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In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency
 CHINA
PRADESH
HAL
NAC
TIBET U
AR
SIKKIM
Itanagar
Gangtok BHUTAN

NEPAL ASSAM
Dispur NAGALAND
Kohima
BIHAR MEGHALAYA
Shillong Imphal

ND
KHA
BANGLADESH

AR
MANIPUR

JH
Agartala

TRIPURA Aizawl
MIZORAM MYANMAR
WEST BENGAL
Bay
of
Bengal

Political map of Nagaland and Northeast India

Source: Adapted from http://www.emapsworld.com/north-east-india-map.html.
Note: This map does not claim to represent authentic international boundaries. This map is not to scale and is provided for illustrative purposes only.
 In the Shadows of
Naga Insurgency
Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India

Jelle J.P. Wouters

1
 1
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries.

Published in India by
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2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India

© Oxford University Press 2018

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

First Edition published in 2018

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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-9485703

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Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro 10.7/13.3

by Tranistics Data Technologies, Kolkata 700091
Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020
 CHINA
PRADESH
HAL
NAC
TIBET U
AR
SIKKIM
Itanagar
Gangtok BHUTAN

NEPAL ASSAM
Dispur NAGALAND
Kohima
BIHAR MEGHALAYA
Shillong Imphal

ND
KHA
BANGLADESH

AR
MANIPUR

JH
Agartala

TRIPURA Aizawl
MIZORAM MYANMAR
WEST BENGAL
Bay
of
Bengal

Political map of Nagaland and Northeast India

Source: Adapted from http://www.emapsworld.com/north-east-india-map.html.
Note: This map does not claim to represent authentic international boundaries. This map is not to scale and is provided for illustrative purposes only.
 To Beduhü Tunyi
who adopted me as his son
Figures

1.1 View of Phugwumi village 24

1.2 View of Noksen village 25

2.1 Tunyi clan meeting in Phugwumi 49

2.2 Modern village gate in Noksen 52
2.3 Old village gate in Phugwumi 53

4.1 Megaliths erected in honour of a feast-giver in Phugwumi 157

6.1 Frontier Nagaland banner hung on the facade of a shop

in Noksen Town 206

7.1 Polling day in Phugwumi 239

Preface and Acknowledgements

T
his book invites its readers to the upland tribal state of
Nagaland in India’s Northeast to reflect upon what hap-
pens to a society long saturated in violent political conflict.
It points to the ways in which Naga insurgency and the Indian state’s
response to it aggravated the imbrications of violence and disorder,
tribalism, failing development, volatile politics, and corruption into
the socio-political fabric of post-statehood Nagaland. However, for all
the precarity and strain that political conflict produces, Naga society is
not incarcerated in a terrifying epic of violence and political disorder
in any simple sense. Theorizing from the vantage of rural Nagaland,
I shall show ethnographically how the acts, articulations, and aspira-
tions of Naga villagers are infused with an agency and imagination
of their own making, albeit often in ways that complicate, if not con-
tradict, normative practices and principles of state, development, and
democracy. Their everyday enactments are undoubtedly a product of
the condition of protracted political conflict but not necessarily wholly
xii preface and acknowledgements

eclipsed by it, often revealing themselves, indeed, in the shadows of

Naga insurgency.
First things first, however. For over six decades, the Naga Movement—
in its now different forms, factions, and, dare I say, facades—rejects and
rebels their enclosure into postcolonial India, aspires to realize Naga
independence through the barrel of the gun, and in doing so presents
itself as a people’s movement. A ceasefire is in place since 1997. However,
this manifests itself on the ground not foremost as a period of relative
political stasis but as a complex social reality that witnesses the con-
tinuation of conflict by other forms and means. These can be seen in a
rampage of factional faultlines and an ever more complicated relationship
between the offices and officers of state and Naga ‘underground’ actors.
While the antecedents of the Naga uprising trace back to the era of late
colonialism, in more concrete form the Naga nationalist project took off
in the 1950s. ‘Simply because a strong people got the control of political
administration of a country over a weaker people it does not mean the
end of history’, A.Z. Phizo (1951), the erstwhile president of the Naga
National Council (NNC) and the prophet of Naga nationalism, pro-
nounced, as he orchestrated a near millennial movement galvanized by
a messianic, salvific promise of Naga political and spiritual redemption.
‘I always have a feeling that God, our Heavenly Father—our Creator—
is with us and guiding us. What is there for us to fear?’, Phizo added.
The Naga armed resistance that emerged provoked a massive escala-
tion of violence from the Indian state, the dense militarization of the
Naga highlands, and the enactment of draconian laws that turned the
Naga highlands into a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 2005). This was
soon followed by stories and reports of wanton killings, unprecedented
levels of violence, torture, abductions, village regrouping, ambushes, and
burning villages and granaries of what seemed to be a murky geography
of misery. It did not cause the NNC’s Naga Army to give up its fight.
‘For every Naga life that was taken, ten others joined the Naga Army’, an
NNC veteran once told me with lingering patriotic fervour. As with most
people’s movements, however, the spread of the Naga Movement and
the ways in which the Indo-Naga conflict evolved, are not reducible to a
simple singular narrative of Nagas mobilizing as one homogenous and
uniform group against the domination and overrule they experienced
at the hands of the Indian state. Among other things, such a narrative
 preface and acknowledgements xiii

glosses over the diversities and politics internal to the Naga struggle,
in particular the generational, tribal, and factional conflicts that came
to divide and drain the Naga Movement and the very diverse attitudes
and aspirations taken on by different Naga communities and individu-
als. Today, listed amongst the most protracted postcolonial struggles
anywhere, the impact of the conflict on Naga society is complicated,
dispersed, and polyphonous and felt in the everyday contexts of social
relations and moral judgments, governance and politics, societal tensions
and violent memories, imagination, affect, and affliction.
For these reasons, I wish to see Naga insurgency not as a historical and
straightforward narrative of resistance nor yet as extracted from wider
social processes, or, for that matter, in terms of clear victims and victors.
Instead, this book explores how protracted political conflict affects
and afflicts ‘the everyday’. I, therefore, approach Naga insurgency—and
herein lies this book’s main contention—as a complex, an ‘insurgency
complex’, and explore the consequences of and corollaries to protracted
conflict, illustrating and arguing how Naga insurgency and the state’s
reaction to it has long flooded the banks of political conflict and surges
through all areas of social life.
Amidst the Indo-Naga conflict, which, at the time of my research and
writing remains unresolved in spite of two decades of political dialogue,
it is impossible to write anything about Nagas without it being some
kind of politics and protest. In a way, participant observation and eth-
nography, on which this book heavily relies, is, writes Shah (2017: 56),
always a ‘political act’, even a ‘potentially revolutionary praxis’ because
it ‘enables us to challenge received wisdom and produce knowledge that
previously had no space in the world, was confined to its margins, was
silenced’. Projecting ethnography as politics connotes not just the search
for new ontologies and cosmologies, or the genuine appreciation of fun-
damental moral differences between societies, but also to foreground
and privilege in the art of theorizing, the views, experiences, and con-
cerns of ‘ordinary’ men and women as they go about their lives and make
sense of the world around them.
Every ethnographer, I would like to think, has an academic (and
moral) obligation to not be allied with power—whatever form that
power might take—but to breathe ethnographic life into the everyday
acts and articulations of the people he or she resides and works with, in
xiv preface and acknowledgements

our case Naga villagers whose selves, individual biographies, and social
lifeworlds have long been wrought by political violence and volatility. If
doing so, in the Naga context, amounts to a ‘potentially revolutionary
praxis’ it is because the competing analyses and discourses that emerged
from the Indo-Naga conflict belong either to the Indian state or to Naga
militant leaders, in the process often glossing over the experiences and
views of Naga men and women living in villages (and towns).
Besides being scant on people’s experiences, the now considerable
literature on the Indo-Naga conflict, both contemporary and historic,
remains, with few exceptions, also largely derivative of formal declara-
tions and manifestos, colonial documents, and other secondary sources.
Starting with depictions of who the Nagas are, most such accounts
narrate the history of Nagas’ resistance to British colonization, the arrival
of missionaries and the spread of evangelical Christianity, the creation of
the Naga Club and the memorandum its members sent to the Simon
Commission in 1929 (which goes as the first official record of Nagas’
desire for Independence), the advent of the Naga National Council
(NNC), and the role of A.Z. Phizo in conducting the 1951 plebiscite
and in organizing the Naga rebellion. They then discuss the state vio-
lence and repression, the enactment of the state of Nagaland in 1963 as
an envisaged (but failed) political compromise, the abortive treaties and
peace processes of the 1960s and 70s, the demise of the NNC, the rise of
the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) and its subsequent
splits into rivalling factions, and finally the 1997 ceasefire and the elusive
status of the peace talks. This literature, while certainly valuable, pays
virtually no attention to the dialectical interactions between the Naga
Movement and Naga society, to the particularistic state-society rela-
tions that protracted conflict and capricious violence produces, and to
the wider consequences and carryovers of conflict on the fabric of Naga
social and political life.
This lack is understandable as all these years of insurgency and
counter-insurgency was hardly conducive to the practice of ethnography
in the area. Moreover, a stringent Inner-Line regime and the additional
requirement for foreign nationals to obtain a (sparingly granted)
Protected Area Permit long restricted access to the Naga highlands.
This long-lasted impossibility of doing fieldwork in the Naga highlands
feeds into a larger absence, as Shah and Pettigrew (2009: 230) note, of
 preface and acknowledgements xv

ethnography and analysis of insurgency and revolutionary movements

as they unfold because ‘most anthropological work is done post-conflict,
when the guns are silent’. The relaxation of restrictions on foreigners to
enter Nagaland from 2011 onwards was the awaited policy change that
enabled my fieldwork and which subsequently took place in the liminal-
ity between conflict and post-conflict with ‘guns’ less ubiquitous but far
from locked away. This account, based on extensive fieldwork, now hopes
to add ethnographic flesh to the theoretical bones of the Naga Movement
and the Indo-Naga conflict through a discussion of the implications of
long years of insurgency and counter-insurgency on Naga society and
polity. The story of this book is told through many Naga voices, weaving
a texture that pays attention to both individual biographies and senti-
ments widely shared, to commonalities and disagreements and debates,
to generality and specific struggles, aspirations, and concerns.
My arguments, I hope, will have some resonance beyond Naga society
with which they are immediately concerned. Particularly so in the con-
text of Northeast India, a region long home to animated political conflicts
over identity and belonging, territory, and ethnic self-determination.
A region located on the margins, but whose historical specificities and
social and political processes offer a crucial site for reflection on the theo-
ries and concepts central to the production of knowledge in South Asia
(and not just there). Within the Indian polity, the label ‘Northeast’ clubs
together eight states, most of which contain hilly expanses that fold and
unfold in neighbouring China, Burma/Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
and Nepal and connect to India’s ‘Mainland’ only through a narrow
swathe of land couched between Nepal and Bangladesh. On a political
map, consequently, Northeast India assumes a peculiar shape, jutting
out of India as though it is ‘an inconvenient outlier that is regulated to
an inset’ (Van Schendel 2002: 652). Its appearance on India’s map—as
simultaneously part of it and beyond its pale—has contributed, cer-
tainly in parts, to a popular ignorance of the region and its ethnicities,
languages, and historical narratives in national discourses, prompting a
leading magazine to paint India’s Northeast as On the map but off the
mind (Tehelka 2006).
While studies on Northeast India witnessed a surge of promising
scholarship in recent years, at the national and popular levels the region
remains subject to social processes of ‘othering’ and marginalization.
xvi preface and acknowledgements

The nomenclature ‘Northeast’ itself contributes to this marginaliza-

tion as this is the only region in the country named after a cardinal
direction. The name is further ambiguous because as a region with a
reasonable level of internal coherence and commonalities, the location
and identity of the ‘Northeast’ or ‘Northeasterner’ does not exist (Subba
1998), at least not within the region itself. Per contra, its communities
have been likened to an ‘ethnic explosion’ (Nibedon 1978), an ‘ethnic
mosaic’ (Bhaumik 2009), a ‘rainbow of people’ (Rajkumar 2010), and
because of such ethnic and cultural diversities (and because of the
stereotypical conviction that this is what anthropologists necessar-
ily crave for) an ‘anthropologist’s dream’ (Narahari 2002: 4). To the
extent, then, that the ‘Northeast’ or ‘Northeasterners’ exist as a unitary
region or identity, it does so as a social category produced in relation
to India’s mainstream. The Northeast has become a coherent and
meaningful unit, as Tanka Subba and I argued elsewhere, only through
colonial and postcolonial administrative and political conceptions of
order and institutionalized discursive spaces, including the enactment
of special government institutions and ministries such as the Ministry
of Development of the North-Eastern Region (MDoNER) and the
North-Eastern Council (NEC) (Wouters and Subba 2013: 131).
In academic parlance, Northeast India is also part of a region recently
inaugurated as Zomia—that vast upland tract that transcends political
and academic boundaries (Van Schendel 2002) and whose historical
peopling, according to James Scott (2009), was the result of communities
consciously ‘opting out’ or ‘evading’ the oppressive tax, conscription, and
corvée obligations of states that flourished in adjacent valleys (for more
and less constructive critiques of Scott’s thesis see, among many others,
Lieberman (2010), Jonsson (2010), Brass (2012), and for Northeast
India specifically Wouters 2011 and Karlsson 2013). Despite vast varia-
tions between people of Zomia, or highland Asia, what they seemingly
share is, first, their peripheral inclusion in different nation-states (in the
case of Nagas their enclosure into two distinct nation-states: India and
Myanmar), and secondly, that from ‘Mainland’ points of view, they—be
they ‘Jummas’ in southern Bangladesh (Van Schendel 1992), highland
communities in Myanmar (Gravers 2007), the Miao minority in upland
China (Schein 2000), or ‘Northeasterners’ in India—are imagined as
collectively different (in terms of history, language, religion, social mores,
 preface and acknowledgements xvii

