Hornbill Festival: Imag(in)ing the Naga Culture

By Dr Asangba Tzudir

During the 19th century, the Nagas were known to the outside world as Naked Headhunters. The interest of the West that mainly focused on themes that underlined their already existing stereotypes also led to such projections about the Nagas. Today, Nagas seems to have no qualms about such ‘concocted’ references to such projections as a premise in trying to underline the Naga context today, whether it is by Nagas or others. In the Christian context there are certain themes surrounding the transition:

“From Headhunters to Church planters”; “From darkness to light”. The latest of such stereotyped imaging can be seen from Rohit Gupta’s Directorial musical documentary film title - Headhunting to Beatboxing. Produced by AR Rahman, Headhunting to beatboxing is an exploration into the sonic heritage of Nagaland, and traces the evolution of music across cultures, tribes and generations from the ancient traditions of headhunting tribes to the musical renaissance in the state. However, the question lingers – What has Beatboxing in the Naga context got to do with a stereotyped imaging Headhunting? 

At this backdrop, Nagaland once again gears up for the much hyped hornbill festival, tagged as the ‘festival of festivals’. The official partner will be Wales, and considering the fact that this year’s festival marks the 25th Edition, the ‘stage’ definitely will be bigger. While the festival is being held with the primary objective of displaying Naga culture and heritage, it has become a prominent space not just for witnessing the various forms of cultural display and performances but also the waves and emerging trends of culture and lifestyle of the Nagas. To suit the changing times and tastes while ‘promoting’ our culture, the events that revolves around the festival comes with a blend of tradition and the so called ‘toxic’ postmodern. Within this blending, a new understanding of ‘Naga Culture’ emerges through the way the Nagas ‘present, perform and portray’ to the outside world. 

Over the course of the 24 editions which began way back in the year 2000, this festival has also opened the window to the commercially escapist world of Naga culture which is tilted towards a ‘deceptive style’ and opportunistic capitalism where there is ‘commoditization’ including humans. When the festival is so opened to commercialisation and commoditisation of Naga culture, often, the Naga cultural ‘narrative’ gets fitted into the narrative of the Hornbill Festival and thereby produces a ‘misrepresented real’ through the material display so do the captured pictorial images for pleasurable consumption of the ‘others’ wherein we happily and ignorantly continue to reinforce the various stereotyped labeling on the Nagas while ignoring the unique value system in our culture. As such, Hornbill festival creates a ‘questionable space’ that provokes and begs the question - what is Naga Culture? 

Over the years it has attracted many tourists both domestic and international and what largely remains to be seen is that, the festival has so much to offer and also make it a global event in the form of large scale participation from other culturally vibrant countries and thereby create meaningful discourses on knowledge, people and culture through cultural exchange programmes. This call for an urgent necessity to resurrect the Naga sense and sensibility and the way Nagas portray themselves to the world. The term ‘Naga’ is mocked when the ‘right knowledge’ and the ‘value system’ that truly represent the Nagas is not disseminated while being submerged in symbolism and materialism. 

The challenge that remains is to showcase and thereby promote the ‘right knowledge’ and the ‘value system’ through Naga culture and traditional practices. There is an underlying danger in the way in which Nagas represent the ‘Naga text’ within the ‘toxic blending’ wherein the misrepresented ‘Naga text’ is propagated and further gets misconstrued and reinterpreted. The ‘content’ of the festival should portray the uniqueness of Naga culture and values rather than getting trapped in the tension between tradition and the ‘toxic modern.’ Somehow, hornbill festival fails to address the rich traditional value system embedded in our culture, which makes our culture unique. As such, there is an urgent need for imag(in)ing the Naga cultural value system in defining the Naga culture. So the larger question remains: What will Hornbill Festival 2024 portray to the world? Will it continue to reinforce the stereotyped Naga Imag(in)ing or will it be in a new light that relocates the Naga life and cultural worldviews?   

As for the Nagas, the aspects that make Naga culture unique are viable resources that needs to be engaged in the context of Naga unity in order to heal the fragmented Nagas that finds divided on various sinister lines. On another level, the Naga condition presents a sad reality that, ‘far’ away from Kisama, the real Naga people continue to struggle within their own bracketed zones. It is this gap that hornbill has also failed to address. In perspective, Nagas need to learn, unlearn and relearn about tradition and culture if the objective and claim of the festival is aimed at “reviving, protecting and sustaining” the values and richness of the unique Naga culture and traditions.” There lies the credibility of the Hornbill festival beyond the ten days ‘enter-extra-tainment.’

(Dr Asangba Tzudir writes guest editorials for The Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)