Abstract
One of the recurring themes pertaining to the ‘Northeast’ of India is the question of ethno-political unrest prevalent in the region. While the lens through which this ‘unrest’ is interpreted is diverse, the language of ‘insurgency’ continues to be the privileged perspective. This has led to the reductionist perception that the issue is a particularly postcolonial phenomenon, and in the Naga and Zo Hills, an aftermath of the Christian mission influence in these areas. This perception is problematic as it offers no conceptual space to account for the historical particularities that have shaped these respective struggles, and is unable to imagine a way beyond countering to understanding in seeking honourable and sustainable resolutions. This paper explores the particularities of the Naga and Zo ‘insurgencies’, particularly in the context of their encounter with the British Empire and Christian missionaries, to seek substantive insights about dialogic transformation as a possible way forward.
Introduction
The eruptions of some of the most intense armed insurrections in the ‘Northeast’ ‘frontiers’ of ‘India’ that followed the transfer of power from the British crown to the Indian Union has predominantly influenced the way these regions have been perceived even till today. Not only has the plethora of ethno-political unrest been generally conceptualized through the language and prism of ‘insurgency’, but the Christianized [Naga] population that constituted the ‘first’ ‘armed resistance’, whose impact is claimed to have diffused to other parts of the region, also brought forth the question of the nature of the relationship between Christianity and ‘secessionist’ ideologies to the fore (Dena, 1988). While the persistent adoption of the terminology of ‘insurgency’ has led to the reductionist presumption that the issue of political unrest is an ahistorical postcolonial ‘rebellion’ that is isolatable from its ‘self-determination’ narratives and history of struggles (Bhaumik, 2009), the work of the Christian mission societies in helping uplift and transform these populations was reduced to accusations of ‘clandestine roles’ in the cultivation and outbreak of these resistance movements (Dena, 1988). The simplistic assumption of these political unrests as a postcolonial phenomenon that is concerned primarily with the idea of India as a nation-state is not only problematic – as it seeks to isolate the event from the socio-historical context of confrontations that surrounded the intrusion of the British Empire and thereby prevent us from excavating its colonial roots – but also does not contribute towards a substantive understanding of the nature of Christian influence. These limited conceptions, of both indigenous struggles and mission activities, is problematic because it offers no conceptual space to account for the historical particularities that have shaped the struggles of the varied people-groups that inhabit the ‘Northeastern’ ‘Frontier of Bengal’ (Mackenzie, 2005), and more importantly, to enquire into the processes that led to the acceptance, internalization and appropriation of an ‘alien’ Christian narrative.
Thus, in refusing to recognize the vitality of the indigenous historical trajectories, the Indian Union is unable to move beyond countering to understanding in their engagement with these people-groups, and in dismissing the indigenous-Christian encounter as imposed ‘conversions’ rather than ‘fusion’ of worlds, they are unable to draw insights from the only material model of engagement available that ushered dialogic durable transformation. The continued projection of a ‘rebel narrative’ to validate their ‘counter-insurgency’ operations have resulted in an unprecedented periodic abuse of constitutional and human rights and have deepened the epistemic, cultural, political and racial alienation and estrangement of these northeastern terrains from the rest of India (Bhaumik, 2009). It is in the tension between this persistent alienation and concern for a more substantive understanding and resolution that this paper revisits firstly, the Naga and Zo aspirations and history of engagement, to uncover their particularities as well as their underlying ‘dialogic’ posture and terms of ‘meeting’ the other, and secondly the missionary encounter, to unearth some of the fundamental meeting-points that made the adoption of a new narrative and the internalized transformation of these ‘hostile’ people-groups possible.
