V V: Nagaland's tribal complexities

Jonathan Glancey, Guardian’s architecture and design correspondent, has given a potpourri in Nagaland: A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier (Faber, Special Indian Price: Rs 650). It is part travelogue, part memoir and part a potted anecdotal history of Nagaland to trace the roots of its multiple identities.

All tribal societies have multiple identities largely because the distinction between tribes and sub-tribes is often blurred, unlike castes and sub-castes where it is easy to fix a man’s caste. Kaka Iralu, a Naga nationalist, explains the complexity of the tribal system which goes a long way towards explaining why a political settlement between India’s central government and Nagaland rebels is difficult:

 

“I am from the Khonoma village from the Angami tribe. My political status and identity as a Naga starts from that village level … every Naga village is a sovereign democratic republic with its own sets of laws governing the village. The Iralu clan belongs in turn to the Meyasetsu clan. The Meyasetsu clan in turn belongs to the still wider and larger group called the Merhuma Khel. The Merhuma Khel in turn is one of the major Khels that make up the Khonoma village. The Khonoma village in turn belongs to the Angami tribe and the Angami tribe belongs in turn to the Naga nation. My sense of political identity, therefore, starts from the Iralu level to the Meyasetsu to the Merhuma to the Khonoma to the Angami and ultimately to the Naga national level..

At every level of my political identity, I have hundreds of clansmen, khelmen, village men, tribesmen and fellow Nagas who have the obligation to protect me as a Naga. I in turn have the same obligation and allegiance to all these levels of my political identity. This is how Nagas … have defied the mighty British empire for over century and India for half a century. In actual political reality, no Naga stands alone.”

You could put this down to a very narrow outlook that could be broken down by a more cosmopolitan education. But this doesn’t work because the Baptist missions who have been active in the region for decades (in fact, Baptists also claim their own tranche of Naga identity) have provided education at all levels and are largely responsible for the spread of Nagaland’s English-speaking elite. So, Glancey says that a society in which family, clan, tribe, religious preferences and local associations swear by their Naga identity, and refuse to subsume it with others, must require another explanation for its rigidity.

Nagaland is neither primitive nor educationally disadvantaged. In fact, with English as the official language of the state, they are better off than most and more employable in the service sector and the media.

Glancey’s explorations with reference to their uncertain history leads nowhere. For one, no one knows where they came from and where they settled: it was a long time back and seems to have been the result of several migrations, possibly from inland China or Tibet by way of coastal stopovers in South- east Asia. Glancey has done some digging up of archival material and says that one of the Naga tribes brought with it a written language that might have helped clear the air. Unfortunately, the only copy of the script that was written on a leather parchment got eaten up by a Naga dog. “So the dog ate their homework,” Glancey says. There is a great deal of anecdotal history, based mostly on bazaar gossip, but little does it help to explain why the Nagas have been such a closed shop.

Political scientist and social anthropologist James C Scott has provided a tentative answer in his recent book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist history of Upland South East Asia. He says the vast jungle-clad massif like that of South-east Asia which spans the borders of India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam is inhabited by people who belong to autonomous, state-resistant and subsistence-oriented societies of the hills.

The colonial powers carved up these mountain regions into the nation states, each with its notions of territorial integrity but it was a division that wasn’t accepted; they remained “ethnic minorities” within the state into which they were absorbed. This could be seen by their distinctive traits – segmentation, mobility, egalitarian social structures, flexible cultivation – which were simply a response to their new environment and “a strategic adaptation to avoid incorporation in state structures”. Scott’s analysis of the lifestyles of people in the mountainous regions of South-east Asia, of which Nagaland is an integral part, best explains why it remains aloof and ignores the commonalties of southern Asia’s myriad borderland people.

Elsewhere, Glancey talks about Naga crafts, culture, apparel and architecture, suitably backed by photographs but we have been there and seen it all before. So this book is really a simple introduction to the land and its people, and nothing more.