cultural expressions, and phenotypes) from national mainstreams

(Wouters and Subba 2013).
Such differences, both real and imagined, have led, in whole or in
parts, to Zomia communities’ uneven, hesitant, or haphazard accommo-
dation in different nation-states. While I have some reservations about
the contemporary exultation of Zomia, in the sense theorized (or politi-
cized?) by James Scott (2009) (What, in the end, is the point of talking
about a region that exists only in scholarly imagination?), the more mod-
est trend of taking highland Asia as a field of comparative ethnography
and study, the way originally intended by Willem van Schendel (2002),
offers a fertile counterpoint to the ‘methodological nationalism’ (Gellner
2012) that long impeded scholarly imagination. Naga resistance against
the Indian state, for one thing, is part of a wider pattern in highland
Asia, spawning precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial epochs that saw
fractured, often hostile, relationships between highland communities
and kingdoms, dynasties, and modern states with their powers centred
in the plains.
I first arrived in India’s Northeast in 2007 when I, rather inno-
cently, took admission as an exchange student in the Department of
Anthropology at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Shillong,
situated on a pine-clad plateau and the capital of Meghalaya. To not
appear altogether ignorant of my new surroundings, I recall trying
to memorize the names of the eight states and their major cities the
night before the start of classes, as I was told that NEHU attracted
students from across the region. One of the names I learned that night
was ‘Nagaland.’ I also learned that its capital was Kohima and that its
inhabitants, called Nagas, lived not only in Nagaland, but also in the
neighbouring states of Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh, as
well as across the border with Myanmar. As is regularly the case with
ethnographers, my eventual interest in the study of Naga society grew
out of a host of personal encounters and friendships. Not only were
many of my classmates Nagas but so was my roommate. Unable to get
a hostel-seat inside the University campus (the University was adamant
in their conviction that it would be impossible for me to adjust in one of
the student halls, a stance they finally changed in 2011, when I enrolled
in a PhD programme, although not without my supervisor having to
exert considerable pressure on my behalf ), I began searching for a place
xviii preface and acknowledgements

to live inside the main city of Shillong. In this search, I was joined by
Wungreithing Sali, a Naga classmate whose application for a hostel
seat had been similarly unsuccessful, although for different reasons. We
decided to rent a room together. For the next year we shared the same
living-space, during which Mark (the Catholic name by which he was
better known) often spoke about life ‘back home’, the Naga struggle, and
the many conundrums Naga society was facing. While Mark and I were
formally the only tenants of the room, there was a continuous arrival of
his relatives and fellow-villagers, who came to Shillong for admissions in
schools and colleges, medical treatment, or in search of employment, and
who rolled out blankets on the floor and often stayed for weeks. Besides
the pleasure of making new friends (and the taste of the dried meat they
invariably brought with them), the many stories and personal experi-
ences they shared as we sat together during evenings gradually convinced
me that I wanted to pursue ethnographic research among the Nagas.
Of course, back then, I was formally still an undergraduate student and
lacked the training required to conduct fieldwork. In any case, Nagaland
was then still near hermetically sealed for foreign nationals.
In more concrete terms, this book has its origins in a PhD programme
at NEHU, which culminated into a thesis unimaginatively titled: State,
Development, and Democracy in Nagaland. Initially, my research project
was registered as ‘Land relations and development in Nagaland: A case
of the jhum and terrace villages’, but even as I collected a good amount
of ethnographic data on this while in the field, I soon discovered that my
informants were greatly interested in talking about the Naga struggle,
governance, development, and, most of all, politics. This eventually led
me to request the University to allow me to change the topic of my
research. My request was granted, although I was advised to leave out
the politics of Naga insurgency, at least so from my thesis title.
From Shillong, the town of Dimapur, the main gateway into
Nagaland, was just an overnight bus journey away, making ‘my field’
readily accessible (at least so in theory as military checkpoints, Assam
floods, and abruptly announced bandhs now and then blocked the
highway and prolonged journeys). Being a doctoral student at a uni-
versity inside the region, moreover, helped me navigate the exhaustive
paperwork and permits needed to carry out prolonged fieldwork in
Nagaland (again, in theory, as despite possessing the necessary permits,
intelligence agencies continually doubted my presence and intentions
 preface and acknowledgements xix

in Nagaland. I hope this book, at last, proves that my intentions were

what I insisted they were; carrying out ethnographic research).
Few worlds are perhaps as cosmopolitan as the world of anthropology.
However, it does not (as yet) seem common practice for an anthropologist
first trained in the so-called ‘West’, as I was in Amsterdam and Oxford,
to pursue a doctorate from a university within the broader region of
ethnographic study. This is understandable for a variety of reasons.
I, however, found residing and writing in a university campus close to my
fieldwork area extremely rewarding on a number of counts. First, most
of my teachers hailed from the Northeast, including from Nagaland, and
their teachings and insights, often based on first-hand experiences, have
been formative of my understanding of the region. To all of them, and in
particular to T.B. Subba, B.T. Langstieh, L. Zehol, H. Lamin, Q. Marak,
R. Khongsdier, and V. Pakyntein, I remain heavily indebted.
Second, my fellow PhD scholars, hostel-mates, and friends in
NEHU were all researching the region in a wide variety of disciplines.
A good number of them hailed from Nagaland, or from Naga inhabited
areas in surrounding states, and over the years our countless conver-
sations greatly helped me to work towards a better understanding
of my fieldnotes and of the issues troubling Naga society. Sincere thanks
to the following: Zhoto, Neibu, Asiele, Chan, Chiete, Mhonthung,
Asakuo, Sezolu, Chumchano, Temsu Among, Robert, Gideon, Sunep,
Aaron, Kensibo, and Nsungbemo—your friendship is what made
Shillong such a happy place. Third, while the NEHU library cannot,
as it stands, compete with the library resources available in major
research universities elsewhere, it houses a precious collection of mate-
rial published by local scholars and intellectuals. They significantly
shaped my own thinking and ‘seeing’ of the Northeast, but which, often
poorly printed and distributed, are hardly available outside the region.
Lastly, but most importantly, pursuing my doctorate at NEHU
allowed me to work under the supervision of Tanka B. Subba, who
supported me far beyond the call of duty, shipped my thesis through
some very murky waters, and through it all was a never-ending source of
inspiration. I owe him not just much of my anthropological thinking but
also important lessons that he taught me about life in general.
Over the years of researching and writing this book I have incurred
many other debts in many different places, too many, I fear, to do com-
plete justice here.
xx preface and acknowledgements

To start with, I must thank Ellen Bal, who, about a decade ago,
when I was an undergraduate student in Amsterdam, dissuaded me
from taking up admission as an exchange student at Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, which I had applied for and been granted.
Instead, she suggested that I must take admission at North-Eastern
Hill University in Shillong, some of whose faculty she knew person-
ally. Everything else followed from this early intervention. When, as an
MPhil student at Oxford University, I first started thinking and writing
seriously about Naga society and political conflict, David N. Gellner
generously commented on my ideas and drafts and was an incredible
source of intellectual inspiration. I also thank Willem van Schendel,
whose student I was, much to my regret, only briefly, but whose insights
on the region, encouragement of my research, and in his role as an
external examiner of my PhD thesis was a beacon of light. I received
similar encouragement from Philippe Ramirez, whose deconstruction
of ethnicity and kinship in the Assam-Meghalaya borderland influenced
my own understanding of social bonds among Nagas.
I carried out fieldwork in Nagaland for roughly two years between
2011 and 2014. I am grateful to Lucy Zehol, Besasayo Kezo, and
Kühüpoyo Puro for guiding me to the Chakhesang Naga village, which
I shall call Phugwumi, and for facilitating my fieldwork there. Kühüpoyo
Puro especially was a constant source of support and his house in
Kohima a place of intellectual and bodily nourishment. My second
fieldwork took place in the Chang Naga village of Noksen, for whose
arrangements I thank Achu Chang in Pune and his extended family in
Noksen. My fieldwork in Nagaland was funded by the Wenner-Gren
Foundation, for whose generosity I remain deeply grateful (the disser-
tation fieldwork grant that they awarded enabled me to release myself
from a very edifying but marginally paid position at the Don Bosco
Museum for Indigenous Cultures in Shillong and to fully concentrate
on my PhD research).
My greatest debt, as ever, is to the Phugwumi and Noksen villagers
who warmly welcomed me into their lives and whose never faltering
cooperation, hospitality, and kindness I am at loss to ever be able to
reciprocate. For reasons of confidentiality, and in view of the sensibilities
that run through this book, I have to restrain myself from mention-
ing those who helped me so immensely, but they certainly include my
hosts, interlocutors, and friends in both villages. While I have used
 preface and acknowledgements xxi

pseudonyms throughout, I am sure some of you will recognize yourself

in the pages that follow. I am less sure that all of you will be equally
pleased with what this book has turned into but I nevertheless hope that
my arguments will contribute, even through their criticisms, to debates
on the past, present, and future of Naga society.
Elsewhere in Nagaland I thank Toshinaro Longchar, Aziebu Shaiza,
Panger, Aküm Longchari, Takatemjen Ao, Thungti Chang, Ejan Ngullie,
Dzuleno Zhimomi, I.L. Chingmak, Wondangbeni Shitiri, C.M. Chang
and his family, Dozhuhy Tunyi, Zubenthung Ngullie, Shiroi Shaiza,
and Muzito Tunyi. In Kohima, I specifically thank Neichute Doulo, a
trusted friend and sparring partner for many of the arguments I advance
in this book, as well as Michael Heneise for his friendship and many
fruitful conversations.
This book was written, in bits and pieces, while teaching at three
different academic institutions. When my supervisor, Tanka B. Subba,
was bequeathed the position of Vice-Chancellor of Sikkim Central
University in Gangtok he took me along to assist him in establishing
a department of anthropology. While I hardly got any writing done
during the first couple of semesters in Sikkim, starting a department
from scratch (with Samson Singh, who took care of physical anthro-
pology) was a privilege and opportunity I would not have wanted to
miss. I started writing my ethnography in the Department of Social
and Cultural Anthropology at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen,
where I was invited on a ‘Teaching for Excellence Award’ granted by
the German Research Foundation. In Tübingen, I thank Gabriele Alex,
Roland Hardenberg, Baktygul Tulebaeva, and particularly Vibha Joshi
Parkin and David Parkin for their support and insightful discussions.
The bulk of this book was written at Royal Thimphu College, my pres-
ent institutional home-ground, during the early hours before and after
dawn when most students are still asleep and our hilltop campus is
an abode of silence and serenity. At Royal Thimphu College, I thank
Tenzing Yonten, T.S. Powdyel, Shivaraj Bhattarai, and Samir Patel for
creating such a conducive environment. I also express my gratitude to
Leishipem Khamrang, colleague and neighbour, for reading through
multiple drafts and for many stimulating discussions.
Several other colleagues and friends generously read portions of
this book, offered useful comments and prevented me from fossilizing
to paper some embarrassing mistakes (for those that still remain the
xxii preface and acknowledgements

responsibility is solely mine). I thank, in no particular order, Zhoto

Tunyi, Michael Heneise, Iris Odyuo, Shrochis Karki, Riku Khutso,
Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh, Arkotong Longkumer, Jasmine
Yimchunger, and Asojiini Rachel Kashena as well as two anonymous
reviewers at Oxford University Press, India. I also thank my student
Karma Yangden for helping me sort out the references.
Certain sections of this book are based on earlier versions of my
research published in various journals and permissions to reproduce
them are gratefully acknowledged.
Parts of the following article have been used in Chapters 2 and 5 in
this book: ‘Who is a Naga Village? The Naga “Village Republic” through
the Ages’, The South Asianist: Journal of South Asian Studies 5(1): 99–120
(2017), (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
2.5 UK: Scotland License).
Parts in this book, especially in Chapter 7, have been reproduced or
expanded upon from: ‘Polythetic Democracy: Tribal Elections, Bogus
votes, and Political Imagination in the Naga Uplands of Northeast India’,
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 121–51 (2015), (Creative
Commons-Jelle J.P. Wouters- Attribution 4.0 International).
The following article has been used in parts at various places in this
book especially in Chapter 2: ‘Sovereignty, Integration or Bifurcation?
Troubled Histories, Contentious Territories and the Political Horizons
of the Long Lingering Naga Movement’, pp. 97–116, originally pub-
lished in Studies in History, Vol. 32 No. 1, copyright © 2016 Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the
permission of the copyright holders and the publishers, Sage Publications
India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi.
I thank the team at Oxford University Press, India for their constant
support and inputs in the journey of this book.
I end by thanking my family; my parents for never doubting my life-
decisions, no matter where and how far they took me, and my siblings,
Elke and Remy, for their support, even as the friction of distance often
prevents us from meeting for long stretches of time.
Finally, I thank Kikee. Without her, nothing.