The Naga and Zo Narratives of Self-determination: A Hermeneutic Recap
In the 76 years of India's independence, amidst the confrontation and negotiations with the plethora of ‘insurgent’ groups that are reported to remain active in its troubled northeast (Bhaumik, 2009), two movements share privileged attention for two different reasons with respect to India's counter-insurgency operations. On the one hand is the ‘Naga saga’ (Iralu, 2009), which posed the first major challenge to India's postcolonial nation-building project when it claimed its own independence a day before India was granted hers. The Indo-Naga conflict, which has widely been portrayed as the cause of the outbreak of insurgency in the region that spiraled a cycle of armed resistance movements in its wake, remains unresolved till today. In becoming the longest running guerilla campaign in South Asia, it serves as the starkest reminder of the limitations of counter-insurgency measures in India. 1 On the other hand is the ‘Mizo uprising’ (Hluna and Tochhawng, 2013), which concluded with the signing of a peace accord between the Mizo National Front (MNF) and the Government of India. This movement, which is an important chapter of the larger Zo struggle in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands, is popularly projected as the success story and attestation for the continuing endorsement of India's counter-insurgency operations. These two ‘resistance movements’, which had already cultivated their respective aspiration for ‘sovereignty’ and ‘reunification’ during the British occupation, intensified their struggles when they found themselves overwhelmed by the politico-territorial assimilation attempt by the Indian Union, and their right to determine their own future disregarded. In their long history of encounter, engagement, and negotiations with the British and the Indian Union, these fiercely independent people-groups have both witnessed unparalleled violence and suffering. In their perseverance for settlements through dialogue and negotiations, the [political] recognition of their particular histories, which includes their inhabited geographies and customary ways of living, remain their constant non-negotiable.
The Naga Claim of ‘Sovereignty’: A ‘Unique History’ of Resilience
From their encounters with the Ahom kings in the twelfth century, to the advent of the British Empire following the annexation of Assam [Brahmaputra Valley] after the Indo-Burmese War in 1826, the Nagas have a long history of struggle to protect their ‘sovereign’ right to govern themselves and their homelands (Frykenberg, 2008: 443). The formation of the first uniform political body called the Naga Club in 1918, which submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929 in Kohima, demanding the exclusion of the Naga Hills from the proposed constitutional ‘Reform Scheme’ of India, 2 was borne out of this resolute aspiration to govern themselves on their own terms. This aspiration was an outcome of their understanding and affirmation that the Brahmaputra Valley was distinct both culturally and territorially from the surrounding hills that constituted the ‘Naga homeland’ and ‘Naga sovereignty’ (Baruah, 2020: 101). By February 1946, when the erstwhile Naga Hills District Tribal Council was transformed into the Naga National Council (NNC) at Wokha, the same aspiration was substantiated with the immediate goal of uniting all the Naga groups under one political umbrella to establish a ‘sovereign independent Naga country’. 3 Such claims for ‘sovereignty’, even if articulated through more modern idioms, were founded on the bedrock of a sense of solidarity and ‘nationhood’ that was believed to have always existed, going as far back as 150 AD (Iralu, 2009). 4 Indeed, as pointed out by Baruah, the ‘Nagas were pioneers among tribal communities of Northeast India to call themselves a nation – and, in effect, to reject the colonial designation tribe’ (Baruah, 2020: 105, emphasis mine).
Up until the impending transfer of power from the British government to India, the NNC maintained, through official memorandums, that ‘the future of the Nagas would not be bound by any arbitrary decision of the departing British government if such decision were taken without the prior information and approval of the Naga people’ (Iralu, 2009).
5
In 1946, T Aliba Imti, who was the then president of the NNC, staged a walk out from a sub-committee that was constituted for the Northeast regions over the question of joining India. He exhorted: ‘We, the Nagas, cannot sign our names to be under India. We do not agree with it and we resign … I cannot return to my people a traitor’ (Iralu, 2009). This uncompromising approach saw a semblance of a breakthrough when the governor of Assam, Sir Akbar Hydari, visited Kohima on the 27th of June 1947. A nine-point-agreement was signed between the government of India and the NNC, which recognized the legitimacy and authority of the Nagas, their customary laws and their established councils. The ninth point of the agreement stated categorically that: The Governor of Assam as the agent of the Government of Indian Union will have a special responsibility for a period of ten years to ensure the due observance of this agreement; at the end of this period the Naga National Council will be asked whether they require the above agreement to be extended for a further period, or a new agreement regarding the future of the Naga people arrived at. (Iralu, 2009)
The contentious interpretation of the would-be-status of Nagas after ‘the ten years’ coupled with the accusation by Angami Zapu Phizo, ‘father of the Naga nation’, that Hydari had threatened the Nagas with military power resulted in the eventual rejection of the agreement. Consequently, after meeting Mahatma Gandhi, ‘the father of the Indian nation’, the NNC declared their independence [from the British] on the 14th of August 1947 – a detail which is to be ‘of great significance in narratives of Naga nationhood’ (Baruah, 2020: 102).
