Contested customs in the Naga hills: Baptist reformers, colonial ethnography and the construction of a modern Naga identity

ABSTRACT

This paper directs attention to the Naga Hills, an outlying hill district in British India’s Northeast frontier, that became a site of conflict between the early Baptist converts and the non-converts over the nature and authority of customs which were recorded in the colonial archive as ‘Christians vs Ancients’. These conflicts produced two opposing discourses on ‘tribal’ customs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the reformism of the American Baptist missionaries and the romanticism of the colonial anthropologists. However, the path of self-determination that the Nagas chose defied these established paradigms even as they fashioned a modern Naga political identity that appropriated strands of both colonial ethnography and Baptist Christianity. This article contends that the Christian-Ancients conflicts are significant not only for understanding the ideological underpinnings of Naga ethnonationalism but also for providing a historical intervention into contemporary debates on Naga customary law.

KEYWORDS:

• Customs
• Naga hills
• salvage ethnography
• Baptist Christianity
• ancients
• missionaries
• romanticism, Naga nationalism

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dr. David Zou for his painstaking guidance during the initial stage of formulating the arguments of this paper. An earlier draft of this paper was also presented in the Roots to Bridges ethnography workshop in November 2021. I am indebted to the discussants for their insightful comments and suggestions. This paper has also benefitted immensely from the feedback of the two anonymous reviewers whose astute observations and valuable suggestions have enriched the scope of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hutton, Tour dairy, 14/12/1934.

2. See Mepfhü-o, “Conversion: perception of the Christian.” In a similar vein John Thomas also argued that the missionaries constructed a new religious and cultural self for the Naga Baptists who were expected to ‘adopt and internalize a different worldview, religious consciousness and set of practices and have different notion of time, space, body, and aesthetics’. See Thomas, Evangelizing a nation, 4.

3. Hutton, Tour diary, 12/07/1928.

4. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, viii.

5. See Lhousa, Strange Country, 5; Lhousa, American Influence in Christianity, 3–4; and Yonuo, The Rising Nagas, 23.

6. Colonial administrators such as J. H Hutton and J. P Mills were amongst the earliest and bitterest critics of the Christian missions. Mills devoted an appendix in his monograph on the Ao Nagas to record the negative effects of mission work and a more detailed analysis in the census report of 1931. See Mill, The Ao Nagas, 410–24 and Mills, “The effects on the tribes”. Later anthropologists such as Christoph von Fürer Haimendorf and Verrier Elwin continued the same diatribe against Christian missions as responsible for the destruction of tribal culture. See Haimendorf, The Naked Nagas; and Elwin, A Philosophy for NEFA.

7. See Zhimo, “Indigenising Christianity”; Pruett, “Christianity, History, and Culture in Nagaland”; Eaton, “Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas”.

8. Recent studies on the Northeast region have impressed the need for a more nuanced reading of the relationship between the colonial state and Christian missionaries, particularly with regard to their different and conflicting visions of modernity and civilization. See Nag, “Rescuing Imagined Slaves”; and Nag, The Uprising; Khekali, ”The remaking of custom”.

9. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report 1911, 32.

10. Butler, “Rough notes on the Angami Nagas”, 320; and Johnstone, My Experience in Manipur and Naga Hills, 58–59.

11. Thong, Progress and its impact, 87; and Thomas, Evangelizing the Nation, 27.

12. Clark, A Corner in India, 29.

13. Ibid., 45.

14. See Angelova, “Colonial rule, Christianity and sociocultural (dis)continuities”; Pruett, “Christianity, History, and Culture”; Joshi, A Matter of belief. Writing in the context of Christian missionaries in Africa, Sanneh critiqued the idea of Christianity as a European religion being imposed on African societies and argued for the need to see the ways in which the message of Christianity had to be assimilated within the cultural characteristics of the societies, a process which he called ”translation”. See Sanneh, Encountering the west. In a recent work Kyle Jackson reversed the analysis by setting out to explore how the Mizos encountered, perceived, and received the Christian missionaries and their message. See Jackson, The Mizo discovery.

