Dr Visier Sanyü on reconstructing Naga History from oral tradition
Morung Express News
Dimapur | November 2
Indigenous communities take great pride in their cultures. But how authentic or diluted are the folk stories and practices propagated and witnessed today? This was a question that came to mind at a lecture by academician, Dr Visier Meyasetsu Sanyü on the theme— Reconstructing Naga History from oral tradition.
It happened to be the 1st Dr PS Lorin Annual Impact Lecture at the Tetso College, Sovima, Chümoukedima, held on November 1.
Sanyü is also a core member of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, Advisor to the Naga Global Forum, and President of the Peace Initiative in North-East India (PINE).
“Nagas have lost much of the traditional stories and worldviews that gave them birth. We need to retrieve them from our archival memories…” said Sanyü. It however came with a cautioning that, “As we attempt to reconstruct history and cultural documents,” priority be accorded to accuracy in recording the information and ensure that the interpretations are unbiased and true to the original context.
Cultural reinvention, while an uncertain and arduous process, must continue because without it, “We fade into oblivion,” he said. He quoted an old Angami saying, a loosely translated version of which would mean drawing from the wisdom of the ancients.
According to him, retrieval of the old traditions would be the first step to avoiding “cultural oblivion,” and evolving from the old tradition to the realities of the 21st century.
Memory & Culture
His lecture opened with an epigraph from the work of Belgian historian and anthropologist— Jan Vansina, regarded as a pioneer in the study of African history. He said that Vansina’s words, “…culture is reproduced by remembrance put into words and deeds,” resonates with the cultures of the Nagas. He said that the Nagas can concur with modern scholars like Vansina, who speak of the centrality of oral traditions in societal evolution as a whole.
Placing emphasis on oral cultural and collective indigenous identity, he said that a living culture is one that renews itself through iterative narration and progressive enactment. “This is the reason behind Vansina recommending that oral traditions be made a component of formal education,” Sanyü said. He added, “If, and when an oral tradition dies, so does the community.”
Cultural commodification
He said that the Hornbill Festival serves as a fine example of cultural commodification. While there is no harm is celebrating culture, he said that there is the danger of “tourism culture” or cultural commodification, where people wearing traditional costumes, dance and sing in make-believe venues.
“We know that they are staged shows. They are merely shallow images of our culture,” he said. Such spectacles, he added, should reflect the lived reality of the community that gave birth to the songs and dances in the first place.
Christianity
Sanyü further dwelled on how colonialism changed the Nagas. With colonialism came Christianity, which with all its transformative effect changed the Naga worldview.
According to him, Christianity to the Nagas came packaged in colonial biases. “They forbade converts from performing traditional rituals and taking part in festivals. They urged converts to discard the native appearance by dressing in western clothes and changing their hairstyle to make their conversion to Christianity visible…” he said.
This western-centric attitude, he said, undermined some of the priceless values of the indigenous culture like the Nagas’ sense of self and place within the cohort, which, he added, was intimately connected to the community’s well-being as a whole.
He recalled attending a Sekrenyi festival, organised by a church community, which was unlike what he saw as a child. “For me it was both a mourning and a celebration, a joy and a sadness. I was mourning the death of of Sekrenyi, a precious and a beautiful part of my Angami culture that was now forever lost,” he said.
On a positive note, he added, “At the same time I rejoiced and embraced the birth of the new Sekrenyi, which is totally different from the traditional one, waiting to be given a renewed lease of life, an imaginary creative Sekrenyi in a Christian form…”
He described it as witnessing firsthand the evolution of a culture from the ancient times to the 21st century.
Today, he said that the Christian communities are attaining meaningful cultural rebirths but a process that will require facilitating the transfer of the old to the new terms. “The harder task will be merging the best of both worlds” in a place which is today largely Christian, he said.
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