'To Raise the Savage to a Higher Level': The Westernization of Nagas and their Culture

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Introduction

'Westernization' refers to the influence of Western ideas, values, and practices on the non-Western world. 'Westernization', according to Özay Mehmet, 'is reconstructing or shaping the rest of the world on western norms and institutions'.¹ It is, in many cases, supplanting native culture with Western cultural values and practises. More specifically, the term here refers to colonial and missionary attempts at wholesale assimilation of Nagas between 1832 and 1947. The Naga experience of westernization of their culture is not unique in the world. Rather, all colonized people suffered a similar outcome in their encounter with the West.

For Nagas, the process of westernization began when the British invaded their homeland in 1832.² In 1839, the British colonial administration invited American Baptist missionaries to proselytize the Nagas and other native inhabitants in Northeast India.³ This 'two-pronged attack',⁴ until decolonization in 1947, served to westernize the Nagas and their culture. Thus, nearly everyone who studies the process of change among the Nagas is likely to draw the conclusion that British colonial rule and the introduction of education and Christianity by American missionaries served to transform significantly 'the Naga way of life in all aspects'.⁵ In this paper, I will discuss the current mental and cultural states of the Nagas that have resulted from the adjustments in the lives and minds of the people because of forced exposure to the imposition of westernization. In fact, it is more than merely a process of adjustment consequent upon conquest, but an extensive overhauling of cultural institutions, values and practises of the Naga people.

Who are Nagas?

Contemporary Nagas are a transnational indigenous people of about 40 different tribes, numbering approximately three million people and occupying a landlocked mountainous region.⁶ Their homeland is surrounded by India in the southwest, China in the north and Myanmar in the east. Politically Nagas live in a number of colonially segmented regions within India and Myanmar, named 'Naga Hills' during the British colonial period. The Nagas in India alone live in four different states: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland. In Myanmar, they inhabit the provinces of Sagiang and Kachin. With the exception of Nagaland, where they are in the majority, the...