Reading Literature from India’s Northeast as Peace Literature

Muse India: a literary journal - Issue 92 (Jul-Aug 2020)

The projection of the Northeastern region as a “conflict zone” is deeply planted in the minds of most Indians that it has become quite difficult to imagine otherwise. Besides this, there is also the other image that captivates their imagination – an exotic place – almost mystical to them that they like to imagine it, as a ‘land lost in time’! An ordinary scene and everyday mundane situation doesn’t seem to permeate the minds of many. Whenever I get opportunities, especially to address young minds, I have stated categorically that unless we imagine the region beyond the images of “conflict” and “exotic”, one would not see the real Northeast. It is this twin effect that has unfortunately done more damage to the image of the region. Somehow, despite several pleas against such projections, nothing substantial has changed. It is this much obsessed issue of conflict in the region that becomes “newsworthy” to the “mainstream” media.

Moreover, it is with the same breath that even literature originating from the region has been branded as “conflict literature”, as if the writer from the Northeast does not know how to write any other subject or genre. Yes, they do write about their own experiences of conflict and violence because many have gone through some terrible times in the recent past. But the same is also true of many other writers from different regions in the country or the world. We live in a broken world with broken people, so what more can we expect than to read and write about the lived reality. It is time, however, that we move beyond the boxes that define and limit creativity. I would like to suggest that we re-imagine the region through literature, and hereby, propose to redefine the writings from the region as “peace literature” because many of these works are so much about hope and the desire to move on from the broken realities of the present.

The idea of peace literature, as Antony Adolf argues, should “evoke empathy” upon realising the complexities and actualities of life, while at the same time possess universal appeal (13). Niall Munro also postulates, “A literature of peace must challenge. However recent the conflict, it must insist on its role in the safeguarding of memory and commemoration and it must highlight the need for citizens to acknowledge personal responsibility for their actions” (2016).

A glance at the writings from the Northeast will draw the reader to the rich imagination that is fed by a long tradition of storytelling. Within the larger themes, a close reading would also enable one to see the complexities of social and political realities, whereby the reader could also empathize with the narratives that are brought alive. Just as social and political peace is desired within the context of conflict or violence, the literature of peace offers hope of a better future without antagonism.

This idea can be traced in Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood (2011) which gives a historical account of the Naga political struggle over the last six decades. Tracing the life of a person named Mose (short for Moselie) from his birth in 1937 to his fatal death in 2007; the novel gives us a glimpse of what it meant to live through one of the longest conflicts in modern history. But the author neither indulges in self-pitying nor laments the plight her people are forced to undergo. Instead of the much-hyped Indo-Naga conflict, forgiveness is the underlying theme of the novel. It focuses on healing to the political abrasions caused by enmity and looks forward to the future with hope and peace.

As a believer in her Christian doctrine of forgiveness, Easterine Kire firmly holds that it is this virtue that can only lead the way forward in the relationship between Indians and Nagas. This perspective should appeal more to the Nagas who are largely Christian and forgiveness is an essential virtue to reach God. In one of the poignant moments in the narrative, she demonstrates this principle when Mose’s grandson and his friend (grandson of a retired Indian army officer who was posted in Nagaland in the turbulent periods) learn about each other better and discover a more humane way to end misunderstanding. They thereby see life beyond conflict. Talking about how this change of perspective came along, she states:

As a believer in her Christian doctrine of forgiveness, Easterine Kire firmly holds that it is this virtue that can only lead the way forward in the relationship between Indians and Nagas. This perspective should appeal more to the Nagas who are largely Christian and forgiveness is an essential virtue to reach God. In one of the poignant moments in the narrative, she demonstrates this principle when Mose’s grandson and his friend (grandson of a retired Indian army officer who was posted in Nagaland in the turbulent periods) learn about each other better and discover a more humane way to end misunderstanding. They thereby see life beyond conflict. Talking about how this change of perspective came along, she states:

I began to understand very clearly that the problems did not lie in laws and government policies alone, but the problems of the Northeast, and all human problems for that matter, had their origins in human sources. Thereby, the solutions could come only through human solutions. I know many say this is an idealist view to take, but the fact that the laws of the land have been made by humans at some stage in history and therefore, can be undone by humans. I have addressed this in my book, Bitter Wormwood where the grandson of the protagonist and his best friend, who is the grandson of an Indian soldier, discuss the concept of deconstructing history to rescue the present. Their friendship demonstrates that when people come together, they learn to understand each other, and this human understanding can be the biggest stepping stone to a future without conflict. [emphasis added] (2014).