15. Eaton, “Conversion to Christianity”.

16. It is important to note that by the early 20th century there was an expressed disillusionment with the project of civilizing the ”primitive” peoples. See Rivers “The Government of Subject Peoples”; Balfour, “The welfare of primitive peoples”; Rivers (ed) Essays on the Depopulation of Melanesia; Smith, “Missionary activities and the acculturation”. The extensive literature reviewed by Smith in his monograph on the Ao Nagas attests to the growing critique of the supposed benefits of spreading civilization that garnered widespread acceptance among scholars by the early decades of the 20^th century. Smith, The Ao Nagas of Assam, 271–305. The influence of these works was fairly evident in the writings of Hutton and Mills, the foremost scholar-administrators in the Naga Hills. See Tewari, “Spaces of Protection”; Hutton, “Presidential address to the section of anthropology”; and Mills, “The Effects on the tribes”.

17. See Zhimo, “Indigenising Christianity”, 69. Also see Eaton, “Conversion to Christianity”, 13–14.

18. Bos frontalis, also called gayal and Indian Bison. It is popularly known as Mithun among the Nagas and is recognized as the state animal of Nagaland.

19. Smith, The Ao Nagas of Assam, 103.

20. Ibid., 189.

21. For a detailed description of the feast of merit see Mills, The Ao Nagas, Appendix 1, 370–96.

22. Mills, The Ao Nagas, 259–60.

23. NSA, Index No. 1, File No. 178, Mithun killing 1890–91.

24. NSA, Pol Dept, Index No 2, File No. 19, Letter from Rev E. W. Clark to A. Porteous, DC, Naga Hills, Amguri, 13 September 1889.

25. Refer to note 23.

26. NSA, Index No. 1, File No. 177, letter from the DC, Naga Hills to the SDO Mokokchung, 4 Sep 1890.

27. Clark, A Corner in India,105.

28. Ibid., 17.

29. Assam Baptist Missionary Conference Report, 1913, p. 51.

30. J. P Mills records that Saru referred to the funds that are collected after the harvest to meet the expenses of the village. These expenses include pigs bought for aksü, animals killed during sacrifice, and other animals killed during important village meetings. Mills, The Ao Nagas, 186–87.

31. NSA, Index 1, File No. 203, Aksü Feast, 1898–99.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. NSA, Political Department, File No. 59, Letter from the Offg. Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Assam to the DC Naga Hills, 26 Feb 1899.

35. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, 374.

36. NSA, Political Department, File No. 59, On the Rights and Liberties of Christians.

37. ABMCR, 1907, 51.

38. NSA, Political department, File No 94, Ao Christians of Chonglimsen aksü, 1908, letter from Robert B Longwell to the DC Naga Hills, 3 Oct 1908.

39. Ibid., from the DC Naga Hills to R B Longwell, 17 Oct 1908.

40. Clark, A Corner in India, 19.

41. Thong, Progress and its impact, 88.

42. Hutton in his monograph on the Angami Nagas used the word “genna” to encompass three practices among the Angamis. First, it refers to ‘kenna’ which means ‘forbidden’ or ‘taboo’ and refers to the abstention from doing certain things. Hutton believed that this was applied only at the individual level. Secondly it refers to ‘penna’ which was basically a Sabbath or non-working day. On days when penna was declared it was forbidden to go to the fields or interact with strangers. Hutton also used the word for a third meaning ‘nanii’ which is a very general term for religion. In this sense, nanii refers to the whole period in which penna is declared. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, explanatory note.

43. Smith, The Ao Nagas of Assam, 110.

44. There were many different kinds of gennas that the Baptists refused to observe. For instance, Mary Clark recorded that the Ao Baptists refused to observe the genna associated with the death caused by a Tiger much to the consternation of the villagers. See Clark, A Corner in India, 61. Similarly, the Angami Baptists of Chiechama village also refused to observe the genna associated with “theprie”, the custom of feasts following the death of a person. See Chiechama Baptist Centenary, 6.

45. Smith, Ao Nagas of Assam, 65. For a discussion on the various types of gennas among the Angamis see Hutton, The Angami Nagas, 177–217.

46. Ibid., 407.

47. Ibid., 190.

48. ABMCR, 1907, 87.

49. DC records cell, Kohima.

50. Chiechama Baptist Centenary, 7.

51. Hutton, Tour diary 8/6/1926.

52. Nag, The Uprising, xxii.

53. Writing in 1931, J. P Mills articulated the role of the anthropologically-sensitised administration: “Realising that on the preservation of customs developed exactly to fit the environment and tested by centuries of use depends the whole fabric of tribal society government has been at pains to preserve them to the utmost limit possible and ensure that such change as must inevitably come shall not be destructive in its suddenness.” Mill, “Effects on the tribes”, iii.