Jelle J.P. Wouters

Thimphu, September 2017
Abbreviations

ACAUT Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation

AFSPA Armed Forces Special Powers Act
APBF Asian Pacific Baptist Federation
BDO Block Development Office
CPO Chakhesang Public Organisation
CTC Chang Tribal Committee (Council)
DUDA Department of Underdeveloped Areas
ENPO Eastern Naga Peoples’ Organisation
ENSF Eastern Naga Students’ Federation
FGN Federal Government of Nagaland
FGN- N/A Federal Government of Nagaland (Non-Accordist)
FGN-A Federal Government of Nagaland (Accordist)
FNR Forum for Naga Reconciliation
GOI Government of India
GPRN Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim
MDoNER Ministry of Development of the North-Eastern
Region
xxiv abbreviations

MGNREGA Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment

Guarantee Act
MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly
MP Member of Parliament
NBCC Nagaland Baptist Church Council
NEC North-Eastern Council
NEFA North-Eastern Frontier Agency
NHDTC Naga Hills District Tribal Council
NHTA Naga Hills Tuensang Area
NNC Naga National Council
NNC-A A Naga National Council (Accordist)
NNC-N/A Naga National Council (Non-Accordist)
NNO Nagaland Nationalist Organisation
NPC Naga People’s Convention
NPF Naga People’s Front
NPMHR Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights
NPSC Nagaland Public Service Committee
NSCN-IM National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak/Muivah)
NSCN-K National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang)
NSCN-KK National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khole-Kitovi)
NSCN-R National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Reformation)
NSCN-U National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Unification)
PWD Public Works Department
RGN Revolutionary Government of Nagaland
UDF United Democratic Front
UNPO Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organisation
VC Village Council
VDB Village Development Board
WGIP UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples
1 Introduction
The Shadows of Naga Insurgency

I
t is autumn 2013 and a mass protest is scheduled in Dimapur.
Schools and educational institutes are closed, and shops and busi-
ness establishments have rolled down their shutters. Only a few
minutes have passed and already thousands of Nagas are spilling onto
the streets to air their anguish against the internal divisions and per-
ceived degeneration of the Naga National Movement. The number of
protestors first swells below the clock-tower, a landmark in the heart of
Dimapur, from where they fan out across the town’s lanes and streets,
shouting, sloganeering, and flaunting banners as they march.
For over 60 years, since the mid-1950s, the Naga Movement—
in its various forms, factions, and guises—has fought for Naga
Independence, and in doing so presents itself as a people’s movement
supported by tribal and Christian uplanders.1 The Naga armed struggle
provoked a massive escalation of violence from the Indian state, a dense

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India.
Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0001
2 in the shadows of naga insurgency

militarization of the Naga highlands, and countless tragedies. The Naga

Movement persevered across decades, and in 1997 a ceasefire was struck
between India’s Central Government and the National Socialist Council
of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah (NSCN-IM), arguably the dominant force in
an increasingly divided and disjointed Naga Movement. It was from the
moment of ceasefire, my Naga friends and interlocutors explain, that the
perceived downfall of the Naga Movement began. Post ceasefire, they
narrate, the earlier mostly noble and selfless motivations of ‘national
workers’, as cadres of Naga underground groups are called locally, quickly
degenerated into greediness, intimidation, and internal bickering, lead-
ing to a general air of unpleasantness between rivalling Naga factions and
the wider Naga populace.2 Of course, in a region long poised between
the violence of insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrible things keep
on happening, but it is nevertheless widely held that the ceasefire has
not made things better for ordinary Naga men and women. Frustrations
long cropped up, or expressed only in hushed conversations, finally
turned to shouts on a hot and humid Dimapur afternoon.
In most visual representations, the Naga highlands make for idyllic
sceneries of forest-clad, rolling hills veiled by low-hanging fog, and
dotted with picturesque hilltop villages. Oftentimes the Naga uplands
are painted as a landscape filled with age-old traditions, year-round
festivals and merrymaking, and colourful culture and customs; the
perfect stuff for ‘ethnic’ and ‘exotic’ photography and glossy coffee-table
books (for example, Kunz and Joshi 2008; Stirn and Van Ham 2003;
Welman and Jagoi 2013).3 Not here in Dimapur (neither in Naga
villages, as this book will variously show), which is a town of business
and bustle built on flatland alongside, and across, the Nagaland–Assam
border.4 Rows of buildings sit in a monotonous urban landscape
of concrete, while new shopping complexes and apartment clusters
sprout fast to cater and accommodate Dimapur’s rapidly expanding
population. Because of its commerce and trade, Dimapur is also the
territorial locus of Naga underground groups, which collect the bulk of
their finances from taxing all peoples, goods, and services in the area;
rebellion and resistance, including the maintenance of a ceasefire, after
all, requires resources and thence ‘rebels must raise capital’ (Weinstein
2007: 7). Camp Hebron, as the designated post-ceasefire headquarters
of the NSCN-IM was christened, is just a few miles away, and so are
 Introduction 3

the camps and hideouts of several other underground groups such as

the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) (NSCN-K),
National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Unification) (NSCN-U),
Naga National Council (Non-Accordist) (NNC-N/A), and National
Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khole-Kitovi) (NSCN-KK).5 Many of
its leaders and cadres have built houses in the town, sometimes neigh-
bouring those of Naga bureaucrats and politicians with whom, formally,
they are at loggerheads.
What is protested in Dimapur, more specifically, are the endless
and excessive taxes and collections Naga underground groups, and
their respective parallel governments (even as Naga factions resist the
Indian state, each faction simultaneously mimics structures and func-
tions of the Indian government to themselves look like a state) levy from
government offices and ordinary Nagas, and which have long curbed
household budgets, business profits, and public monies. Protested, too,
is the prevailing factionalism that spreads violence and death, and which
results from an enormous struggle that is fought out between seven or
eight Naga underground groups over historical legitimacy, ideological
differences, leadership, and territorial and tribal domination within
the broader Indo-Naga conflict. While the plot of Naga resistance was
never simple, the post-ceasefire era witnessed further seizures and splits
within the Naga Movement. Some of the banners protestors carry now
read: ‘One [underground] government, one tax’,6 ‘We don’t work to feed
you guys’, ‘Stop factionalism!’, ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’,
and ‘Who lives, if Nagaland dies?’
The public rally was organized by a newly floated civil society orga-
nization that called itself the Action Committee Against Unabated
Taxation (ACAUT), and took place in spite of dictums served against it
by Naga underground leaders, who insisted the rally went against Naga
nationalism. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah,
for one, declared the ACAUT as ‘anti-national’, condemned the rally as
maligning the Naga cause, and as undermining the peace talks it had
held with the Centre since 1997, and which, they insisted, was mak-
ing good progress. The Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation
spokespersons reasoned differently. The protest march, they explained,
was not against but in support of Nagas’ historical and political rights
for sovereignty and self-determination. What they, and the protestors,
4 in the shadows of naga insurgency

rejected and resented, however, was the current form and factions of the
Naga Movement, and which to their eyes had reduced Naga nationalism
to a pretext for national workers to accrue purely private material gains
and to fight over interpersonal and intertribal differences.
I was not in Dimapur at the time of the rally, but seven hours
of winding roads away in a Chakhesang Naga hilltop village I shall
call Phugwumi, and where I learned about the protest march, as did
the villagers, through the radio, newspapers, and phone calls.7 Most
villagers talked about the protest as ‘bold’ and ‘daring’. One villager,
whom I grew to know well, told me: ‘There is a problem with our
national movement. Before we used to respect national workers,
almost worshipped them as supra-humans, but now they fight amongst
themselves and things are topsy-turvy’. Another commented: ‘Earlier
national workers served the Naga cause, but today it seems we are serv-
ing them’. Some in the village, however, expressed apprehension about
the possible consequences of the rally: ‘Could the Central Government
use the protest march to weaken the NSCN-IM’s negotiation posi-
tion and so impede an honourable political solution?’,8 ‘Would Naga
underground groups react and retaliate by going after the organizers
of the protest?’, ‘Might this lead to a new wave of violence?’ These were
genuine worries villagers expressed.
Dimapur’s public rally drew widespread attention, both within and
outside Naga society. Never before, in long decades of political conflict,
had ordinary Nagas come out in large numbers against the form and
functioning of the Naga Movement. But even as multiple analysts,
commentators, and media channels interpreted the protest march
as foreboding the implosion of the Naga Movement, this was not the
message either the ACAUT or the protestors, several of whom I spoke
with later, wanted to express. For instance, while they rejected the exces-
sive and multiple taxes levied by national workers, they did not object
to contributing financially to the Naga Movement per se. A Dimapur
resident (and a former classmate) working in a government office told
me: ‘I am ready to contribute part of my salary to the Naga cause.
Almost all Nagas remain willing to do so. But we cannot be expected to
finance the existence of rivalling underground groups and governments
whose existence serves no purpose except causing hardship, violence,
and tribalism’. In fact, by rejecting the disintegration and degeneration
 Introduction 5

of the Naga Movement, most protestors, if anything, saw themselves as

protectors, not dissenters, of the Naga cause.
In Phugwumi, too, villagers usually separated their frustrations and
disillusionment with the present-day Naga Movement from the deeper
rationalities and doctrines of Naga sovereignty, a political aspiration
many supported, or certainly felt sympathetic towards, even though they
understood that chances of Nagas achieving this were both complicated
and slim. Not a few Phugwumi villagers had their individual biographies
linked to the Naga Movement and, in the past, had risked their lives
and limbs battling India’s military and paramilitary forces, while all
villagers had variously suffered as the result of the conflict. Most villagers
had experiences to share and stories to tell, and to which I spent many
evenings listening.
This was no different in the Chang Naga village of Noksen, where
I carried out a second stint of fieldwork, even as for many Noksen
villagers, and the Chang more widely, the Naga Independence struggle
has been put on the backburner in favour of a—for them—more press-
ing political demand: the bifurcation of Nagaland state through the
creation of a new state to be called Frontier Nagaland (Chapter 6). Their
political and territorial demand cuts through an envisaged integrated
Naga homeland, and makes one of the multiple complications, convul-
sions, and apparent contradictions that have emerged within the broader
contours of the Indo-Naga conflict.
These internal complications, as well as the protest rally, evade most
popular images of the Naga struggle, which conjures that of a margin-
alized and culturally distinct community resisting, against all odds,
invading and repressive Indian and Burmese states; of a popular move-
ment driven by rights of self-determination and self-preservation as a
distinct Naga nation. Oftentimes the term Nagalim (or Naga Land) is
invoked, which projects the political integration of a contiguously inhab-
ited Naga territory presently bifurcated between India and Burma/
Myanmar,9 and ultimately the emergence of an independent, upland
country where Naga culture and Christianity structure social life.10
My ethnography, as ethnography does, complicates any such singular and
simplistic readings by providing a worm’s eye-view of Naga insurgency,
revealing some of the complex ways in which the tentacles of insur-
gency and counterinsurgency attach themselves to everyday social and
6 in the shadows of naga insurgency

political life. Roughly two years of fieldwork revealed a plethora of

political voices, motivations, and aspirations, the articulation of social
binds and divides that obscure images of the Naga nation as a single
ethnic rubric, and an ever-contested linkage of ‘overground’ appara-
tuses of state, development, and democracy with the politics of Naga
insurgency. ‘Nothing is ever what it seems in Nagaland,’ as a Naga
friend in Shillong once confided to me. Through a fine-grained
ethnographic account, this book nevertheless hopes to distil some of the
inner logic, intricacies, and indeterminacies that shape everyday social
life as it unfolds in the (often murky) ‘shadows’ of Naga insurgency.

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency

‘In this transitional period of history, we the Nagas are in a very delicate
position,’ wrote A.Z. Phizo from Calcutta’s Presidency Jail, where
he had been incarcerated on charges of ‘stirring trouble’ in the Indo-
Burma borderland. The year was 1948. India had just woken up to ‘life
and freedom’ and the Nagas, of whom Phizo introduced himself as a
spokesperson, now wanted India to set them free. His letter continued:
‘We occupy a territory at a point of transfusions and we cannot permit
Naga territory to be political polemics.’11 What Phizo invoked was
the colonial geopolitical objectification (Zou and Kumar 2011), the
administrative and cartographic ordering and reordering of a hitherto
non-state upland space, thence transmuting Naga lands from a fringe,
rugged and remote, into a crucial and potentially subversive border or
buffer zone between India and China, Burma, and, at some distance,
(erstwhile) East-Pakistan. ‘[The Nagas] are not planning Machiavellian
politics’, Phizo, witty as always, assured, then asserting that it was ‘not
the nature of the Nagas to be secretive…. We never made a secret of our
aspiration to be independent again when the British leave India’.
This letter by Phizo was sent to Rajagopalachari, the first Governor-
General of free India, but he immediately rejected its plea, as did Nehru,
Patel, and other Indian leaders (bar, it must be said, Mahatma Gandhi).12
Phizo, after his release from jail, became the fourth president and main
ideologue of the National Naga Council (NNC), which launched
and spearheaded the Naga Movement for Independence. To justify its
claim for Independence, the NNC insisted and persisted that neither
 Introduction 7

were Nagas Indians, nor had their hills ever been Indian terrain, be it
in terms of precolonial political realities, mythological and cosmological
configurations, or the cultural stretch of Bharat. Naga spokespersons
had articulated this viewpoint as early as 1929, when a memorandum
signed by members of the Naga Club, the first Naga apex body of sorts,
was submitted to the Simon Commission, which had come to British
India to study constitutional reform. The memorandum read:

Before the British Government conquered our country in 1879–80, we

were living in a state of intermitted warfare with the Assamese of the
Assam Valley to the North and West of our country and Manipuris
to the South. They never conquered us nor were we subjected to their
rules. On the other hand, we were always a terror to these people…. Our
language is quite different from those of the plains and we have no social
affinities with the Hindus or Mussalmans. We are look[ed] down upon
by the one for ‘beef ’ and the other for our ‘pork’ and by both for our want
in education …
(cited in Vashum 2005: 175)

