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‘To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level’: The

Westernization of Nagas and their Culture

TEZENLO THONG

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 46 / Issue 04 / July 2012, pp 893 - 918

DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X11000412, Published online: 30 August 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X11000412

How to cite this article:

TEZENLO THONG (2012). ‘To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level’: The
Westernization of Nagas and their Culture. Modern Asian Studies, 46, pp 893-918
doi:10.1017/S0026749X11000412

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Modern Asian Studies 46, 4 (2012) pp. 893–918. 
C Cambridge University Press 2011
doi:10.1017/S0026749X11000412 First published online 30 August 2011

‘To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level’:∗

The Westernization of Nagas and their
Culture∗∗
TEZENLO THONG

University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology, 1587 36th Lane, Pueblo,
CO 81006, USA
Email: [email protected]

Abstract
Westernization is a pervasive modern phenomenon. Its impact is more pervasive
and pernicious than many people are aware and/or willing to admit. The
spread of the dominant Western culture has caused a gradual demise of many
peripheral cultures. The incursion of Western agents into Naga soil, beginning
with British military conquest and American missionary intrusion, has resulted
in a significant influence and westernization of Nagas and their culture and
worldview. Consequently, it is almost a cliché to assert that since colonial contact
the long-evolved Naga traditional values are being replaced by Western values.
Today, the literal colonization of Nagas by the imperial West has ended, but
the process of westernization is continuing, thanks to the ongoing influence
being exerted by modern media, technology and other trends of globalization.
My objective in this paper is not to highlight the ‘form’ or ‘material’ aspect of the
culture, such as clothing (although mimicry in this area is almost faultless among
a large section of Nagas), rather, my goal is to discuss the current state of mindset
and fundamental cultural structures of the Nagas that have resulted from the
adjustments in the lives and minds of the people because of the imposition of
westernization. In fact, it is more than merely a process of adjustment consequent
upon conquest, it is an extensive overhauling of cultural institutions, values and
practices. I will underscore the westernization of some basic social structures and
the mindset of the people.

∗
This part of the title is taken from Henry Balfour’s article, ‘Presidential Address:
The Welfare of Primitive Peoples’, Folklore, (1923), 34: 17.
∗∗
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer whose insightful comments enabled
me to revise and rewrite the paper in its present form. I am also gratefully indebted
to my friend W. A. Howard, D. Min., for grammatical and syntactical help.

893
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 894 TEZENLO THONG

Einführung

‘Westernization’ refers to the influence of Western ideas, values, and

practices on the non-Western world. ‘Westernization’, according to
Özay Mehmet, ‘is reconstructing or shaping the rest of the world on
western norms and institutions’.1 It is, in many cases, supplanting
native culture with Western cultural values and practises. More
specifically, the term here refers to colonial and missionary attempts
at wholesale assimilation of Nagas between 1832 and 1947. The Naga
experience of westernization of their culture is not unique in the
world. Rather, all colonized people suffered a similar outcome in their
encounter with the West.
For Nagas, the process of westernization began when the British
invaded their homeland in 1832.2 In 1839, the British colonial
administration invited American Baptist missionaries to proselytize
the Nagas and other native inhabitants in Northeast India.3 This ‘two-
pronged attack’,4 until decolonization in 1947, served to westernize
the Nagas and their culture. Thus, nearly everyone who studies the
process of change among the Nagas is likely to draw the conclusion that
British colonial rule and the introduction of education and Christianity
by American missionaries served to transform significantly ‘the Naga
way of life in all aspects’.5 In this paper, I will discuss the current
mental and cultural states of the Nagas that have resulted from the
adjustments in the lives and minds of the people because of forced
exposure to the imposition of westernization. In fact, it is more than
merely a process of adjustment consequent upon conquest, but an

1
Özay Mehmet, Westernizing the Third World: The Eurocentricity of Economic Development
Theories (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 2.
2
James Johnstone, My Experiences in Manipur and the Naga Hills (Elibron Classics,
2006 [1896]), p. 22. This first invasion was led by Francis Jenkins and Robert
Pemberton.
3
Dana Albaugh, Between Two Centuries: A Study of Four Baptist Missions Fields: Assam,
South India, Bengal-Orissa and South China (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 1935),
p. 49. With reference to this particular event, Albaugh wrote, ‘. . .Major Jenkins,
British Commissioner of the then wild and uncivilized country of Assam, came to feel
that some of his barbarous subjects might be in need of a spiritual reformation’.
4
Andrew West, The Most Dangerous Legacy: The Development of Identity, Power and
Marginality in the British Transfer to India and the Nagas (Hull: Centre for South-East
Asian Studies, 1999).
5
D. Koulie, ‘Changes in Naga Work Culture’, in N. Venuh (ed.), Naga Society:
Continuity and Change (New Delhi: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian
Studies, 2004), p. 100.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 895
extensive overhauling of cultural institutions, values and practises of
the Naga people.

Who are Nagas?

Contemporary Nagas are a transnational indigenous people of about

40 different tribes, numbering approximately three million people
and occupying a landlocked mountainous region.6 Their homeland
is surrounded by India in the southwest, China in the north and
Myanmar in the east. Politically Nagas live in a number of colonially
segmented regions within India and Myanmar, named ‘Naga Hills’
during the British colonial period. The Nagas in India alone live in four
different states: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.
In Myanmar, they inhabit the provinces of Sagiang and Kachin. With
the exception of Nagaland, where they are in the majority, the Naga
population in all other states and provinces is a marginalized minority.
Successive periods of colonial occupation for nearly two centuries,
beginning with British colonization and continuing today under India
and Myanmar, have partitioned the Nagas both geographically and
politically.

Western colonization and proselytization

For decades after their first invasion in 1832, the British undertook
numerous military expeditions into Naga territories, inflicting
considerable damage and suffering on the people.7 It was common
practise in every military expedition for British troops to kill any Nagas
who resisted, by attacking villages, setting fire to houses, and forcing
survivors to flee into the forest.8 The British mission to conquer them
caused decades of suffering and loss to the Nagas, and has been termed
‘one of the most violent chapters in the history of British conquest of

6
The political fragmentation of Naga homeland makes it difficult to ascertain their
population. For example, the restrictive and politically risky situation in Myanmar
prevents anyone from knowing the approximate number of Nagas in that country, let
alone an official documentation. So, the total Naga population can only be at best a
‘guess-estimate’.
7
Asoso Yonuo, The Rising Nagas: A Historical and Political Study (Delhi: Vivek
Publication House, 1974).
8
Verrier Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press,
1969).

