In search of an elusive Shangri-la

Nagaland, situated in the northeastern corner of India, to many people remains elusive and mythical like a name taken from one of J.R.R Tolkein’s novels.  Images of pristine landscapes, dotted with picturesque huts and rice terraces, colourfully dressed people in traditional clothes, donned with their spears and exquisite cowry shells, beads, and Hornbill feathers continue to portray Nagaland as an exotic destination.  Sometimes modern life in Nagaland is carefully etched out to give a visual representation of Nagaland as Eden – untouched and unspoilt, at least to the untrained eye.    
This choreographed representation appears in most coffee-table books on Nagaland, enriched by wonderfully, staged, photographs that belie a certain reality to them.  Indeed, it is presented in a manner in which the target audience is a Western consumer whose interest is the visual authenticity of real-people-doing-real-things-living-real-lives.  It ultimately constructs a nostalgic parallel universe in which the two worlds – the West and the exotic East – exist apart.  The real story of Nagaland is hardly told because it is swallowed up in this mishmash of representation that cloaks rather than reveals.  
Jonathan Glancey’s book Nagaland: A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier is different in this respect.  It provides a historical and ethnographic picture of the global geo-political puzzle that is Nagaland and in doing so brings to light facets of global history that have implications for India, China, and Burma.  Remnants of this puzzle have their origins with the British, the Japanese and even the Americans. I would recommend this book because it is one of the better books written on a complex place such as Nagaland and it offers a balanced historical view that will appeal to a general readership, but will also resonate with many Nagas.  It is a story told from the perspective of an outsider, who not only understands the Nagas but also shows deep empathy for their history and their future.    
Jonathan Glancey recounts to us how his fascination with Nagaland began as a child.  Indeed, this fascination was fuelled by his family – grandfather, father and his tea planter uncle – who knew Nagaland (then the Naga Hills) well.  In fact, his father served with the RAF in 1944 to fight the Japanese whose ambitions to enter India were halted in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland.  Armed with stories of the Nagas, Glancey finally manages to sneak into Nagaland in the early 1980s (because of the difficulty of attaining visas) via Arunachal Pradesh and into northern Nagaland.  Since then, he has returned to Nagaland several times visiting the eleven districts and crossing into the eastern and southern mountain borders with Burma where the eastern Nagas live.  The knitting together of the intimate landscape, history and identity of the Naga people into a nuanced and sophisticated constellation of narratives is undeniably one of the strengths of this book.  There are a number of instances where this strength is clearly visible.  
Glancey deftly manoeuvres through the history of the region when the British encountered the Nagas around the mid-18th century, due to the expansive tea trade underway in the Northeast of India and particularly in Assam.  To protect the tea gardens from the Nagas, who routinely attacked tea labourers and captured ‘heads’, the British were forced to administer this recalcitrant landscape.  Administer they did, in some parts at least, while large areas remained ‘unadministered’.  Along with British administration came trade, modern infrastructures, jobs, education, hospitals, and religion.  Christianity, though largely exported by the American Baptists, was one of these forces that has had a lasting impact in Nagaland; it is estimated that over 90% of the Nagas are Christian.  
Another strength of the book is that Glancey doesn’t simply focus on events in the Naga Hills, but highlights the reverberating effects of global history that would shape the future of the Nagas.  When World War I erupted in Europe, several thousand Nagas were enlisted in the Allied Labour Corps in France.  The accounts gathered by Glancey are revelatory, in that they show for the first time how the Nagas were viewed in Europe, fighting alongside the allies against a common enemy.  Their service in France not only endeared the Nagas to the British, but it also helped foster a sense of Naga nationhood.  The experience in France, coupled with the returning men to the Naga Hills, brought about a common Naga consciousness that would lead them to form the Naga Club in 1918.  From this moment, Naga nationhood would take on an important dimension of realising their national identity which would be carried across generations by different groups and personalities, and became centred on their demand for an independent Naga country.  