This concept of “deconstructing history to rescue the present” is an apt idea to understand that the conflict of the past should not continue to dictate the present as well as a vision of the future. Unfortunately, this has been a difficult step to tread upon. What is more daunting is the fact that the prolonged projection of conflict in the region has resulted in the internalization of a victimhood mindset in the people. Easterine deals with this issue when she aserts, “The trouble with us Nagas is that we have allowed the conflict to define us for too long. It has overtaken our lives so much that we have been colonized by it and its demands on us” (236). This truth is also applicable to the other communities of the region – that there is a sense of being colonised by a conflict mentality. Perhaps, to some extent, the fact of having lived through conflicting times has made many to be defined by conflict. But allowing conflict to define our lives is also to let the past have a grip on us to a point of crippling our present. The way to overcome this is to let go of the bitterness of the past by adopting the attitude of forgiveness to heal the souls of the people.

Added to that is the metaphor of “bitter wormwood” in the novel, which has also been adopted for the title of the book. The herb which has long been traditionally valued for its medicinal components and also believed by the people to keep bad spirits away, stands for the possibility of healing the wounds of the past. Perhaps, the novel appeals to the larger Indian population to understand the people of the Northeast and its multiple problems. Often, the rest of the country sits back at a safe distance and comment on the happenings in the Northeast, but that does not really help build relationships. But a mutual understanding and honest effort to connect, like the two friends in the novel, would do a good deal in respecting each other’s culture and past. This is the challenge for the reader, which Munro talks about. Easterine’s novel is an example of peace literature as it plays the “role in the safeguarding of memory and commemoration and it must highlight the need for citizens to acknowledge personal responsibility for their actions”. The action required here being that of a step to heal the wounds of the past through forgiveness.

We see this form of writing emerging from other states of the Northeast. Mention may be made of Malsawmi Jacob's Zorami – A Redemption Song (2015) which also talks of healing from the trauma of the past. The Mizos too, like the Nagas, have undergone tremendous sufferings in the 1950s and 60s which led to the rise of the MNF (Mizo National Front) who took arms against India. Just as the protagonist of the novel needed inner healing to let her move forward, the people too required a spiritual healing through forgiveness to see healing in the land.

There is power in stories – the power to let the still clear voice emerge to speak what has not been uttered by the maddening crowd. Far more than what politicians or bureaucrats blabber about peace in the chaos around us, it is the voice of the writers who speak sense. The political peace will continue to remain an illusion for the Nagas as long as a spirit of forgiveness is not given primary focus. This is true of not just peace with the larger Indian state or the neighbouring people groups but also within their own fold which has been marred by factional conflicts. The Forum for Reconciliation (FNR) initiated in 2008 by well-intended Naga public leaders is driven by the need for reconciliation among different warring groups through forgiveness for the sake of the future.

I think it is this truth expressed through literary works that needs consideration for peace and hope to be perceivable. In these times of uncertainty, it is the voice of the writers that speaks volume loud and clear, as Easterine Kire mentions.

There is power in stories – the power to let the still clear voice emerge to speak what has not been uttered by the maddening crowd. Far more than what politicians or bureaucrats blabber about peace in the chaos around us, it is the voice of the writers who speak sense. The political peace will continue to remain an illusion for the Nagas as long as a spirit of forgiveness is not given primary focus. This is true of not just peace with the larger Indian state or the neighbouring people groups but also within their own fold which has been marred by factional conflicts. The Forum for Reconciliation (FNR) initiated in 2008 by well-intended Naga public leaders is driven by the need for reconciliation among different warring groups through forgiveness for the sake of the future.

I think it is this truth expressed through literary works that needs consideration for peace and hope to be perceivable. In these times of uncertainty, it is the voice of the writers that speaks volume loud and clear, as Easterine Kire mentions.

I believe that stories are powerful

they have the power to transform lives

the magic to work peace.

It is so important that they be told

in any possible way, even in ways that we have not thought of before

as pictures, as gestures, as dance, as song

in any way they can be told

reborn, breathing life in new shapes

so that they can work their transforming magic. (“Barcelona Dreamtime”)

Works Cited (For details please see www.museindia.com)

Second Edition of Literary Cultures of India's Northeast

Of Love and Loss – A review of A Respectable Woman

Author: Easterine Kire

Publisher: Zubaan

Year/pages: 2019/184

The opening line of the new novel by Easterine Kire, A Respectable Woman, resonates with the popular passage of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 where the wise king Solomon articulates that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. In verse 7 of the passage we read of “a time to be silent and a time to speak.”The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kevinuo, says, “It took my mother, Khunuo, exactly forty-five years before she could bring herself to talk about the war.” The statement indicates a period of silence on the subject. And interestingly, silence is not about forgetting but a process of letting matter, the trauma or tragedy in this case, sink in until one can be strong again to talk about it. Most cultures, in a sense, share this truth.