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 896 TEZENLO THONG

the sub-continent’.9 The British occupied the Naga Hills until 1947
when the Naga homeland was arbitrarily divided and transferred to
post-colonial India and Burma (now known as Myanmar).
The first encounter between Western missionaries and the Nagas
took place in January 1839, when an American Baptist missionary
named Miles Bronson went to the Namsang Nagas in what is now
known as Arunachal Pradesh.10 However, this mission did not succeed
and was terminated two years later. More than 30 years later, in 1871,
an Assamese evangelist, named Godhula, was sent to the Ao Nagas by
E. W. Clark, who was also an American Baptist missionary stationed
in Assam. In March 1872, Clark established a mission station among
the Ao Nagas at Molung.11 In November 1872, he baptized nine Naga
converts at Sibsagar. This is considered the birth of Christianity among
the Nagas. Subsequently, missions were started among other Naga
tribes. The American missionizing enterprise became significantly
truncated with India’s independence in 1947. Under the mandate
known as the Assam Disturbed Areas Act, 1955, the Indian government
summarily expelled the last American missionary, Robert Delano,
from Nagaland and imposed restrictions on all foreign citizens seeking
to enter the region.12 This restriction remains in effect today.13
For more than a century, Western colonial and missionary agents
sought to ‘civilize’ the ‘savage’ Nagas. When they forced their ‘civilized’
and ‘superior’ culture on the Nagas, especially with regard to religion,
law and political administration, the Nagas suddenly found themselves
ignorant and powerless against the arbitrarily imposed paradigm.
Many of their age-old values and traditions became somewhat
outmoded. The Nagas found themselves at the mercy of the colonizers
who had the knowledge and skills of a new way of life. While ignorance
of the new paradigm disempowered the colonized, the knowledge
of it afforded power and authority to the colonizer. In other words,
the culture of the West was used to disenfranchise the colonized

9
Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (New
Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
10
H. K. Barpujari, The American Missionaries and North-East India (1836–1900)
(Guahati: Spectrum Publishers, 1986).
11
Joseph Puthenpurakal, Baptist Missions in Nagaland: A Study in Historical and
Ecumenical Perspective (Calcutta: Firma KLM Private Ltd., 1984).
12
L. Kari Longchar, ‘“The Missionary Position” and the Nagas’, Morung Express:
Dimapur, 28 October 2008.
13
Reisang Vashum, Nagas’ Rights to Self Determination: An Anthropological-historical
Perspective (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2005).

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 897
and maintain power over them.14 The pronouncement that Naga
traditional myths, sacred stories and ways of knowing were pagan,
irrational and primitive caused not only a sense of cultural confusion,
but also served to invalidate the cultural values and practises that the
people relied upon for guidance and strength in life.15

Civilizing mission

It is important to note the perception of the Nagas by Western

invaders, because the desire to westernize the Nagas stems from
how they were perceived. Albert Memmi calls colonial perception a
‘mythical portrait of the colonized’16 and argues that without the
colonial portrait ‘the presence and conduct of the colonizer . . . would
be shocking’.17 The Nagas have been subject to a plethora of colonial
stereotypes during the extended period of their colonization. The
British and the Americans were a people of their time and were deeply
entrenched in the vortex of colonial euphoria. They thought that their
own culture represented the pinnacle of cultural progress. Conversely,
they relegated all colonized cultures, especially the indigenous or tribal
cultures, to the lowest stage of progress.18 As such, ‘civilizing the
savage’ was a constant part of the mindset and appeared frequently in
colonial and missionary literature pertaining to Nagas. One colonial
writer described the Nagas as ‘very low in the scale of civilization’
and deserving of careful study.19 Another recommended a study of
the Naga languages because ‘they represent the characteristics of the
earliest pre-historic periods’.20 Still another remarked that ‘in actual

14
Musa Dube, ‘Reading from Decolonization (John 4:1–42)’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah
(ed.), Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (New York: Orbis,
2006), p. 299. Also, for an argument that knowledge/power form a couplet, see
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977,
trans. Colin Gordon, et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).
15
Some Naga writers consider this to be the ‘dark period’ in Naga history. See
Inato Yekhoto Shikhu, A Rediscovery and Rebuilding of Naga Cultural Values: An Analytical
Approach with Special Reference to Maori as a Colonized and Minority Group of People in New
Zealand (New Delhi: Daya Books, 2007), p. 46.
16
Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 79.
17
Ibid.
18
Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1995), p. 13.
19
Gertrude M. Godden, ‘Naga and Other Frontier Tribes of North-East India’, The
Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, (1898), 27: 9.
20
Hyde Clark is quoted in S. E. Peale, ‘The Nagas and Neighbouring Tribes’, The
Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, (1874), 3: 481.

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 898 TEZENLO THONG

mental capacity [the Nagas] are rather low’.21 Consequently, a main

goal of the British administration, as outlined by one officer, was ‘the
introduction of civilization and Christianity among a large class of
people at present hopelessly buried in barbarism and superstition’.22
Henry Balfour, in his presidential address to the British Folklore
Society, stated unambiguously that bringing civilization to ‘primitive’
people was not simply a responsibility, but the White person’s right
as well. He asserted, ‘We all share in the responsibilities arising
from our assumption of the right to control the destinies of peoples
in a backward state of culture. Our prestige is at stake’.23 Balfour
had just returned from a three-month visit to the Naga Hills in
1922, and his address was replete with concern for the welfare of
the ‘primitive’ Nagas. One concern was ‘rescuing a very interesting
people from inclusion in the category of “dwindling populations” and
“moribund races”’.24 Then he reminded his fellow Society members
of their responsibility and challenged them saying, ‘Our conscientious
aim is to raise the savage to a higher level . . . by evolution, not by
revolution’.25
The missionaries were no better in their judgment and derision
of Nagas and their culture. This should surprise no one, because
Christianity and civilizing the ‘savage’ went hand-in-hand. In fact,
civilization was considered a prerequisite for proselytization.26 It
was believed, as Tink Tinker has rightly noted, that civilizing
the ‘barbarous’ natives would prepare them to grasp and embrace
Christianity. The Naga Hills was then referred to as ‘the wilds of
barbarism’27 and the people as ‘those savage wilds’.28 Consequently, it
was acknowledged, ‘To the natural man these people [Nagas] would be
revolting, but in Christ all is changed’.29 The missionaries also hoped

21
Ibid., p. 478.
22
Bengal Judicial Proceedings 18(123). This refers to correspondence between two
British military officers, Mr Vincent and Mr Butler, dated September 10 1852. Both
led military attacks against the Nagas.
23
Balfour, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 13.
24
Ibid., p. 21.
25
Ibid., p. 17.
26
George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural
Genocide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). Also see, J. Dharmaraj, Colonialism and
Christian Mission: Postcolonial Reflections (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999).
27
Clark, A Corner in India (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society,
1907), p. 15.
28
Ibid., p. 32.
29
Ibid., p. 135.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 899
that ‘the Nagas, once civilized and Christianized, will make a manly,
worthy people’.30 E. W. Clark, a pioneer American missionary to the
Nagas, thought that the Nagas were ‘by far the most pure pagans’, who
‘are sitting in gross darkness . . . and to whom we are under obligations
to give it [i.e., the gospel]’.31 As it was understood then, ‘civilization
was white and Christian and everything else was barbarian’.32 Having
perceived the Naga Hills as ‘the paradise of the head-hunters’,33 where
‘heathenish darkness and ignorance reign supreme’,34 the mission to
the Nagas began essentially as a strategy for colonial pacification and
civilization. This dark and prejudicial perception of the Nagas led to
an intense and passionate desire to westernize and ‘civilize’ them.
Now, having provided a glimpse of the ‘cognitive world’ of the West-
ern civilizing agents, I describe below some aspects that have served
to westernize the Nagas and shape the course of their life and modern
history. I will do so by describing traditional or pre-colonial practises
on some aspects of the Naga way of life vis-à-vis Western culture.

