, and material culture. The festival was such a success that a
Joshi, V. (2012). A matter of belief : Christian conversion and healing in north-east india. ProQuest Ebook Central <a
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260 Appendix 1
special heritage village was built at Kisama, on the outskirts of Kohima town
near the villages of Kigwema and Mima (Joshi 2008c).
Many pictorial works on the Naga have been published since 2003, including
my own book (Arya and Joshi 2004) based on extensive travels by the
photographer Aditya Arya and myself in 1987 and 1990–91. By the time the
book came out in 2004 some of the photographs were already of a historical
nature due to the rapid conversion to Christianity and also the death of those
from an older generation who had remembered the days of Hutton, Mills and
Fürer-Haimendorf. A travel book celebrating the ‘exotic’ aspects of Naga,
documenting what remains of the older lifestyle of Naga peoples and
emphasizing the travels of white men to remote areas, was written by a German
couple Aglaja Stirn and Peter van Ham (2003). Peter van Ham and the late
Jamie Saul, a South African businessman interested in the Naga people of Burma
and India, wrote a tour diary (2008) inspired by J.H. Hutton’s official tour diary
of 1927. Jamie Saul, with Dominique Viallard (an allopathic doctor by training),
also wrote a separate book on Burmese Naga (2005) based on his regular travels
to an organized tourist festival in the township of Lahe in Burma. While these
coffee-table books do not purport to scholarly analysis, their pursuit of the
exotic give us some idea of the continuity of some tradition and thus counter the
pessimistically styled writings of some Western scholars who consider that
Christianity has led to the destruction of a people’s culture and a feeling of
shame about past cultural practices (see Oppitz 2008). These books capture a
resurgence of interest among the Europeans. In 2011, West published his
doctoral theses on colonial collections from the Naga Hills in British Museums.
In 2008 two international exhibitions on the Naga were held, in Zurich and
Basel. While the Zurich team concentrated on the passage of the Naga from
precolonial to colonial and contemporary, the Basel team exhibition, for which
I was a guest curator, focused on collectors, objects and the history of museum
collecting. Both exhibitions were accompanied by complementary publications:
A Forgotten Mountain Region Rediscovered, referring to the object collection that
had not been given attention since the 1930s, and Naga Identities, which focused
on the research work being done on the Naga and by the Naga themselves. The
objects depicting a way of life and the contemporary aspect of the Naga were
told through video links, photos, films made by both the Naga themselves and
others, as well as an art installation by London-based Naga artist Temsüyanger
Longkumer and a series of sculptures by a Swiss artist who had been inspired
by Konyak Naga wood carvings and metalwork. Naga authors (Easterine Kire
alias Iralu and Temsula Ao) and those involved in the reconciliation effort for a
peaceful negotiation between different Naga nationalist groups and the Naga
civilians were invited to give lectures. The Zurich exhibition focused on the
‘loss’ of a culture, with the project on oral tradition lamenting the passing of
traditional knowledge. But one may ask what is indeed traditional? Even the
writers of the first monographs on the Naga were engaged in what is now called
salvage ethnography. Hutton himself acknowledged this fact in the preface to
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Appendix 1 261
the second edition of his book on the Angami Naga published in 1969. It is
indeed rather disturbing to note that some scholars are unable to appreciate the
creativity in change and expect a people to remain static (even mocking the
culture of the Naga youth and their love of rock music). Some recent publications
by Naga female authors in the genre of novels, short stories and poetry are of a
reflective nature and are based on the actual experience of the authors or on the
narratives of those who have lived through the winds of change and have been
active or silent participants in the history of the Naga people. An Angami author,
Easterine Kire (alias Iralu), has written three books that take the reader to the
heart of the Angami way of living – a slice of life as lived in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Her book, A Naga Village Remembered (Iralu 2003), narrates
events leading up to the Khonoma rebellion of 1879 and the changes that
British annexation, American missionaries and conversion to Christianity
brought to the life of a family. The second novel, A Terrible Matriarchy (Iralu
2007), is a coming-of-age story which follows the life trajectory of a young girl
who grows up straddling a ‘traditional’ family set-up and the contemporary
world of the Angami Naga in which Christianity, the presence of the Indian
Army, the Naga nationalist movement and alcoholism are all part of
contemporary living.2
These two novels were the closest depiction in fictional
form of the concepts that I came across during my fieldwork and of the
observations I made of family life when living with my Naga friends and hosts
in townships and villages. Her third book, Mari, a semi-fictionalized account
based on her maternal aunt’s life (as a Christian) during the Second World War
Battle of Kohima, is a narrative that brings out the profound impact of the war
on the lives of people who found themselves in its throes, and the hard choices
they had to make. Significant, too, in its combined use of ethnographic fieldwork
and archives is the book published in 2010 on the Naga about the Heraka, a
charismatic religion practised by the Zeme of North Cachar Hills in Assam. It is
written by Arkotong Longkumer, a Naga of the Ao group who was trained in
religious studies and theology.
