History of Naga Anthropology (1832-1947) PDF

# History of Naga Anthropology (1832 - 1947) ## Introduction The history of anthropology is situated within the contingencies of world history. Anthropology developed as an academic discipline during the colonial expansion but became important after WWII with political decolonization. **Colonial...

# History of Naga Anthropology (1832 - 1947) ## Introduction The history of anthropology is situated within the contingencies of world history. Anthropology developed as an academic discipline during the colonial expansion but became important after WWII with political decolonization. **Colonial expansion brought the British into contact with the Nagas in northeast India.** The Nagas are an indigenous people who inhabit parts of Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and northwestern Burma. **Naga ethnography developed alongside the British Empire in the Naga Hills.** The British rule was divided into three phases: - military: military reports and surveys - political: topographical survey reports - administrative: ethnographic articles and monographs **Naga anthropology is a history of an intimate relationship between anthropology and colonial administration.** The British sent military expeditions into the Naga Hills to stop incursions into British territory and pacify the Naga tribes. **Ethnographic studies on the Nagas were:** - encouraged by the colonial administration because the Nagas' culture was on the verge of extinction - seen as a fossil to study **The relationship between anthropology and administration was intimate but one-sided.** Ethnographic information was used to aid in administering and controlling the Nagas. **Colonial administration was essential to ethnographic studies on the Nagas.** There was a constant danger that **anthropology would become a tool for colonial administration.** However, the research produced by anthropology was not necessarily helpful to colonial administration. **This book examines the relationship between anthropology and the colonial administration in the development of Naga anthropology.** It also examines the historiography of Naga anthropology during the colonial period from 1832-1947. ## Anthropology and Colonial Administration: An Overview Anthropology, especially British social anthropology, developed under the umbrella of European colonialism. **What effect did the relationship between anthropology and colonialism have on anthropology?** How did it influence the development of anthropological theories? How objective was the anthropological knowledge and how was it used? How was the knowledge objectified? **The role of colonialism in anthropology cannot be trivialized.** >Colonialism threatened to destroy ethnographic fieldwork while simultaneously making it possible. (Stocking 1991:10) **Prior to World War II, the power structure of colonialism was not taken into consideration by anthropologists.** Many were not critical of the impact of colonialism on the field. **Postcolonial experiences of political decolonization brought into light the relationship between colonialism and anthropology.** **Anthropology was looked upon with distrust by the colonial governments by the end of the colonial era.** **New nations, especially in Africa and Asia, distrusted anthropology for its relationship with colonialism.** **The exposure of Project Camelot and its use of anthropologists by the U.S in Vietnam, highlighted the problematic relationship between anthropology and colonialism.** **Colonial ethnography has sometimes been looked upon as the “child” of western imperialism.** **Anthropology was accused of producing knowledge that reinforced the colonial power imbalance and helped maintain it.** **The charges against anthropology in the British colonies can be summarized in three points:** * Functionalist analysis emerged and survived because it was well suited to the tasks of the empire. * Anthropologists were the maintenance engineers of the colonial system. * Their research served the interests of colonial rulers. ### Fieldwork and Colonialism **Fieldwork is an area of intimate collaboration between science and colonial administration in the development of Naga ethnography.** Colonialism provided the power structure for ethnographers to conduct their fieldwork in the Naga Hills. **The soldier-ethnographers and administrator-ethnographers had easy access to the field, and they undertook research as part of their official duty.** **Some important examples of ethnologists who worked as administrators:** * J.H. Hutton, Deputy Commissioner at Kohima * James Phillip Mills, Assistant to Hutton and later Deputy Commissioner of Nagas Hills * Henry Balfour, who accompanied Mills and Hutton **Though all ethnographers were in contact with indigenous populations, they lived in official residential bungalows or government guest houses.** **Communication was a considerable problem.** Administrators used official interpreters who were also employees of the government. ## Publication and Sponsorship The intimate relationship between anthropology and colonial administration is also seen clearly in publication and funding. - The scientific journals encouraged the ethnographers to write and provided the space and infrastructure for the publication of the ethnographic articles. - The Government sponsored some of the publications. - There was a comparative increase in the number of anthropological notes and articles in the Asiatic Society’s journal. ### Rescue-recording **Naga ethnography had a special concern for rescue-recording of Naga culture which was perceived to be in danger of becoming extinct.