Were the British to depart, as rumour already had it, they pleaded, ‘we
should not be thrust to the mercy of other people … but to leave [sic] us
alone as in ancient times’ (cited in Vashum 2005: 175). It was a reading of
history and a future political vision India’s newly Independent government
rejected. In the 1940s and early 1950s, these conflicting interpretations
of what was, and what was not, Indian territory, and who was, and who
was not, an Indian, were battled with rhetoric, historical narratives,
political treatises, and symbolic acts. However, when subsequent talks,
negotiations, and attempted treaties failed, Jawaharlal Nehru ordered in
his military and paramilitary forces. In those early days, few perhaps had
foreseen that this political disagreement would become accompanied by
anything like the protracted conflict, violence, and bloodshed that even-
tuated. ‘Troops moved into Tuensang by Oct. 1955’, B.N. Mullik, then
Director of India’s Central Intelligence Bureau recounted, ‘and the war
with the Nagas started from then’ (cited in Vashum 2005: 12).
The subsequent history of the Indo-Naga conflict is a history of a
daring resistance, one defying the odds of a small, initially ill-equipped
Naga force holding out despite being outnumbered many times over.
Over the past decades, several ceasefires and treaties were signed, but in
8 in the shadows of naga insurgency

the end each failed to hold or backfired, turning Naga insurgency into
a multi-generational struggle. But there is more to the Naga Movement
than resistance against Nagas’ enclosure into the Indian nation-state.
‘When history is written as a history of struggle’, Pandey (2004: 4) writes,
‘it tends to exclude the dimensions of force, uncertainty, domination and
disdain, loss and confusion, by normalizing the struggle, evacuating it
of its messiness and making it part of a narrative of assured advance
towards specified (or specifiable) resolutions’. Pandey diagnoses this in
relation to the history of Partition, but, in adapted form, his observation
bears on the Naga struggle, which besides a history of resistance (and an
advance towards a political solution favourable to Nagas) also contains
a history of multiple dissensions, coups, rivalries, acts of tribalism, and
factional feuds within, splitting and complicating the Naga Movement
into myriad rivalling underground groups.
What sets the Indo-Naga conflict apart from most armed conflicts
is its longevity, its listing amongst the longest postcolonial struggles
worldwide. Scholarship on armed conflict is voluminous, and I do not
intend to traverse its theoretical triumphs and pitfalls here. What never-
theless needs pointing out is that most treatises on conflict concentrate
on tales of violence, resistance, and survival, often emphasizing the
destructive nature of violent conflict on social life. Violent conflict,
Carolyn Nordstrom (2004: 68) posits, ‘undermines core foundations of
society … [it causes] the wounding of culture, social dislocation, and the
destruction of the very epistemological and ontological tools by which
we construct our world and ourselves in it’. The realization that the rami-
fications of armed conflict go beyond bodily damage and destruction is
pertinent, and perhaps still too often overlooked. However, most such
approaches end up essentializing armed conflicts in terms of violence,
and in so doing quarantine them from wider social processes, struggles,
and realities that continue alongside it, rather mistakenly presenting the
conflict as a ‘thing in itself ’ (Richards 2005: 3).
Tobias Kelly (2008: 351) critiques such ethnographic studies of
armed conflict for ‘over-determining violence’ and ‘ignoring the mundane
nature of most political conflicts’. This is not to underestimate the real
devastation and destruction armed conflicts cause, but to acknowledge
that social life, even in situations of conflict, usually remains a great deal
more complex and ‘thicker’ than tactics of coping alone (Thiranagama
 Introduction 9

2011: 7). To capture everyday life amidst continuing conflict, Kelly

(2008: 353) argues, ‘an examination of the ordinary is just as important
as the apparently extraordinary or exceptional…. If we are to understand
the specific shape that armed conflicts take, with their particular peaks
and troughs, we need to understand the lulls as much as the spikes
of violence’.13 Wars and armed conflicts, especially protracted ones,
Stephen Lubkemann (2008: 1) contends, should not be understood as
a suspension of social life but as a complex ‘social condition’; it is ‘not an
“event” that suspends “normal” social processes but instead has become
the normal—in the sense of “expected”—context of the unfolding of
social life’. For several generations of Nagas, the politics, perils, and
precarities of insurgency and counter-insurgency, the militarization of
the landscape, and ceasefires and their breakdowns have indeed been the
‘expected’ context of social life as most Nagas have no historical point of
political stability they can refer back to.
Instead of reducing conflict to violent struggles for territory and
power, anthropologists studying (in) conflictscapes, Lubkemann
(2008: 14) postulates, should concentrate on ‘everyday social life and
the process of its realization’, taking into account the many ‘complex and
multidimensional social struggles and concerns, interpersonal nego-
tiations, and culturally scripted life projects’ that continue to orient the
social lives of ordinary men and women, and which may deviate from ‘the
macro-political terms of the conflict’. In approaching Naga insurgency,
I perceive as its ‘macro-political terms’ the different political positions
that exist between Naga undergrounds and the Government of India,
the armed conflict, violence, and current ceasefire that emerged from
this, and the political shadow this casts over Naga society. This shadow,
as shadows are in spite of their darkness, is nevertheless translucent;
through it can be seen the social practices, processes, and relations,
political aspirations, normative imaginations, moral values and struggles
that inform the more minute texture of everyday life, and which, while
certainly influenced by the macro-political terms of Naga insurgency, are
not fully eclipsed by it.
For most of my Naga friends and respondents, and especially after
the 1997 ceasefire and the related withdrawal of Indian Armed Forces
(mostly) to their barracks, Naga insurgency existed behind the immedi-
ate scenes and compulsions of everyday life. Even if past experiences told
10 in the shadows of naga insurgency

Naga villagers that violence could potentially re-emerge without prior

notice, the conflict did not preoccupy their daily lives in the ways that
fulfilling kinship obligations, religious duties, studying, marrying and
establishing families, cultivating fields, or otherwise carving out a living
did. While war and conflict, as Sharika Thiranagama (2011: 6) rightly
argues, tends to have ‘its own parameters, frames and codes, and gener-
ated different forms of sociality’, it does ‘not obliterate preexisting social
projects, fantasies or social mores’.
In line with these approaches, I do not perceive of the Indo-Naga
conflict as dissected from wider patterns and precepts of social life.
However, with Thiranagama (2011) I argue that this should not
lead to an abandoning of the social and political specificities of life
in a conflict zone. Naga insurgency, as I will variously show, has long
flooded the banks of political conflict and washes through all fields of
social life, and is thence best understood as a complex—an ‘insurgency
complex’. Approaching Naga insurgency as a complex, thus traversing
beyond armed conflict in the strict sense, recognizes how Nagas’ histori-
cal and embodied experiences of resistance and state aggression, violence
and political volatility, struggle and suffering link together, how they
produce long-term mentalities and prejudices, shape social norms, moral
evaluations, local struggles, and magnify interpersonal and intertribal
relations in expected and unexpected ways. What emerges from this is
perhaps not a complete transformation of social life (or conflict-induced
‘cultural chaos’ as Lubkemann (2008) argues armed conflict causes),
but a situation in which social relationships, moral reasoning, political
sociality and aspirations, and culturally scripted life-projects become
variously entangled in, and complicated by, the past and present of Naga
insurgency.
What follows, then, is not a panoramic overview of the protracted
Indo-Naga conflict, but an ethnographic underview of the social corol-
laries, carryovers, and consequences of Naga insurgency.14 The seven
chapters that make the main body of this book explore, in multiple
ways, the form and substance of social life as it emerges in the shadows
of political conflict. I variously look at how kinship networks, social
bonds, and tribal identities constitute themselves and interrelate with
the politics of insurgency, the kind of state-society relations that have
grown, how development schemes and projects manifest themselves
 Introduction 11

locally, and, amidst all this, what agency and imagination Naga villagers
possess to appropriate and rework apparatuses and policies of state,
development, and democracy to their own uses, understandings, and
distinctive lifeworlds.

Where Is Nagalim?
When the Central Government, in 2016, began fencing and trenching the
international boundary between India and Myanmar the ‘trans-border’
Khiamniungan Naga tribe protested. Its apex body condemned it as a
‘felonious act’ and explained that the ‘Khiamniungan have always lived
as one community’ but that ‘after British colonialism an imaginary line
was drawn between India and Myanmar, dividing the tribe between two
countries’. This ‘imaginary line’, it is popularly imagined, ‘was drawn over
the Patkai ranges when Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minster of
India, and U Nu, the then Prime Minister of Burma, flew over the area to
determine the international boundary, thus unwittingly dividing villages
perched on the mountaintops between the two nations’ ( Joshi 2013: 166).
The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah also
objected to the physical demarcation of the international boundary in,
what it called, ‘the heart of the Naga homeland’. It stated, in a public
communiqué, ‘We shall no longer accept any policy to further divide the
Naga family in the form of an artificial boundary fencing between India
and Myanmar’. The Naga Hoho—a pan-Naga apex body—similarly
issued a newspaper statement rejecting the border fencing as ‘an attempt
by India and Myanmar to rewrite the history of Nagas’. Nagaland’s
Chief Minister, in turn, stated: ‘Even if we may not be able to do much
to change the international boundary, we will do everything to see that
the traditional right of the Naga people to move about freely within their
own ancestral land is not taken away’. These public outpourings were
followed up by Nagaland’s lone representative to the Lok Sabha, who
wrote, in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, that ‘the people living
in both sides of the border in the Naga areas belong to similar tribes and
have been living as one community since time immemorial’.15
If borders are amongst the ‘most paradoxical of human creations’
(Gellner 2013: 2), this is, in parts, because they often either join
what is different or divide what is similar (Van Schendel 2005a: 9).
12 in the shadows of naga insurgency

The contemporary criss-crossing of political boundaries across the

Naga highlands—and the mismatch between tribal, ethnic, and political
borders this generates—is a prime example of ‘borders that divide’.
Political boundaries, of course, are not natural and permanent, but
reflect the historicity and politics of a place, and always carry within
themselves the potential to be redrawn or abandoned. Such a redraw-
ing of borders lies at the heart of the territorial and political projection
of Nagalim, which protests the bifurcation of Naga territory by the
Indo-Myanmar border, and its further fragmentation, within India, by
the political boundaries of four states (Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, and
Arunachal Pradesh). Hence, the NSCN-IM defining as ‘the heart of the
Naga homeland’ that which the Indian and Myanmar states perceive as
the outer edges of their respective territory and nation.
Akin to colonial subalterns subjugated and marginalized elsewhere,
Nagas had little or no say in the drawing of borders that divided
them. Its delimitations, instead, were concocted and chiselled at the
convenience of the colonial administration and later confirmed and
congealed (but also added to) by the postcolonial Indian government.
Even as boundaries in South and Southeast Asia did not dwell on the
catastrophic notion, once popular in colonial Africa, that straight lines
make uncomplicated borders, they hinged on arbitrary considerations,
political motives, and bird-eye perspectives all the same. Consequently,
for Nagas, they not just truncated what was, or came to be, Naga political
consciousness across different state territories, but also cut across single
tribes and villages, and in at least one instance runs through a house, as
happened to the dwelling of the Konyak Naga chief of Longwa village
(Longvah 2014: 44).
In crafting his case for Naga Independence, and the territorial reorga-
nization of the region, Phizo wrote:

The Nagas were divided by the British administration into three major
units. About one fifth of the Naga population with that much in
proportion of our land were administrated from British India [Naga
Hills district]. About the same proportion was administrated by British
Burma. And approximately sixty percent of the population occupying a
territory of about seventy percent of Nagaland [Naga-lands] were left
untouched and undisturbed, who were absolutely independent.
(cited in Nuh 1986: 101)
 Introduction 13

It is the coming together of these Naga lands under a single political,

administrative, and sovereign roof that remains projected as the ultimate
outcome of the Naga struggle. Even as the NSCN-IM, in its political
dialogues with the Centre, professed readiness to absolve its demand
for complete Independence, it remains firm on the unification of Naga
territories: ‘We will never compromise on our demand for the reunifica-
tion of the Naga homeland. We were divided first by the British and
then India perpetuated the divisions. The NSCN wants a unified Naga
homeland and we will either have it or we will fight for it’ (Muivah cited
in Samaddar 2009: 182).
This desire to unify Naga lands (certainly those lying within India)
elicits support across the Naga political spectrum, and a resolution
unanimously adopted by the Nagaland Assembly in 1994 reads thus:

Whereas, by quirk of history, the Naga-inhabited areas have been

disintegrated and scattered under different administrative units without
the knowledge and consent of the Nagas…. Whereas, the Nagas
irrespective of territorial barriers have strong desire to come together
under one administrative roof … the Assembly, therefore, resolves to
urge upon the Government of India and all concerned to help the Nagas
achieve this desired goal.
(cited in Chasie 2005: 61)16

Naga civil societies, too, demand this and, in 2010, the Naga Hoho
proclaimed: ‘henceforth, we derecognize any artificial boundary lines
drawn across our ancestral lands in the so-called Manipur state’ (cited
in Longvah 2014: 44).17