Westernization of Naga culture

Richard Clemmer observed that the Hopis were being pulled by ‘two
opposite poles: the pursuit of progress and opposition to it’.35 Most,
if not all non-Western cultures are subject to this debilitating and
helpless experience, including the Nagas. The Naga writer Charles
Chasie observed, ‘The advent of the [Western colonization], and
exposure of the Nagas to the outside world, turned Naga society upside
down and ushered in profound changes that would leave indelible scars
that could never be erased’.36 Although there is a growing awareness

30
Ibid., p. 45.
31
Clark, ‘Gospel Destitution About Assam’, in The Assam Mission of the American
Baptist Missionary Union. Papers and Discussions of the Jubilee Conference Held in Nowgong,
December 18–29, 1886 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1887), pp. 224, 226.
32
Roger Osbrone, Civilization: A New History of the Western World (New York: Pegasus
Books, 2006), p. 5.
33
Alva Curtis Bowers, Under Head-Hunters’ Eyes (Philadelphia: The Judson press,
1929), p. 194. Bowers’ chapter on the Naga Hills, chapter IX, is called ‘A Head-
Hunter’s Paradise’. Similarly, in Mary Clark’s A Corner in India, the third chapter is
entitled ‘A Plunge into Barbarism’, which describes the beginning of American Baptist
Missions in the Naga Hills in 1872.
34
Clark’s letter, ‘Assam’, Baptist Missionary Magazine, (1897), 77: 191.
35
Richard O. Clemmer, Roads in the Sky: The Hopi Indians in the Century of Change
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 9.
36
Charles Chasie, ‘Nagaland in Transition’, in Geeti Sen (ed.), Where the Sun Rises
When Shadows Fall: The North-East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 255.

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 900 TEZENLO THONG

among some Nagas of the importance of preserving cultural identity

and values, the overwhelming majority remain deeply entrenched in
the idea of the pursuit of modernization.37

Westernization through education

The introduction of Western education served to transform the non-

literate Naga culture. When American missionaries arrived in 1839
with the desire to introduce literacy and Christianity, the Nagas
reacted with either indifference or resistance: ‘Who wants religion
from a foreigner, and who will alter the customs of their fathers to
receive books?’.38 This attitude to Western culture gradually shifted
as the Nagas realized the social and economic advantages that
accompanied literacy and Christianity in the newly emerging Western
socio-cultural paradigm. Accordingly, the introduction of education by
missionaries was poised to transform permanently the way of life that
the Nagas had previously known. Naga scholar Piketo Sema observes
that amongst ‘the agencies which brought about a considerable socio-
political change . . . were Christianity and education’.39
American missionaries were at the forefront with regard to the
introduction of Western education. Initially, education meant merely
enabling the Nagas to become literate. It had a religious motive—‘to
develop literacy in order that the Bible could be read’.40 Christianity
and education were intentionally intertwined to pursue a set of
objectives. For this reason, some scholars have drawn the conclusion
that the spread of Christianity resulted in cultural crisis among
Nagas.41 However, the causes of crisis in culture and identity are
numerous and varied, and it would be naïve to suggest it is due
to one factor alone. Education and Christianity were two sides of
the same coin and served as a conduit through which Nagas were
not only Christianized but also westernized. Some Naga elders, such

37
The concept of modernization did not exist amongst traditional Nagas. It started
only when they encountered the West. As such, I use westernization, modernization
and progress interchangeably.
38
Bronson (21 December, 1840) in Barpujari, American Missionaries and North-East
India, p. 238.
39
P. Sema, British Policy and Administration in Nagaland 1881–1947 (New Delhi:
Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1992), p. 67. Because of the fact that the missionary
promoted education, we can discuss the inception of education only in tandem with
Christianity. The two form an inseparable couplet.
40
West, The Most Dangerous Legacy, p. 17.
41
A. K. Ray, ‘Change: The Law of Life’, in Venuh, Naga Society, p. 13.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 901
as Talitemjen Jamir and Lanunungsang, have rightly attributed
the gradual disappearance of Naga culture to the ‘influence of
westernization’, education being a major force.42
For the educated Nagas, their attachment to White people
through education and employment created alienation from their own
community and culture. They tended to consider themselves in a class
of their own, with superior knowledge and achievement. Education
enabled them to pursue non-traditional means of livelihood, causing
disinterest in and detachment from participatory cultural practices
such as festivals, rituals, ceremonies and other social activities. Thus,
a tendency towards individualism and personal achievement at the
expense of alienation from the community and culture, previously
unthinkable, became an acceptable norm. Mission schools not only
trained students, but also provided non-traditional employment
opportunities, thus promoting a culture that increasingly became
dependent on money.43 This paradigmatic cultural shift introduced
monetary culture that paved the way for the inception of the Western
culture of materialism and consumerism among contemporary Nagas.
Traditional Naga society had no formal education system as it is
being practised in today’s westernized Naga society. Education was
conducted through oral transmission and learning by experience. It
was participatory and practical and took place in the context of the
home and larger community. Each person was an integral part of
the community.44 As such, every Naga was taught to be responsible
to the family and village, thereby contributing to the cohesion and
harmony of the whole. Priority was given to formation rather than
information, that is, formation of character over information of a body
of knowledge such as facts and ideas. The purpose of education was
to make an individual fit for the societal role expected of him or
her and to develop skills and character rather than impart a certain
quantity of essentially abstract knowledge. The traditional education
was inextricably integrated with the socio-economic, artistic, religious
and recreational life of the community.45 Thus, contrary to western

42
N. T. Jamir and A. Lanunungsang, Naga Society and Culture (Mokokchung:
University Tribal Research Centre, 2005), p. 1.
43
W. E. Witter, ‘Wokha’, Baptist Missionary Magazine, (1887), 67: 266. Witter
reported that ‘most of the boys [enrolled in mission schools] were employed as servants
[by American missionaries]’.
44
Ray, ‘Change’, in Venuh, Naga Society, p. 17.
45
Ganmumei Kamei, Ethnicity and Social Change: An Anthology of Essays (Imphal:
Akanksha Publishing, 2002), p. 138.