** **The dying process was accelerated by:** - The British abolition of headhunting. - The introduction of education by the Christian missionaries. - The systematic negation of Naga culture by the missionaries. **The urgency to rescue "some local history from these people ere it has faded for ever"** is evident in much of the Naga ethnographic literature during the administrative phase. **The primary motive of the rescue-recording mission was to collect ethnographic data before it was lost in order to help ethnologists in Europe** for the advancement of the discipline. **The rescue-recording tradition did benefit the Nagas in some ways.** **However, rescue-recording served to maintain the cultural distance between the rulers and ruled. ** It perpetuated the imbalance between the dominating and the dominated people. ### Civilization by Evolution and not by Revolution The expansion of the British colonial empire had an adverse effect on indigenous people. **The British goal was to "civilize" the Nagas to make them useful British subjects.** **The British goal was to "civilize" the Nagas to make them useful British subjects.** The British encouraged the establishment of mission schools which resulted in the converts of the missionaries taking on a negative attitude toward Naga culture. **The missionization process led to drastic changes in the Naga society** that caused a decay of communal life. **The British did not realize that Christianity would counter their efforts to preserve a "pristine" Naga culture and would expedite a radical change in the Naga society.** They followed a policy of civilization by revolution. **Hutton believed that "civilization is a drug which however harmless or even beneficial to the hardened and immune, is a rapid poison to those unaccustomed to its use**" (Hutton 1927:287-288). **The greatest importance of anthropology to administration is in informing administrators about the evil effects of contact between a lower and a higher culture.** **The British goal of "civilizing" the Nagas was to regulate contact between civilization and the wild tribes.** They wanted the Nagas to accommodate themselves gradually to new conditions. ## Naga Ethnography: Colonial Project For Control **British colonialism in the Naga Hills is a story of double domination: political and scientific.** **Colonial expansion facilitated the production of ethnographic literature on the Nagas.** Ethnographic knowledge became a tool used to maintain the colonial control. **The British employed ethnographic information in several ways to control the Nagas.** ### Modalities to Aid Military Control - **The British needed to locate and identify the local people to protect their commercial interests in the plains.** - **They also had a strategic need to know the geography**. **Identification and mapping were a primary concern during the military phase.** **The British obtained ethnographic knowledge about the Nagas in the process of mapping, surveying, and pacifying the Naga ‘tribes’** * **Thornton’s maps provided accurate knowledge of the Naga country.** He accompanied Vetch in 1842 and made a "very accurate map" of the Singpho and Naga frontier of Luckhimpore * ***During the expedition to the Angami country with Butler, he “surveyed the route, traversed and plotted off on a large scale a most valuable map of the greatest portion of the Naga Hills attached to the District of Nowgong”*** (Mills 1854 in Elwin 1969:123). **Thornton’s maps helped to identify the ‘tribes’ along the frontier and the country of the ‘tribes." ** **The British found it more convenient to distinguish the different Naga tribes with reference to their political relations to the British frontier districts along the Assam border.** - The Nagas were classified into Boree (tamed or dependent) and Abor (untamed or independent) ‘tribes’. - The Boree Nagas were those tribes that lived at the Assam border. - The Abor were those tribes in the interior Naga hills. - The Nagas were generally known as pakka (genuine) and kacha (raw or half baked) Nagas. The pakka Nagas were naked and the kacha Nagas wore short black kilts or loin cloths. **Few of the Abor Nagas came down to the Assam plains for trade, but the Boree Nagas had a constant trade with the plains. ** **The constant feuds between the tribes led to disorder and disrupted commerce.** So the British tried to stop incursions into the British frontiers by the Nagas and also tried to conciliate the warring tribes. **The British also learned that the Naga “tribes” in the North were under powerful chiefs who had strong influence over their subjects.** **The tribes in the west and south had a democratic system of government which gave the British opportunities for interference. ** ### Administrative Aid The idea of using ethnography to aid administration was a part of colonialism even before its explicit application in the Naga Hills. <start_of_image> Cities and Queries (N&Q), a considerable increase in the collection of ethnographic data led to a need for a reorientation of ethnography and the uses to which the "facts" collected might be put. * The increased use of administrative officers shifted the focus of interest in the use of anthropological data. Political and economic motives for the collection of ethnographic materials were becoming as important as the scientific. * The ethnographic section explicitly introduced the idea that "the information provided by N&Q might prove useful to governments and help them to avoid the "disagreements arising from ignorance of their (the natives's) cherished prejudices and beliefs" (N&Q, 1892:88 cf. Urry 1972:49). * It was argued that many of the most startling injustices had arisen simply through the ignorance rather than the malice of the administrators concerned. **Colonial interference and the application of ethnographic data for colonial purpose became an increasingly important aspect of British anthropology.