Reading these and other contemporary works, from the touristic and
fictional to the scholarly, it seems a far cry from those written by earlier
commentators who, as relatively recent outsiders, inevitably objectified the
Naga as non-participants in their lives, despite their sometimes empathetic
involvement with them, not always without misunderstanding. And yet these
early publications have made an often considerable impression on Naga
perceptions of themselves in history and they must be acknowledged as such,
for they inform some of what we know of the Naga today and hence this book.
The very first accounts of the Naga were written by the British officers who
were leading exploratory and punitive expeditions to the Naga Hills in the
mid-nineteenth century. Major Butler, Captain Butler, Major Jenkins and
Colonel Mackenzie are the first few officers to provide an insight into Naga
villages, writing first on Lotha and Angami groups along the Assam border.
These accounts repeatedly mention the warlike nature of Naga and the practice
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262 Appendix 1
of headhunting among them. The narratives also describe the difficulty in
reaching these villages through thick rainforests, up steep hills and in constant
fear of ambush by the ‘hostile Nagas’. In fact, several officers and soldiers lost
their lives in such ambushes. Well documented incidents are the killing of
Captain Butler in 1875, when he was leading an expedition in the Lotha Naga
area, and the killing of the then Political Officer to Naga Hills, Damant, at
Khonoma in 1879.
Some of these tour reports3
have been published as books and articles, and
Verrier Elwin collected texts from these and several other sources in his Nagas
in the Nineteenth Century (1969). These texts also bring to our attention the
difficult physical conditions under which the expeditions were carried out, and
the constant tussle with the Naga. Other sources of first-hand information are
the official reports in the District Gazetteers that were published by the
Government of India during the British rule.
A different perspective is found in the writings of the missionaries. The first
missionary to station himself among the Naga was Reverend Bronson of the
American Baptist Mission in the 1840s. After a gap of nearly four decades,
Reverend E.W. Clark and his fellow missionaries were successful in establishing
a mission centre. The letters written by them to the American Baptist Home
Board are a valuable source of information on their impressions of the Naga,
their struggles, and their successes and disappointments in setting up the
mission. I was able to access and copy some letters at the archives of the
American Baptist Historical Society at the Mission Centre in Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania.4
It was not easy to read these letters. Most by Clark were difficult
to decipher, being written on both sides of onion skin paper. The later
correspondence from the 1930s onwards is mostly typed and so is easy to read.
Most letters were in fact reports written to the Baptist Home Office, informing
them of the need to carry out evangelical activity among the Naga.5
The
language used is typical of mission writings, in which phrases such as ‘a field
ready for the harvest’ are used frequently. The language is, as Beidelman calls
it, ‘peculiar’.6
The contents of some of these letters were published in the
Baptist Mission newsletters. Some are of a personal nature, concerning
squabbles between the missionaries on their different methods of working, and
the displeasure among the converts at the disparity in the salaries of white and
native missionaries. Some letters of Supplee written in the 1930s and 1940s
also recount differences of opinion with British officers, such as J.P. Mills.