A Brief Naga Historical Detour

The kinds of past we conjure, David Lowenthal (1985: xvi) writes, is
‘largely an artefact of the present’. This is because we selectively recall and
celebrate some historical events, and invoke them to justify the present,
but expunge or ignore others. Lowenthal explains: ‘as the past has new
consequences for each successive generation; we are forever reinterpret-
ing it’ (1985: 62). Most Naga history writing is fraught with the volatile
politics of the Indo-Naga conflict. Ask a Naga and Indian scholar to
interpret the same historical sources and the conclusions drawn by
14 in the shadows of naga insurgency

each are likely to differ. Nor, perhaps, could this be otherwise. Besides
political colouring, our understanding of Naga history is also ‘thin’.
Much of what we assume we know about Nagas’ ancient and precolonial
pasts is either derived from oral histories, legends, songs, and folktales,
or is an interpretation of fragments and shards of historical accounts
written, not by Nagas, but by litterateurs of neighbouring kingdoms and
dynasties in the Assam and Imphal valleys. This section, in the briefest of
summaries, sketches Nagas’ political history up till the demand for Naga
Independence on 14 August 1947, one day before India gained hers.
The Naga inhabited hills are usually said to be made up of dispa-
rate tribes. These, prior to their (partial) incorporation into the British
Empire and later complete enclosure into the Indian and Burmese states,
were political communities with a fierce history of self-governance.
In actual practice, however, both the locus and ethos of Naga political
organization was vested not in the tribe, but in the prototypical Naga
‘village republic’ (Chapter 2 in this volume). It was only seldom that
separate villages asserted themselves as a tribal entity that in its func-
tioning was considerably constant, corporative, and cohesive. From
the earliest documentary accounts we have, we know that these Naga
villages maintained complex sets of relations with kingdoms and dynas-
ties in the adjacent Brahmaputra, Barak, and Imphal Valleys, and which
across time and space included raids and retaliations, trade and tribute,
cooperation, co-optation, and conflict, suzerainty, and submission
(Devi 1968; Mackenzie 1884; Wouters 2011).
As a general principle, however, Naga villages, while occasionally
subdued, were never administrated by an external force, but left to fend
for themselves. This relative seclusion was—though never completely
isolated, bounded, and sealed—first, because the rugged uplands seemed
to offer little of value to dynasties in the plains. Secondly, because plain
dwellers both scorned and feared the upland Nagas as headhunters,
found their behaviour as fickle as the upland winds, and generally looked
upon the hills as a fortress of savagery, nakedness, and barbarity best
kept away from.18 And thirdly, because Naga villages and communities
themselves fiercely resisted intrusions into their hills, putting up fero-
cious fights to push back invaders. This was also the evaluation of the
few European travellers who ventured into Assam before its formal
annexation by the British Raj, and who described the Naga highlands as
 Introduction 15

the place where civilization ended and unruly, violent savages took over
(Mackenzie 1884).
With measures of historical verifiability, the relations between Nagas
and Ahoms (whose princes and nobles reigned over large swathes of
the Brahmaputra Valley from roughly the thirteenth till nineteenth
century) were documented in the Ahom Buranjis, or court chronicles.
Some selected passages detail: ‘the Itania Nagas revolted’, ‘the Chiefs
of the Lakma Nagas came down and hurdled spears into the air’, ‘the
Nagas of Tirualia revolted…. They entered into our villages, murdered
our men, and pillaged the people. For many days, they devastated the
villages and our men had no peace’, and ‘Malauthupia Nagas killed a
number of our villagers and pillaged their properties’ (Baruah 1980).
While such accounts evidence the early presence of upland Nagas,
specifications as Itania, Lakma, Tirulia, and Malauthupia Nagas but also
‘Barduria, Paniduria, Mithonia, Banfera, Joboka, Jaktungias [Nagas]’
(Prakash 2007: 384) have long fallen into oblivion, and it is hard, though
not always impossible, to reconstruct to which Naga villages or village-
clusters they referred.
By the first decades of the nineteenth century, and as a result of
Burmese incursions followed by the authoritative arrival of the British
in Assam, Ahom rule first crumpled, then was obliterated. The colonial
administration that followed, certainly in the beginning, strongly
revolved around the causes of tea, taxes, and timber. It was the cause of
tea that led the British into the Naga foothills, which, even if not always
inhabited, were used by Nagas as ancestral hunting grounds. As early as
1844, Owen, a British officer, invoked a report from ‘scientific gentlemen’
to claim that ‘these Naga Hills must undoubtedly bear better sorts of tea
than is found in the plains of Assam’ (1844: 8). Soon, the acquisition
of Naga lands began. In fact, a major contention between the British
and upland tribes, including Nagas, was the ‘pushing of hill tribes up
into the hills, alienating them from land previously under their control
and granting such land, formally declared “wasteland”, to tea planters and
immigrant peasants from Bengal’ (Karlsson 2011: 270).19
Naga villages responded in ways they knew best, and carried out raids
on tea plantations and the Assam plains beyond. They would swoop
down, usually after dark, and destroy produce, loot harvests, and, in
some instances, capture labourers which they put to work in the hills
16 in the shadows of naga insurgency

or traded as slaves.20 These raids reduced British revenues and were

retaliated with punitive expeditions, often including the burning of Naga
villages and granaries. The first such expedition ensued in 1832 and
was led by Captains Jenkins and Pemberton accompanied by ‘a party of
700 soldiers, and 800 coolies’ (Mackenzie 1884: 101) All along the way,
they were attacked by Angami villagers who ‘rolled down stones from the
summit of the hills, threw spears, and did their utmost by yelling and
intimidation to obstruct the advance of the force’. Such and subsequent
British-Naga encounters were never fought on equal footings: ‘[Naga
warriors] were astounded at perceiving that their wooden shields were
no protection against leaden bullets’ (Butler 1855: 171). Still, Nagas
refused to surrender, and it took the British several decades, the loss of
many lives, and tremendous expenditure, to subdue Naga villages into
notional submission (Elwin 1961: 147–95). To effectuate control, the
Naga Hills district was created in 1866, of whose decision Colonel
Woodthorpe (1882: 57) wrote: ‘Suffice it to say that in consequence of
the raids continually made by the Nagas on our territory, it was found
necessary to locate a Political Officer at a place called Samaguting, just in
the hills’. In 1878, this outpost was moved up to Kohima, which remains
Nagaland’s state capital today.21
While slow at first, and not without setbacks, the colonial government
gradually expanded its sway over swathes of the Naga uplands. Once in
place, colonial rule led to the political, economic, and legal restructur-
ing of the Naga uplands. Headhunting and slavery were made illegal,
and punishments meted out against those who transgressed.22 The new
colonial administration also introduced ‘house-tax’ and monetized the
local economy to enable Naga villagers to pay these. These taxes turned
into a source of continual contention, and in their memorandum to the
Simon Commission (mentioned above), Naga representatives wrote:
‘We are afraid new and heavy taxes will be imposed on us, and when we
cannot pay, then all lands have to be sold and in long run we shall have
no share in the land of our birth and life will not be worth living then’.
If the Naga highlands, and adjacent hills, were already remote, what
made them more remote still was the imposition of the Inner Line in
1873 with the motive to provide a ‘territorial frame to capital’ (Kar 2009:
51). More deeply, Kar explains, it sought to ‘demarcate “the hills” from
the “the plains”, the nomadic from the sedentary, the jungle from the
 Introduction 17

arable—in short, “the tribal areas” from “Assam proper”’ (Kar 2009: 52).
What lay beyond the Inner Line, the Naga Hills included, was legally
notified as ‘backward tracts’, which entailed that laws passed by legisla-
tures did not apply to them but that they were administrated directly by
the offices of the Governor. Later the term ‘backward’ was replaced with
‘excluded’ and ‘partially excluded’ areas, although the same principle of
governance largely remained in place (Robb 1997).23 Areas beyond the
Inner Line were also subjected to a permit regime, ostensibly to ‘protect’
Nagas against the perceived cunning and deceit of the more ‘advanced’
plainsmen. But even as total seclusion was not enforceable since hill and
valley people needed to meet for purposes of trade, more stringent forms
of regulations did curb the frequency with which such interactions took
place, in the process isolating the Naga uplands in unprecedented ways.
In the wake of British rule came missionaries, most of them
belonging to American and Welsh Baptist missions. Within the course
of a century, they succeeded in converting most Nagas to Christianity
( Joshi 2012; Thomas 2016). Besides ‘sin and salvation’, missionaries
also brought with them modern education and medicine, which they
promoted across the hills, and in doing so shaped not only novel reli-
gious and moral outlooks but also new perspectives, ways of thinking,
and expectations. Some colonial officers supported, and facilitated, the
arrival of missionaries and missions—‘Who shall say that the Bible will
not be the means of changing the habits and ideas of these wild savages?
The experiment is worthy of trial,’ wrote John Butler (1855: 66). Most
British officers, however, felt ambivalent, if not rancorous, towards these
missionaries, whom they accused of destroying Naga traditions and
culture. J.P. Mills (1935: 148) wrote thus: ‘Government has been at pains
to preserve them [Naga customs] to the utmost limit possible…. In
strong contrast has been the attitude of the American Baptist Mission.
As religion is a part in every Naga ceremony and as that religion is not
Christianity, every ceremony must go’. In spite of cultural loss, what
Christianity did offer was a common denominator among Naga commu-
nities in a way disparate languages, cultural practices, customs, beliefs,
and bloodshed histories of inter-village strife could not. Ultimately, it
was Christian faith, and the universal truths it espoused, that ‘mediated
the formation of a modern political identity among Nagas’ (Thomas
2016: 1). Over time, Christian discourses, symbols, and slogans became
18 in the shadows of naga insurgency

deeply intertwined with the Naga Movement, as evidenced by the still

popular slogan: ‘Nagaland for Christ’.
Then came the World Wars into which Nagas were drawn in unex-
pected ways. During the First World War, about 2,000 (estimations
vary) Nagas were assembled and dispatched as part of the labour-corps
to war trenches in France and Mesopotamia, where they were intro-
duced, for the first time, to ideas of nation, nationalism, and patriotism.
Henry Balfour, then curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum and with a keen
interest in Naga artefacts, came across ‘a gang of Nagas’ in France ‘engag-
ing in road-repairing in the war zone, within sound of the guns’. Balfour
was to reflect later:

One wonders what impressions remain with them from their sudden
contact with higher civilizations at war. Possibly, they are reflecting
that, after what they have seen, the White Man’s condemnation of the
relatively innocuous headhunting of the Nagas savours on hypocrisy.
Now that they are back in their own hills, will they settle down to the
indigenous simple life and revert to the primitive conditions which were
temporarily disturbed?
(Balfour 1921: xvi)

Settling back into ‘indigenous simple life’ they did not, and France return-
ees were amongst those who initiated the Naga Club in 1918, the first
pan-Naga apex body. Initially a social club, which ran, among others, a
football team and a cooperative store, the Naga Club gradually assumed
a more political character as its members started, the Naga historian,
Mashangthei Horam, writes,

Preparing themselves politically in the event of India gaining her

Independence from the British—a happening they then visualized as
being imminent. Thus their chief concern was the political future of
their homeland after the exit of the British. The Naga club was still in its
infancy then, but the pattern of the future had already been installed in
their minds.
(cited in Franke 2009: 60)

Whereas the Naga Labour Corps had travelled far to participate in

the First World War, the Second World War announced itself at Naga
 Introduction 19

doorsteps as Japanese and Allied Forces battled over Kohima in 1944. In

this battle, Nagas fought, suffered, and sacrificed at the behest of Allied
Forces, making Swinson (1956: 213) conclude: ‘how many [Allied] lives
were owed to the courage and skill of these remarkable [Naga] hillmen
will never be known; but the figure must certainly run into thousands’.
The battle of Kohima often fails to make it into standard textbook
versions of the Second World War, but it was in Kohima that the
Japanese expansion was fought to a halt, making Kohima to the Japanese
‘what Stalingrad was to Russia and Alamein to the Desert’ (Philips cited
in Horam 1988: 57). For Naga villagers, the Japanese invasion and the
presence of large numbers of Allied Forces provided ‘a definite break
from the uninterrupted past and brought to their unaccustomed eyes
the glare of a totally new world—new people, new weapons, new attire,
new food and above all new ideas’ (Horam 1992: 162). One such ‘new
idea’ was the vision of an independent Naga nation.
The war reduced Kohima to ruins and rubble. The colonial govern-
ment, in an attempt to compensate Nagas’ loyalty and losses, offered
post-war reconstruction. It was to streamline the distribution of materi-
als and cash that Charles Pawsey, the last British District Commissioner
of the Naga Hills, facilitated the formation of the Naga Hills district
Tribal Council (NHDTC) in April 1945, and whose mandate it
became to unite Naga tribes to effectuate reconstruction. Less than a
year later, the council had re-christened itself as the NNC, and became
the platform for debates on Nagas’ political future. Initially the debate
was between those who envisaged a genuine Naga autonomy within
Assam and India and those who insisted that only an independent ‘gov-
ernment of the Nagas, for the Nagas, by the Nagas’ (Kevichusa cited in
Archer 1947) would ensure Nagas’ welfare. At first, it was the stance for
autonomy that drew majority support, and found expression in several
memorandums the NNC dispatched to Jawaharlal Nehru. For a number
of reasons, but including the ‘indifferent and non-committal’ attitudes of
Indian national leaders (Thomas 2016: 2) and because no definite agree-
ment seemed forthcoming, the voice for Naga Independence amplified
in sonority.24
This initially led to a division within the NNC, and the split of a
group calling themselves the ‘People’s Independence League’, of which
A.Z. Phizo was a member. It was the People’s Independence League
20 in the shadows of naga insurgency

which on the 14th of August 1947 unilaterally, and without consent of

the NNC, declared Naga Independence. In the confusion that followed,
Phizo was first arrested, then released, and in 1950 selected as the fourth
President of the NNC. Under Phizo’s leadership, the NNC’s stance
formally changed from meaningful autonomy to complete Independence.
Characterized as a ‘swayer of men’ (Horam 1988: 27), Phizo travelled
across the Naga uplands to promulgate the stance for Naga Independence,
and did so with notable success: ‘for the first time, who for centuries had
had no contact with the people of the next village, had been chopping of
each other’s heads without pity, fear or remorse, joined hands to attain
independence’ (Anand 1980: 70). This was followed by a monumental
plebiscite held in 1951, presided over by Phizo and the NNC, during
which, Naga historians tell, 99 per cent of those Nagas consulted
pressed their thumb in favour of Naga Independence. In 1954 the NNC
declared the People’s Sovereign Republic of Free Nagaland, which was
soon replaced by the Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN) as the
political wing of the NNC and the government of Nagaland. Soon after,
the war began.