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 902 TEZENLO THONG

education, the aim of traditional education was not to generate

change or innovation, but to produce conformity to societal norms
and practises.
In contrast to traditional education, the modern westernized
education system among the Nagas remains largely irrelevant and
meaningless. Indeed, it breeds social problems, because it is not
only from the West, but also is highly examination-oriented. As Vine
Deloria, Jr. argued, ‘modern education places immense reliance on the
standardised tests as a measure of the worth and accomplishments of
the individual’.46 Paulo Freire called this the ‘“banking” concept of
education’, a system in which ‘students patiently receive, memorize,
and repeat’.47 Deloria also contended that the Euro-American
system of education amounts to indoctrination because ‘it insists on
implanting a particular body of knowledge and a specific view of the
world that often does not correspond to the life experiences that people
have or might be expected to encounter’.48
The current system of westernized education among Nagas lacks
cultural relevance to the needs of the learner or their society and does
not take into account the applicability of what is being taught and
learned. It has miserably failed in meeting the needs of the society.
The school curriculum contains very little or no Naga culture and
history. In a world that is almost completely shut off from the West
by India,49 Naga students are taught White middle-class ideals and
values relating to economics, law, politics, science, and philosophy,
none of which have much practical relevance to a largely agrarian Naga
society. They compete to learn and pass examinations on European
history, the Renaissance, Western industrialization, the American
democratic system, Keynesian economics, free trade, and English
literature, to name a few. Education is oriented towards the acquisition
of mostly irrelevant factual information with very little thought put to

46
Deloria, Jr., ‘Knowing and Understanding: Traditional Eduaction in the Modern
World’, in Barbara Deloria, Kristen Foehner and Sam Scintia (eds), Spirit and Reason:
The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader, (Golden: Fulcrum Publications, 1999), p. 141.
47
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York; London: Continuum, 2003), p. 72.
48
Deloria, Foehner, and Scintia, Spirit and Reason, p. 138.
49
Under the mandate known as the Assam Disturbed Area Act, 1955, the government
of India effectively drove out the last remaining foreigners, including American
missionaries, from the Naga Hills and restricted entry without the Restricted Area
Permit (RAP). In 1958, the parliament of India also passed the Armed Forces (Assam and
Manipur) Special Powers Act, 1958. Both these acts were passed to meet the exigencies
of the Naga freedom movement. Despite strong protests for revocation, both acts
remain in force to this day.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 903
comprehending the meaning or implication of what is being learned
or taught. This social and cultural irrelevance means that students
often lack the motivation to study. They have difficulty in relating
what they learn to their frame of reference and in making it a part
of their knowledge or themselves. Below I will discuss some of the
lingering impacts of Western education on contemporary Nagas.
First, the westernized education system created visible social
polarization and stratification. Colonial education and employment,
provided to a select group, created social divisions and asymmetry
in structures of power and wealth. Western education also brought
bureaucracy and elitism, or an Euro-American class system to a
formerly classless society. Today, Naga society is divided into the
‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, the educated and illiterate, the employed
and unemployed, and the government employees and traditional
subsistence cultivators. The illiterate, the poor, the unemployed and
the subsistence workers are seen as ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ village
dwellers, who are trapped in tradition. Naga writer Chasie rightly
observed, ‘The bureaucrat, and his lifestyle, also became the ‘role-
model’ for many. Focus shifted from values to symbols of achievement
while money became the measuring yardstick’.50 Consequent to this
stratification of Naga society, widening socio-economic disparity has
emerged rapidly, particularly between the educated employed in urban
settlements and the subsistence cultivators in rural villages. This
aspect of westernization has brought about an erosion of traditional
consciousness such as the practice of communal caring and equitable
distribution of resources.
Second, westernized education also caused disruption in the balance
of authority, especially with regard to the traditional practice of
respecting elders and valuing their leadership role and pragmatic
wisdom.51 Most British officers and American missionaries were young
individuals, keen on exploration and adventure. Although young,
they wielded enormous authority in an extremely unequal power
relationship in a colonial context. Not surprisingly, they also elevated
young literate Nagas to leadership positions. Most, if not all, educated
young individuals were also Christians, who believed that they were
no longer bound by traditional socio-religious rules.52 Because of their
newly found privileged position, they shifted their allegiance and

50
Chasie, ‘Nagaland in Transition’, in Sen, Where the Sun Rises, p. 259.
51
Jamir and Lanunungsang, Naga Society and Culture.
52
Smith, The Ao Naga Tribe of Assam, pp. 196–197.

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 904 TEZENLO THONG

loyalty to their Western colonial and/or missionary masters. In this

respect, Western education has proved disruptive to the traditional
balance of authority by contributing significantly to the disintegration
of traditional gerontocracy.53 Education, and the shift of the socio-
political paradigm, served to nullify the social position and influence
of elders. Indeed, this paradigmatic shift rendered the older Nagas
redundant in that their wisdom was no longer efficacious. Their
status dropped and their contributions were minimized amidst social
changes. Consequently, their self-esteem and self-worth also declined.
Third, unemployment among Naga youth is a serious modern
malady caused by westernized education. It is a condition unknown
to the pre-colonial Nagas.54 In pre-colonial society, every Naga was
employed, because a good share of their traditional education was
devoted to ensuring that each person acquired the knowledge and
skills necessary to provide a livelihood. In gaining this education, it
made the person feel valuable and meaningful within their social
group. No one suffered psychologically from being socially stigmatized
as ‘unemployed’. With the inception of Western education, the reality
of unemployment and its associated socio-economic and psychological
ramifications begin to affect unemployed educated Nagas as well as
society in general. For many educated unemployed, education has
become an end in itself, i.e., education has become simply a means to
acquire a school degree, leading only to frustration, despair and a loss
of self-esteem and self-worth.55
A colonial administrator in the 1850s observed that ‘the motive
which brings the [Naga] boys to the schools is simply the prospect
of getting Government employment’, which remains even more so
today. He further remarked, ‘The one cry with the higher classes
is: “you have given us education under the promise of employment,
and unfitted us for an agricultural life, and you do not fulfill your
promise.”’56 An American missionary made a similar observation

53
I use gerontocracy to refer to the tradition of respecting and valuing the
experience, wisdom and instruction of the elders in society and not to any formal
government or rule by elders.
54
J. P. Mills, ‘The Effects on the Naga Tribes of Assam of Their Contact with
Western Civilization’, in John Bodley (ed.), Tribal Peoples and Development Issues: A
Global Overview (Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1988).
55
For an extended study on the problem of unemployment among Nagas, see
K. Kikhi, Educated Unemployment Youth in Nagaland: A Sociological Study (New Delhi:
Akanksha Publishing, 2006).
56
A. J. M. Mills, Report on the Province of Assam (Calcutta, 1854; Reprint Guwahati,
1982), pp. 26–28.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 905
in the early 1920s: ‘. . . boys who have been in the Mission School
consider themselves above manual labour. They have observed that
the missionaries and officials, and the high-caste Assamese, who are
teachers in the school and as Government clerks, do not perform
manual labour’.57 He also observed that some of the boys preferred
to ‘care for the missionaries’ ponies’ over the traditional means of
livelihood, because they considered the former to be superior to the
latter.58
The colonizers and missionaries consistently and persistently
propagated the idea that the Naga’s subsistence living was primitive
and so labour-intensive that no civilized person ‘could stand the life
for a year’.59 Young Nagas were strongly encouraged to submit to
the new education system as the only escape from the ‘backward’
life. Those who did were offered paid employment. Subsequently, over
the decades the belief that education is the vehicle through which
one moves away from the primitive and into the modern has become
deeply engrained in the Naga psyche.60
This attitude towards education and its associated expectations
produced a rate of literacy among the Nagas of 19 per cent in
1960 to 67.11 per cent in 2001, translating into 44,960 educated,
unemployed youth in 2006 in the state of Nagaland alone.61 Today,
there is no private sector to offer employment opportunities. Educated
Nagas continue to think of subsistence living as beneath them and do
not consider self-employment honourable. Consequently, trade and
commerce are almost entirely dominated by non-Naga immigrants,
who drain resources away from the Nagas. With only government
jobs available, the power of Naga bureaucrats and politicians has
become disproportionate. Additionally, widespread nepotism, tribal
favouritism and bribery, unknown in pre-colonial society, have become
the norm.