The military turn in the Indo-Naga negotiation originated when the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru found himself addressing only a handful of government servants on the 30th of March 1953 in Kohima. The Nagas were prohibited from submitting a memorandum to the Indian government as Nehru considered their claim to independence as ‘absurd’, and they responded by refusing to turn out for his address (Baruah, 2020: 102). The proud Nehru, who ‘lectured’ the Nagas on their ‘patriotic’ duties as India's citizens, was soon deserted even by the little crowd that gathered, as his speech increasingly took a condescending tone (Frykenberg, 2008: 444). Feeling humiliated, Nehru authorized military operations to crush the NNC movement in a total sense. This resulted in the pillaging and burning down of whole villages, the conducting of large-scale warrantless arrests, the terrorizing and torturing of innocent civilians, the raping of women and girls, and the killing of men and children across the Naga Hills (Iralu, 2009). 6 This act of unreserved brutality compelled the Nagas to form the Federal Government of Nagaland in 1956, which immediately established an army of ‘national workers’ to defend and protect their honour. The Indian government retaliated by passing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in 1958, which effectively gave the armed forces draconian powers such as the right to shoot and kill, to enter, search and arrest without any warrant any person against whom ‘reasonable’ ‘suspicion’ exists. The rampant and unparalleled human rights violations by the armed forces and the civilian casualty that followed ensured the perdurability of the conflict. The memory of the violence suffered was haunting enough for the Nagas to impel the continued resistance of all forms of political settlement (including the construction of the state of Nagaland), rendering reconciliation and cultural integration between the Nagas and Indians an impossible hope even till date.
The Zo Quest for ‘Reunification’: Against Manufactured Marginality
The Zo (Chin-Kuki-Lushai) 7 aspiration for ‘reunification’ is an ever-present yet inconspicuous telos in the history of their colonial and postcolonial struggle for autonomy and self-determination. Beginning with the encroachment-raids-expeditions cycle that characterized the early Zo-British encounter ever since the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885–1886, the Zo resistance against external threat was finally overpowered through a series of military expeditions, most importantly the Lushai Hills Expedition (1871–1872), the Chin Hills Expedition (1888–1889) and the Chin-Lushai Hills Expedition (1889–1890) (Mackenzie, 2005). The nature of these indigenous resistances effected a shift from non-interventionist policies to occupation and rule that resulted in the administrative fragmentation of the ‘Chin-Lushai country’ (Robin, 2009). By 1890, North Lushai Hills was firmly placed under [British] Assam, South Lushai Hills under [British] Bengal, and Chin Hills under [British] Burma (Reid, 1942). 8 The introduction of this practical ‘divide and rule’ policy of administering these defiant hills was however fraught with the challenge of financing such a policy, 9 and the arrangement was contentious not only for the Zos but also problematic for the Empire itself (Robin, 2009). The question concerning ‘whether any remedy should be applied in order to obviate the disadvantage of Lushai-land and the Chin Hills falling under three separate civil administrations and three separate military commands’ continued to be weighed against the possible threat of the Zos collective uprising and resistance (Pau, 2018: 8).