From a Cradle of British Social Anthropology

to Ethnographic Scarcity
In studying the Naga highlands, and tracing social and political change
and complexities, contemporary scholars grapple with a decades-wide
ethnographic void, largely as a side effect of the protracted Indo-Naga
conflict which long impeded the rise of Naga scholars and imposed
research restrictions on nonlocal researchers, be they Indian or foreign
nationals. Thankfully, academic interest on Nagas is currently on the
rise, as evidenced by several recently published monographs (Longkumer
2010; Joshi 2012; Thomas 2016). On the whole, however, scant academic
treatises, even less ethnographic ones, emerged between roughly the
1950s, when the Indo-Naga conflict erupted, and the second decade of
the twenty-first century.25 The limited ethnographic scholarship that
does exist is fundamentally patchy as while formerly colonially admin-
istrated tribes such as the Angami, Lotha, Ao, and Sema have attracted
some scholarship, our ethnographic understanding of eastern Naga
tribes remains much more deficient (fewer still are accounts of Naga
 Introduction 21

tribes across the border into Myanmar). Much important work is yet to
be done, but for which a large number of Naga anthropology and sociol-
ogy students are now being trained in universities inside and outside
India. Important to highlight, however, is that today’s ethnographic
scarcity contrasts starkly with the colonial era during which Naga tribes
turned into an ethnological hotbed, arguably even a cradle of British
Social Anthropology.
While administrated ‘lightly’, Naga culture and customs became
subjected to intense ethnological scrutiny and speculation, mostly by
‘administrator-anthropologists’. British military and civil officers like
Davis, Butler, Woodthorpe, Godden, Mills, and Hutton repeatedly
addressed gatherings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland and the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata),
and amongst whose eminent audiences their ethnographic material
incited lively, if at times fantastical, discussions. After retiring from
the colonial Indian Civil Service, J.H. Hutton and J.P. Mills, moreover,
and based on their ethnological studies of Nagas, were appointed as
Anthropology Professors at Cambridge University and the London
School for Oriental and African Studies respectively. Till date, most
reputed university libraries in places across the globe flaunt a shelf of
Naga colonial monographs, most of them bound in characteristic dark
blue colour covers, and carrying titles such as The Angami Nagas (Hutton
1921a), The Sema Nagas (Hutton 1921b), The Lhota Nagas (Mills 1922),
The Rengma Nagas (Mills 1937), The Ao Nagas (Smith 1925), another
The Ao Nagas (Mills 1926), The Naked Nagas (Fürer-Haimendorf
1939), The Naga Tribes of Manipur (Hodson 1911), and Naga Path
(Bower 1950).26 Ethnographic museums—be they in Oxford, Basel,
or Berlin—too continue to showcase Naga skulls, spears, headgear, and
other artefacts. Such was the interest in Naga material culture that there
are reportedly ‘over 12,000 Naga artefacts in Britain alone’ (Macfarlane
and Turin 2008: 370), all of which were variously confiscated, gifted, and
procured by colonial administrators, missionaries, curators, and travellers,
today spurring, besides a continuing popular interest in Naga material
culture, complicated debates on authenticity and ownership, including
calls to have these artefacts returned to their villages of origin.
Back then, writings on Naga communities were diverse and colourful,
including detailed narrations of religious beliefs and rituals, origin and
22 in the shadows of naga insurgency

migration stories, headhunting, megalithic culture, khel (village ward)

and clan set-ups, political structures and sentiments, ornaments, archi-
tecture, tigermen, and so-called feasts of merit. While colonial writings
were certainly rich; not all early writers were equally careful in their gath-
ering and interpretation of data, while their analyses remained invariably
(and understandably) couched in dominant ideas of socio-evolutionary
paradigms and British hegemony (Asad 1973; Said 1978). This has led,
in recent years, to a trend of ‘corrective anthropology’ in which mostly
Naga scholars try to rectify what has been written about them (Wouters
and Heneise 2017: 7).
Commenting on early colonial writings on Nagas, Elwin (1969: 1)
evaluated: ‘There are certainly many mistakes of fact, misunderstand-
ing of customs and institutions; almost everything is very different
now’. Much has continued to change since Elwin’s observation. But
few societies perhaps witnessed social change at such rapid pace as
Naga villagers have over the past 150 years or so. These changes can
be captured along a number of axes: from a non-state to a state society,
‘animism’ to Christianity, tradition to modernity and developmentalism,
from powerful chiefs and village elders to participatory democracy, or
from a social landscape inhabited by disparate clans, villages, and tribes
to a political projection of a more or less unified Naga nation. This book
treats some of these axes in conjunction with my ethnography, and in
doing so it aims to return some of the fine-grained ethnographic under-
standings Naga society was long known by.

Fieldwork during Ceasefire

After 138 years of dubious service, Nagaland’s Inner Line was partially
lifted in 2011, permitting freer movements of foreign nationals within
the confines of the state. The year 2011 was also the year I started my
fieldwork, and had it not been for the Centre’s shift in policy—the
Nagaland government had long asked for the partial removal of the
Inner Line with the view of promoting international tourism—this book
would not have been written. At the time the Inner Line regime was in
place, and because of the Indo-Naga conflict, entering Nagaland was not
just notoriously difficult, but a permit, if granted, would hardly exceed
seven days, not a time span that enables sustained ethnographic inquiry.
Another random document with
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If then we can show these that the study of the ancient languages
affords not only an admirable, but perhaps the best exercise for
training tender minds into healthful habits of thought and reflection,
that in looking to an economy of the time which measures the little
span of human life, it is the pursuit in which the youthful mind can do
most in acquiring human knowledge, we shall at least hold out strong
temptations to these studies, even to those hasty and incautious
inquirers who reject every thing for which they have no present use.
But if we go farther, and demonstrate that the man who would
thoroughly understand modern literature, must seek its foundations
in that of the ancients,—that the poet and philosopher, the orator and
statesman, who would train his mind to a successful pursuit of his
favorite object, must look to the great masters of antiquity for the
best models of his art, surely we shall persuade him to apply the
means which a knowledge of the dead languages affords him, to the
study of the literature which they embody. And shall he pause here in
his career? is it to be supposed that he will still look to knowledge
only for the earthly honors which it will enable him to obtain when he
has in view the higher rewards which the love of truth has within
itself? Will he be content with the narrow horizon which first bounded
his prospect when he has taken a more elevated view of creation?
Feeling that every sensible addition which his knowledge makes to
his wisdom is another link by which he mounts in the chain of
spiritual existence, he will lose the original ends for which he was
laboring in the nobler objects which unfold themselves to his mind.
He learns to disregard what men may say of him, sustained by the
proud consciousness of what he is. And like the mariner who has
become weary of coasting adventures, he boldly puts forth to sea in
quest of that unknown land which his spirit has seen in its dreams.
These are the higher uses of the pursuit of knowledge, and although
we are far from asserting that classical studies are the only pursuits
that are thus rewarded, yet we will hazard the assertion, that there
are none more eminently fitted for strengthening the human mind
and elevating its character.

But to return to the first position which we have taken as to the

peculiar fitness of this pursuit for the early employment of the human
mind. It is something in its favor, that for centuries past, until of late,
there has been nearly a common assent amongst literary men that
the study of the ancient languages affords the best exercise for the
youthful mind,—an opinion so old and so prevalent, must have had
at least some foundation in truth. Indeed, when we come to look at
the nature of the system of training necessary for the youthful mind,
we cannot long doubt the fitness of these pursuits for that end. There
is no period, but boyhood, of a man's life at which he would submit to
the drudgery necessary for training his memory in the exercises by
which it is most strengthened. It would be difficult to induce him to
submit to such tasks when he had arrived at a more advanced
period of life, and taken even a superficial view of the more
agreeable walks of knowledge. With a boy who stands upon the
threshold of science, it is far different. Taught that the end in view is
worthy of all his pains, and that his commencement of the pursuit of
knowledge must of necessity be difficult, he is as willing to seek
science through that pass as any other, and the more especially as
he perceives that the exercises are not beyond his strength. In the
study of the ancient languages, (the Greek especially, because it is
more regular than any other) he not only finds an improvement in the
powers of simple suggestion or mere memory, but he is insensibly
led to processes of generalization from the great saving of labor
which he discovers in classification, thus burthening his memory with
a rule only, instead of the mass of facts which the rule serves to
recall and connect—an advantage which the study of none of the
modern languages will afford to the same extent. In the difficulties of
translation, which occasionally present themselves, he is not only
forced to reason upon the rules which regulated their forms of
construction, but often finds it necessary, by an examination of the
context and subject matter, to ascertain the meaning of the author;
and thus early learns to consider the logical arrangement of
propositions and sentences. How often do we find boys thus eagerly
and earnestly engaged, in inquiring into the customs and history of
the people whose language they are studying, and reasoning upon
the motives of action and the characters of men, without being
conscious of the high nature of their speculations, or that they are
doing more than translating the meaning of a difficult sentence—thus
without weariness gradually storing their minds with a knowledge of
allusions necessary for their future reading, and which in the mass
would never be acquired by the youthful intellect from the fatiguing
nature of a study directed to them exclusively. How often do we find
a lad profitably engaged in metaphysical inquiries and nice
calculations of human motives at a time when works exclusively
devoted to these subjects would only serve to weary and disgust
him. The youthful mind is thus trained to the capacity of undergoing
the severest processes of thought and reasoning by a system of
occasional and gentle exercise which amuses without wearying or
breaking its spirit. There are certain advantages peculiar to the study
of that most wonderful of all languages, the Greek, in the culture of
the youthful mind. They are to be found in the regular forms of
compounding their words, and in the almost invariable applicability of
rules to its modes of expression. In tracing a compound word to its
root, the mind is insensibly forced to trace the compound emotions of
the human mind to their source through the seemingly hidden links
of the chain of association which are almost pointed out one by one
in the varying terminations of the radical as it branches out into its
many different shades of signification. What boy of tolerable capacity
could turn to a root in Scapula's Lexicon, with a view of its various
compounds, without tracing (often unconsciously it is true) the simple
to the compound emotions of the human mind through that chain of
association which may be deemed necessary and invariable, since
not only the simple, but also the compound emotions and
perceptions are to be found in every human mind? How could he fail
to acquire a knowledge of the cognate ideas of the mind with this
ocular reference to their connexion before him? He thus learns the
kindred ideas which the expression of certain given ideas will call up,
he begins to know how to marshal the host under their leader, he
perceives the true force of expression which belongs to words, and
traces much of the progress of human thought by means of the land-
marks which this regularly formed language indicates to the inquirer.
He perceives the modes by which the ancient masters of style in this
language learned to express with precision the most abstract of
ideas, and as it were, to transfer to paper almost every shadow
which flits through the human mind. Penetrating to the truth, through
the metaphysical and logical construction of this language, that style
consists more in the arrangement of ideas than words, he acquires
rules which he may transfer to his own language, and thus increase
its capacities of expression, at the same time that he may often
improve the beauty of its form without impairing its strength. No man
ever acquired a thorough knowledge of the Greek without having in
the course of his progress penetrated often and far into the walks of
philology and metaphysics. As no philologist has ever arrived at
eminence without an attentive study of this language, so perhaps it
will not be going too far to say that without it, none ever will. They
were thus trained—the great masters of the English language who
have improved its construction and added so much to its beauty and
strength. The greatest and most sudden improvement which has
ever been wrought at any one period in the English language,
certainly took place in the reign of Elizabeth, and yet every page,
nay, almost every line of the great authors of that day, betrays a
constant and studied reference to the models of antiquity. Next to
them, and pre-eminent as a reformer in our language, stands Milton,
who was trained in the same studies, and whose marvellous power
over language has never been sufficiently considered in the attention
which is bestowed upon his genius. Perhaps no other man ever
effected such a change in the construction of a language, or did so
much to reform it. It has been well said that his construction was
essentially Greek. He only possessed the wonderful power of
transferring the construction of one language to another, dissimilar in
its origin and forms, and of transfusing as it were an old spirit into a
new body. Profoundly versed in written and spoken languages, he
was yet more a master of the language of thought and feeling, and
was thus able to improve the arrangement of the groupes and to
touch with a more natural coloring and living expression the forms by
which we had sought to embody our ideas. And what was the
chosen model of that mighty genius, whose language may be said to
mirror thought, if that of any other English author can be said to paint
it? The Greek! the immortal Greek! which surviving the institutions
and national existence of its people, stands forth like the Parthenon
itself, and defies the genius of all other nations in all succeeding
ages to produce a structure which shall equal its combinations of
strength and elegance—a language which even yet justifies the
proud boast of its creators, that in comparison with them, all other
nations are barbarous. It is evident from the whole spirit of the
writings of this immortal man, that he believes in no other Helicon but
the Greek. If we were called upon to recommend to the reader of
English literature only the writings which would afford him the best
substitute for the study of the classics in the improvement of his
style, we should undoubtedly recommend him to the works of Milton.
There are several authors since his day, who, trained in the same
studies, have labored with less effect, it is true, for the same end;
and indeed it would be difficult to point out a single author who has
improved the strength and beauty of the English language, without a
knowledge of the structure and literature of the Greek. There have
been many who, without this knowledge, have well used the
language as they found it. But Temple, Tillotson, Addison,
Bolingbroke, Warburton and Johnson, who have all contributed
sensible additions and changes to its structure, formed their styles
upon ancient models.