This long and complex history is guided well by Glancey’s prose and knowledge of the region.  Glancey unravels the way in which the creation of a Naga national identity is crucial in defining their relationship with the Indian state.  Along with Christianity as the dominant religious identity amongst the Nagas, and the adoption of English as the official language, the Nagas have constructed a viable rhetoric of resisting the Indian state who are seen as ‘Hindu’ occupiers.  This stalemate has been exacerbated further by the imposition of the Arms Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) by the Indian government in 1958 that has meant that military and security objectives are foremost in their agenda.  India is worried that any political and territorial compromise on Naga independence will expose India to the strength of China’s monopoly in the region.  Glancey alerts us to the power games of international geo-politics and highlights the important role Nagaland is playing in the larger arena.        
This geo-political reality is best articulated beginning with Glancey’s wonderful account of the Battle of Kohima in 1944 where the British Army, assisted by Naga warriors, defended the capital from Japanese invasion.  Glancey informs us about the many actors involved, particularly the relationship between the fiery Indian National Army leader Subhas Chandra Bose and the Naga nationalist leader Angami Zapu Phizo who connived with the Japanese in the hope that once Japan succeeded the Nagas would have their independence.  Little did we know that the global forces of Adolf Hitler of Germany, Emperor Hirohito of Japan and the forces of the Indian National Army under Bose would culminate in the Battle of Kohima under Naga skies.     
The post-World War II geo-political situation is exemplified in his discussion on the politics of Naga sovereignty, bringing into purview China, Burma, Pakistan, India and America, all playing – in some way or the other – an important role in pitting one against the other, perhaps for their own ends rather than benefiting the Nagas in any way.  Here Glancey’s narrative strengths are at their best when he is concerned both with the vicissitudes of local history and its broader implications – and both resonate with equal parlance.  The circularity of the conflict and the never-ending political stalemate regarding Naga sovereignty demands has disillusioned many Nagas (since 1997 there are peaceful negotiations at the highest level between the Government of India and the different Naga factions).  This feeling is fittingly captured in Glancey’s interviews with Nagas who say that India is primarily interested in Nagaland for two reasons: exploiting its mineral wealth; and to act as a buffer state between India and China.  Glancey warns that if these concerns are foremost in the minds of the Indian state, then this hegemony is a form of neo-colonialism, where the Nagas will never feel a part of India and always be treated as second-class citizens.  Glancey doesn’t offer any solutions to this impasse but rather says that the only way he can help Nagaland is to bring its story to the attention of the world.  
But is Glancey’s story a sentiment shared by all Nagas?  How would the Nagas narrate their own story?  Glancey’s narrative is strongest when dealing with historical facts.  We hear a lot of the Nagas, but less so from the Nagas themselves.  The global forces of history sometimes drown the conversations at the intimate levels and fail to capture the distinct Naga personalities that could have made the book more rewarding and enriching.  It sometimes feels as if Glancey’s construction of the Naga world is like a finely manicured garden that hides the untidy bits, and in the process his book misses the ethnographic magic that makes travel writing a delight to read. Let me now return to the beginning of the story and why he embarked on this journey in the first place.  Intrigued by the romantic adventures of heroic explorers, Glancey reflects on whether Nagaland could be his own Shangri-La, a place that is unspoilt and pristine.  Upon travelling to Nagaland he notes ‘When I discovered that my “Naked Nagas” were mostly Baptists I was, to say the least, surprised’.  Although Glancey is self-reflexive and aware of his own limitations in realising this elusive Shangri-La, and where this dream is manifested in some sort of an authentic Naga culture, there are moments when his nostalgia surfaces, especially when he sees so much environmental destruction and a vanishing traditional culture.  In these quiet moments, he seems to moan the loss of Nagaland’s innocence that perhaps once existed in some mythical time?  Ultimately, it is history that alone will decide these things: is it a loss that can be recovered or is its loss characteristic of our changing world?  
Dr. Arkotong Longkumer is a Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK.  He is a native of Nagaland and has worked for many years with the Nagas of Assam and Nagaland.