This dilemma originated the Chin-Lushai conference (1892), organized by the British Empire at Fort William, Calcutta, which subsequently paved way for the amalgamation of the North and South Lushai Hills, but not the entire Chin-Lushai Hills (Robin, 2009). The introduction of colonial cartography – known for its ‘imaginary lines’ drawn across terrains – for the remapping of the entire area ensured that contentions about ‘homelands’ and ‘boundaries’ amongst communities would remain. As Pau observes, the appointment of the Chin Hills-Manipur Boundary Commission (1893) or the demarcation of the Chin-Lushai Hills boundary (1901) amongst others, would result in the creation of unspecified zones which would ultimately be subsumed by nearby states (Pau, 2018: 13). This explorative administrative fragmentation of the Zo Hills and its ramifications set the tone for the emergence of a reunification spirit amongst the varied Zo clans. With the departure of the British, the ‘Chin-Lushai country’ was torn between three new post-colonial nation-states with the birth of Burma [Myanmar], India and later Bangladesh, and were subsequently transformed into ‘international’ borders (Pau, 2018). The Zos were tasked with the dual responsibility of immediate engagement with these newly emerging ‘displaced’ arrangements and the continuation of the quest for reunification under one administrative set-up.
The formation of the Mizo Common People's Union (later Mizo Union) in 1946 was preceded by organizations such as the Chin National Union (1933) and followed by others including the Paite National Council (1949). Each of these respective organizations were significant in their demand for uniting the entire Zo people under a single administration in the form of ‘self-rule’ or autonomous self-determination. 10 Indeed, it was the Chin Liberation Army, led by General Tunkhopum Baite from Lamka [Churachandpur] in present South Manipur, which was pivotal in securing the military training of the first cohort of the MNF led by Laldenga, in erstwhile East-Pakistan, as both leaders had the common goal of uniting all the Zo areas. The Chin National Organization, Zomi National Congress and Kuki National Assembly that were operative around the mid-1960s were all driven by similar long-term goals. The ‘Mizo insurgency’ that erupted in the Lushai Hills began when a Mautam-caused-famine 11 evoked a realization amongst the Mizos (Zo people of Lushai Hills) that they would be better off being independent [autonomous] rather than marginalized citizens. The MNF, which was previously a cultural society named ‘The Mizo National Famine Front’, declared independence and simultaneously launched an armed assault known as ‘Operation Jericho’ that resulted in the taking-over of government institutions and planting of the MNF flag in Aizawl district in 1966. The conflict escalated when the Indira Gandhi led government responded by deploying the Indian Air Force [fighter jets] to conduct aerial strikes (incendiary bombs) on civilian territories, causing colossal destruction. The air strikes were accompanied by an unprecedented and lawless harassing and displacing of many innocent civilians to attempt to force the MNF into the negotiating table. The outcome of India's counter-insurgency operations was the eventual signing of a peace accord that included the creation of the state of Mizoram (Zo peoples [mi] land [ram]) on 7th August 1986 (Frykenberg, 2008: 450), but not before two decades of conflict and the cementing of the feeling of radical otherness amongst the Zos.
Ultimately, it was the dissatisfaction with the terms of the Mizo Accord, of which a ‘state’ under the Indian Union was the primary negotiated settlement as opposed to ‘Zalenna [independence]’, that left many, including members of the MNF themselves, feeling betrayed (Fredholm, 1993). This sense of betrayal spiraled a new thrust of armed movements amongst the Zos across the Zo inhabited terrains [in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar], although it would become selectively territorial and clan-based henceforth. This signalled the end of a collective struggle for Greater Zo Land (Mizo-gam or Zalen-gam) that the reunification ideal presupposed, but not the end of armed resistance movements. As Ngaihte and Paulianding pointed out, ‘while the Indian State continues to treat each of these armed outfits as separate groups with different demands, the underlying goal of all of these groups, regardless of their internal and operational differences, is one of eventual re-unification under one administration’. They note: ‘The Kuki demand for Kuki state in Manipur, the Chin demand for Chin State in Burma and the Mizo demand for Mizoram State are all seen as practical phases that ought to be overcome before the demand for the re-unification of this ethnicized groups as one nation again’ (Ngaihte and Paulianding, 2022: 131). This spirit of reunification continues to be advocated by the Mizoram-based civil body called the Zo Re-unification Organization (ZORO) 12 and is also upheld by armed outfits such as the Zomi Re-unification Organization (ZRO) today.
Empire, Christianity and the ‘Host Communities’
The respective Naga and Zo aspirations for ‘sovereignty’ and ‘reunification’ and its continued assertion through various movements and organizations are intrinsically related to the disruptions that resulted from their encounter with the British Empire. The British annexation and occupation of the Naga and Zo Hills not only resulted in the cartographic remapping and fragmentation of their homelands, but also wrecked major upheavals and disruptions of their ‘spirit-worlds’. The total sense in which the British Empire had thrown the indigenous world of the Nagas and the Zos into epistemic, political, and cultural disarray is a thematic that has yet to receive substantial interrogation. The conflict-centred postcolonial discourse, which uncritically seeks to implicate Christianity or mission work for the political unrest that independent India encountered, is unable to imagine the depth of the missionary intervention in the rebuilding of these Empire-stricken worlds, who were more than often at great odds with Empire themselves. The gradual substitution of some of the pillars of these indigenous spirit-worlds by adapted (or ‘contextualized’) Christian narratives is often presented as instances of imposed conversions rather than dialogic rebuilding, but only precisely because the agency of these people-groups was never taken into consideration. The rationales that made the Naga and Zo people-groups accept and adopt the Christian narrative as their new guiding story has often been missed by scholars working on the area. The comparatively warmer reception (though not immediate or spontaneous by any means) that the Christian missionaries received in these Hills, when compared to the cycle of resistance and confrontations that characterized their relationship with [both the British and Indian] Empire, presents itself as an important site for excavating a model of engagement [or encounter] that was unthreatening for these people-groups.
The Indigenous-Christian Fusion of Spirit-Worlds
As a consequence of the period in which the Christian mission societies carried out their mission work, the postcolonial evaluation of their influence is often coloured through the theme of ‘collaboration’ either with the colonial project of expansion and ‘civilizing mission’, or with the local movements for self-determination and/or secession (Dena, 1988). This projection of the mission work as simply a supporting instrument to other movements is unable to capture the nature and telos of missionary movements in general, and the uniqueness of the dialogic ‘fusion’ or ‘meeting’ that characterized their encounter with both the Nagas and the Zos in particular. The appropriation of the Christian narrative by both the Nagas and the Zos as a significant constitutive part of their self-understanding today, when reread through the ‘agency’ of these ‘host communities’, allow us to appreciate the transformative influence of these mission works. Even if the encounter is often presented or read through the lens of a ‘civilizing mission’, it was a mission that was nonetheless accepted and received by the Nagas and the Zos willingly, in contradistinction to their immediate resistance and opposition to both the British Empire and Indian Union.
Despite the criticisms that may be directed towards the pioneering missionaries, the manner in which they were able to capture the imagination and respect of the Nagas and the Zos, to such an extent that these ‘proud’ people-groups subsequently internalized and appropriated the Christian narrative as part of their own story, is a phenomenon that remains pregnant with substantive and practical insights. The welcome and acceptance accorded to the missionaries and their message (gospel), precisely during the period in which encounters were essentially violent and disruptive in nature, offer us a window into how these people-groups gauge and meet the other. Without sidelining the importance of the theological account that the ‘fusion’ was primarily a ‘religious’ one characterized by otherworldly interventions, the material [this-worldly] ways in which the missionaries prepared the ‘field’ by offering the possibility of both social transformation and narrative reconceptualization is explored below as the site that engendered the fusion of unfamiliar worlds. As a context, the advent of Christian missions into these hills paralleled the Naga and Zo capitulation to the strong hand of the colonial annexation and rule – a period when they were floundering to engage the imposition and disruptive changes that descended upon them, and were seeking to reconstruct their foundational footing.
The ‘Naked’ Missionaries
For people-groups who place a sacred importance to the phenomenon of hospitality as a cultural practice, which is founded upon the recognition and reception of the other as ‘guest’, the manner in which the other enters their homes and homelands is a determining factor of the nature of relationships cultivated. The notion of a guest can encompass a wide variety of people that includes clan members [from different villages], visitors and travellers [from different villages and/or from different ethnic groups or race], travellers across worlds [such as missionaries and servants of the British Empire] and so on. All of them are accorded the same welcome and hospitality, unless their visit is found to have malice and begets disharmony. The Zo culture for example, have a concept and practice called ‘Zin Tun’, roughly translatable as ‘sheltering [Tun] guests [Zin]’, where any traveller [often unannounced] who knocks on the gates of a village or doors of a home can expect warm shelter, food and fellowship for the duration of their stay. The act of eating together [ann kuang sawk khawm (dipping one's hand into the same food bowl)] is considered to be one of the practices that breaks down barriers and can transform a guest to a friend, and even possibly a kin.
