Naga Polity

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Foreign writers have sincerely attempted various studies of the multifaceted subject of Naga people and their territory and have succeeded in gathering enough obvious information. But they have found it well nigh impossible to treat at length any one aspect of it. This is not surprising as even today, among the Nagas themselves, no reliable information about the history of their race is available. This is so because there is a dearth of relevant records and, also, the legends, traditions, culture, history and literature are preserved orally.

This work is intended to contribute towards the knowledge of early Naga political institutions which are basically unchanged even today. In order to study Naga polity one has to begin with the study of the family, the village and the customary laws. These factors are very closely associated with the Naga polity.

The author, a Tangkhul Naga himself, has made a comprehensive study of the polity of three Naga tribes -Ao, Angami and Tangkhul. He has also studied some other Naga tribes -Mao, Chake-sang, Rangma, Kabul, Lotha, Sema, Konyak, Chang and Sangtam.

While previous studies on Nagas have dealth with the generalities of their life and culture. They have predictably suffered from lack of indigenous touch. The present book is a valuable new document as it has been authored by a son of the soil.

Mashangthei Horam (b.1939) was Senior Fellow at the Centre of Advanced Study in Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, under the sponsorship of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. A political scientist by training, he was working on Politics and Social Change in Nagaland'. The present study was Undertaken for his Ph.D. degree from the University of Gauhati. He has taught for 12 years at graduate and postgraduate levels and was for some time Principal of Kohima College, Kohima. He has contributed a number of articles and papers to several journals of repute, apart from writing introductory notes for the new editions of T.C. Hodson's The Meitheis and W. W. Hunter's A Statistical Account of Assam.

In the early decades of the present century the Nagas were among the anthropologically best known ethnic groups of the Indian subcontinent. The classic monographs of such authors as T.C. Hodson, J.H. Hutton and J.P. Mills provided a wealth of detailed information on the major individual tribes, and innumerable articles published in learned journals dealt with many specific aspects of Naga culture. Parallels between the Nagas and certain tribal societies in parts of southeast Asia as distant as the Philippines and Borneo had aroused the interest of anthropologists concerned with the comparative study of archaic civilizations, and ethnographers such as Henry Balfour had traced similarities between items of Naga material culture and comparable phenomena in Oceania. Thus the scene was set for an intensive analysis of the entire complex of Naga civili- zation which might well have matched the co-ordinated research which American anthropologists applied so successfully to the Indian populations of the New World.

Unfortunately, the Second World War and the subsequent political events which for long disturbed the peace of Nagaland brought down the curtain over the whole of the region inhabited by Nagas. Anthropological research came virtually to a standstill. Neither Indian nor foreign scholars were able to observe and record the momentous changes which throughout Nagaland took place during the past twenty-five years, and the anthropological world is left with books such as The Angami Nagas by J.H. Hutton and The Ao Nagas by J.P. Mills, which despite their intrinsic merit and immense value as historical records reflect no longer the situation prevailing today among the people of Nagaland. During an all too brief stay among the Konyak Nagas in 1970, I was able to revisit villages where I had worked thirtyfour years earlier, and this experience convinced me of the urgent need for a study of the process of rapid change now affecting most of the Naga communities. The fact that the people of Nagaland live now under their own government and are free to work out a pattern of life combining traditional values with the necessity to adapt themselves to the modern world, distinguishes this process from the type of culture change which occurred in many parts of the globe under colonial regimes. This creates a situation of unique interest to social scientists, and it would be regrettable if so rich a field for research continued to remain untilled.

Not a few books have been written about the Nagas. Strangely enough mostly by foreigners. Perhaps therefore one belonging to the soil finds that most of them, excepting the artistic ones, are just a collection of facts-important and interesting no doubt-threaded together on a string of conjectures. Nevertheless the works are marked by the sincerity of the writers many of whom have lived among the tribes studying them in their own environment. And yet, that indigenous touch is missing in these otherwise valuable mono- graphs, mainly because of the writers' understandable but immense difficulty of perceiving what lies below the surface of the Naga way of life. As a matter of fact no single writer has yet found himself equal to the task of correctly portraying the Nagas-historically, socially, politically and psychologically.

The subject is vast and intricate. It is likely not to be exhausted even by the united labour of a number of research scholars; also it is so interesting that many a scholar will be temp- ted to devote his lifetime to a deep, if not complete, study of any one aspect of the Naga way of life. But in order that his work may possess character, depth, originality and insight, he must needs confine himself to a particular subject and, as such, his volume may be slender but he would have the satisfaction of having broken fresh ground, of having explored his area of study, however small, thoroughly.

Foreign writers have sincerely attempted various studies of the multifaceted subject, that is, the Naga people and their country and have succeeded in gathering enough obvious information but they have found it well-nigh impossible to treat, at length, any one aspect of it. And no wonder for, to date, even among the Nagas themselves, no reliable information about the history of their race is available. The reasons for this are, first, a dearth of written records, and secondly, legends, traditions, culture, history and literature being preserved orally.

This work, in view of the above, is intended to serve one and only one purpose, to contribute towards the knowledge of early Naga political institutions which are basically unchanged even today. In order to study Naga polity we have to begin with the study of the family, the village and the customary laws. These factors are so closely associated with the Naga polity that any attempt to write about it, without a compre- hensive knowledge of them, will be sheer waste of time. Also a thorough knowledge and understanding of the political structure of the various Naga tribes would hardly be possible without a similar knowledge of their time-honoured customary or traditional laws.

The customs, the laws and the ancient cult of even the unlettered are full of political significance. The proverbs and household phrases of the poor, the song of the peasant, the language of the layman are all pregnant with meanings which may easily escape those unacquainted with the intricate involvement of the Naga customs and usages with the Naga polity. A small people with a vigorous political life, they have made a tremendous contribution to the new Naga world. We do not know exactly from where and when these interesting people came to their present land but we can guess their furiously active interest in the politics of their doll States. They fought each other, rallied to the support of their clans and tribes with an almost fierce loyalty, sang and danced, ate and drank, forged laws, ruled themselves, leading a life swinging between gay abandon and ruthless savagery. Thus they lived till they came under an outside influence-mainly Western-and were led to give up a great deal of their culture and traditional way of life. This change was not always for the better and, in certain aspects, was decidedly for the worse as in the field of song and dance which were shunned because of their new faith.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages