(Re)visiting postcolonial ethno-spirituality in Mamang Dai’s the Black Hill and Easterine Kire’s Sky is My Father: a Naga Village Remembered

ABSTRACT

Ethno-spirituality refers to the discourse associated with spiritual evolution found in ethnic groups or communities. Contemporary North-east Indian literature relentlessly delineates a unique portrayal of the customary set of traditions, beliefs, customs, behaviors, responses or reactions to different situations and ways of life of the concerned tribal groups in their usual socio-cultural milieu. This article explicates the aspects of ethno-spirituality manifested in the select works of Mamang Dai and Easterine Kire as the postcolonial resistance. The purpose of this article is also to reinterpret Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill (2014) and Easterine Kire’s Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered (2018) within the broad postcolonial framework of ‘ethno-spirituality’ to trace and reconstruct their ethnic identity as their cultural heritage, spiritual values, and cultural richness as a frame of reference to indigeneity and belief system.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethno-spirituality
• Postcolonial
• North-east Indian Literature
• History
• Ethnic identity

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and constructive suggestions. It has essentially enriched the article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Baruah, Postfrontier blues: Toward a new policy framework for Northeast India, 4.

2. Haokip, ‘Conceptualising Northeast India: A Discursive Analysis on Diversity,’ 111.

3. Baruah, In the name of the nation. India and its northeast, 25.

4. Ibid, 2.

5. Phanjoubam, The Northeast question: Conflicts and frontiers, 31.

6. Ibid, 33.

7. See note 6 above.

8. Longkumer, The greater India experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast, 92.

9. See note 8 above.

10. See note 8 above.

11. Haokip, ‘Conceptualising Northeast India: A Discursive Analysis on Diversity,’ 112.

12. Mebo, a tehsil or taluka, is located in the East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It is situated 30 km east of the Pasighat District headquarters. According to Census 2011, there are 1547 inhabitants in the village (villageinfo.in 2021).

13. ‘Mishmee’ or ‘Mishmi’, Indigenous folks mostly of Arunachal Pradesh (previously North East Frontier Agency), dwell in the North-East of India, near Assam and Tibet. They speak vernaculars of the ‘Tibeto-Burman linguistic family’ (britannica.com 2021). The natives of the Mishmee region identify themselves as ‘Kmaan, Taraon, and Idu people, and the term “Mishmee” was alien to them … Kmaan, distinct from Taraon whom Kmaan knew as Tah-wrath or Chimmu, and the Idu clans whom they called Mindow and who occupied the territories further south and northwest’ (Dai, The Black Hill, 7).

14. The Ao Naga tribes are major Indigenous native groups of people who dwell in Mokokchung district of Nagaland in Northeast India. They are not homogenous, and consist of six major groups, such as Pongen, Longkumer and Jamir of Chungli group; and Imchen, Walling, and Longchar of Mongsen group. They are governed by their own customary rules and laws (Longchar and Imchasenla, ‘Taboos of the Ao-Nagas: Change and Continuity,’ 47). Their traditional religion is animist, believing that spirits, both benign and malevolent, must be prayed for and pacified through sacrifice and ceremony (Jamir, ‘The Ao Naga Traditional Indigenous and Religious Beliefs,’ 1). Among the Nagas, they first embraced Christianity and western education with the arrival of Edwin W. Clark, an American Baptist missionary in Molungkimong (an Ao Naga village) in 1872.

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16. Pou, ‘Of People and Their Stories: Writings in English from India’s Northeast,’ 229).

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22. Chakraborty, Queering Tribal Folktales from East and Northeast India, 56.

23. Bigger, ‘Ethno-Spirituality: A Postcolonial Problematic?,’ 1–14.

24. Prasad, ‘Ritual and Cultural Practice among Indian Adivasis,’ 10–30.

25. Nandy, ‘History’s Forgotten Doubles,’ 44–66.

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51. Espinosa, ‘Ethnic Spirituality, Gender and Health Care in the Peruvian Amazon,’ 423–437.

52. (Fleming and Ledogar, ‘Resilience and Indigenous Spirituality: A Literature Review,’ 47–64.

53. Bigger, ‘Ethno-Spirituality: A Postcolonial Problematic?,’ 2.

54. Ibid, 4–8.

55. Trafzer et al., ‘Integrating Native Science into a Tribal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),’ 1844–45.

56. Briggs et al, ‘The Nature of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge Production: Evidence from Bedouin Communities in Southern Egypt,’ 242–245.

57. Whap, ‘A Torres Strait Islander Perspective on the Concept of Indigenous Knowledge,’ 23.

58. Shiva, ‘Foreword: Cultural Diversity and the Politics of Knowledge,’ vii-ix.

59. Shivamurthy et al., ‘A Comparative Study on Sociodemographic Characteristics between Tribal and Non-Tribal Children,’ 130.

60. Ramya et al., ‘Characteristics Determining the Livelihood Security of the Tribal Farmers,’ 4462.

61. Purshottam and Dhingra, ‘Understanding the Indian tribal life and their issues,’ 1588.

62. Purkayastha, ‘Concept of Indian Tribes: An Overview,’ 2–3.

63. Shrivastava et al., ‘Implementation of Public Health Practices in Tribal Populations of India: Challenges and Remedies,’ 6.