One of the first defining practice that distinguished the Christian ‘religious’ entry from the other military ones is the nature of their entrance. Rather than descend upon these terrains as encroaching tea-plantation workers, or as armies carrying out explorations and ‘punitive expeditions’, or nation-states imposing their imagined sovereignties, the missionaries (often a single person or two, accompanied by already befriended natives) enter these communities ‘naked’, that is, as human persons without the protection of the Raj or the outfit of a money-lender. To enter these hills in such an unprotected fashion and risk the possibility of being killed either by the hill-inhabitants or by nature (through new forms of illness) itself is ultimately what enabled the missionaries to earn the respect, and gradually the trust, of these people-groups. The missionaries were keenly aware beforehand that the indigenous Nagas and Zos had a history of tenaciously resisting intruders or outsiders who were deemed as a threat to their ways of living. Indeed, the Baptist missionary Dr Edward Winter Clark, was cautioned about ‘keep[ing] his head’ by the then British officer in charge of Shivsagar, Colonel Campel, when he attempted a personal visit to the Ao [Naga] village of Molungkimong (Frykenberg, 2008). The story of Godhula, the eldest son of a low-caste washerman, and his interactions with Subongmeren Ao, and the blossoming friendship that resulted in the acceptance of the Christian gospel in the village of Molungkimong is one of the prime examples that exemplified this approach (Frykenberg, 2008: 421). Such entrances allowed the flourishing of a mutual curiosity that slowly inspired a learning about each other's culture and uniqueness. This enabled the missionaries and the indigenous populations to have the time to appreciate, understand and connect with one another at a deeper and more substantive level.
The Religious Contextualizing Endeavour
The breadth of imaginative and conceptual effort that has gone into the attempt to discover a cosmological compatibility between the Christian message and the indigenous spirit-worlds is a theme that remains understudied in the scholarship on the history of Christianity in these regions. For instance, the spiritual presence that governs the indigenous understanding of life-while-alive and life-after-death, and the nature of the essence of the person (the ‘self’ or the ‘spirit’) and its final abode, were themes that were continually adapted and reinterpreted through the Christian understanding of similar themes. The biblical story of ‘sin’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘salvation’ and ‘afterlife’ [or ‘heaven’] were contextually expressed in an imaginative conceptualization that closely resembles indigenous motifs. What enabled the missionaries to attempt a fusion of perspectives very early on was the meticulous and attentive realization that the guiding principles of most of the indigenous cultural practices resemble, in spirit, many Christian foundational principles. In their thorough engagement with the cultural practices and narratives of the other, the missionaries were also able to identify the significant challenges that these indigenous cultures faced, and offer an alternate perspective. The Christian narrative and the indigenous cosmology were continually explored to find commonalities upon which their horizons could potentially be fused. Therefore, the native curiosity and allurement by the technologies of literacy, medicine-based healings and the mission schools were preceded by the missionary attempt to understand the underlying principles or rationalities that undergirded the embodied traditionary practices of these close-knit community-centred people-groups.
