Museums, Colonialism and Identity: A History of Naga Collections in Britain

Naga Republic Feature

By Arkotong Longkumer

The Nagas of India and Burma (Myanmar) have had a somewhat sensational and “exotic” relationship with the British public ever since the Nagas entered their imagination during British colonialism from the mid-nineteenth century onward.

The main reason for this perception, argues Andy West, is museum collections of Naga artifacts and their displays in the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), which houses the largest collection, followed by other substantial collections in the British Museum, the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Horniman Museum.

Alongside these, smaller collections are scattered in around 45 museums all over Britain, demonstrating the size (estimated to be anywhere between 7,000 and 12,000 pieces) and the popularity of the Naga collections in Britain compared to the other hill tribes of India/Burma that the British also administered.

Why so much about the Nagas, and why were the  Nagas so popular among the British? Who are the Nagas in the first place, and what role did the British have in “classifying” Naga artifacts that would eventually crystallize and simplify Naga identity for public ease and consumption?

Andy West navigates through these complex questions in this impressive and lengthy monograph (209 pages, coffee-table style, with illustrations and color and black-and-white  photographs). He presents the various materials—both theoretical accounts of museum studies and material culture and various ethnographies on the Nagas—through a deft handling of sourcesand with meticulous care.

Indeed, the book represents his cumulative interest in the Nagas since the early 1980s. It builds on other works on museum objects and their “entanglement” with different interlocutors (such as between colonial officials and indigenous peoples) and at different levels (local/colonial/museums/institutions in Britain). To my knowledge, this is the first in-depth examination of Naga material culture in Britain.

The book is organized thematically and begins by presenting a good overview of the role of anthropology and museums. Indeed, West makes the case that anthropology as a discipline was formed through its relationship with ethnographic collections in museums. In the case of the  Naga collections, there was a connection between the expansion of the “British empire, the initiation of public museums, and the rise of anthropology as a discipline” (11).

Underlying such an ambitious project, then, is a caution to the reader that museums are not simply sites that legitimize national cultural values, but somewhere these values are contested. Nowhere is this more paradigmatic than with the Nagas. To throw light on some of these complex issues, West trawls through the early British colonial contact with the Nagas, providing the reader with some well-trodden information (for the specialist, at least) (chapters 3, 4, and 5) and some new insights into the relationship between the British, the Nagas, and material culture (chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9).

Chapter 10 consolidates some of the findings by investigating “shifting identities”, particularly when there are complications between the British classification of Naga artifacts in museums and the evidence from the material culture “on the ground”. It is in this last point that West is at his best. For example, the relationship between Naga objects, their official classification, and the context in which these identities are formed presents significant problems to the way Naga identity is represented. Due to the prevalence of the Nagas over other hill peoples (such as the Chin, Kuki, Kachin), most objects (regardless of other associations) were assigned “Naga”; in this process others were possibly obliterated from memory.

The category “Naga” has thus proven to be problematic in a number of ways with regard to material culture. First, since the inauguration of the Indian state of Nagaland, most  Naga objects are attributed to this geopolitical location, and in this way the Nagas are fixed solely in Nagaland. Second, it treats the Nagas as isolated and therefore neatly classifiable.

For instance, West notes that there were widespread material exchanges that were happening with other communities such as the Kachin and Chin groups (particularly with regard to spears, hats, and baskets), and in some cases Chin spears (though heavily influenced by Naga designs) were wrongly identified as “Naga” due to the visibility of the Nagas in the ethnographic literature. Third, because of the proliferation of material available from the Nagas on the Indian side of the  border, these were used to confirm the identity of eastern Nagas (those on the Burmese side), which further reinforced certain blanket assumptions supposedly shared by all Nagas.

The result of these processes has meant that a distinct Naga identity is represented and visualized in museums and other avenues uncritically. So what does this study inform us about the Naga materials in museums and the subsequent implications of representing Naga identity?

On one level, it establishes and maintains  Naga identity, through its early focus on collecting objects associated with headhunting and the  prosperity complex (such as feasts of merit, fertility rituals, and sexual prowess) to the contemporary performance of national identity among the Nagas that is reflected in the demands for political autonomy and Naga sovereignty since 1947.

On another level, it remains an important way of projecting a distinct Naga identity to outsiders through ceremonial dresses, evoked in dances and festivals and visualized in postcards and other media. Although the two levels of representation may reinforce Naga identity in some modular form (which could play into the hands of various nationalists), what West reminds us is that material cultures have a way of complicating this picture on an ethnographic level, demonstrated by the fact that people moved beyond administrative (and national?) boundaries and circulated their material culture across the hills and plains and among different peoples.

West’s book is a constant reminder that material cultures also have complex biographies that need to be probed. Although there is much to be commended in the book, some of the material is slightly repetitive and lengthy. Additionally, although the strength of the book is the material collection in British museums, it seems to be slightly unbalanced, particularly in the absence of the Nagas’ own views on their material culture and overall reaction to these museum objects.

This gap, which West alludes to briefly but does not explore, would have made this book even richer in terms of how artifacts reveal interesting information about social worlds across generations, worlds that “shape those we inhabit today” (2). Nevertheless, this is a book that is ambitious in scope and would appeal to scholars interested in museum studies, material culture, anthropology, and the Nagas.

Arkotong Longkumer is a faculty at University of Edinburgh, Scotland