A Respectable Woman (ARW henceforth) is woven around the story of a mother telling her experiences of growing up at a defining moment of Kohima and people who lived through the Second World War. Divided into three parts, the novel chronicles the memories of the mother and traces the family relations in Part One. Part Two begins with the birth of the protagonist-narrator and her growing up “to witness different happenings, some of them good, some much worse…” Part Three is largely a continuation of the narratives from the previous one but focused on personal battles the protagonist had to confront mainly with the tragic death of her closest friend, Beinuo, due to abuse by her husband and taking custody of the orphaned girl. While the plot of the novel is centred on the stories of Kevi and her mother, it is interwoven with the memories of the grandmother and other elders of the community about certain aspects of the past, and in this case the times around the war.

Memory of the period is important because it was a time of tremendous changes, not just for people living in and around Kohima, the centre of the action, but also for the Nagas as a whole as there was a paradigm shift in the political and social dynamics. So significant is the war in the novel that there is repeated use of the phrase “before the war” to demarcate a historical timeline. Just like different seasons mark the timeline of the year, “the war” became an important historical reference point for the Nagas. Though the war was not of their making, the Nagas were caught in the war and were forced into bear the brunt of it. In the recent times there has been few works by Nagas narrating their accounts of the war. Notable ones include The Battle of Kohima (2007) by Mekhrie Khate, Aphriilie Iralu, et al. (Eds.), The Road to Kohima: The Naga Experience of the 2nd World War (2017) by Charles Chasie and Harry Fecitt, and Easterine Kire’s bestselling semi-fictional novel titled Mari (2010). These narratives help us assess the impact of the war on the Nagas. The brutality of the battle of Kohima led the military historian Robert Lyman to remark that the war fought in the Naga Hills was “[t]he most desperate and bloody struggle in the entire war in the south Asian land mass” (Japan’s Last Bid for Victory: The Invasion of India 1944 (2011), p. 215). The centrality of the war is also depicted in the novel wherein Amo, the narrator’s maternal uncle, became a war hero after he survived the Japanese bullets, but couldn’t live long for the same reason.

ARW holds an important place in this regard as it documents a lot of what has been side-lined in the current discourses of the Nagas. In an interesting way, the book even becomes a historical source of Kohima’s past because it mentions of when and who set up the first book shop, the first pharmacy, and the famed Kohima Bakery, among others. Also, by mentioning many of the first among Nagas in various fields, Easterine Kire makes a conscious attempt to credit those who contributed to the building of the society, especially in the formative period. As one reads the novel, one gets a feeling that Kohima becomes a character in the novel with all its liveliness, be it bearing the brunt of the war destructions or the makeover it got after it or the restructuring of the township in the 50s and 60s. Certainly, there is a sense nostalgia in the author’s tone as she recounts a lot of what was a part of her growing up years in Kohima. Written in the first person narrative, the autobiographical mode of writing gives a perfect blend of facts and fiction. Though Kevi may not be Easterine in to-to, the reader can nevertheless draw the semblance in various aspects. But in the fine hand of the master-artiste-novelist, the line is nevertheless drawn clearly.

There are also other issues of the society that the author tries to address through the novel. Alcoholism, which had become a byword of the largely frustrated young Nagas, remains an issue which both the church and the state have not contained till today. While critiquing the state for treating alcoholism as a mere crime of the few misfits, the novel also unveils the fact that there is a huge contribution of the “political environment” and the harsh governmental actions on the public which contributed to the social problem. Added to the whole challenging situation is the lackadaisical approach of the church as well as the society. What should bother the reader is the silence of larger society in the issue of alcoholism and its related issue of domestic violence. The twin belong to some of those devils that the Nagas still count ignorable but has eaten into the marrows of the society. The narrator’s shock at learning about his best friend’s marital woes at a much later stage is something to be grasped.

ARW is a book that gives a critical insight into some of the challenges confronting the Naga society today. And in the hand of a commendable writer and ‘insider’ like Easterine Kire the stories she construct powerfully captivates the readers with her own style of narration which is deeply rooted to the storytelling tradition of the Nagas. Even in this novel, her effort to reconstruct the memory of the past is in true spirit of the Naga oral culture wherein there is a conscious passing down of stories of the people to the younger generation. Though the mother finds telling some of her life stories hurting at times she felt the importance of telling about the family because those are the legacies that should be passed on. Every generation’s experience is unique and telling them can be a learning experience for the next generation. As a foremost writer among Nagas there are so much that the younger generation of storytellers can find inspiration in Easterine Kire. Besides the national and international recognitions, the award just endowed on her, The Gordon Graham Prize for Naga Literature, is truly a recognition of her contribution to literary wealth of the Nagas.