The Christian Service
In the history of Christian missions, the technology of education and medical service have historically been the two principal specializations that characterize their witness especially in the Asian and African continent. The introduction of biomedicine and the phenomenon of new-healing introduced by the missionaries – most of whom were medical doctors – serves as the primary, critical and catalytic service that ushered in the immediate respectability of the Christian message and the validity of its embodiment (Hardiman, 2008). The setting up of dispensaries and medical services in the Naga and Zo Hills by the early mission societies played a vital role in the transition away from the indigenous practices of [sacrificial] healing to the medical healing that was visibly more effective in comparison. Such transitions were often seamlessly possible as the indigenous religiosity itself was primarily centred on the phenomenon of healing (Verghese and Thanzawna, 1997). The testimony of healing through modern medicines was reported to have softened the hardest of hearts towards the missionaries first, and towards their symbolic message of eternal healing and redemption eventually (Thanzauva, 1997). 13
While the medical services eased the way for the acceptability of the Christian message, the mission schools introduced itself as the instrument that would help the indigenous population negotiate the whirlpool of ‘modern’ changes that now threaten their worlds. Before the advent of the mission schools, the representations of these terrains and cultures were monopolized by colonial cartography and ethnographic ‘reports’, which often reduced them to lifeless ‘objects’ of study and experimentation. These representations were largely responsible for the epistemic alienation and territorial disintegration of these indigenous worlds. The Zos for example, were represented as distinct groups under different colonial nomenclatures (such as ‘Kuki’, ‘Chin’, ‘Lushai’) and were administratively divided and displaced as a consequence (Grierson, 1903–1922; Shakespear, 1912). The technology of literacy that was introduced by the missionaries originated a process that enabled these people-groups to participate in the affairs of the Empire to exercise their agency and articulate their own self-understandings (Son, 2013). From the [basic] introduction of Roman scripts to the eventual translation of [Christian] texts and hymns, these missionary activities of ‘civilizing mission’ became the very mode through which these people-groups would re-engage and negotiate their constructed marginality and vulnerabilities. This process was possible because of the sincere efforts that the missionaries have taken to learn, understand and converse in the local vernaculars, all of which inspired the cultivation of the affection and trust that was necessary to allow the development of local scripts and the introduction of educational programs. 14 It was primarily through the impact of the mission schools that the Nagas and Zos were able to catapult themselves into the emerging modern world, and seek to find their bearing within it. Thus, the indigenous appropriation of the gospel narrative and their attendant technologies of education and medical services was as much a realization of the importance of preparing themselves for the changing and modernizing world as it was a religious conviction.
The Localized Discipleship
One of the most important backbones of the mission movements in these Indo-Myanmar borderland areas that receive regular mention (scholarly and popularly) is the role of the ‘native evangelists’. These stalwart native leaders, initially known as ‘helpers’ or ‘catechists’ (Frykenberg, 2008: 427), were responsible [even single-handedly at times] for the wide dispersal of the Christian message, and the steady evolution and eventual establishment of Christian communities. As Ngaihte and Paulianding pointed out, these native evangelists were predominantly the first ‘converts’, who served as local guides (for travel across difficult and dangerous terrains) and translators (for conversing with the local populace) for the missionaries (Ngaihte and Paulianding, 2022). Known for their steadfast dedication and perceptive learning ability, they would expeditiously become ‘native mission workers’ and would end up being responsible for spreading the Christian message into the most insulated and unreached terrains [especially for outsiders]. Such participative involvements and ownership were possible precisely because the telos of mission work and the structure of its organization was centred around the raising up of native leaders who would not be dependent on external support or ministrations forever, but would build-upon the good work through the introduction of self-generating and sustainable leadership models. Unlike their counterparts, the missionaries had no intention of ruling these terrains and imposing their ‘kingdoms’ or ‘domains’ through co-option or might, but were [perhaps more astutely] committed to planting and instilling a narrative [or vision] whose embodied expressions can absorb local flavours and develop in its own unique way. The raising of native leaders was not a simplistic instance of ‘converting’ hapless individuals who do not know better, but involved a tenacious process that entailed the responsibility of presenting a grand or meta narrative in light of contextual indigenous struggles, in a manner that allows the rational and strong-headed indigenous people to witness both its grandness and their agential role and voice within it.