64. Shama and Roy, ‘Socio-Economic and Demographic Characteristics of Three Most Backward Tribes of Madhya Pradesh,’ 78.

65. Reddy et al., ‘Water and sanitation hygiene practices for under-five children among households of Sugali tribe of Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh, India,’ 1–2.

66. Devy, ‘Introduction,’ 1.

67. Ibid, 5.

68. Bigger, ‘Ethno-Spirituality: A Postcolonial Problematic?,’ 1.

69. Mignolo, ‘Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom,’ 162.

70. Quijano, ‘Coloniality and modernity/rationality,’ 169.

71. Ibid, 176.

72. Mignolo, ‘Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality,’ 451.

73. Ibid, 463.

74. Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples, 172.

75. Ibid, 172.

76. Lockyer, ‘Textual Analysis,’ 866.

77. Baruah, Beyond counter-insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India, 9.

78. Prasad, ‘Ritual and Cultural Practice among Indian Adivasis,’ 10–11.

79. Baral, ‘Articulating Marginality: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India,’ 3.

80. Misra, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, xiii.

81. Dai, ‘On Creation Myths and Oral Narratives,’ 5.

82. Ibid, 5.

83. qtd. in Dhanya and Bhattacharya, ‘The Praxis of the Wedded Mystic: a Divergent Reading of Easterine Kire’s novel When the River Sleeps,’ 2).

84. Trafzer et al., ‘Integrating Native Science into a Tribal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),’ 1844.

85. Khonoma (also referred to as Khwüno-ra, named after the Angami term for a native plant, Glouthera fragrantisima), is situated 20 km west of Kohima, the state capital of Nagaland. The total population of the village is about 1943, who are settled in 424 households (census2011.co.in, 2021).

86. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 6.

87. ‘Lashü’ or ‘lashüsia’ is an ‘apotia death’, especially denoting a woman dying during delivery. The word ‘apotia’ is of Assamese derivation and is ‘used to refer to unnatural death’ (Ibid, 148).

88. See note above 85 above.

89. See note above 85 above, 6.

90. Dai, The Black Hill, 85.

91. ‘Terhünyi’ is the name of a feast of Angami Nagas where native or Indigenous people will bring in their harvests and eulogize their creator for his blessings.

92. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 20.

93. Ibid, 82.

94. ‘Genna days’ denote ‘no-work days, it is taboo to work on genna days’ (Ibid, 148).

95. Ibid, 57.

96. (Devy, 2021, 175).

97. ‘Theku kete’ is a ‘ritual of piercing the tiger after a tiger-kill by all male members’ (Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 149).

98. Ibid, 15.

99. Ibid, 24.

100. (Dai, The Black Hill, 258.

101. Ibid, 148.

102. Vo-o’ is the name of the ‘spirit propitiated at the seed-sowing ritual’ (Ibid, 149).

103. (Ibid, 14.

104. (Dai, The Black Hill, 184.

105. (Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 68–69.

106. Ibid, 71.

107. Ibid, 150.

108. Dai, The Black Hill, 157.

109. Ibid, 86.

110. Ibid, 70.

111. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 9.

112. Bigger, “Ethno-Spirituality: A Postcolonial Problematic?, 4–7.

113. Mondal and Singh, ‘Asserting Naga cultural identity and challenging colonialism in Easterine Kire’s Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered,’ 205–206.

114. Ibid, 185.

115. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 67.

116. Dai, The Black Hill, 192.

117. Ibid, 193.

118. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 43.

119. Ashcroft et al., Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 143.

120. See note 66 above.

121. Devy, ‘Introduction,’ 2.

122. Nelson, ‘Literature Against History: An Approach to Australian Aboriginal Writing,’ 30.

123. Jenkins, Re-thinking History, xiii.

124. Nandy, ‘History’s Forgotten Doubles,’ 44.

125. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 127.

126. Ibid, 128.

127. Bigger, ‘Ethno-Spirituality: A Postcolonial Problematic?,’ 3.

128. Devy, ‘Introduction,’ 1.

129. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 128

130. Dai, The Black Hill, 179.

131. Prasad, ‘Ritual and Cultural Practice among Indian Adivasis,’ 12.

132. Ibid, 19.

133. Borah, ‘Resisting the Outsiders: A Historical Study of Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill,’ 6680).

134. Kire, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered, 128.

135. Prasad, ‘Ritual and Cultural Practice among Indian Adivasis,’ 11.

136. Nandy, ‘History’s Forgotten Doubles,’ 65.

137. Ibid, 65.

138. Mignolo, ‘Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom,’ 162.

139. Gupta, ‘Adivasi Literature: An Emerging Consciousness,’ 202.

140. Pou, ‘Of People and Their Stories: Writings in English from India’s Northeast,’, 243.

141. Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples, 172.

142. Misra, ‘Speaking, Writing and Coming of the Print Culture in Northeast India,’ 24.

143. Baral, ‘Articulating Marginality: Emerging Literatures from Northeast India,’ 8.

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Joy Das

Joy Das presently teaches English at Saheed Kshudiram College which is affiliated with the University of North Bengal (India). His areas of interest include ‘Postcolonial Literature’, ‘Cultural Studies’, ‘Environmental Humanities’ and ‘Gender Studies’ among others. He has published several research articles in reputed journals like ‘Contemporary Voice of Dalit’ (Sage), ‘Environmental Philosophy,’ ‘Media Asia’ (Taylor & Francis) and others. He has also presented a range of research papers in national and international seminars. His ORCID is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0146-9252, and he can be reached at [email protected].