NSA’s talk examines varying shifts in Naga society

New Delhi, September 1 (MExN):  Taking a leaf out of the recently released book, Discoursing the Shifts of the Naga Society in North-East India, which called for critically examining and interrogating the varying shifts occurring in the Naga society, the Naga Scholars’ Association (NSA) invited the core team of the book to its virtual round table talk on August 27. 

With the book highlighting that such actions are more urgent and pronounced, the NSA felt the need to amplify the pertinent conversation to a wider audience and organised the round table talk, informed a press release from the Association. 

Moderating the talk, Monica Kanga Taruba, one of the editors and a contributor of the book, noted that main objectives was to “to engage one in critical thinking about the Naga society in contemporary times in connection with the past, present, and future by bringing together scholars from various disciplines and schools from across the country.”

The book was an outcome of a national seminar conducted by the Naga Research Scholars’ Forum (NRSF) of Hyderabad, in collaboration with the Centre for Social Inclusion and Exclusion, Inclusive Policy of Hyderabad, on October 2016, Taruba informed.  

At the  round table, Riku Khutso, Extra Assistant Commissioner (EAC), Pfütsero, presenting a paper titled, “Old Sensibilities and New Legitimacies in the Naga Society: Understanding Institutional Formations, Public Sphere, and Identity Discourse” argued that institutionalisation in the Naga society experiences new legitimacies through the interaction arising from the colonial forces and missionary intervention via the English language.

Arguing against the tendency among the scholars to adopt a Euro-centric approach while studying shifts in Naga society, he observed that the major shifts occurred not only as a result of pressure from the outside but also intricate interactions from within. 

He called it ‘interaction between the foreign and the local that generated new forms of consciousness and new collective institutions.’

Such social change was possible because ideological consolidation in the then Naga Hills was proffered primarily by English education, among other ancillary factors, Khutso opined. 

By turn of the 20th century, many Naga people were enrolled in missionary schools and the excitement of education shaped a new mode of interactive discursive within the community and began to transform social, economic, and political legitimacies, he said. 

Vernacular democracy and the homogenisation of the erstwhile heterogenous social systems of the various communities were primarily streamlined by the ideas English education entailed. 

Such consolidation of ideas resulted in emergence of the public sphere represented by the early educated class of the Naga society, he said.  

Accordingly, whether it was the religious or the political sphere, along with the vernacular dialects, English education played a significant role in defining the disjuncture of the salient pragmatic strain between the old practices and the new emerging transformative institutions, he added. 

Khutso further posited that rendering of the English language began to manifest in the political rhetoric of the Nagas and was very central to the collective representation of the Naga society.

Rhelo Kenye, guest faculty at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad, and a Research Fellow at the Highland Institute, Kohima, in his presentation, “Reading Factions in Fiction: A Critical Appraisal of Select Literary Works on the Impact of Factional Violence in Naga Society” highlighted the absence of discourse on the impact of factional violence on the lives of common people in Naga society, which could not be ignored in the political history of the Nagas.

Secondly, he based his argument on the notion that literature provided the space and platform for articulating the plight and lived experiences of those directly impacted by factional violence. 

To corroborate his arguments, the selected fiction by prolific writers such as Easterine Kire, Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, and Temsula Ao were analytically studied on the premise that “Literature is not just what it is but what it does.” 

Kenye projected his paper as an engagement with literature not only in the ontological sense but also in its functional sense. At the center of his argument was the question of “who are the legitimate stakeholders of the Naga National or Naga political movement?”. 

Citing Kire’s remark that “Something that began as a noble cause but that has metamorphosed into a mind game,” Kenye claimed that there had been “a growing sense of disinterestedness and anxiety” primarily amongst the younger generation towards the Naga national movement. 

Rongsenzulu Jamir, a Maharishi Kanad Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Delhi School of Public Policy & Governance Institution of Eminence, University of Delhi, meanwhile, elucidated on  “Lore, Local Knowledge and Status: An Anthropological View on Ao Naga Land And Resources.” 

In the paper, Jamir analysed how the changing patterns of land ownership and the new ways of managing lands and resources affect changes in the notion of status in the Naga society. 

He particularly explained using his discretion on not referencing the Euro-centric terminologies such as ‘indigenous’ and ‘indigenous knowledge’ in his studies of the two villages by problematising the terms as containing colonial connotative renderings with “ all memories of power and violation,” perpetrated upon the colonized subjects in the hands of the colonized rulers, to destroy and exploit the former.

