‘Naga Literature & Creative Writing in English’

Senapati, May 29 (MExN): A discourse on ‘Naga Literature and Creative Writing in English’ with Dr. Easterine Kire was held on May 28 at Mt. Pisgah College.   Around 200 delegates participated in the event which was held in partnership with Tahpu Foundation, Hills Hornbill Express and Senapati District Debating Society.   Giving an ‘overview of Naga Literature’, Dr. Kire observed that many people have a misconception in their understanding of Naga literature in thinking “it is still very young”. Seeking to clear such misconceptions, she maintained that Naga literature has been there since the settlements of forefathers in the different villages.   Naga Literature, in terms of fictions, essays, folktales, short stories, biographies, poems, songs, may not always be totally academic, philosophical, historical, political, which in a way is different from the other scholarly volumes, she says but contends that one will find contents of all of the above.   Insisting that Naga literature is unique, Dr. Kire stated that there was always an Oral Literature among our forefathers, through their story telling. In this, she urged the participants to go to the villages, sit with the elders and listen to them “because they are the living books as they have the literature in their heads”.   Story telling through folktales and songs should continue and should be preserved and documented, she asserted.   In the discourse, she mentioned how the Naga story telling was silenced in different ways. She cited the coming of the British to the Naga villages and argues that this has silenced narratives. Bombings, military occupations, atrocities have agitated the people, their minds preoccupied and the peace that was prevailing was gone and there was no more sitting together and no storytelling, she contends.   Calling for a stop to ‘Cultural and Academic Thefts’, Dr Kire urged the gathering to start valuing the knowledge of our culture. She encouraged the participants not to let their culture be taken away or other culture be imposed on them. “The ‘Cultural Theft’ that happens by force as well as by giving away by the natives should be stopped. We should break the silences; suppress the imposed and super-imposed of their identity on us.”   Oral literature, she says, is something we should always take pride in. Contending that stories are the basis of Naga literature, she expressed the need to record as much as stories as possible.   In the second session, Dr. Kire started on the topic “Identity”. According to her, there always is a question splitting our consciousness on Naga identity – i.e., “Sovereignty”.   This, she says, is a problem caused by colonization. Colonization, she says, has given us a fractured identity. “We are considered to be an inferior race because of the defeat. What has followed was most severe because our psychology has been affected and somehow we have accepted that we are the victims and has to be ruled.”

  Arguing that “we are ethnic,” she maintains, “It is high time we assert that voice.”   Lamenting that “deep and meaningful words are dying out,” she encourages the participants to bring out their own dictionaries. “We should collect songs and categorise them because we have for example ‘songs of the forest’, ‘songs of the warriors’, ‘songs of the village’, etc. That way we would be taking ownership of our culture, the culture that our forefathers have given to us.”   On “Creative Writing in English”, Dr Kire stated the need for one to have “enormous ideas, romantic ideas and beauty of expression, form and emotional appeal.”   Defining Literature as, ‘an artistic writing, worthy to be remembered’, she encouraged the participants to have journals and write every day. “The more we write, the more we become comfortable and words come to us. Writing and reading a lot is necessary if one wants to become a good writer,” she stated.