We have already adverted to the knowledge of the allusions to the

ancient mythology acquired by the study of the Greek and Latin
authors, a knowledge which can only be fully acquired in this mode,
and which is of inestimable use to the student, not only in
understanding the writings even of modern times, but in learning to
write himself. The ardent imagination of the East has produced
nothing more beautiful than the splendid mythology of the Greeks—a
mythology which abounds in powerful imagery and poetic
conception. Perhaps there is nothing so little various as fiction,
notwithstanding the numerous and repeated efforts at such
creations. Indeed it would be curious to ascertain how much of the
fiction now in possession of the human race is of ancient origin, and
thus to perceive how little would be left if we were to abstract the
creations of the mythic ages of ancient Greece. Nothing could
illustrate more strongly the fact that the history of the human heart is
always the same. We find powerfully portrayed even in the fictions of
that early day, the intrigues of love and ambition, the vanity of earthly
hopes, and the warfare of contending passions. There is scarcely a
feeling which is not pictured in some poetic personification which
developes its tendencies and nature, and there is not a moral of
general use in the conduct of life which is not illustrated by some well
designed and beautiful allegory. It seems to have been an early
practice with the eastern sages to address the reasons of their
people through the medium of their ardent and susceptible fancies.
The Hebrew, the Egyptian and Grecian lawgivers and sages, all
resorted to it, and truth presented in this attractive form has never
failed to take a lasting hold upon the public mind. Addressing itself in
this form most powerfully to the young, because their fancies are
most susceptible, it cannot fail to make an impression at that age
when it sinks most deeply in the human mind. It is thus that
principles of action are instilled into the human mind at an age when
reason is scarcely yet capable of eliminating the true from the false,
and the youthful imagination receives an early and wholesome
excitement from the contemplations of poetic conceptions whose
simplicity fits them to be received, and whose beauty commends
them to be loved, by the youthful mind. The most powerful, the most
beautiful and concise modes of expressing much of human feeling
and passion, are to be found in the Grecian mythology. The true
value of an image consists in the conciseness with which it
expresses the idea that it represents. An image is misplaced and
useless, no matter how beautiful in itself, if it presents your idea in a
more tedious and cumbrous form than that in which a few simple
words would have explained your meaning as well. It is then
obviously unnecessary, and presents itself to the reader as a mere
attempt at beauty, which at once recalls him from the subject to the
author,—an effect which is always unfortunate for the latter. Good
imagery, on the contrary, offers a glowing picture which at once
makes a vivid impression upon the mind, accurately representing
your meaning, and calling up ideas through the force of a necessary
and natural association, which would not have been otherwise
awakened except by the use of many more words. Such in an
eminent degree is the imagery of the mythology of which we have
been speaking. Where is the course of power without knowledge to
guide it, so briefly yet so forcibly depicted as in the mad career of
Phaeton misguiding the steeds of the sun? And what picture so
descriptive of the writhings of disappointed ambition as that of
Prometheus on his rock with the vulture at his liver? Tantalus in the
stream is an ever living fiction, because it borrows the form of Truth
when it points to the punishment of him who rashly essays to satisfy
his thirst for happiness by the gratification of unhallowed lusts; and
Sisyphus toiling at his stone, is the faithful picture of man who vainly
confident in his unassisted strength seeks to roll the ball of fortune
up the slippery eminence. What can be more beautiful than that
picture of fraternal affection which we find in the fable of the sons of
Leda—a union of spirit so pure that it was typified in the two bright
stars which still maintain alternate sway in heaven as an everlasting
memorial of that undying love which married the mortal to the
immortal in one common destiny. In what other language could
Byron have described fallen Rome, "the Niobe of nations," than that
which he used, the language of truth and feeling which is now
common to the whole of the civilized world, and must be as
universally used as known, since it embodies the pictured thought
and feeling of the human heart. The man who neglects this mythic
and most beautiful of languages, must be content to see himself
excelled by those who have studied it, both in strength and beauty of
expression. Perhaps we do not hazard too much in asserting that a
knowledge of this mythic language alone (if we may call it so,)—a
knowledge only to be obtained by reading the Greek and Latin
authors—would compensate the student for the labor bestowed in
acquiring those languages. So far we have looked only to the
advantages to be derived from a mere study of these languages,
without any reference to the literature which they embody. And if we
have shown so far that these studies of themselves afford a reward
for our labors, how much more important will they seem when we
consider the learning which we shall find in them. But it may be said
that we promised to show that these studies were not only profitable,
but the most profitable in which the youthful mind could be engaged;
and so far we have not redeemed the pledge. To this we reply, that
the study of natural philosophy by which we comprehend physics
and morals, and that of languages, afford the only subjects to which
the mind is directed in books. Now, in relation to the first, we assume
in common with most of the best thinkers on the subject of
education, that such studies would serve to weaken the youthful
mind by its premature exertions under a load as yet beyond its
capacity; and with regard to the study of other languages than the
Greek and Latin, that all the advantages to be derived from the mere
study of language, which the others afford, are also to be had by the
classical student, whilst the more regular formation and peculiar
structure of these two ancient languages promise benefits to the
youthful mind which are peculiar to themselves, or at any rate, much
greater in them than in any others.

We come now to the second proposition which we laid down, and

that is, that out of his own language, there are no other two
languages whose literature holds out as many inducements to the
student for acquiring them, as that of the Greek and Latin languages,
since independently of their own worth, these studies are absolutely
essential to the proper understanding of modern literature as it now
exists. Surely there could exist no opinion more unfortunate for the
progress of science, than that which supposes, that a view of
science as it now exists, is all that is necessary for its thorough
investigation; indeed, we believe the assertion may be safely
hazarded, that no one can ever qualify himself for the race of
discovery who looks alone to what men now think without a
reference to what they have formerly believed and written upon the
subjects of his inquiry. Strange as it may seem, the man who would
ascertain truth, must not confine himself to the simple inquiry of what
it is. He must also see what men have thought about it. He must look
to the history of human opinion and the modes of reasoning by which
men have arrived at their conclusions. He must not only be able to
understand the results of right reason, but he must learn also to
reason for himself. It was a perception of this necessity which
induced the immortal Bacon to turn his attention to the mode of
investigating truth, rather than to the discovery of truth itself. He
perceived that it was the most important benefit which could be
conferred by any man of that day, and the Novum Organon, the most
wonderful of mere human conceptions, was the result. A view of the
different modes of reasoning to truth which had been employed
before him, a comparison of the methods which the most successful
philosophers had pursued, soon taught him that there was as much
in the method used as in the genius of the investigator. He who
would pursue the path of truth, would do well to prepare himself with
a guide book made up from the experience of former travellers; he
will thus learn the various roads which intersect his true path, and
might be likely to put him out, each of which some former pilgrim has
taken before him, from whose recorded experience he may take
warning; or sometimes it may happen that whilst the crowd of
philosophers have been wandering for centuries through a mazy
error, the account given by some long gone traveller of a partially
explored route may lead the happy investigator into the true way,
and thus forward him on his journey. In the progress of truth, which
of necessity must be slow and cautious, it is important to weigh
every step, and every chart should be preserved. It was thus that
Copernicus, retracing the steps of philosophers for two thousand
years, discovered in the almost forgotten accounts of the writings of
Nicetas, Heraclides and Ecphontus, traces of a route into which he
struck off and was conducted to the most brilliant discoveries. It was
thus that Galileo was conducted to some of his discoveries in
hydrostatics by the hints of Archimedes. Indeed, how many of the
most important discoveries of science have thus originated? Had
Archimedes and Pappus never written, or had they been neglected,
the method of tangential lines of Fermat and Barrow, approximating
so closely as they do to the discovery of the differential calculus, had
perhaps never existed, and to these we must attribute the
subsequent important discovery of Newton and Leibnitz. Indeed, the
whole history of scientific discovery is the history of a chain whose
links have been forged by different men, and fitted at different times.
If such be the most fortunate mode of scientific discovery, how much
do we increase the importance of the study of the ancient literature,
when we come to reflect that the termination of their scientific labors
during the night of the middle ages, is the point of departure from
which all modern scientific discovery has emanated. It will at once be
recollected that at the revival of letters, the only sources of
information were derived from the study of the ancients revived
chiefly by Boccacio and the philosophers of the Medici school and
from the Arabians, whose knowledge was drawn chiefly though at an
early period from the same source. Notwithstanding the elegant
rivalry between the Abassides and Ommoiades, which so much
fostered the spirit of learned inquiry, notwithstanding the resort of the
Arabian philosophers to the Indian school, and the polite and
elevated spirit of the Saracen conquerers who offered peace to the
modern and degenerate Greeks in exchange for their philosophy, it
is still evident that with the exception of some few discoveries in the
science of medicine, they were yet far behind the ancients at the
period of the decay of letters. Ancient science became the text upon
which modern writings were for ages the commentary, one of its
languages became the medium of communication between the
learned and polite of all nations, and no book of science was
published for a long time except in the Latin. The writings of
mathematicians as far down as Euler, those in medicine in England
as far down as Hunter, the writings of Blumenback, of Grotius and
Spinoza, the Novum Organon of Bacon, and indeed those of nearly
all the modern philosophers, until the middle of the seventeenth
century, were in Latin. In Belles Lettres, criticism and rhetoric, in
history, physics and morals, the models of the moderns were all
chosen from antiquity. In addition to this too, the progress of Roman
arms, and afterwards the advance of Roman letters, had
incorporated much of the Latin language and idiom in all of the polite
modern languages except the German. The Italian and Spanish in
particular have been well called "bastard Latin." How then can any
student of modern literature only, hope to understand the genius of
his own language, or even the spirit of that literature to which he has
devoted himself? What scientific inquirer can hope, in any great
degree, to forward the march of discovery no matter what may be his
genius and spirit, if he be without this learning? Independently then
of the intrinsic value of ancient learning, we humbly think that the
reasons enumerated by us, suffice to prove not only the importance
but the absolute necessity of these studies to the accomplished
scholar and man of science. But we are prepared to go further, and
maintain that on certain subjects of mental inquiry, it still affords the
best models extant. In poetry, the best models are confessedly
ancient. In rhetoric, Aristotle, Quinctilian and Horace, have left
nothing for modern investigation to add upon that subject. But it is in
history, oratory, the philosophy of government, law and psychology,
that the pre-eminence of ancient literature is most important to be
noticed. We are perfectly aware that the history of remote antiquity
has for every mind a charm which does not belong to the genius or
the taste of the historian. Ideas of events remote in point of time,
whether past or future, always fill the mind with a certain degree of
awe and uncertainty. A feeling of mystery always attends our ideas
of what is remote in point of time or place. It is on the tale of the
traveller from far distant lands that we hang with most delight and
wonder. Had Columbus discovered America within two days voyage
of Europe, the tale of his genius had been yet untold. So too the
mind looks to events long past with an awe and wonder akin to those
feelings which fill it in its eager gaze into futurity. It is this power of
association which attaches the antiquarian so devotedly to his
peculiar study, and so soon converts it into a pursuit of feeling rather
than of reason. It is the same mysterious link which binds the poet to
the early customs and history of his country, and which lends a
charm to the simplest ballad if it be ancient, and connects his
contemplations with the past. It was the same feeling so strong in the
human heart which swelled in the breast of the indignant old lawgiver
when in despite of his formal pursuits and fancy-killing studies, he
pronounced his rebuke on those who ignorantly maligned "that code
which has grown grey in the hoar of innumerable ages." It is a
mighty journey which the human mind takes when it is transported
from the present to the past. When the mind awakes to realize these
long-gone scenes, feelings of mingled awe and pleasure insensibly
possess it. A thousand associations of gloomy grandeur attend us as
we seem to walk amid the mighty monuments of the dead in the
silent twilight of past ages. We feel as if we were treading the lonely
streets of the city of the dead, and lifting the pall of ages. We start to
find that the mouldering records of man's pursuits then told as now,
that still eternal tale of empty vanity and misbegotten hopes. The
ashes of buried cities on which we tread, the timeworn records of
fallen empires and past greatness, the monuments of events yet
more remote and faintly discernible in the dim distance, seem the too
visible memorials of "what shadows we are, and what shadows we
pursue," and like Crusoe we recoil with wonder and fear from that
trace of man on the desert shore. The earlier the records to which
we refer, the more deeply are we struck with the wonderful power of
our minds which enables us to use the hoarded experience of ages
and enter into silent communion with the dead, and the more
sensibly are we impressed by the comparison of the imperishable
creations of our spiritual nature, with the fading glories of our mortal
state. We ascend the stream of time as the traveller of the Nile in
quest of its mysterious sources, and the farther we proceed the more
wonderful is the view adown that vale of ages through which it flows.
Behind us, in the dim distance arise the dark and impenetrable
barriers, whose cloud-capt summits seem to point to the heavens as
the source of the mysterious river, whilst before us flow the dark
rolling waves of that wide stream which is to bear us too to the
mysteries of that land of shadows where we are taught to expect an
eternal, perhaps an awful home. Fair cities and mighty empires arise
in momentary show along its shores, and then pass away upon its
rolling waters. In swift succession the generations of man chase
each other upon its heaving billows in shadowy hosts,—the dim
phantasmagoria of our mortal state! And yet like shades that wander
along the Styx, some memories still live upon its silent shore to tell
the tale of wrecks and ruins which stud the wave-worn banks. Lo!
yonder rocky headland around which sweeps the swift stream as it
stretches into the dark bay where the waters lie in momentary
repose. How many were the marble palaces, how smiling were the
gardens which gladdened that once lovely spot. Yon mouldering fane
that yet clings to the wave-worn rock, was once the least amongst
ten thousand, and where are they?—Lost in these dark waters in
whose deep womb are buried the long forgotten glories of our mortal
race.