** **The Standing Committee on Applied Anthropology of the Royal Anthropological Institute was to meet at regular intervals for the discussion of problems of culture contact and the application of anthropological knowledge to the government of a subject race** **Ethnographic information was needed to pacify and control the Nagas, and to help administer them.** **After the establishment of colonial power, “what was required was no longer simply the justification of dominance in terms of difference, but more detailed knowledge of functioning societies that would facilitate and maintain an economical and trouble-free colonial administration”** (Stocking 1991:4). ### Project for Control ** Ethnological information aided British administration** **The ethnographic survey was both scientific and administrative.** Balfour stressed the importance of anthropological knowledge for administration. ** Ethnographic information made the colonial officers sympathetic to the people** **Knowledge of tribal custom helped in administering justice.** The Indian Penal Code and the Codes of Criminal and Civil Procedure were not in force in the Naga Hills, "the Magistrates being required to administer justice in the spirit of the Codes and not by their letter” (Mills 1926:406). **Whether the use of ethnography was for subjugation or for better administration, it only served to control the Nagas. ** **The Nagas were divided between two countries: India and Burma.** **The Nagas were divided into three units: "administered," "unadministered." and "free Naga.** - Administered. - Unadministered - Free Naga. **The British divided the Nagas into major “tribes” and “sub-tribes”. ** **The British recognized the institution of the chief and made them official representatives of the people.** The institution of the chiefs helped the British gain control over villages. **The British created another institution: interpreters called **dobashis**. ** The dobashis became a new elite within the Naga society** **The dobashis handled all the cases in the Naga traditional court. ** **By the 1940s, the British had political control over the western, northern and southern Nagas. ** **The British claimed to have more knowledge about the Nagas than the Nagas had of themselves. ** **The administrator-ethnographers became experts on the Nagas and became elucidators of Naga culture. ** **The British succeeded in the scientific domination of the Nagas. ** **The politics of publishing allowed ethnographers to maintain the power imbalance.** **The ethnographers had the advantage for getting easier access to publishing agents (government or other firms) ** **The British used ethnographic knowledge to maintain their control over the Nagas.** **The British were able to dominate the Nagas using cultural technologies of rule.** **The ethnographers used statistical returns, histories, gazetteers, legal codes, and encyclopedias to obtain information.** **In the Naga Hills, military reports, administrative histories, census, gazetteers, topographical and ethnological surveys were the predominant "investigative modalities.”** ## History is Not Dead **Colonial Naga anthropology was guided by the British rationale to protect the tribes from unscrupulous traders and political powers that came in contact with the tribals.** ** Colonial attitudes and policies have had far-reaching consequences on the ‘tribals.’** Many of the socio-political problems in Northeast India have their roots in the colonial attitudes and policies of classification and demarcation of the ‘tribals.’ **The Indian Government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** The colonial discourse perpetuates the images of the Naga ‘tribes’ as primitive, backward, rebels, insurgents, and extremists. This is radically opposed to the Nagas’ conception and representation of themselves as unconquered people. **The ‘tribals’ are often seen as primitive and backward.** **The Indian government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** **The Indian government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** * Under direct rule, a large part of the tribal region was integrated within the administration of the provinces of British India. * The British Resident kept a watch on the tribal situation. **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** ### Ethnographic Articles and Books (1874-1910) **From the 1870s onward, numerous publications of ethnographic articles about the Nagas appeared.** **S.E. Peal’s article, “The Nagas and Neighboring Tribes” (1874), was one of the earliest about the Nagas to be published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI).** **In the article, Peal described the practice of head-hunting, agriculture, religious beliefs, and customs.** He compared the Naga society to the Dyak customs. **Woodthorpe’s lectures summarized almost all that was known about the Nagas at that time.** E.T. Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1872) had descriptions about the Naga villages and their social structure. **The focus shifted from information gathering to interpreting and analyzing the information.** ### Ethnographic Survey of India and Naga Monographs (1910-1947) **In 1901 the Government of India took up the suggestion of the British Association for Advancement of Science and funded the Ethnographic Survey of India** to be carried out all over India in connection with the census operations. **The Ethnographic Survey was used to collect more ethnographic information about the races and tribes of India.** **The survey had two objectives:** 1. Ethnography: the history, structure, traditions, and religious and social usages of the various races, tribes and castes in India 2. Anthropometry – the physical characteristics of the people **The survey was to be conducted in each province under the orders of the Superintendent of Ethnography** **The initial amount budgeted for the survey in Assam was not sufficient.** **Sir Bampfylde Fuller recommended that the “more important tribes should be described in a series of monographs”** He laid out a scheme in which “each monograph was to deal with the habitat, economic and domestic life, tribal and social organization, laws and institutions, religion and folklore, language, racial affinities, and traditions as to the origin of the people concerned” (Roy 1921:44). **The survey resulted in the publications of various monographs** such as: * T.C. Hodson, Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911) * J.H. Hutton, Angami Nagas (1921) * J.P. Mills, The Lotha Nagas (1922) * The Sema Nagas (1921), * The Ao Nagas (1926), * The Rengma Nagas (1937) **The monographs were steeped in Taylor’s Comparative Method and diffusionism** which held that a particular cultural feature came about through transmission by diffusion through migration of people or trade routes. **The comparative method of investigation was to find answers to the problem of race and racial differences.** **For the Ethnographic Survey of India, uniformity of procedure was an essential condition for the proper application of the comparative method** (Risley 1903:1). **The survey was to proceed on the same general lines in order that their results might be of some service to students of comparative ethnology of Europe. ** **Comparative ethnologists in the Naga Hills were to place the Nagas and their culture in true ethnological perspective.** **The origin of the Naga ‘tribes’ was to be traced, and explain the existence of similar cultural features among the different Naga ‘tribes’ with ‘tribes’ in other southeast Asian societies.** **The ethnographic survey was used to classify the Naga ‘tribes’ and assign places to them within the Mongoloid racial type** **The anthropometric aspect of the survey group was to determine the physical types characteristic of particular groups.** **Hutton’s first book, Angami Nagas (1921a), includes anthropometric measurements by Dixon and Hutton of the Angami, Lotha, Ao, Sema, Rengma, Chang and Konyak Nagas.** **The measurements did not yield any definitive conclusions. ** **The tide turned quickly against both anthropometry and Risley’s version of it”** (Pinney 1990:290). **How did the monographs help explain the problem of origins and migration of the Nagas and cultural diffusion?** The first chapters of the ethnographies dealt with the origins of the tribes using evidence of myths and legends and oral tradition. **The Naga ethnographies shifted from the descriptive style of the military reports to the descriptive style of the topographical survey reports.** ### Influence of Fieldwork Methods and Functionalism **Trained anthropologists from the academic world who did research in the Naga Hills were few.** **Henry Balfour, the curator for the Pitt Rivers Museum, toured the Naga Hills with Hutton and Mills. ** He encouraged them to collect material for the museum and even wrote introductions for some of their books. Balfour also wrote articles on different topics about the Nagas. **By the late 1930s, Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf brought with him influences of Malinowski’s fieldwork method and functionalist theory.** **Von Fürer-Haimendorf was interested in the tracing of the history and development of cultures.** **Von Fürer-Haimendorf was interested in megalithic cultures.** He applied for funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and the London School of Economics before he began his fieldwork in Southeast Asia. **Malinowski’s seminar group and “the problems of functional analysis stimulated him greatly and guided to a large extent his subsequent fieldwork among the Konyak Nagas”** (Meyer 1981:viii). **The Naked Nagas (1939) is an example of Von Fürer-Haimendorf’s functionalist work.** **The British ethnographers failed to incorporate new ideas in their work. ** ## Anthropology and Administration: A Relationship in the Naga Context There was a close relationship between anthropology and colonial administration in the development of Naga ethnography. - The distinction between the two was sometimes blurred because the administrators themselves did the ethnographic research. - The relationship is evident in the administration providing easy access to fieldwork, space for the publication of ethnographic literature on the Nagas, or scientific journals providing space for the publications. ### Fieldwork and Colonialism Fieldwork is an area of intimate collaboration between science and colonial administration in the development of Naga ethnography. Colonialism provided the power structure for the ethnographers to conduct their fieldwork. **The soldier-ethnographers and administrator-ethnographers had easy access to the field, and they undertook research as part of their official duty.