The contents of some of the letters have also been published in recent books
on Baptist Missions in north-east India. Books by Puthenpurakal (1984),
Barpujari (1986) and Downs (1971, 1983) have been a valuable source of
letters and unpublished reports that I could not access. Besides the
correspondence with the Home Board, missionaries also published memoirs
and articles; Mary Clark, who was Clark’s wife and co-missionary in the Ao
Naga area, wrote a memoir of their first years among the Ao Nagas. Entitled A
Corner in India (1907), the work gives a glimpse of missionary life in the
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Appendix 1 263
geographical area that, at the beginning of the mission, lay outside the British
territory. Some missionaries also published articles7
in journals such as the
Asiatic Society of West Bengal. The personal correspondence of Reverend
(Doctor) Rivenburg, his wife Hattie and daughter Narola8
was published by the
latter as The Star of Naga Hills (1941), and is very revealing of the way
missionaries viewed their work and lives among the Naga. W.C. Smith, a
missionary and sociologist, wrote a monograph on the Ao Naga in 1925. His
book, The Ao Naga Tribe of Assam: A Study in Ethnology and Sociology, provides
an insight into the sociocultural changes that were occurring among the Ao
Naga through the introduction of Christianity and new medical practices.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the first ethnographic monographs
on Naga communities were published. They followed the guidelines of Notes
and Queries on Anthropology (Freire-Marreco and Myers 1912), and the
genealogical research was based on the pamphlet, The Genealogical Method of
Anthropological Enquiry by Rivers (1910). These monographs follow a set
pattern describing the domestic, political and ritual lives of the people studied,
as prescribed by the Assam Administration (Hutton 1921a: viii). J.H. Hutton
and J.P. Mills were the pioneers. Both of them spent several years in the Naga
Hills as district commissioners during which they toured the area and arbitrated
in inter-village disputes.9
Their monographs on the Angami (1921a), Sumi (as
Sema 1921b), Lotha (as Lhota 1922), Ao (1926) and Rengma (1937) Naga are
detailed, but were geared more towards presenting an account close to the
‘traditional’ way of life of the Naga. In the preface to the book on the Angami
Naga, Hutton reiterates the lament of S.E. Peal, who had appealed for a ‘careful
study of Naga tribes before they are “reformed and hopelessly sophisticated”’
(1921a: vii). In the second edition of the Angami Naga published in 1969 by
the state government of Nagaland, Hutton wrote that the account given in his
1921 edition was of a ‘historical’ nature and admitted that the first edition was
more of a salvage anthropology than an account of the change that was
occurring during his time as the district commissioner of Naga Hills. Neither
Hutton nor Mills go into details when mentioning the changes taking place due
to the introduction of Christianity and education, and the exposure of the
peoples of Naga Hills to outside forces, especially the monetary economy; they
prefer to expatiate on the romantic theme of a lost way of life. J.P. Mills, in fact,
severely criticized the role of missionaries in one of his articles in the Indian
Census report of 1935. In later years, after their return to England, both
Hutton10
and Mills wrote several articles in anthropological journals after
taking up posts as professor and reader of anthropology at the University of
Cambridge and School of Oriental and African Studies in London, respectively.
Much before Hutton and Mills’ monographs, T.C. Hodson, another officer
posted in the adjacent state of Manipur, wrote the The Naga Tribes of Manipur
(1911), which gives a comparative account of the customs of the Naga ethnic
groups of Manipur. Three European anthropologists, Fürer-Haimendorf,
Kauffmann and Ursula Bower, conducted research among different Naga groups
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264 Appendix 1
in the first half of the twentieth century. Fürer-Haimendorf was the most prolific
writer of the three. His fieldwork diaries of 1935–36, which were later published
as books, are an invaluable source of information and insights. Most of
Kauffmann’s publications (1935, 1938, 1939, 1944, 1953, etc.)11
were in German
and have not been translated into English, and tend to contain more information
on material culture than social organization. Ursula Bower (1939, 1946, 1950,
1950a, and 1953), who undertook a documentation project for the Pitt Rivers
Museum, wrote travelogues based on her tours among Tangkhul and Kabui, and
fieldwork among the Zemi (now Zeme) Nagas. She also submitted a thesis on the
Zemi for the diploma in Anthropology at University College, London.