From the charm of such associations we do not pretend to be

exempt, nor do we envy the man who could claim such an
exemption. But we are free to confess that this circumstance is too
apt to disturb the judgment in a comparison of the merits of ancient
and modern history. To a certain extent it may fairly be estimated
amongst the advantages of the former, for if it gives a greater
interest to early history it holds out a greater temptation to the ardent
prosecution of that study. But we do not fear the comparison without
such adventitious aid, for we maintain that as historians the ancients
are still unequalled. Of all their histories which have descended to
the present time, there are none which have not many of the higher
excellences of historical composition; but it is for Thucydides, Tacitus
and Plutarchus, the great masters in their respective styles, that we
challenge modern history to produce the parallels. The definition
which Diodorus has given of history, "that it is philosophy teaching by
example," may truly be applied to the writings of the two first named
historians. Indeed, we have never taken up the works of the first
without wonder at the rare and philosophical temperament which
enabled him to conduct his eager search after truth without
disturbance from those feelings which personal injuries and the spirit
of party would so naturally have awakened in others under the same
circumstances. Himself a principal actor in the scenes which his
page commemorates, his situation and temper alike fitted him for
conducting his researches in a spirit of truth, a task which he
accomplished in a manner as yet unrivalled. How deep is the
devotion to the austere majesty of truth which he displays in his
masterly preface when he offers up the favorite fictions of his nation
as a sacrifice upon its altars, and stripping his subject of its stolen
ornaments, presents it to the world in naked simplicity. If historical
criticism has become a science in the hands of the accomplished
Niehbuhr, surely its origin and chief ornament are to be found in that
noble monument of antiquity. It was no small evidence of future
greatness which the young Demosthenes gave, in the choice of this
history as his model. For where could he find the springs of
government touched with so true a knowledge of their nature, or in
what book are the actions of man in masses traced to their motives
and causes with an analysis so searching? If we would trace society
through the first forms of republican government, and witness its
agitations under the opposition of those ever living and opposing
forces the democratic and aristocratic principles, we must look to
Thucydides. A living witness and a profound observer of the
unbalanced democracies of ancient Greece, his deep sagacity
always enabled him to resolve their line of action into the two
elementary and diverging forces according to their true proportions.
As the modern astronomer is able to detect even in the course of the
most erratic comet the resultant of the two opposing forces of the
solar system, so this profound observer of the human heart was able
to trace in the madness of revolution, the contests of a more pacific
policy, and even in the horrors of anarchy, the direction given by the
two elementary and opposing forces of the social system. Would we
trace society still further as another combination of these elementary
forces in different proportions gives its direction in the line of
despotism, we must turn to the Roman Thucydides—to Tacitus, for a
true knowledge of the internal machinery which regulates it under
this form of government. Do we wish to obtain an accurate view of
the motives which move masses to action? would we investigate
man, not as an individual, but according to those common qualities
of the human mind by which we may classify his species and
genera, and by which only we must consider him if we would rightly
estimate the effects of circumstances upon masses? Turn to either
or to both of these historians, whose profound and searching
analysis so rarely fails of detecting the motives to human action. In
both we shall find the same deep philosophy, the same careful study
of the human heart, and the same eagerness to utter truth when
clearly conceived, without regard to the forms of expression; the
great and distinctive difference is in the difference of temperament
arising perhaps out of a difference of situation. The more fiery
Roman gives you glowing sketches, not pictures—they flow from him
with that careless haste so indicative of boundless wealth. Each
sketch bears within itself the evidence of lofty conception, and shows
in every line the traces of a master's hand whose rapid touch is too
busy in embodying the forms with which his brain is teeming to
waste its energies in those minuter cares so necessary for filling out
a perfect picture. With rapid pencil he leaves perhaps a simple line,
but it is the line of Apelles—the hand of the master was there. The
conceptions of the rival Greek, like his, are lofty but more matured,
and the same careless ease with a somewhat superior elegance,
mark his execution. His coloring however is milder, and you are
never struck with those startling contrasts of light and shade so
peculiar to the Roman.
The inquirer who would train his mind in those pursuits most
necessary for the statesman, and, for that reason, seeks an intimate
knowledge of human nature, would arise from an attentive study of
the works of these great historians with feelings of pleasure and self
gratulation. Conscious, that he had acquired much knowledge of
man as a mere instrument in the hands of the politician, he already
begins to perceive the rules by which men of sagacity have reckoned
with much of probability if not of certainty, upon the future actions of
their fellow beings. But not being yet fully aware of the uses to which
this knowledge may be applied in directing the affairs of society, he is
now anxious to inquire into the results of those attempts which the
great masters of the human race have made, to regulate the
movements of masses and mould them to their peculiar views. He
must now turn to Plutarch's superb gallery of portraits of the
distinguished men of antiquity; he must open that book, which
oftener than any other, has afforded the favorite subject of the early
studies of the distinguished statesmen and warriors of all the
countries to which modern civilization has extended. He will here
perceive the modes by which his models are trained to greatness,
and learn to know and estimate the distinctive qualities which have
elevated their possessors so far above the common mass. His
studies which heretofore were directed to his fellows will be now
turned to himself, and a course of self reflection will teach him to
exercise and improve his strength, and to measure the proportions in
which it must be applied to the levers which move the ball of public
opinion. To show that we do not place too high an estimate upon this
wonderful book, we might simply refer to the internal evidences of its
rare excellences. But we cannot refrain from offering further proofs,
more striking at least, if not as strong. It is no small evidence of its
excellence that it is a book of more general interest than any other
biography or history extant; that it is amongst the first and the last
books which we like; its interest taking an early hold upon the
youthful mind, and continuing through our after life. And the fact is
not to be forgotten, in choosing the books for such a course of study
as the one just referred to, that most of the great modern statesmen
and generals, have bestowed much of their early attention and study
on this work; for this is some evidence that its pages serve to
awaken an early love of heroic virtue, and contribute to form the
habits necessary for its growth and continued existence. In our
reference to the works of the three authors which we should choose
in preference to all others of human origin, for the study of human
nature we have not adverted to the true order in which they should
be read. The book of biography should precede as well as succeed
the study of the two historians. We challenge all modern history and
biography for the production of three parallels to our chosen models,
whose works can contribute so much to the attainment of this
particular end. Davila, the favorite of Hampden,—and Guicciardini,
whom St. John preferred to all modern historians,—have some of the
excellences of which we have been speaking, but will any one
compare them to the first? In the English language, Clarendon is the
only history worthy of the attention of the student in search of an
author who illustrates the science of human nature by a reference to
the recorded experience of past generations. The works of Gibbon,
Hume and Robertson, are admirable for their style and general
interest, but they take no true views of man (epistola non erubescit)
as the instrument of legislation; they do not present us with that
impersonation of the common qualities and motives of our nature,
which alone can be the subject of laws, and whose character only
can be moulded by the general institutions of society,—in short, with
that man who is the true subject of the politician's study. Indeed we
doubt if the historical works of these gentlemen ever were or ever
will be the favorites of any great and practical statesman,—a test
which we ask shall be applied to the models which we have chosen.
We are perfectly aware of what we hazard by such assertions, but
safe behind our mask, we feel secure from danger.

In the view of the course of study which we have just been

surveying, we paused at the point where the inquirer having learnt
the strength and the temper of the various great springs which
chiefly influence human action, had turned aside to ascertain the
best modes of handling them by a reference to the experience of
those who had successfully regulated the machinery of society and
effected in its movements the particular objects which they had in
view. From this point, the transition is easy from the history and
biography of antiquity to its oratory. For where shall we find the
springs of human action so dexterously handled? It must be
remembered that the orators of antiquity approached their subjects
under circumstances very different from those which attend our
modern debates. They practised upon the societies in which they
lived, under the same penalties which attend the eastern physician
who undertakes the Sultan's cure. The gift of this splendid but fatal
talisman of the heart was always attended with the most unhappy
consequences to its possessor. Exile and death were the penalties,
in case of failure, in the measures which they recommended, or even
in case of the loss of popular affection. And so deep were the
distresses of those gifted but unhappy children of genius, that one of
their most sincere admirers was forced to exclaim

"Ridenda poemata malo

Quam te conspicuæ divina Philippica famæ,
Volveris a prima quæ proxima."

It is not to be supposed, that under such circumstances they would

ever approach their subject without a most careful consideration of
its nature and consequences, or that they would fail to study the
means of recommending themselves and their plans to popular
favor. Indeed it would naturally be expected that in the effort to
persuade the will of those upon whom they were operating, into a
concurrence with their own, they would scarcely place in competition
with that object the desire to write an oration to be admired by
posterity. We should look to find then a more attentive observance of
the modes of influencing the human heart and reason, than amongst
the modern speakers who were moved by none of their fears. A
comparison of the ancient with the modern orators would fully prove
the fact, but as we cannot of course enter into that comparison here,
and deserve no thanks from the reader for inviting his attention to it,
we would advert to the fact that these are the only real statesmen
whose orations have had an interest for a remote posterity. From
which the conclusion is fair, that of all speeches accessible to the
reader, these are the most valuable for acquiring the means of
influencing men, since no other orations of successful orators remain
in an agreeable form. Who reads the speeches of any of the modern
orators who have been statesmen at the same time, and who
succeeded in impressing their views upon the public mind. No one
reads the speeches of Walpole, Chatham, and Fox, the real orator
statesmen of England, whilst Burke's orations, which invariably
dispersed his audience, are familiar to almost every reader of the
English language. The most distinguished orator and statesman that
France has produced was Mirabeau; the most successful in America
were Henry and Randolph. Yet what orations have they left behind
them which are indicative of the real genius of those master minds?
The modern speeches which are held up as models, are those which
failed to effect the end of their delivery, and even if pleasing in point
of style and composition, they must have been very feeble as
orations.

But the admirers of modern oratory, the readers of Sheridan, Curran

and Philips, will perhaps demand that definition of oratory which thus
excludes their favorites from all competition with the orators of
antiquity. We define it to be, the means of attaining, by the
persuasion either of the feelings or reasons of men, an end which of
ourselves, we cannot effect. This is the only point of view in which a
statesman would use rhetoric as an instrument. The display of
learning and the exhibition of the graces of composition and style, he
leaves to the author in his closet who has time to bestow upon
pursuits less exalted than his. The real orator, if he be the subject of
a despot, will study the character of the man whom he sues, and
mould his address in the form most persuasive to him who holds the
power of which he would avail himself. If on the other hand the
power which he seeks resides with the people, he will appeal to that
temper and those dispositions which are common to the mass, and
having selected the arguments and sentiments most persuasive to
them, would never think of sacrificing one tittle of them to secure the
reputation of an orator with the future generations who might read
his effusions. Ridiculous as it may seem to the lovers of the gaudy
imagery and polished periods of the Irish orators, we maintain that
the speeches of Cromwell and of Vane, which seem so absurd to us
now, in effecting their ends, accomplished the true object of rhetoric.
They suited the temper of the times, they served to mould the
progress of public opinion, and proved powerful instruments in
directing the revolution. Profound observers of those times, they
were too sagacious as statesmen to think of sacrificing the means of
securing great public ends for the sake of pleasing the taste of
posterity and acquiring the reputation of turning polished periods—a
task in which, after all, the wretched Waller had excelled them.

Who believes that such oratory as Sheridan's or Curran's, aye, or

even as Burke's, would have produced a tithe of the influence upon
the sturdy old roundheads which the cant of the day exercised over
them. These effusions would have been treated with scorn, or would
perhaps have called down punishment upon the heads of their
authors as holding out temptations to the carnal man. Any attempt, in
the temper of those times, to deliver orations fitted for the taste of
posterity, would have been as ridiculous and misplaced as Petit
Jean's apostrophes to the sun, moon and stars, in his defence of the
dog. Indeed, it is the prevailing sin of modern taste to suppose that
the making of a "fine speech," can be a sufficient inducement for
speaking. Plato has defined rhetoric to be "the art of ruling men's
minds," and the moment it ceases to look to that end, it is vain and
ridiculous. This is the besetting sin of American oratory. Adams,
Everett, or even Webster, will seize any occasion, the death of
Lafayette, the erection of a monument, or any thing which may serve
as a text for a speech, to deliver orations which can have no possible
influence except to convince the few who read them, that their
authors have not only read, but learned to round a period. Polished
sentences, brilliant imagery, and even the ancient forms of
attestation are profusely displayed, and all the orator's most showy
wares are studiously arrayed, for effect, so as to tempt the public to
what?—to any useful end which they have in view? No, simply to an
admiration of their authors. It was the practice of antiquity, it is true,
to deliver funeral orations—but they are miserably mistaken if they
expect to shelter themselves under those usages in their unmeaning
and personal displays. They pursue the form, but neglect the
substance. Do they suppose that when Pericles delivered his funeral
oration over his countrymen who had fallen in the expedition to
Samos, he had no other object than that of making a speech? Do
they believe for a moment that he whose rhetoric procured him the
surname of Olympius, that the master orator of antiquity, (if we may
judge his oratory by its effects,) that he who never addressed an
assembly without first praying the Gods "that no word might fall from
him unawares which was unsuitable to the occasion," would have
spoken from such a motive as that only? Could they have supposed
that such was the motive of Demosthenes in his funeral oration over
those who fell at Cheronea?

Higher ends were in the view of these orators upon these occasions.
They were subjects connected with the public policy of the times and
with measures which they themselves had directed. Upon the
success of these depended their popularity, and on that hung their
fortunes, their homes, nay, their lives. They afforded happy
occasions for defending their policy, for pushing their claims upon
public favor, and for weaving by a thousand plies the cord which
bound them to popular sympathy, in those moments of deep feeling
when the people were too much absorbed in their own emotions, to
examine into the personal motives of their orators. No such
consequences depend upon the popularity of our orators. Their
popularity can scarcely be really affected, by any orations which they
could deliver on the battle of Lexington, the Bunker Hill monument,
or the death of La Fayette. The public measures of the present day
have but a remote connection with them. What worthy motive then
could have influenced them, we were going to say, in the
perpetration of such folly? In such men of the closet as the younger
Adams and Everett, it is not surprising; but in Webster, who is
capable of real and effective oratory, it can only be viewed as a weak
compliance with the morbid taste of the clique around him.

Of the importance of the study of the ancient laws, particularly the

Roman or civil, we shall say but little, as in the first place, a view of
that subject in all its relations with modern government and
civilization, would far exceed the limits of this essay; and because,
secondly, no one can be found who will deny the uses of this pursuit
to the lawyer. To the general reader we would only remark, that