Published in Morung Express on 9th April, 2019

http://morungexpress.com/of-love-and-loss-a-review-of-a-respectable-woman/ 

A Resilient Spirit: Remains of Spring - A Naga Village in the No Man’s Land

Author: Jibon Krishna Goswami

Translator: Manjeet Baruah (from Assamese)

Publisher: Oxford University PressPages: 238Price: 695/-

The Book Review, Vol. XLI, No. 3, March 2017, p. 74.

The idea of a novel based on a no man's land, a stretch of land between two nation states, can quickly draw the attention of the reader for it instantly hints at a possible political conflict situation. But Remains of Spring: A Naga Village in the No Man’s Land (2016) by Jibon Krishna Goswami is more than the story of a village caught in a war-like situation that prevails everyday. It powerfully portrays the hope of a people to rebuild their homes and their lives again despite several attempts by adversaries to destroy them. Translated from its Assamese title Aoleangar Jui (2007) to Remains of Spring by Manjeet Baruah, the novel questions the politics of space-making or cartography at large. Most of the action of the story is set in the village of Hoyat, the no man's land that lie between India and Burma (Myanmar).

The plot centers around Atanu, an Assamese “Teacher”, who was brought to the village by Anyam, a “spirited young man full of hope”, to start a school with the hope that someday their world would change “through the gift of education” (41). But while Atanu was looked upon as a harbinger of change by the villagers, it was also for him an escape from his dark past and the “burden of failure”. When offered to become a teacher in a village nestled in the hills, he “accepted the beckoning of life” and became “a traveller into the future” (39). The long journey through the rough terrains became a test for him and the in the end it was him who learned more about life, love and sacrifice from the people whom he had hoped to educate. Even the hope of setting a school was dashed as the Burmese army invaded the village and sets it on fire.The interesting narrative strategy is supplemented by some forceful stories of other characters that run parallel to the main plot. For instance, the pure love between the Laipa and Amung is symbolic of a sacrificial relationship and not so much a romantic one. Though they could not see the fruition of their love into marriage because of the brutal reality that Laipa had to undergo despite his innocence and which also eventually led his death, in their relationship the novelist projects the enduring love of Amung and pain that the people had to endure only because they belong in no man's land. In essence, the novel is the story of the people, their resilient spirit to rise again like the phoenix rising from the ashes. It was the fourth time, Anyam told Atanu, that the village had been burnt down completely, but the people do not give up: “Rebuilding their houses and their village was like a cycle” (93). 

The Assamese title Aoleangar Jui, derived from the Konyak Naga Spring festival, is more symbolic to the hope that people look forward to, just like spring rejuvenates nature and signals another cycle of life.However, one may wonder what is in the village that the people would go back to when everything is burnt down. It sounds even irrational. But therein lies a central theme of the novel: land as a symbol of identity. And this is pertinent to every Naga imagination. The attachment to land is time and again brought to the fore by Jibon Krishna Goswami. In fact, the theme that powerfully pulls people's attachment to the village is also woven together with the story of Naga national movement, the undercurrent motif. And Naga nationalism is largely hinged on their desire to free their land from foreign control. The novel finely connects the two themes through a man named Imli Apa. Except for the information that he was a retired intelligence officer in the Naga army, everything else about him is shrouded in mystery. Perhaps, that mystery is also important in the narrative because his story is also the story of the Naga movement. 

Each of the characters in the novel stood out powerfully on their own but the image of Imli Apa is an enduring one. The enigma that surrounds Imli Apa is phenomenal. He is like the backbone of the village, the one that unites the people. His farsightedness and wisdom weaves the story of the village together. Atanu could never fully understand the man that he had to conclude at the end in amazement: “when alive or even after death, Imli Apa was truly extraordinary, someone who was always capable of controlling the minds of other people” (229).When Atanu first met him, Imli Apa confronted him with a riddle: “Have you come here to be cut into two pieces?” What rattled Atanu's heart all the more was that the aged man “swung his dao cutting through the air” (77). The imagery of violence in that question was deeply disturbing to the young protagonist. While it took sometime for Atanu to realize that Imli Apa's question was rather a hint that living in no man's land was like being torn between two countries, he also understood the fact that life and death were nothing extraordinary to the people. Death has to be embraced as much as a birth is. Atanu learned this hard reality of life when he confronted those with severe illnesses and the desperation of a people who are denied modern medical facility. His close encounter with the sufferings of Tempu, the autistic brother of Laipa and with whom he also found some psychological semblance, utterly shocked him.Another interesting feature of the novel is the idea of freedom or independence. While it may seem contradictory that the people of Hoyat should go back to rebuild their homes and start their lives again from the scratch, the people see it otherwise: “If there's life, it is only in this No Man's Land. Beyond this, there's only death” (193). Such a projection is not just metaphoric but an assertion of their superiority over those who are under the rule of some undesired government. The reader, at this point, may also find the novelist Jibon Krishna Goswami an interesting personality. 