** #### Important Examples of Ethnologists who worked as administrators: - J.H. Hutton, Deputy Commissioner at Kohima - James Phillip Mills, Assistant to Hutton and later Deputy Commissioner of Nagas Hills - Henry Balfour, who accompanied Mills and Hutton The researchers lived in official residential bungalows or government guest houses. **Communication was a considerable problem** **Administrators used official interpreters who were also employees of the government. ** ### Publication and Sponsorship The intimate relationship between anthropology and colonial administration is also seen clearly in publication and funding. - Scientific journals encouraged the ethnographers to write and provided the space and infrastructure for the publication of the ethnographic articles. - The Government sponsored some of the publications #### Rescue-recording **Naga ethnography had a special concern for rescue-recording of Naga culture which was perceived to be in danger of becoming extinct. ** **The dying process was accelerated by:** - The British abolition of headhunting. - The introduction of education by the Christian missionaries. - The systematic negation of Naga culture by the missionaries. **The urgency to rescue "some local history from these people ere it has faded for ever"** is evident in much of the Naga ethnographic literature. **The primary motive of the rescue-recording mission was to collect ethnographic data before it was lost in order to help ethnologists in Europe for the advancement of the discipline. ** **The rescue-recording tradition did benefit the Nagas in some ways.** - It enhanced Naga traditional values and recorded past cultural practices. **However, rescue-recording served to maintain the cultural distance between the rulers and ruled. ** It perpetuated the imbalance between the dominating and the dominated people. #### Civilization by Evolution and not by Revolution The expansion of the British colonial empire had an adverse effect on indigenous people. The British goal was to "civilize" the Nagas to make them useful British subjects. **The British encouraged the establishment of mission schools which resulted in the converts of the missionaries taking on a negative attitude toward Naga culture.** **The missionization process led to drastic changes in the Naga society** that caused a decay of communal life. **The British did not realize that Christianity would counter their efforts to preserve a "pristine" Naga culture and would expedite a radical change in the Naga society.** They followed a policy of civilization by revolution. **Hutton believed that "civilization is a drug which however harmless or even beneficial to the hardened and immune, is a rapid poison to those unaccustomed to its use**" (Hutton 1927:287-288). **The greatest importance of anthropology to administration is in informing administrators about the evil effects of contact between a lower and a higher culture.** The British goal of "civilizing" the Nagas was to regulate contact between civilization and the wild tribes. ## Naga Ethnography: Colonial Project For Control British colonialism in the Naga Hills is a story of double domination: political and scientific. Colonial expansion facilitated the production of ethnographic literature on the Nagas. **The British employed ethnographic information in several ways to control the Nagas.** ### Modalities to Aid Military Control - **The British needed to locate and identify the local people to protect their commercial interests in the plains.** - **They also had a strategic need to know the geography**. **Identification and mapping were a primary concern during the military phase.** **The British obtained ethnographic knowledge about the Nagas in the process of mapping, surveying, and pacifying the Naga ‘tribes’** - **Thornton’s maps provided accurate knowledge of the Naga country**. He accompanied Vetch in 1842 and made a "very accurate map" of the Singpho and Naga frontier of Luckhimpore. - ***During the expedition to the Angami country with Butler, he “surveyed the route, traversed and plotted off on a large scale a most valuable map of the greatest portion of the Naga Hills attached to the District of Nowgong”*** (Mills 1854 in Elwin 1969:123). **Thornton’s maps helped to identify the ‘tribes’ along the frontier and the country of the ‘tribes." ** **The British found it more convenient to distinguish the different Naga tribes with reference to their political relations to the British frontier districts along the Assam border.** - The Nagas were classified into Boree (tamed or dependent) and Abor (untamed or independent) ‘tribes’. - The Boree Nagas were those tribes that lived at the Assam border. - The Abor were those tribes in the interior Naga hills. - The Nagas were generally known as pakka (genuine) and kacha (raw or half baked) Nagas. The pakka Nagas were naked and the kacha Nagas wore short black kilts or loin cloths. **Few of the Abor Nagas came down to the Assam plains for trade, but the Boree Nagas had a constant trade with the plains. ** **The constant feuds between the tribes led to disorder and disrupted commerce.