57
Smith, The Ao Naga Tribe of Assam, pp. 196–197.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid., p. 197.
60
K. Terhuja, ‘The Christian Church Among the Angami Nagas’, in K. Suresh
Singh (ed.), The Tribal Situation in India (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
1972), p. 298.
61
This figure of unemployment is provided by the Nagaland state registry of
employment. The estimate could be much higher, because many have lost hope
and simply do not care to register. ‘44,960 unemployed in Nagaland’, Nagaland Post
(Dimapur), 17 March 2006.

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The introduction of job specialization through westernized

education has also generated unemployment among the Nagas.
Because of the irrelevance of the training, many educated Nagas
find themselves at a loss after completing their studies. For example,
dentistry, veterinary medicine and computer engineering do not bear
much relevance to a largely agricultural and rural Naga society where
such types of expertise are rarely needed. Even when employed by
the state government these sorts of professions end up contributing
minimally to society. So, the modern Western idea of professionalizing
work has become a factor in contributing to social problems such
as unemployment and unnecessary waste of human and monetary
resources in acquiring professional training that is contextually
irrelevant.
The foundation on which the westernized education system was laid
is flawed and has a negative impact on contemporary Nagas because
the system did not encourage adapting education to the specific Naga
cultural setting. The objective of the Western education was not to
strengthen the existing cultural values and practises, but to disrupt
and transform the culture and the mindset of the people. Its objective
was, and still is, to inculcate White middle-class values, example,
adversarial democracy, individual rights, freedom of expression and
free trade. Colonial education was not only transplanted, but also was
needed for the colonizing of the Nagas. While the missionaries needed
literate Naga teachers and preachers to assist them in proselytization,
the British needed educated Nagas as agents to enforce colonial rules.
Consequently, educated Nagas were not only critical agents in the
westernization and modernization of the Nagas but also were the first
colonial instruments and native accomplices.

Westernization through Christianity

On first contact, the effort to Christianize the Nagas was a cooperative

undertaking by the American and British colonial agents who made
‘a two-pronged attack’ on traditional Naga society.62 However, schism
began to emerge gradually between the two interest groups. The later
British colonial administrators desired to keep Naga culture as pristine
as possible, and they saw the effort of American Baptist missionaries

62
West, The Most Dangerous Legacy, p. 17.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 907
to foster conversion as a threat to keeping the Hills as a ‘colonial
zoo’ or ‘human museum’.63 Unlike the British, American missionaries
had the resolute goal of Christianizing the Nagas as fast as they
could. Accordingly, besides proselytizing and establishing schools, the
missionaries implemented the creation of ‘Christian colonies’ in order
to transform the Naga converts as rapidly as possible.64 For example,
one of the first things Clark, the first American missionary to arrive in
the Naga Hills known today as Nagaland, did was to establish Molung-
yimsen (New Molung), to where converts were relocated from their
old village of Molung.65 Little Christian colonies such as these were
created out of fear that the converts might relapse into their old
‘demon worship’. So, the new converts were separated with the object
of cutting contact with their non-convert families, community and
their ‘heathen’ way of life. The objective of the segregation was to
fully Christianize Naga converts by inculcating and training them in
Western Christian values and lifestyle. The missionaries referred to
the mission compounds, as they are called to this day, as the abode of
light, progress and civilization as opposed to the abode of darkness, evil
and barbarism.66 By superimposing their own rules on the converts,
missionaries created a microcosm of the Christian West. Even in
traditional villages where Christians and non-Christians co-existed,
as the demand for schools increased observance of Christian rules by
the entire village became a prerequisite for establishing a school.67
A. K. Ray argues that the missionaries ‘sought to sweep . . . [Naga
culture] away at one stroke, and replace it with something that is
entirely foreign’.68 Indeed, Christianity has been an important force
in westernizing the Nagas. In fact, Christianity is in itself a form
of westernization, because modern Christianity has an enormous
influence on Western culture. Conversely, it has so much Western
culture contained in it. So as it Christianizes, it also westernizes by
inculcating Western values and practices. For this reason, Christianity

63
See Mills, ‘The Effects on the Naga Tribes’, in Bodley, Tribal Peoples and
Development Issues. British colonial officers such as Mills and others like him blamed
American missionaries for much of the destruction of Naga culture.
64
‘Little Christian colony’ is used by Mary Clark to refer to a ‘Christian’ village
that was established by her husband and herself. Clark, A Corner in India, p. 145. Even
to this day, some Nagas continue to use the term ‘Mission Compound’ for their village.
65
Gordon E. Pruett, ‘Christianity, History, and Culture in Nagaland’, Contribution
to Indian Sociology, (1974), 8: 52.
66
Clark, A Corner in India.
67
The Baptist Missionary Magazine (July 1884).
68
Ray, ‘Change’, in Venuh, Naga Society.

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 908 TEZENLO THONG

is rightly viewed as a Western religion, although the West inherited it

from the ‘Middle East’.
Consequent to the aggressive missionary effort, contemporary
Nagas share a westernized Christian culture that mirrors the West.
Christianity among Nagas is not a contextualized one. It is a
transported or ‘imported’ one in its entirety. For example, instead of
singing Naga music and playing Naga musical instruments in church,
Naga Christians sing Western hymns and play guitar or synthesizer.
Appreciating the ability of Nagas to sing Western hymns that were
introduced by missionaries, an American missionary in reporting home
wrote, ‘I cannot tell you how it thrills our hearts to hear these heathen
voices singing so sweetly the praises of Jesus’.69 Because of these
westernized practices, Naga traditional songs, dances and musical
instruments have long been discarded. Besides, the worship-styles
and religious literature are mostly Western. To show the impact of
westernization through Christianity, I will point out some contrasts
between Naga traditional religious beliefs and Christianity.
As opposed to the Christian concept of a male deity, pre-
Christianized Nagas believed in a divine being who was perceived
in feminine terms. Among the Rengma Nagas, the word for the deity
is Anyiza (mother of humanity). Anyiza is a compound word, where
anyi means humanity and za is an archaic form for mother. Likewise,
in Angami Naga language, the divine being is referred to as Kepenuopfü
(literally, ‘birth spirit’). Not only does the concept imply female (i.e.,
birth), it is also feminine as pfü is a feminine suffix.70 As Angami Naga
scholar Visier Sanyü pointed out, ‘[Ukepenuopfü] was a female God,
not a goddess. When the missionaries came to our land they made her
a male God and used her name to translate Jehovah’.71 Today, both
terms have been ‘Christianized’ and are being used to refer to the
Christian God understood as a male deity. This is an example of how
Christianity has revolutionized, colonized and altered the religious
mind of contemporary Nagas.
Furthermore, unlike Christian theology, the concept of God was
never formulated at length; nor was it a basis for rationalism,

69
W. E. Witter, ‘The Naga Mission’, Baptist Missionary Magazine, (1887), 67: 23.
70
J. H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas: With Some Notes on Neighbouring Tribes, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
71
Visier Sanyü, ‘Voice of the Voiceless: Trust building in a divided World’
http://www.caux.iofc.org/en/node/27050 [accessed 15 July 2011; a speech given on
the World Indigenous Day, 9 August 2007].