In the author's note, he mentions how the novel was partly his own experience of living in the No Man's Land in the 1990s “as a middle-ranking leader of an armed revolutionary organization of Assam that was fighting to free the state from India” (vii-viii). An interesting insight, perhaps, as an ex-revolutionary [of ULFA], though the story is not his story as “revolutionary” but of the people with whom he had some unforgettable experience.By telling the story of no man's land, the novelist an imaginary boundary line drawn by an external force can change the lives of people who have been living there for ages. The situation is even worsened by the factionalism in the Naga underground organization as the people are compelled to take sides without complete knowledge. Rather than liberating the people, they became suspects from all quarters. And I think this is where the novel strikes a universal theme; that often one becomes a victim of situation not created by the self. Towards that end, the translation by Manjeet Baruah was “to make it available in a language that is widely accessed by people interested in such themes” (xii-xiii). Of late, there also has emerged an interest on studying the Northeastern region of India as a borderland because of its topography. Hopefully this novel will contribute to the engagement of literatures that deal with narrative of space, borderland and frontier studies, as well as studies on resistance literature.

An Allegory of Love and Hope: A Review of Son of the Thundercloud

Author: Easterine Kire
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Month/Year of publication: December, 2016
Pages: 149
Price: 350/-

The latest novella from Easterine Kire titled Son of the Thundercloud is a fascinating read right from the start. I read it just before Christmas, and I could immediately see it as an allegory of the biblical story. Coming up fresh from winning the Hindu Prize 2015 for When the River Sleeps there is certain anticipation from the readers. And Easterine didn't fail to awe them! There is an interesting thematic connection between the two fictions as they both are closely sourced from the time tested legends that continue to wield its influence in the present imagination of the Naga world.

The plot of the novel is a straight forward narrative of a man, Pele, who left his village after severe famine took his wife and children away. He became a traveller to the unknown, partly to escape the distraught of the pain and loss, partly to escape death, but not sure if he would survive the journey. His path led him to a drought affected “abandoned village” where he met two sisters who were several hundred years old and had been living on “hope”. They told him of their wait for a prophesy, the birth of the Son of the Thundercloud, which would regenerate the land to its fruitfulness once again. While there with the ancient sisters the rains came extraordinarily. Shortly, he travels with them to the Village of the Weavers, where the third sister, known to others as the tiger-widow for her husband and seven sons were killed by the tiger, has been impregnated by a “single drop of rain” that fell from the thundercloud. Pele continues to stay on as the guardian of Rhalie, the Son of the Thundercloud. True to the prophesy Rhalie kills the tiger, but also dies in the hand of his friend who became envious of him.

It is interesting to discover how Easterine seamlessly weaves the biblical narrative of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ with a Naga creation story. Any Naga reader would be able to decipher that the birth of the Son of the Thundercloud is closely drawn from the oral story of the primal woman who was overcome by a cloud and gave birth to the proverbial three brothers. As a myth it is told with latent meaning to explain how things came into being and its relevance in understanding of the world around us. And in the Naga cosmology even today there is a close proximity between the worlds of the animal, spirit and man. In fact, they continue to interface, though not in a friendly way as it used to be. Things have become more violent. This is where Son of the Thundercloud has a lesson for us.

Metaphorically, the story of Pele is the story of mankind in search of a meaning in life. The two sisters of several hundred years old in the famine struck village of seven hundred years stood for mankind's wait for a saviour to reverse the tragedy. The prophesy has it that “... the great hope of the ancestors who used to say that our ancient misfortune will end when the Son of the Thundercloud is born. Everything will be transformed then” (p. 19). Their watch over the stars every night for the sign of the promised birth reminds us of the Magi who followed the stars to pay homage to baby Jesus. The birth of the Son of the Thundercloud was shrouded in suspicion and distrust from the people of the village, much like the people during Jesus' time was steeped in disbelief. The birth of Rhalie restored the land to prosperity but the people refused to believe the signs. On the contrary, his own friend Viphrü grew jealous especially after he killed the tiger.

