SCROLLS OF STRIFE — The Endless History of the Nagas: Homen Borgohain
and Pradipta Borgohain; Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd., 7/16, Ansari
Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 395.
On February 29, 2012 a congregation of Naga people that included
leaders, cadres and followers of five Naga underground outfits and
representatives of various Naga organisations representing Naga people
from Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh as well as Myanmar
closed ranks at a “Reconciliation Meet” at Dimapur in Nagaland under the
aegis of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) to adopt the
resolution: “the Nagas are a sovereign people, who uphold the principle
that sovereignty lies with the people and hence abide by the concept
that the will of the people is supreme.”
The Reconciliation Meet recognised that the “sovereignty of the Naga
people is at the core of the uniqueness of the Naga historical and
political rights. To understand the essence of these resolutions,
essentially articulated to carry forward the Naga nationalists'
assertions for Nagas' independence from India, one needs to understand
first and foremost the Nagas, their long history from the Nagas' own
perspective.
Mainland “outsiders”
Authored by the father and son duo-Homen Borgohain, a veteran
journalist, Sahitya Akademi award-winning novelist and writer and
widely-read columnist of Assam and his son Pradipta Borgohain, who holds
a Ph. D from the University of Illinois, and currently teaches English
at Gauhati University as an Associate Professor, this book is a
narrative of the relationship between the Nagas and the “outsider” from
mainland India.
It is the outcome of a methodological study done by the Borgohains
dealing with the relationship between the people of the Northeast and
other Indians and focusing on the experiences of the Nagas — the
experience of the people from the region being made to feel like an
“outsider” in the rest of India. The authors while taking the readers
through the turbulent and strife-torn history of the Nagas have tried to
probe the relationship between the Nagas and the rest of India from the
premise that prevailing constitutional and political reality is that
Nagaland is a part of India and while they are Nagas, first and
foremost, it is still difficult to deny their “Indian” identity. They
have made a conscious attempt of looking at the Nagas through the eyes
of the Nagas, interviewing and interacting with Naga scholars and
thinkers.
Naga unity
The first chapter titled “Many Races, Many Faces” introduces the readers
to the core of the study in the course tracing the development of Naga
unity and nationalism amidst fierce rivalries between clans, villages or
tribes. The Borgohains have cited Anungla Aier, Director of Women's
Studies, Nagaland University, whom they met in Nagaland's capital Kohima
in 2009, to bring out an important finding of their study that clan or
village loyalties do not stand in the way of a Naga's larger sense of
belonging to a collective identity of being a Naga.
“Because I belong to my village, I belong to my clan; because I belong
to my clan, I belong to my tribe; because I belong to my tribe; I belong
to the Naga race,” she says, which perhaps best explains how the Nagas,
despite their long history of bloodshed and divisiveness can close
ranks to rise together under a common identity of the Naga race, against
their adversaries.
A cocktail of unique story telling style used to narrate the engrossing
interactions which the authors had with the interviewees, the emotions
and sufferings of the Naga people, the rich elements of the Naga way of
life and the academic excellence of encapsulating a highly complex issue
such as Nagas' struggle for Independence and endless tales of Naga
history in just 218 pages, has made this book an attention-grabbing one
not just for the academics and students of political history, and social
anthropology but for the non-academic readers as well.
The book can be expected to remove some misconceptions about the Nagas
which many people from the rest of India have owing to their prejudices.
The Nagas, according to the authors, are “arguably the most distinctive
but misunderstood race in India.”