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 909
argument, division, conflict or war. The concept of the divine was left
to the experiences of the individual in the context of communal life
and nature. No school or teacher existed from where or whom Nagas
learned about the divine being. There was no designated worship
place, literature, creed or a religious expert to help delineate the
beliefs. The traditional Naga religion was not an account of one
person’s life and teaching as it is in the case of Christianity. Rather,
it was represented by the communal life, wisdom and experience of
a group of people over a long period of time. Unlike Christianity,
the Naga religion did not have a missionary tendency and did not
gain followers by conversion. Rather, it was passed down successive
generations through oral narrations, myths, songs, rituals, dances and
ceremonies. As such, conversion was understood as a total rejection
of one’s own community and tradition and was viewed with great
seriousness. Conversion caused so much tension and conflict within
the family and village as ‘early Naga converts were even disowned and
exiled from their village communities’.72
Another crucial aspect of westernization is the concept of the
‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’. The concept of ‘separation between
religion/church and the state’ is a purely Western concept. For
traditional Nagas, the so-called ‘religion’ was not a dogma or a set
of established beliefs. Rather, it was a way of life. Life experience in
its entirety was religious. Every traditional Naga was a deeply religious
being and the thought of oneself as an atheist, agnostic, sceptic, non-
believer or non-religious never existed.73 In other words, religion
permeated all of life. The concept of life as inseparably interwoven
as a whole was a dominant unifying force that united the Naga not
only to the community, but also to nature around human beings. The
compartmentalization of ‘things sacred’ and ‘things secular’ never
occurred to a Naga. As such, Western Christianity secularized the
once thoroughly religious Naga society by introducing the concept
of the secular and the sacred, or the natural and the supernatural.
Today, the Nagas, who had no concept of things secular but considered
everything sacred or religious, have radically compartmentalized their

72
Charles Chasie, ‘Administrative and Social Factors: The Change in Naga
Society’, in Venuh, Naga Society, p. 132.
73
Correspondingly, with regard to Traditional African Religion, John Mbiti made
a similar observation: ‘. . .God is no stranger to African peoples, and in traditional life
there are no atheists’. John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Nairobi: Heinemann
Publishers, 1985), p. 29.

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 910 TEZENLO THONG

lives to things secular and things sacred, verging closely on Gnostic

dualism.74
Additionally, there was no concept resembling heaven or hell in
the Naga religion. It was believed that in death a person would be
exactly what he or she was in life—live in the same village with
the same villagers and family and do the same thing—albeit, in
the world of the dead. So at the initial stage of ‘missionization’,
the Nagas dreaded the idea of converting to Christianity to get
to heaven because of fear that it would mean eternal separation
from their ancestors who, in the judgment of missionaries, were
in hell. Given a choice, some Nagas chose to go to ‘hell’ and be
with their dead relatives and community members. As opposed to
this kind of communitarian religious tradition, the concern of the
missionary religion was largely individualistic and eschatological. It
placed a strong emphasis on personal salvation, even at the expense
of physical separation from one’s societal members and traditions, not
only ‘hereafter’ but also ‘herenow’. Therefore, emphasis on personal
salvation directly or indirectly fostered individualism and individual
responsibility and eroded the primacy of community hitherto valued
among Nagas.
This concept of dichotomy of ‘heaven and hell’, ‘the secular and
the sacred’ or ‘the here-and-now and the here-after’ has created
in the minds of many Naga Christians the belief that Sundays or
religious holidays are ‘holier’ than other days and ‘religious’ works
are holier and/or greater than ‘secular’ works. This misconception
encourages rampant corruption in what is understood as the ‘secular’
sphere. Then, on a Sunday or in the ‘religious’ sphere the same
people who indulged in corrupt and wicked acts seek to assuage
their guilt by offering a part of their ill-gotten gains to ‘God’. This
compartmentalization also has rendered religion hollow and futile in
the transformation of society as the emphasis is placed on personal
regeneration and the salvation of the individual soul. The theology of
the church, in most part, has remained vertical (i.e., between God and
a person) and has little horizontal or social dimension. So in the midst
of widespread corruption, unending political violence between Nagas
and the Indian government and fratricidal killing associated with the
Naga freedom movement, the propensity of Naga Christians to uphold

74
‘Gnostic dualism’ refers to the Gnostic belief in the dualism of flesh and spirit,
with the flesh being evil and the spirit being good.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 911
‘vertical religiosity’ and to overlook ‘horizontal religiosity’75 validates
Marx’s claim that religion is the ‘opiate of the masses’. Thus, the once
‘this-worldly’ religious worldview of the Nagas has become increasingly
‘other-worldly’ and less relevant to ‘this-worldly’ existence.

Westernization through ‘democratization’

‘Democratization’ is used here to refer to the negation of the Naga

system of social ordering76 and the imposition of a Western form of
government or ‘the imported state’.77 The introduction of Western
institutions of politics and ‘civil’ government rested solely with the
British imperial government. The democratizing of the political
processes of the Nagas was rigorously enforced in order to subjugate
them.78 A main and obvious example is the creation of a system of
centralized power and control, contradictory to the Naga practice of
egalitarianism, which is discussed further below.
Here, it is important to note that the British and American intruders
thought that no form of government existed amongst the Nagas. One
colonial officer argued, ‘. . . no regular Government can be expected
to exist amongst wild uncivilized tribes who are ignorant of the use
of letters or the art of writing’.79 Similarly, an American missionary
to the Nagas also said, ‘. . . the wild men not infrequently come from
across the border and beg the English official to take them under
his government and protection, for he knows . . . that he cannot govern
himself’.80 Undoubtedly, a form of government equivalent to the West
did not exist. Nonetheless, the Nagas were not without any form of

75
Martin-Baro defines ‘vertical religiosity’ as ‘believing in God as being in heaven
and a salvation beyond this world’ and ‘horizontal religiosity’ as a ‘belief in God as
a brother and salvation in this world’. Ignacio Martin-Baro, Writings for a Liberation
Psychology, ed. Adiran Aron and Shawn Corne (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1994), p. 147.
76
When referring to the traditional Nagas, instead of government, I will use social
ordering or a governing system.
77
‘Imported state’ comes from Bertrand Badie’s book, The Imported State: The
Westernization of the Political Order (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), where
the author traces the rise of the modern state and its spread to colonial and
postcolonial societies.
78
J. Lonkumer, ‘The Ao Village Organization: Origin to Present Day’, in Venuh,
Naga Society, p. 28.
79
Mills, Report on Assam, p. cxlii.
80
S. A. Perrine, ‘The Value of the Wild Men of India’, The Baptist Missionary Magazine
(June 1901), 81(6): 213.

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 912 TEZENLO THONG

governing system or unable to govern themselves. So the claims above

clearly show the fixation of the Western mind and its inability to see
beyond the culturally biased view.
Some Western anthropologists have argued that societies have
evolved from stateless societies to chieftainship to social classes and
sophisticated state societies.81 This evolution of a political system was
then thought to be a sign of evolution from the depths of savagery to
civilized nation-states or ‘civil’ government. One of the reasons for the
failure of Westerners to see any form of ‘civil’ government amongst
the Nagas is the absence of institutionalized authority, hierarchy
and class structure associated with Western civil government and
‘democratic’ politics. In their mind, it was hard to perceive how
systematic ordering of social relations could be maintained without
the institutions of civil government and politics. The failure to see a
Western-style hierarchical structure led to the misconception that no
civil government existed amongst Nagas and resulted in the imposition
of a Western structure of government to a formerly stateless society.
J. P. Mills, who served in the British administration in the Naga Hills
between 1916 and 1938, lamented the destruction of the native system
of social organization as ‘the great loss of the tribe’ and believed that
‘it is impossible to revive it’. He admittedly noted:
The habit has grown up of rushing to [British] court with complaint, and the
courts have lent far too ready an ear. A chief’s power is bound to disappear
if the aggrieved party can always appeal to an alien law administered by
a magistrate who has the best intentions in the world uncombined with
knowledge of indigenous custom.82
To understand the process of democratization better, I will describe
some of the salient features of social ordering practiced in traditional
Naga society, with an emphasis on the virtue of egalitarianism vis-à-vis
the British system of centralized authority. Although Nagas are often
referred to as tribal people, the concept of tribe is a colonial construct.
‘The term “tribe” as coined by the British was an administrative and
even political category [which] has come in handy as a lever to exploit
“tribal consciousness”.’83 The Nagas were villagers and not tribals.
Almost every Naga village was an autonomous socio-political entity or

81
Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
82
Mills, The Rengma Nagas (London: MacMillan, 1967), p. 140. What Mills calls
‘chief’ is a mischaracterization, which should be termed ‘elder’.
83
Singh, The Tribal Situation in India, p. xxi.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 913
‘village-state’.84 Even in a more autocratic system practiced by some
Nagas, each village was ‘indigenous and independent’.85 So, in the
discussion of the ordering of society, it is helpful to think in terms of
village governance rather than in the modern sense of a nation-state
political institution or government.
On the subject of governance, a Naga writer contends, ‘Democracy
in its purest form existed among them. A system so suitable to them
[has] lasted through centuries which formed an integral part of their
life’.86 Three ways of governing the village existed in traditional Naga
society. Among a few tribes, a governor or overseer, such as the ang
of the Konyak Nagas, could have supremacy over several villages.87
Amongst others, such as the Ao Nagas, a group or council members,
known as tatar, was chosen by the village to oversee the functioning
of the community. The function and authority of tatar, however, was
‘very small’ and limited to their village only.88 The most predominant
and common form of ordering society, however, could be termed as
‘democracy by consensus’.89 This practice reflects the communitarian
virtue that was highly valued among the Nagas. However, consensus
does not mean that every villager participated and consented in
decision-making, which is not feasible in any society. It means a
willingness and readiness to set aside differences and cooperate for
the sake of the larger whole. For this reason, traditional Naga society
was much less contentious and polemic than it is today. Because most
Nagas followed this last system of governance, it will be emphasized
in the following discussion.
The Naga form of governance was neither a multi-party nor a
one-party system. It was a non-party system. Nothing comparable
with western partisan politics existed in traditional Naga society. As
such, the introduction of westernized partisan politics and electoral

84
N. Venuh, ‘Change of Political Institution of Naga Society’, in Venuh, Naga
Society, p. 93.
85
Ibid.
86
Y. L. Roland Shimmi, Comparative History of The Nagas: From Ancient Period Till
1826 (New Delhi: Inter-india Publication, 1988), p. 131.
87
A. Peihwang Wangsa, Christianity and Social Change: A Case Study of Konyak Nagas
(Mon: KBBB Mission Centre, 2000).
88
This observation was made by A. W. Davis in the Census of India 1891, 1: 241–245.
89
Some African scholars have made a distinction between the traditional African
‘consensual democracy’ and the Western-imposed ‘adversarial democracy’. For further
discussion, see K. Wiredu, ‘Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics:
A Plea for a Non-Party Polity’, in P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux (eds), The African
Philosophy Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 374–382.

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or ‘adversarial’ democracy has had disquieting effects and dire

consequences on a once consensus-seeking community. In traditional
Naga society, there were individuals, mostly men, who led the
community and provided guidance and judgment on customary
practices when necessary. However, unlike today’s politicians or
government bureaucrats, no one fulfilled these communal roles as
a profession, for a living or for remuneration.90 No political institution
or government entity existed to which the Nagas were required to pay
taxes or look up to for social welfare. The needs of the community
members were taken care of by fellow community members, not by an
institution. The communal practice of charity and sharing eliminated
the need for an impersonal institution to provide welfare services. The
establishment of a Western-style government, bureaucracy, electoral
or partisan politics has drastically transformed Naga society.
Another aspect of westernization relates to the introduction of
a Western-style legal system. As a stateless society, this concept
remained almost absent in traditional Naga culture.91 Communally
accepted rules or customs, not laws, served to guide social behaviours
and conducts. For this reason, Western invaders thought of the Nagas
as a ‘lawless’ people.92 Indeed, the traditional Nagas were ‘minimalists’
as far as repressive law and its enforcement agencies were concerned.
The Nagas never had any law enforcement agencies such as Western
and westernized societies have, let alone a standing army. No
externally repressive law or policing system existed. Consequently,
no prison existed. In contrast, one of the first things the British did
after gaining supremacy over the Naga Hills was to introduce a British
legal and prison system. Under English law, Naga ‘criminals’ were
tried and sentenced to prison. Those who in the judgment of the
British committed serious crime were unfairly exiled as far away as
British prisons in Andaman Islands.93 Thus, the proliferation of an
external mode of statutory law and its associated policing agencies
is an obvious westernization of Naga culture. For traditional Nagas,