Interestingly, the tiger is “no ordinary being”, it is spirit tiger that cannot be killed with “worldly weapon”. The “well-tempered spear” that the two sisters kept for Rhalie was the only potential weapon to kill the tiger. By its sheer power to incite fear the tiger has influenced people to make sacrifices to it. In essence, the tiger is the embodiment of the evil that has dominated the imagination of the people. This again, echoes how the Bible warns that the battle against the devil is a spiritual warfare which has to be principally fought in the spiritual realms. Rhalie was able to kill the tiger because he has no “pride” and his “heart was pure”. Just as his name mean “the redeemer”, his killing of the predator brought relief to the people. His mother, Mesanuo exclaimed, “what joy you have brought to all of us!” But men loved darkness instead.

The arrival of Son of the Thundercloud is quite timely. Christmas is the time of celebrating love, peace, hope and joy. It is a reminder of how God loved the world dearly that He sent His only Son to redeem it. Easterine's story reveals the shortcomings in human beings and their inability to change the reality. Only a divine intervention can reverse the tragedy. And while that message is being powerfully told, the novella is also beautifully woven together with many endearing wisdoms of cultural specificities. The generational transmission of knowledge is shown time and again in the older ones' conscious teaching of the young Rhalie. The people's need to preserve and protect God given natural resources for a sustainable future are asserted through the various conversations. And one of the most enduring picture is the 'hope' of meeting the departed loved ones in the afterlife.

First published in Eastern Mirror, December 27, 2016
http://www.easternmirrornagaland.com/an-allegory-of-love-and-hope-a-review-of-son-of-the-thundercloud/

Book Review: People and Articulations in Naga Literatures

February 2, 2016, Morung Express

Manjeet Baruah

Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast: Naga Writings in English by K.B. Veio Pou
Publisher: Heritage Publishing House
Pages: 213, Price: Rs. 300/-

K.B. Veio Pou’s book Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast: Naga Writings in English is an important contribution to the study of literature and culture of Northeast India. It is important because it is an extensive study of Naga literatures, especially since the twentieth century. It is also important because it provides a nuanced view of literatures in English that have emerged from the region during the period. Divided into five chapters, the book covers themes which are as historical and political as they are literary and cultural. Therefore, it makes the study not only one on literature, but also a socio-cultural history of the Nagas, possibly one of the few in this field.

Issues such as modernisation, religion and orality; political experiences and shaping of ideological apparatuses; genres of texts; memory and social experience; and notions or practices of political geography, these issues have figured in different ways in some of the other works on the Nagas too. Then what makes the present book distinct? A reading of Literary Cultures of India’s Northeast highlights a difference which entering such issues through the vantage point of literature can make. For example, the book shows how literary works construct characters. The characters are drawn from the social world, and their experiences and perspectives, as provided with, are important in the making of the narratives. The characters may be of the urban world, or they may be rural. They may be male or female, and could be of different ages. They could speak or imagine in different forms, whether in oral genres or in the written ones. They could be part of events which occur in different locations such as market places, domestic confines, roads, camps, churches, graveyards and many more.

In other words, what is shown in the book is how literature allow us to see the people, the common people, and acquire a sense of how they view their own locations in history and politics. Therefore, what we see is how people being historical and political beings is also closely connected to they being human beings. And it is this relation which the characters and the narratives illustrate. Perhaps, it is this visibility of the common people and their lived worlds which often remain in the shadows of discourses. Therefore, Veio Pou’s book is importantly positioned, wherein the common people become humanly tangible, and it is the tangibility of human life which gives concreteness to discourses or their understanding in research work.

However, one may argue that literatures being fictional narratives, are the characters too only imagined realities? Perhaps not. One can support Veio Pou’s contention through other illustrations as well. For example, when one goes through the tour diaries, reports and brief life narratives of the 1950s from the erstwhile Tuensang Frontier Division, one gets to see how agrarian and guerrilla existences, landscape, objects, building roads, rituals and customs, and firearms were inextricably connected in the lives of the people. There were instances when land was exchanged for rifles and problems that could arise thereof. There were instances when disputes over ownership of agrarian resources were connected to the vicissitudes between agrarian and guerrilla existences. From growing rice to finding wireless sets in the rice fields were part of people’s experiences. There were instances when the focus was not Zapu Phizo per se, but his Tommy gun, and how it changed hands through several people until one day it was found in a field in the village outskirts.

To borrow an insight from Veio Pou’s book, perhaps one can say that what these archival narratives highlighted was the world of those Nagas who were common but tangible people. They were concrete in the materiality and thoughts of their lives. And as his book shows, people in this sense of reality abound as different characters in Naga literatures too. The people who figured in the archival texts were engaged in living their socio-economic lives and also had their political convictions for the Naga movement. After all, they entered the archival narratives because the state encountered them, at times accidentally, while looking for camps and leaders, and did not appreciate their political convictions. Similarly, many important Naga literary works bring out the inextricable totality of the human and political existence, or the historicity of life that comprises both the everyday and the political of the landscape.