 By consciously positioning his approach from an insider’s standpoint/lens, Jamir employed a countered term ‘knowledge system’ instead of the problematical terms, which distinctly qualified its signifier as coming from a local origin per se.

 The signification of this knowledge stemmed from the “natural understanding” of the conceptualization of the surrounding world as the inhabitants saw it; while the simultaneous ordering of this perceived world around them was to be bestowed with encoded meanings corollary to their social and political relationships being formed and maintained in the course of such organic co-existence. 

His paper fore-grounded the significant role of the conscious act of returning back to the land, the point of one’s origin. The purposive local knowledge functioned as an educative tool that was “ a deeply woven ritual’ which also extended to the understanding of the topography and the institution, that the people are intrinsically part of. 

Towing through this trajectory, the Nagaland Village and Area Council Acts, 1978, was closely referred to with a special emphasis on the administrative power and duties vested at the local level, such as the republic system of the elected council, cultural institutions, land ownership (both clan and private lands), etc. 

The fieldwork led to an analytical deciphering of the land with both “cheap and powerful” associations, which were reflected in the oral tradition in the form of myths, memory, custom, and even morality; it also guided the people on how to behave amongst themselves and with nature. Therefore, under such a perceived notion, “ landscape had turned into ancestral tracks which attached history, sacred sites, mythical topographical map” wherein land permeated as “a repository for the history of the group of people and individuals.” 

The shift, according to Jamir, is evident in the changing understanding of one’s status, which was profoundly summed by one of his informants, “Granaries are useless, education is important.”

Amihe Swu, while focusing on the identity construction of Naga people as part of his PhD work, recounted  his childhood experience of never questioning the idea/notion of his Naganess or the idea of Naga people as historically or sociologically inaccurate. 

Given the present scenario, he believed that the identity of the Nagas is in a state of flux, apart from the socio-political-economic challenges that the society face. 

Following the development of the Naga people’s identity from pre-colonial village republics to the supra-tribal Naga identity, Swu located the term ‘Naga’ as something that came out of reference: an external orientation. 

The Naga people have no distinct term to define themselves from the etymological standpoint, he viewed.

Swu also expounded on the coercive intervention of the British attempt to consolidate the frontier territories, which invariably impacted its interactions with the Naga people, pushing them into urban space, and replacing their traditional power with new ones derived from colonial authority. 

It resulted in an antagonistic relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, he contended. 

Swu further observed that the blatant rhetoric in the glorification of the reduction of the rich Naga culture and customs to homogeneous modern society, or as a society seen in a positive move, was one detrimental force that eroded much of the Naga culture and identity, notwithstanding some of the benefits rendered to the people. 

He also poignantly viewed that the descriptions of the Naga people in the “colonial documents shifted from being descriptions to being evolved into the construction of Naga identity.” 

Swu’s paper aptly looked at the construction of Naga identity and extensively emphasised the colonial texts as a point of reference to concur with his argument.

 It highlighted the perspective that literature written by the Naga authors had “consciously or inadvertently pushed the paradigm shift forward,” riding on an optimistic view of the possibility of the incremental changes that may happen due to literary exercises.

Sharing his perspective, KB Veio Pou, writer and Associate Professor of English Literature, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi, expressed concern at how young Nagas accept dominant narratives that are being fed to them with uncritical minds and called for “demystifying them.”

The winner of the 2021 Gordon Graham Prize for Naga Literature for his debut novel, Waiting for the Dust to Settle also expressed concern at how young Nagas accept dominant narratives that are being fed to them with uncritical minds.

To this end, he called upon scholars to engage with them while simultaneously demystifying them.

One such dominant narrative, Pou identified, was the assumption that a political solution will bring an end to all the evils in our society.

 He called attention to other pressing issues that require urgent attention and called upon the scholars to transition from intellectual engagement to identifying avenues for making contributions.

The talk was followed by a Q&A session and ended with a vote of thanks by Tumchopemo E. Tsanglao, the Joint Secretary, NSA, the release said. Thejalhoukho Casavi, a PhD. Scholar of Centre for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi was the Rapporteur of the round table talk.

Priced at Rs 500, the book categorised into six sections with 14 chapters, was published by Heritage Publishing House, Dimapur, Nagaland.

Source: https://morungexpress.com/nsas-talk-examines-varying-shifts-in-naga-society