Archival material comprising tour diaries of Hutton and Balfour, who toured
Naga Hills in 1922–23, and the letters exchanged between Hutton, Mills and
Balfour are available at the Pitt Rivers Museum archives in Oxford. Fürer-
Haimendorf’s field diaries, including his travels in Angami areas in southern
parts of Naga Hills have been largely published in his books The Naked Nagas
(1939) and its second edition, Return to the Naked Nagas (1976). Unpublished
diaries of Fürer-Haimendorf (1936–37, Mildred Archer (1947), wife of W.F
.
Archer, one of the last British officers to be posted in the Naga Hills, have been
made available through the Cambridge Naga Videodisc Project which was
undertaken by a team led by Professor Alan Macfarlane of Cambridge
University. It is to his credit that the voluminous videodisc, containing both
published and unpublished material along with photographs and films has,
since 2005, been available freely on the internet as ‘nagadatabase’ on his
personal website www.alanmacfarlane.com.12
Most other writings on the Naga
since those of the colonial era concentrate on political issues, especially on
insurgency and human rights issues.13
Some books like the ones written by P.
Singh ([1972] 1995) and H. Sema (1986) are general books on Nagaland,
focusing on sociocultural and political aspects, others (for example, Horam
1977) are general description of a single Naga group. The book by Jacobs et al.
(1990), which accompanied the release of the Naga videodisc and an exhibition
of Naga artifacts at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology, is largely based on archival work, except for its final chapter
which draws on contemporary material provided by Lily Das and myself.
Abraham Lotha’s book, History of Naga Anthropology 1832–1947 (Lotha 2007),
based on his master’s thesis, is a critique of colonial writings. In terms of
ethnography N.K. Das’s14
book (1993) on Zonuo-keyhonuo Nagas or the
Southern Angami is one of the few recent anthropological works available on
the Naga.15
Although based on short fieldwork in Visewema village, it gives
valuable information on kinship and customary law among the Southern
Angami. Another book on the Khiamniungan Nagas by a retired army officer,
Sardeshpande (1987), is a straightforward descriptive account, more in the line
of the old ethnographic documentation. In addition, there is a travelogue by
Milada Ganguli entitled A Pilgrimage to Nagaland (1984). Although hailed by its
publishers as an anthropological work, it is basically a diary of her travels, but
some of the description has been taken from the earlier monographs written by
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Appendix 1 265
Hutton and Mills. A recent addition to the literature on Angami is a book on
the oral history of village formation by Visier Sanyü (1996), an Angami Naga
historian. In the past three decades some books have been written and
published by Naga writers in the Ao and Tenyidie languages. Books about
Angami customs in Tenyidie are mostly written by Shurhouzoli, a former
Minister of Education of Nagaland and a member of Ura Academy.16
Most
books in Nagaland are published privately by individuals in limited numbers
and thus often go out of print.
Given the prominence of the role of Christianity in this book, it is relevant
to note also the vast literature on religion in north-east India and especially
Nagaland, for again this informs the way Naga see themselves at the present
time.17
The Christian Literature Centre in Dimapur is well stocked with such
books. Most concern the history of the introduction of the Baptist Church (for
example, Downs 1971, 1992; Downs, Sangma and Syiemlieh 1994; Barpujari
1986; Puthenpurakal 1984; Bengdangyabang 2002, 2004; Philip 1983). There
are also biographical accounts of Naga missionaries who pioneered the spread
of Christianity to the northern and eastern parts of Nagaland, for example, an
account of Reverend Longri Ao by Rao (1986) and Beers (1969). Recently
Reverend Ben Wati (2009) has also published his memoirs translated from Ao
into English. These are particularly revealing of the life of a young boy who
lived in the Christian village of Impur and went to missionary school where he
was taught by both American and Ao Naga teachers.
Many Naga students in fact now go outside Nagaland to study for Masters
and research degrees in theology. Some of the master’s theses have been
published in slim paperbacks by the Indian Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge (ISPCK). Some theses written at theological seminaries in
the United States are now also available online. The subjects range from
indigenous Naga theology, for example, the book Tsungremology: Ao Naga
Christian Theology (1994) written by Alem Ao, former principal of Clark
Theological College, Aolijen, to Angami hymnody, the role of women in
church, and issues of leadership and Naga identity.