Thus, characters from the archives and literatures appear to express a common point. Veio Pou’s book has numerous discussions on how culture, politics and history are contained in the very materiality of people’s existence and thoughts. We get to hear them, see them, and find how the vividness of their past and present can come alive if only we make that little effort. Naga literature abounds representing and manifesting such reality. Genres, languages, or styles in literature are also part of such conditions of reality. The nature or choice of genres and styles cannot be isolated from how they articulate such reality, and also seek to shape the making of reality. As the book shows, folk and written, human and political, state and organisations, body and gender, peoples and nation, these dimensions converge in Naga literary narratives, transforming literature into rich and complex narratives of a national life.

Veio Pou’s book, through exploration of these dimensions, is not only a work of literary studies but also one of socio-cultural history. And it stands as an important contribution towards a nuanced understanding of people, landscape and articulations from this part of the world.

Manjeet Baruah teaches in North East India Studies Programme,

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

http://morungexpress.com/book-review-people-and-articulations-in-naga-literatures/

Easterine Kire’s The Log-Drummer Boy and Children’s Literature (From a Naga Perspective)

I was much delighted to see the publication of Easterine Kire’s The Log-Drummer Boy. Not just because it was written by a foremost Naga writer writing in English and somebody I really admire, but also because I had always wished for the day when I’d see children's books based on our own culture and tradition. The book has a simple narrative structure, but captivating enough to interest adult readers too! (Somehow, and strange enough, it is often the adult readers who are engrossed with the so-called “children’s books” and rushes to watch “children’s movies”! Perhaps, it is the child’s fantasy in all of us that refuses to die with age.) The book opened to introduce us to two young children who begged their grandmother-storyteller to tell them “another” story. Relenting to them, the story she went to tell was about a young boy named Nokcha, who lived with his grandparents, and had a fascination for the log drums. His grandfather, one of the log-drummers in the village, instantly recognized the latent talent in the boy. And so, the young boy of seven was enthralled one day when his grandfather decided to make him a small log drum. Since then he would practice beating the drum into different rhythm. In olden times, the log drum was an important item for the people as it could be used to announce war or announce a big festival. People could recognize the rhythm of the beat and accordingly be alerted. One day, during the time of harvest, Nokcha could not accompany his grandparents to the field because he had sprained his ankle. It so happened that on that day the enemy warriors were waiting to lay siege on the village. Those were the days of warring against each other. Alarmed at the impending threat and prompted by his caretaker-of-the-day, an old woman, the boy ran to where spot where the log drum was kept and “beat out a warning beat very rapidly, his little hands moving fast as he could manage”. The sudden sound of the log drum surprised even the enemy for they thought there was no one in the village. It sounded like almost a dozen of men beating the drums. The alerted villagers ran back to the village and enemy ran off, some of whom even fell into the hand of the villagers. That day the boy saved the village from being attacked. And the entire village praised him and made him an honorary drummer.

Books, whether they are part of the school curriculum or not, certainly shape a child’s outlook. Therefore, there is an increasing need to introduce children to books that will be constructive and not just supply them with whatever is available. In our context today, the influence that comes from those that children read apart from the school curriculum is huge. What we read in our leisure time can shape our thinking to a large extend. But what is given to us in school form the basis of knowledge. One cannot deny that the impact that institutionally transmitted knowledge has in our attitudes to everything around us. It comes almost naturally to any child to accept the formally taught materials in the school as complete knowledge. As fertile as a child’s mind is, anything sown in it can grow well.
Somehow, we all imitate or live out what we have seen or read when we were young. For instance, consider the kinds of books we read during childhood. I’m sure it is a shared experience for children growing up in the eighties and nineties of the last century when for most part of our early schools years the kind of stories that interested us were limited to the few comic books available to us; Western ones like Superman, He-man, Phantom, Batman, Tintin, Commando War comics, etc. and Indian ones like Tinkle Digest and other Amar Chitra Katha series on Indian myths/epics, Chacha Chaudhary and other picture stories and comics. Later on, one would slowly graduate to the Archie’s comics and the various photo romance magazines. Strangely, during those days, I don’t remember having read any story or comic strips based on our folktales. [One may, of course, say that Tinkle comics incorporated some folktales from the Northeast and other tribal communities from various parts of the country, but if I’m not wrong it came to be seen in the much later editions.] Thus, being exposed to materials with no connections to my culture, for a long time I considered my cultural items ‘unimportant’ and even being ‘ashamed’ of being identified with them. And by being ‘western’ in my style and outlook, I mistook it for being ‘modern’. I’m sure many of you had that experience. It took years for me to ‘unlearn’ many of what I’ve learned through ‘institutions’ and redeem a sense of dignity in my own culture.