** So the British tried to stop incursions into the British frontiers by the Nagas and also tried to conciliate the warring tribes. **The British also learned that the Naga “tribes” in the North were under powerful chiefs who had strong influence over their subjects.** **The tribes in the west and south had a democratic system of government which gave the British opportunities for interference. ** ### Administrative Aid The idea of using ethnography to aid administration was a part of colonialism even before its explicit application in the Naga Hills. * Notes and Queries (N&Q), a considerable increase in the collection of ethnographic data led to a need for a reorientation of ethnography and the uses to which the "facts" collected might be put. * The increased use of administrative officers shifted the focus of interest in the use of anthropological data. Political and economic motives for the collection of ethnographic materials were becoming as important as the scientific. * The ethnographic section explicitly introduced the idea that "the information provided by N&Q might prove useful to governments and help them to avoid the "disagreements arising from ignorance of their (the natives's) cherished prejudices and beliefs" (N&Q, 1892:88 cf. Urry 1972:49). * It was argued that many of the most startling injustices had arisen simply through the ignorance rather than the malice of the administrators concerned. **Colonial interference and the application of ethnographic data for colonial purpose became an increasingly important aspect of British anthropology.** **The Standing Committee on Applied Anthropology of the Royal Anthropological Institute was to meet at regular intervals for the discussion of problems of culture contact and the application of anthropological knowledge to the government of a subject race** **Ethnographic information was needed to pacify and control the Nagas, and to help administer them.** **After the establishment of colonial power, “what was required was no longer simply the justification of dominance in terms of difference, but more detailed knowledge of functioning societies that would facilitate and maintain an economical and trouble-free colonial administration”** (Stocking 1991:4). ### Project for Control Ethnological information aided British administration **The ethnographic survey was both scientific and administrative.** Balfour stressed the importance of anthropological knowledge for administration. **Ethnographic information made the colonial officers sympathetic to the people** **Knowledge of tribal custom helped in administering justice.** The Indian Penal Code and the Codes of Criminal and Civil Procedure were not in force in the Naga Hills, "the Magistrates being required to administer justice in the spirit of the Codes and not by their letter” (Mills 1926:406). **Whether the use of ethnography was for subjugation or for better administration, it only served to control the Nagas.** **The Nagas were divided between two countries: India and Burma.** **The Nagas were divided into three units: "administered," "unadministered." and "free Naga.** - Administered: - Unadministered - Free Naga: **The British divided the Nagas into major “tribes” and “sub-tribes”. ** **The British recognized the institution of the chief and made them official representatives of the people.** The institution of the chiefs helped the British gain control over villages. **The British created another institution: interpreters called **dobashis**. **The dobashis became a new elite within the Naga society** **The dobashis handled all the cases in the Naga traditional court.** **By the 1940s, the British had political control over the western, northern and southern Nagas. ** **The British claimed to have more knowledge about the Nagas than the Nagas had of themselves. ** **The administrator-ethnographers became experts on the Nagas and became elucidators of Naga culture. ** **The British succeeded in the scientific domination of the Nagas. ** **The politics of publishing allowed ethnographers to maintain the power imbalance.** **The ethnographers had the advantage for getting easier access to publishing agents ( government or other firms). ** **The British used ethnographic knowledge to maintain their control over the Nagas.** **The British were able to dominate the Nagas using cultural technologies of rule.** **The ethnographers used statistical returns, histories, gazetteers, legal codes, and encyclopedias to obtain information.** **In the Naga Hills, military reports, administrative histories, census, gazetteers, topographical and ethnological surveys were the predominant "investigative modalities.”** ## History is Not Dead **Colonial Naga anthropology was guided by the British rationale to protect the tribes from unscrupulous traders and political powers that came in contact with the tribals.** ** Colonial attitudes and policies have had far-reaching consequences on the ‘tribals.’** Many of the socio-political problems in Northeast India have their roots in the colonial attitudes and policies of classification and demarcation of the ‘tribals.’ **The Indian Government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** The colonial discourse perpetuates the images of the Naga ‘tribes’ as primitive, backward, rebels, insurgents, and extremists. This is radically opposed to the Nagas’ conception and representation of themselves as unconquered people. **The ‘tribals’ are often seen as primitive and backward.** **The Indian government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** **The Indian government continues to use colonial discourse in its relationships with the ‘tribals.’