Towards a Participative Transformation: From Countering to Understanding
Both scholars and policy-makers working on the Northeast have a tendency to treat the area as a homogenous entity. The ‘chicken-neck’ that connects this part of the world with the rest of India is regularly used as a trope to suggest the geographic and cultural distance of these areas from the ‘main-lands’, even as the mosaic of differences that make up these worlds remain loosely generalized. This homogenizing tendency has served to inhibit the decision-makers in Delhi from recognizing and understanding the uniqueness of these cultural particularities and historicity of their [socio-political] aspirations. This lack of understanding has caused the continued adoption of ‘counter-insurgency’ measures that entail the deployment of the Indian army and the paramilitary forces, and have resulted in a militarizing rather than democratizing of ‘the social and political space’ of these ‘disturbed’ areas (Bhaumik, 2009: xv). Such approaches have not only rendered both civil and political institutions meaningless and ineffective, but have also impeded and discouraged the emergence of civil societies. The normalizing of the militarization of the area and its reverberations have caused a collective sense of [repressed] grievance, especially amongst the civilian population, and an alienation and detachment from the ‘Centre’ that remain unbridged even today. However, as Bhaumik perceptively points out, even after 76 years of British departure from South Asia, ‘none of the separatist movements appear anywhere near their proclaimed goal of liberation from Indian rule’, or have ‘threaten[ed] to spin out of control (Bhaumik, 2009: xiv). It can even be argued that the deployment of the military and the continued resistance to their presence today are primarily geared towards effecting the direction in which the negotiating table turns.
Indeed, in recent years the BJP-led government has shown a willingness to create a more conducive environment for peace [and development] by organizing ‘political dialogues’ with ‘insurgent’ groups towards finding ‘honourable [political] solutions.’ 15 The government has wasted little time in introducing a ‘Suspension of Operations (SoO)’ with the varied Zo armed groups in the year 2008. This has encouraged them to unite under the banner of United People's Front and Kuki National Organization, towards the political goal of negotiating a ‘state-within-a-state’ or a ‘territorial council’ for the marginalized Zos in Manipur. The government has also remarkably signed a ‘Framework Agreement’ in the year 2015 with the most influential Naga outfit (NSCN-IM) to work out an agreeable ‘final’ political solution for the Nagas. However, and more significantly, the negotiations around the substantive content (or body) of the framework have since reached ‘dead-end[s]’ over perceived non-negotiables and incommensurable standpoints (Baruah, 2020: 100). While doubts concerning the sincerity of the ‘political will’ of either side exist, causing mistrust and delays, the ‘fresh momentum’ and hopeful ‘expectations’ that these ongoing dialogues have planted amongst the civilian population have outweighed the general pessimism, and they have even played the role of assistant interlocutors to hasten these talks (Baruah, 2020). 16 These novel developments [within the last decade] open a [very rare] window of opportunity for ‘once again’ reconceptualizing possible durable peace in these areas, especially while the civilian optimism and participation remains positive. This may be the juncture where the boundaries of traditional ‘political dialogues’ are pushed to imagine a more holistic transformation that births a true understanding of different worlds, a ‘fusion’, as exemplified by the indigenous-Christian encounter.
While the indigenous-Christian encounter is often simplified as the civilizing imposition of a ‘foreign’ religion upon unreflective cultures, the locating of this encounter within the backdrop of the Empire's violent engagement and disruption of these worlds discloses an unlikely example of a fusion or meeting of two different worlds. For the Nagas and the Zos, Christianity is [quite rightly] understood not as a European religion, but as an Eastern religion that has been indigenized by the Europeans then (Frykenberg, 2008: 421), and by them now. The most important contribution that the Christian missionaries were able to usher was the recognition and affirmation of the agency of these people-groups, and the excavating of their terms of dialogue and meeting through fundamental acts of relentless dedication, sincerity and vulnerability. Such approaches of inter-cultural dialogue are not dissimilar to the dialogic manner in which the various classical Indian [philosophical] traditions engaged the plurality of ideas and incommensurable teachings without homogenizing the otherness of the other, or imposing oneself upon the other. The missionary model of engagement presents a model of religious fusion where the agency and respect for difference that is necessary for the internalization of new horizons and policies is firmly preserved. This attention to the intricacies of the manner of engagement not only helps us repostulate our understanding of the Christian transformative work, but also offers us a new path for reconceptualizing ‘political dialogues’ for the long-term goal of durable and transformative peace in these areas.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