The Log-Drummer Boy came at a much needed time. The young Nagas are living in a time when there is a sense of cultural loss because we’ve only being taught with materials that are foreign to us for all these time. And yet, in a way, the younger generation cannot really be blamed for possessing too little knowledge of culture and tradition. The educational materials that we have been exposed to through out our school life have no links with their own history and culture. Thus, by being not included in the educational curriculum, a message gets passed on that sources from the oral tradition do not fit as materials to be learned or taught. This attitude can be traced to the early years of Christianization, the missionary run schools/institutes being the main source of modern/western education. Though it may have seemed inevitable then, for various reasons though debatable, we’ve reached a stage now where there is potential in creating an indigenous knowledge database. We can start by incorporating children’s book like The Log-Drummer Boy into our school curriculum and encourage production/writing of books like that. (Of course, I understand that there is incorporation of writings by various Naga writers at different levels in the school syllabus, that is laudable). In the case of the book under discussion, the cultural content of the book can help children appreciate our tradition, and in a good way preserve various cultural markers of the society. Undeniably, Nagas have too long depreciated our own culture by thinking that there is hardly any value. But that is not true. There are lots of things that we need to know of our culture, not just to uplift our cultural identity but also because they were part of what made us a people till today.

Often we consider our old storytelling tradition as a kind of time pass activity, merely to listen and enjoy. But it does much more than that. The stories are narrated and songs sung with certain coded message to teach life’s lessons or tell us about people’s history and culture. For instance, in The Log-Drummer Boy, we were informed that in the olden days “the log drum” is considered to be “a spirit and that it protects the village. That is why we respect it and give it honour.” Besides, the grandmother, while telling the story, went on to explain the important functions of the log drum those days and the different motifs labelled on it, representing different symbols and meanings. Being from an oral tradition, the songs and stories are repositories of our rich cultural heritage. And the storytellers hold big responsibilities of passing down information accurately and the wisdom of the forefathers kept when they tell stories. Yet, sad but true, for most Nagas it is only at the research level where we become conscious of the disconnect with our culture. And then we begin to find topics of study to recover, or make an effort to reclaim, the loss. But by the time we move into the field to gather materials, we’re faced with the unfortunate predicament of the scarcity of what we’re looking for. One of the most regrettable losses, I think, is the almost complete disappearance of our culture specific songs and stories.

The inclusion of The Log-Drummer Boy and other similar books into the school syllabus will not only help younger generation of Nagas appreciate our culture but also restore a sense of dignity in who we are. On a personal note, I was very much encouraged to find that the book was published in collaboration with Fernwood School. Though I don’t know the school personally, it is heart warming to see that at least schools (hoping that there are more schools) are taking interest in promoting books like that. I’m sure such an effort by schools will go a long way in imparting cultural values to the budding minds. And of course, there’s the wonderful illustration by Canato Jimo (My daughter loves the cute illustrations!) I hope we’ll see more of it! Easterine Kire is one of the most prolific writers among Nagas writing in English. She is the acclaimed writer of A Terrible Matriarchy (Zubaan 2007, second edition 2013), which was also among the selected books by the government of India to be translated into the six UNESCO languages in 2011. Her novel Mari (Harper Collins 2010) has also been translated into German, her novel Bitter Wormwood (Zubaan 2011) was shortlisted for the Hindu Lit Prize 2013, and her latest novel When The River Sleeps (Zubaan 2014) traces its source to the rich oral tradition of the Nagas. Through her writings a lot more of the Naga story is heard by others from many parts of the world. The Catalan prize for free voice which she won last year (2013) is a commendation of how her work is speaking for a people whose stories have long being subdued. Her initiative for a publishing house, Barkweaver, along with a couple of others is aimed at promoting our stories and songs. And in the recent years Barkweaver has published many people centric story book including Naga Folktales Retold, Forest Song, Life on Hold, Different Strokes (again another book that can be of great help for schools with study guides for teachers and parents), two children’s books, Once in Faraway Dorg and Dinkypu and her latest book of poems My Book of Angels (all authored by Easterine Kire).

Book Details:
The Log Drummer Boy 
Author: Easterine Kire
Illustrator: Canato Jimo
Publisher: Barkweaver
Year of Publication: 2013
Pages: 40
(The book can be ordered online at www.ilandlo.com)

(This review is a slightly improved version of the one that first appeared in Eastern Mirror, 4 April, 2014)