90
Akang Ao, ‘Change and Continuity in Naga Customary Law’, in Venuh, Naga
Society, pp. 37–48.
91
Stanley Diamond has rightly noted that ‘law is symptomatic of the emergence of
the state’ and is an instrument of civilization, which is then sanctioned by organized
force. See Diamond, In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization (New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1974).
92
John Butler, Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam (London, 1855; Delhi:
Vivek Publishing Co., 1978), p. 111.
93
Clark, A Corner in India.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 915
the custom served as the modality for common behaviour. It enforced
internally the regulation of personal and communal moral conduct.
In other words, the traditional moral conscience and values served
to buttress the moral actions of the people. Rules were hidden below
the surface, interwoven in culture, and were implicit in behaviour and
deeply engrained in the habit.
Finally, in its effort to subjugate the Nagas effectively, the imperial
administration established a centralized system of power and control.
The British established their district headquarters and sub-divisional
offices in strategic places in the Naga Hills, from where a handful of
white personnel exercised control over the Nagas.94 The traditional
Naga system of social ordering was a people-centred and decentralized
form of governance. In the Naga system, the people were sovereign.
In contrast, the Crown is supreme or sovereign in the British imperial
system. The superimposition of the centralized and hierarchical
structure of administration was a strategy aimed at increasing
government revenue and political monopoly over the Nagas. This new
power paradigm became one of the most potent factors in effectively
controlling the Nagas. Until then, most Nagas had never known
or experienced a strong and repressive hierarchical and centralized
administration. So, this Western paradigm of power pyramid not only
affected them in the past, but also is responsible for the modern-day
build-up and misuse of power and misappropriation of public funds.
Among contemporary Nagas, this westernized system of centralized
government lacks check-and-balance mechanisms. As such, the system
accumulates unrestrained and excessive power in the hands of a few,
who then blatantly disregard the will of the people with impunity.
Besides the establishment of its headquarters and sub-divisional
offices, the British administration created two categories of native
representatives to enforce the efficacy of the newly created
hierarchical imperial system. At the village level, the British created
a category called gaonbora (village elder). Gaonboras served the colonial
administration in collecting taxes and enforcing imperial law at

94
In March 1879, in an effort to control the Nagas effectively the British moved
its district headquarters from Samaguting (Chumukedima) to Kohima. It also
established sub-divisional offices in Mokokchung and Wokha. The entire Naga Hills
District was headed by the Deputy Commissioner, who reported to the Governor of
Assam. For further discussion, see Marcus Frank, War and Nationalism in South Asia:
The Indian State and the Nagas (London; New York: Routledge, 2009).

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 916 TEZENLO THONG

village level; the second group, known as the dubashi (interpreter),95

being a step higher in the rung of the imperial hierarchy. Literally
meaning ‘men of two tongues’, the role of the dubashi was to serve
as a go-between for colonial officers and village gaonboras, because
most of them could not speak Assamese, which was the language
of communication. Each dubashi was in charge of several villages. As
colonial representatives, both the gaonbora and dubashi were directly
accountable and responsible to a white colonial officer in the district
or sub-district.

Fazit

The objective of this paper is not to highlight the ‘form’ or ‘material’

aspect of the culture, such as clothing, although mimicry in clothing is
almost faultless among a large section of Nagas. Rather, the goal has
been to underscore the westernization of some basic social structures
and the mindset of the Naga people. Today, the literal colonization
by the imperial West has ended, but the process of the westernization
of Nagas and their culture is continuing. Thanks to the ongoing
influence being exerted by modern media, technology and other trends
in globalization, the process of westernization continues to take place
more than half a century after the political decolonization from the
West.
Every culture evolves over generations. Likewise, social systems take
ages for their evolution. As such, well before there was a United
Kingdom or United States of America, Naga culture was thriving.
However, when the Euro-American colonizers, ethnographers and
missionaries came into contact with the Naga culture they had no
appreciation for it. Accordingly, they stereotyped and ‘primitivized’
the Nagas and their culture and were determined to impose upon
them Western values. Tampering with long-established and deeply
rooted customs was apt to be dangerous and was traumatic for the
Nagas. One British visitor to the Naga Hills warned that ‘as with
arsenic, an overdose of civilization is likely to have disastrous effect’.96
And disastrous it has been for the Nagas.

95
Venuh, ‘Change of Political Institution of Naga Society’, in Venuh, Naga Society,
p. 93.
96
Balfour, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 17.

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 TO RAISE THE SAVAGE TO A HIGHER LEVEL 917
The rapid imposition of a foreign cultural system, that has taken
generations to evolve, to an entirely different people group in a
completely different cultural and geographical setting within a short
span of time, has been destructive and disorientating, to say the
least. With reference to Naga society in the aftermath of Western
invasion, Chasie observed that Naga society has been frequently
overtaken by the current of modernizing events, presenting them
with no opportunity for an informed process of choice for change. He
contends ‘that changes have come too suddenly and too fast, without
opportunity to digest and assimilate them’.97 He also noted that ‘as
a result of these sudden changes and difficulties in coping with them,
the Nagas emerged from the colonial period confused and unsure
of themselves—only to find themselves engulfed in another violent
conflict with the new Government of India’.98
In the absence of a traditional system of social structures, the
colonial paradigm left behind by the imperial agents continues to
serve the colonization of Nagas as they continually depend on the
West for Western knowledge and technology for the organization and
‘civilization’ of their society. The supplanting of the long evolved Naga
cultural systems with Western cultural values and practices and the
consequent penchant for mimicking the West have misplaced Naga
society to a place where Nagas are competent in neither traditional
skills nor in Western knowledge for the ordering of their life.
Consequently, the contemporary Nagas lack in what Piotr Sztompka
calls ‘civilizational competence’, which he defines as ‘a complex set
of rules, norms and values, habits and reflexes, codes and matrixes,
blueprints and templates’ required ‘for participation in modern
civilization’. Thus, they are left with ‘civilizational incompetence’.99
Analogous to a piece of fabric, Naga society has been in tatters
because of the onslaught of westernization. Since the inception of
Western colonial and missionary conquests, the threads of their
cultural fabric have been pulled out one after another, which has
come to greatly weaken the society. As a result, vices that were once
foreign have taken deep roots. On the other hand, traditional virtues
that underpinned the society and kept it functioning for ages have
been disappearing, resulting in social dysfunction and disintegration.

97
Chasie, ‘Nagaland in Transition’, p. 256.
98
Ibid., p. 257.
99
Sztompka, ‘Civilizational Incompetence: The Trap of Post-Communist
Societies’, Zeitschrift fur Sociologie, (1993), 2: 118.

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 918 TEZENLO THONG

The traditional practises of Nagas who, over countless generations

had evolved a pattern of life, well adapted to their social needs and
to the landscape in which they live, are in the process of gradual
abandonment for want of ‘progress’. Therefore, the need of the hour
for Nagas is to identify and reclaim the bedrock principles rooted in
their traditional culture, and to practise them rather than pursuing the
Euro-American ideas and models they have come to adopt gradually.
Obviously, no culture can remain entirely isolated; however, a blanket
adoption of any alien way of life is unwise and bound to be flawed.
When revived, their moribund traditional bedrock principles and
practices will work better for them, because Naga traditions provide
sophisticated, coherent and practicable resources in worldviews,
institutions and human-nature relatedness. These long-evolved
traditional values, which are time-tested and developed for optimum
benefit and advantage for Nagas in their particular location of
existence, can help to serve as an alternative to an alien lifestyle
and patterns of life of which they have but obscure and scant
knowledge. The traditional art and knowledge of how to negotiate
with terrain, trees, vegetations, water, insects and animals for a long
lasting sustainable and harmonious existence are paramount for the
Nagas in their geo-specific location. These established cultural and
geographical specific ways of living with the land that has preserved
the Nagas for time immemorial as opposed to an environmentally
unsustainable way of modern life is crucial for the Nagas in their
rugged and ecologically fragile land. Moreover, a wholesale adoption
of Western patterns or structures for social ordering would ensure
their own subjugation and subordination as they depend on the West
for technology and the ‘know-how’ knowledge for their day-to-day
existence.

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