** **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** * Under direct rule, a large part of the tribal region was integrated within the administration of the provinces of British India. * The British Resident kept a watch on the tribal situation. **The colonial protectionist policy was based on the concept of ‘direct rule’ and ‘protectionist’ policy.** ### Ethnographic Articles and Books (1874-1910) **From the 1870s onward, numerous publications of ethnographic articles about the Nagas appeared.** **S.E. Peal’s article, “The Nagas and Neighboring Tribes” (1874), was one of the earliest about the Nagas to be published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI).** **In the article, Peal described the practice of head-hunting, agriculture, religious beliefs, and customs.** He compared the Naga society to the Dyak customs. **Woodthorpe’s lectures summarized almost all that was known about the Nagas at that time.** E.T. Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1872) had descriptions about the Naga villages and their social structure. **The focus shifted from information gathering to interpreting and analyzing the information.** ### Ethnographic Survey of India and Naga monographs (1910-1947) **In 1901 the Government of India took up the suggestion of the British Association for Advancement of Science and funded the Ethnographic Survey of India** to be carried out all over India in connection with the census operations. **The Ethnographic Survey was used to collect more ethnographic information about the races and tribes of India.** **The survey had two objectives:** 1. Ethnography: the history, structure, traditions, and religious and social usages of the various races, tribes and castes in India 2. Anthropometry – the physical characteristics of the people **The survey was to be conducted in each province under the orders of the Superintendent of Ethnography** **The initial amount budgeted for the survey in Assam was not sufficient.** **Sir Bampfylde Fuller recommended that the “more important tribes should be described in a series of monographs”** He laid out a scheme in which “each monograph was to deal with the habitat, economic and domestic life, tribal and social organization, laws and institutions, religion and folklore, language, racial affinities, and traditions as to the origin of the people concerned” (Roy 1921:44). **The survey resulted in the publications of various monographs** such as: * T.C. Hodson, Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911) * J.H. Hutton, Angami Nagas (1921) * J.P. Mills, The Lotha Nagas (1922) * The Sema Nagas (1921), * The Ao Nagas (1926), * The Rengma Nagas (1937) **The monographs were steeped in Taylor’s Comparative Method and diffusionism** which held that a particular cultural feature came about through transmission by diffusion through migration of people or trade routes. **The comparative method of investigation was to find answers to the problem of race and racial differences.** **For the Ethnographic Survey of India, uniformity of procedure was an essential condition for the proper application of the comparative method** (Risley 1903:1). **The survey was to proceed on the same general lines in order that their results might be of some service to students of comparative ethnology of Europe. ** **Comparative ethnologists in the Naga Hills were to place the Nagas and their culture in true ethnological perspective.** **The origin of the Naga ‘tribes’ was to be traced, and explain the existence of similar cultural features among the different Naga ‘tribes’ with ‘tribes’ in other southeast Asian societies.** **The ethnographic survey was used to classify the Naga ‘tribes’ and assign places to them within the Mongoloid racial type** **The anthropometric aspect of the survey group was to determine the physical types characteristic of particular groups.** **Hutton’s first book, Angami Nagas (1921a), includes anthropometric measurements by Dixon and Hutton of the Angami, Lotha, Ao, Sema, Rengma, Chang and Konyak Nagas.** **The measurements did not yield any definitive conclusions. ** **The tide turned quickly against both anthropometry and Risley’s version of it”** (Pinney 1990:290). **How did the monographs help explain the problem of origins and migration of the Nagas and cultural diffusion?** The first chapters of the ethnographies dealt with the origins of the tribes using evidence of myths and legends and oral tradition. **The Naga ethnographies shifted from the descriptive style of the military reports to the descriptive style of the topographical survey reports.** ### Influence of Fieldwork Methods and Functionalism **Trained anthropologists from the academic world who did research in the Naga Hills were few.** **Henry Balfour, the curator for the Pitt Rivers Museum, toured the Naga Hills with Hutton and Mills. ** He encouraged them to collect material for the museum and even wrote introductions for some of their books. Balfour also wrote articles on different topics about the Nagas. **By the late 1930s, Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf brought with him influences of Malinowski’s fieldwork method and functionalist theory.** **Von Fürer-Haimendorf was interested in the tracing of the history and development of cultures.** **Von Fürer-Haimendorf was interested in megalithic cultures.** He applied for funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and the London