In addition to the archival and bibliographic research for this book, I have
spent some twenty-six months in the ﬁeld, spread over a long period from
1985 to the present, and continuing. The restrictions on travel in Nagaland
during the period have necessitated only short-term visits of up to three
months at a time.
Notes
1. At the time of writing, Nagaland University has received a ﬁve-year funding from the Indian
University Grants Commission to set up a department of Anthropology, which results from an
initiative on the part of former Vice Chancellor, Professor Kannan, and myself in collaboration
with Richard Kunz of Museum der Kulturen Basel and Anungla Aier of Kohima Science
College.
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266 Appendix 1
2. Her latest novel, Bitter Wormwood (Kire 2011), focuses on the Naga nationalist movement.
Fictionalising real life stories, she highlights the futile loss of lives and the divisions that have
made the movement directionless.
3. For example, see the writings of Major John Butler (1855), Captain John Butler (1942),
Hutton (1929) Mackenzie (1884), Shakespear (1913, 1914), and Woodthorpe (1875–76,
1882).
4. In 1996, I could only obtain permission to research the archives for three days, as there was
very limited desk space for research work at Valley Forge. However, I was allowed to make
copies of the relevant letters, some of which are no longer available for photocopying. The
archives held by the American Baptist Historical Society have been moved to the Atlanta
campus of Mercer University in the United States. Information on accessibility is available via
web page: http://www.abhsarchives.org/index.html.
5. A similar viewpoint is found in missionary writing of the period in other parts of the world.
Beidelman sums up the genre of missionary writings of this era in his book Colonial Evangelism:
‘Missionaries seek to confirm the purpose and sincerity of their efforts, yet need to present a
sufficiently grim picture of heathen conditions and the struggle of evangelization to promote
more support from home – but always with enough glimmers of success to encourage
enthusiasm. A reader is sometimes hard put to keep some balance in evaluating such accounts’
(1982: xviii).
6. He elaborates, quoting from Leys (1926: 262): ‘every occupation has its jargon. But none can
be quite as nauseous as the dialect used in missionary circles’ (cf. Beidelman 1982: xviii).
7. For example, see Clark (1879, 1911), Smith (1923), and Tanquist (1927).
8. Incidentally, Narola is an Ao Naga name, which literally means ‘flower’.
9. The disputes, mostly concerning village boundary issues, have continued. Interestingly, the
arbitration given by the British political officers is still referred to by the present-day district
commissioners when dealing with these long-running disputes (personal communication
with Kiran Siddhu, Deputy Commissioner of Phek in 1991).
10. Hutton also wrote the well-known book, Caste in India (1946).
11. The bibliography in Hartwig’s (1970) book (in German) on the economy and social structure
of the Nagas lists most of Kauffmann’s publications.
12. See Macfarlane 2008 for an article detailing the digitalization of the database.
13. For examples books by Nibedan (1978, 1981), Gundevia (1975), Luithui and Haksar (1984),
Rustomji (1983), Horam (1988), Maxwell (1980), Mankekar (1967), Singh ([1972] 1995)
Iralu K.D. (2000), Kirkwood (1997); Chasie (1999) and Franke (2009). Naga People’s
Movement for Human Rights, or NPMHR, has become the most vocal group to protest against
the Indian Army’s presence and its conduct in Nagaland and Manipur, through conferences
and the publishing of pamphlets.
14. He is an anthropologist with the Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta. The
Anthropological Survey of India has also published a separate volume on Nagaland edited by
Singh, Das and Imechen (1994) in the series, People of India.
15. R. Vashum (2000) published his Ph.D. thesis in social anthropology (Delhi University). The
book deals with the political issue of self-determination, which repeats what has already been
said in several other books on Naga politics. He has also published a co-edited book (Vashum
and Iheilung 1996) containing essays by Naga research students and activists.
16. A film has also been made by Ate Sakhrie on the legend of the ‘Sopfünuo rock’ at the Angami
village of Rüsoma. Several documentaries have been made by Naga and non-Naga film makers
on the Naga political situation.
17. For example, books by: Nuh (1996); Nuh (ed. 1996); Konyak (1986); Keitzer (1987); Mhasi
(1995); Ao, L (1976); Serto (1986); Dozo (n.d.).
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