54. Much of the attacks on Christian missionaries as insensitive agents destroying native culture failed to acknowledge that the need to understand and protect the culture of the natives also formed a part of the missionary discourses on framing and strategizing missions. See Hall, “The Point of View”; Wallis, “Missionary Enterprise”; Shonle, “The Christianizing Process”; and Tanquist, “Missionary Attitude”.

55. Haimendorf, The Naked Nagas, 58.

56. Ibid., 60.

57. Zou, “Raiding the dreaded past”, 79.

58. These monographs are: Hutton, The Angami Nagas (1921) and The Sema Nagas (1921), Mills, The Lhota Nagas (1922), The Ao Nagas (1926), and The Rengma Nagas (1937). Hutton and Mills also published extensively in journals such as Man, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, etc.

59. Mills, “The effects on the tribes”.

60. See Khekali, “The remaking of custom”.

61. NSA, Case Records, 1890–1906, Index No. 5, File No 288. The proclamation in April 1889 which brought the Ao country under the administration also abolished all traffic in slaves.

62. A standing order in 1933 empowered the DC and SDO to compel a husband who divorces his wife to make certain provisions for her. See NSA, Index No. 5, File No. 229.

63. Mengu is the custom whereby a husband, on the death of his wife, returns certain ornaments or wealth to the wife’s family in recognition of her contribution. The DC passed an order that mengu must be claimed within six months of the claim becoming admissible. See Hutton, The Angami Nagas, 138.

64. The establishment of administration reduced the importance of many village institutions like the Morungs (bachelors’ dormitory) even before the Christians had challenged these institutions. The colonial courts established at Kohima and Mokokchung and the investment of the power to settle disputes in the hands of the colonial officers had attracted many cases which were matters internal to the village and previously settled within the village. There was a clear indication of the declining power of the villages to mete out their own form of justice. The Morung also lost its major significance as the village stronghold and a centre for training young boys for war long before the Baptists came into the scene. The new office of the dobashis and gaonburas created by the government were also novel to the ‘traditional’ institutions of authority.

65. John Thomas identified this as “double consciousness” in Naga nationalism where it claims to protect and develop its unique traditional culture while the Christianity it espoused views this unique traditional culture as savage and barbaric. Thomas, Evangelizing the Nation, 125. Arkotong longkumer has shown how the Nagas appropriated colonial images of ‘primitivism’ through a reverse gaze in articulating a distinct Naga national image. Longkumer, “As our ancestors.”

66. Naga Club Memorandum to the Indian Statutory Commission, 10 Jan 1929.

67. Letter from the Secy NNC to the Right Hon’ble Clement Atlee, Prime Minister of United Kingdom, dated 29 March 1947, cited in Lhousa, Strange Country, 49.

68. NNC memorandum submitted to HMG and the Government of India, dated 20 Feb 1947, cited in Lhousa, Strange Country, 43–46. Compare the NNC memorandum with Hutton’s memorandum on the case for the withdrawal of the hill districts of Assam from the operation of the reform, 17 March 1928, Indian Statutory Commission, Vol. XIV, Memorandum submitted by the Government of Assam to the Indian Statutory Commission, 111–19.

69. Imti, Reminiscence, 35.

70. Ibid.

71. Steyn, Zapuphizo, p. 45.

72. Chophy, Christianity and Politics, 320–21.

73. Thomas, Evangelizing the Nation, 72.

74. Chophy, Christianity and Politics, 331.

75. Longvah, “Christian conversion”.

76. John Thomas has done an insightful study of the two parallel movements of Heraka and the Naga club, both of which attempted to forge Naga unity through different means. The Heraka became very influential in the North Cachar Hills and Manipur but failed to make a similar impact in the Naga Hills where, Thomas argued, the emerging mission-educated leaders favoured a different path. See Thomas, “sending out the spears.” For a discussion on the Hereka movement see Longkumer, ”Cleanliness is next to Godliness”.

77. Chophy, Christianity and Politics, 103–04.

78. Thomas, Evangelizing a nation, 10.

79. For a discussion on the women’s reservation controversy see Hausing, “Equality as tradition”; Wouters, “Land tax, reservation for women”; Kikon & McDuiera, Ceasefire City; Casavi, ”Women’s Reservation Conundrum”.

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Thejalhoukho

Thejalhoukho is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His areas of academic interest are historical anthropology, tribe histories, borderland histories, urban studies, and indigenous studies.