Book Review
by Abraham Lotha
Nagas continue to interest researchers and academicians. In the first half of the twentieth century, writings on the Nagas, particularly the monographs by the British administrators, were confined mostly to anthropological interests. From around 1970s onwards, Naga nationalism has become a major focus for most writings on the Nagas. The Rising Nagas (Yonuo 1974), Nagaland File (Luithui and Haksar 1984), Let Freedom Ring (Shimray 2005) are some examples. However, most books on Naga nationalism tend to follow a familiar template, as if it were, beginning with the Naga resistance to the British incursion from 1832 to the Simon Commission of 1929, the Nine-Point Hydari Agreement, the Plebiscite, Shillong Accord, Cease-Fire Agreement, etc. One gets tired of reading the same descriptions of these landmarks leaving a need for fresh ideas and approaches to the subject.
Two books published in 2011 belonging to this category deserve attention. The ABC of Naga Culture & Civilization by Nandita Haksar was sold in one of the stalls at Kisama during the Hornbill Festival, 2011, to test the market. It supposedly did well. The other, War and Nationalism in South Asia: the Indian State and the Nagas by Marcus Franke was published a few months earlier and has been pretty much unnoticed except by some students and scholars of South Asian Studies.
ABC of NAGA Culture & Civilization
By Nandita Haksar
Published by Chicken Neck, 2011.
263 pages, price: Rs. 1250.
The ABC of Naga Culture & Civilization starts out with two assumptions: one, that globalization has had a negative effect on Naga society and culture; second, that the cultural rights of the Naga communities have been violated, and the author decries the inability of the liberal human rights discourse to address this problem. Against this background, the book is addressed to the Naga youth to provide them with tools for their cultural and political survival. The main objective of the book is “to encourage the development of courses on Naga history and culture in schools and colleges.”
The chapters of the book use the English alphabets from A to Z, with cursory descriptions of the various Naga communities in Nagaland and Manipur and briefly discuss current issues in academia pertaining to the Nagas on topics such as art and artifacts, borders and boundaries, education and ecology, globalization, head hunting, identity politics, Naga nationalism, religion, languages, youth, westernization, tribes and tourism, festivals, including Jadonang and the Zeliangrong Movement. The chapters end with a section on ‘Things to think about.’ The book is useful if one wants to know issues about Nagas that are current in academia, internet blogs and popular media. The book will also be a useful tool for group discussions among activists who want to fight certain causes.
Coming from an activist-author who loves the Nagas and is very concerned about their welfare, the book is very well-intentioned. What the book lacks is pedagogy if it is meant to be a text book. Even though the book claims to be ‘A Resource Book,’ it reads more like a coffee-table book. None of the issues are discussed in depth. Haksar’s position as a rights activist, namely that Nagas are culturally and politically alienated, dominates the book, making it come across as overly opinionated. Perhaps, the Angami style ‘galho’ best describes the book’s content and tone. In one dish you get many good ingredients but you only get a diluted taste of the ingredients.
War and Nationalism in South Asia
The Indian state and the Nagas
By Marcus Franke
Published by Routledge. Paperback 2011. 219 pages
War and Nationalism in South Asia is an analytical narrative of the political history of Naga nationalism. Franke traces the history of “the oldest war of post-colonial South Asia, between the Indian state and the Nagas” through three stages: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial.
The main argument of the book is that the Indo-Naga war is the result of the continuing conquest and subjugation of segmentary societies which Franke calls, “imperialism in the service of state-formation.” Because the Nagas did not want to be ruled by others, they resisted against this conquest by the Indian state resulting in a war to preserve their self-determination. Theoretically, the Indo-Naga conflict comes off as an example of the colonial and post-colonial state’s acting on a perception of its legitimacy for geopolitical dominance at the regional level and coming up against a local people’s defense of the right to self-determination based on a history of independence.
The first chapter, which deals with the colonial period, argues that the British incursion into the Naga Hills was in line with the overall imperial project. That the British refrained from a total subjugation of Naga areas was due to high economic costs and not to imperial indifference. The second chapter deals with who the Nagas were at that point in history. This section stresses the agency of the Nagas: their political consciousness, their understanding of their limitations in comparison to their plains neighbors, and their greater willingness to surrender to the British because “they were aware of the general practice of imperialism.” Chapter three deals with the return of the British agents to the Naga Hills, the British administration, and the reasons for the partial conquest of the Naga areas. The chapter argues that the British did not want the Nagas to be independent but sought to establish safeguards for their cultural integrity in the beginning of post-colonial India. This section links the colonial administration with the formation of the Naga social identity. Chapter four deals with the nation-genesis of Naga nationalism under the British rule, arguing that the impact of the colonial rule only produced an elite Naga nation and that the sensitization of the mass of the Nagas took place only as a result of the Second World War. Chapter five deals with the relationship of the Nagas with the agents of the post-colonial Indian state who treated the Nagas as “politically immature savages,” and the armed forces who implemented policies resulting from such attitudes, leading to terror and genocide. Chapter six deals with the mass mobilization of Nagas for armed resistance as a result of what the Nagas felt was an “insincere Indian policy” and the experience of intolerable violence that ensued. Chapter seven describes the post-Nehruvian ‘carrot and stick’ policy toward the Nagas which only continued the colonial divide-and-rule policy. The last chapter deals with the emergence of Naga civil society since the 1980s, which has played a major role as a pressure group for unifying the Nagas. The book ends with this positive development as a possible way out of the continuing war.
Like most books on Naga nationalism, this book also treads the well-trodden path of Naga nationalism from its genesis during the colonial period, the Naga resistance particularly the Angamis’ war against the British intrusion, the post-colonial neo-colonial policies of the Indian state, the militarization of the Naga areas and the resulting atrocities and genocide, and the mass mobilization and the formation of the Naga nationalist groups. The addition that the book brings to the discourse is the emerging role being played by the civil society to find a way out of the conflict. The strength of the book is that it is a thoroughly researched book. In addition to in-depth interviews, Franke makes extensive use of primary sources, “combing through every relevant volume and folder” in the archives of the British library, as he says, and engages in a critical reading of them. But as the author says, there is “no brute data to be measured neutrally.” The book has the marks of a dedicated scholar whose strength lies in the depth and critical knowledge of the subject and whose weakness is its non-committal distance. That said, this book is a valuable resource for scholars of politics and history in South Asian studies.
