Saturday, December 22, 2012

Nagaland village focus: Khuzama

As I prepare to leave India again (this time to spend Christmas at home with the family for the first time in years), I thought I'd share some photos from a visit to another friend's village in Nagaland. Like Khonoma village that we also visited, Khuzama is an Angami village. You can tell it's an Angami by the suffix -ma (corresponding to Sumi village names that end in -mi). However, most Angami speakers seem to replace the -ma with -ra / -rie when they refer to the villages in speech.

While Khonoma is a Western Angami village, Khuzama is one of the Southern Angami villages situated on the highway between Kohima and Imphal in Manipur. It's also the last Angami village before you reach the state border with Manipur and the start of Mao territory. The Maos (not to be confused with Maoists) are another related tribe. Linguistically, Southern Angami dialects are so different from Tenyidie (standard Angami based on Northen Angami) that they might constitute a different language altogether. My friend from Khuzama says he finds it easier to understand Chokri (one of the main languages of the group previously classified as 'Eastern Angami' but now known as Chakhesang).

Khuzama village gate
The current Khuzama village gate

The weekend my friend from Australia was around, our Angami friends who usually live in Kohima had a church function to attend in Khuzama. I thought it'd be nice to go for a walk around the terraces and they were happy for us to take us to the village. They got one of the boys in the village to take us around, and also to explain to people why a couple of strangers were walking around their village.

Terraced fields around Khuzama village


Terraced fields around Khuzama village


Our 'guide' for the afternoon brought us to our friend's plot of land. Unlike with jhum cultivation, which involves shifting to a new field site every 2 years and the re-allocation of new plots to people to cultivate (typically by the village chief), terraces are 'owned' by the same people every year. They are also passed down from generation to generation, but only to sons I believe.

Terraced fields around Khuzama village


From the village, we could also see the neighbouring village of Viswema. I'm told it's the largest of the Southern Angami villages. If you've been on the highway from Kohima to Imphal, you would have probably noticed that most of the roofs on the houses have been painted red, making it almost look like some Italian village on a hilltop.

Viswema village


We walked down all the way to the little river / stream. It would've been nice to have a picnic on the rocks in the middle of the stream, but we hadn't organised ourselves that well.

River below Khuzama village


River below Khuzama village


We had a really pleasant afternoon walking around the terraced fields down to the stream. It didn't take us long to get down, but the climb back up was quite strenuous, and we weren't carrying baskets of grain or anything back up to the village with us! We were told that when there's a lot of work to be done in the fields, some villagers do sleep in the field huts that you can see dotting the hillside.


I should add that the Angamis and Chakhesangs (formerly 'Eastern Angamis', as mentioned above) are cited as the only two tribes in Nagaland to have started practising terracing before the arrival of the British. (They do still practise some jhum cultivation to grow other crops.) I've been asking around about the origins of terracing in these tribes, as it strikes me as imported technology, but no one I've asked has been able to give a satisfactory reply. I would be quite interested to find out more about local stories / folktales surrounding its origins in these communities.


Terraced fields around Khuzama village


Alright, this will probably be my last post in India for a while. I still have a backlog of material to upload, and I'll try to do that when I'm back in Singapore or Australia. In the meantime, Happy Holidays everyone!

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Khonoma village (Take two)

Two years ago I visited Khonoma village, which is about 2 hours from Kohima (depending on road conditions). Unfortunately, the day I visited was terribly foggy and it was hard to see anything (see here). This time, I visited again shortly after the Hornbill Festival. Thankfully the weather was much better, since I also came with a friend from Australia who may not have another chance to come back.


Khonoma village

Khonoma village


Khonoma village


Now, there are some friends who don't feel that Khonoma needs any special mention or recommendation. Even among my Angami friends, people from Khonoma are often perceived as being particularly proud, arrogant even. The village itself is famed for its defiance of the British which culminated in the Battle of Khonoma in 1879 that resulted in the deaths of a number of British soldiers.

Khonoma village


Khonoma village


The villagers even manufactured their own guns, based on models acquired in the plains of Assam. This particular gun required two people to hold it up, while a third person loaded it.

Khonoma village

Another reason for the perceived 'smugness' might be because the village has also produced a number of intellectuals. I'm told the reason for this is that during the British siege, the villagers smuggled out a number of kids to Dimapur where they eventually received their education (and hence the overall better standard of education in the village compared to others in Nagaland). I'm not quite sure how true this is, but in the absence of other explanations, I'm willing to accept it. The village also produced a number of founding members of the Naga independence movement, including Phizo himself.

Khonoma village


In any case, Khonoma is a pleasant place to visit if you're in Kohima for the Hornbill Fesitval (although the Southern Angami villages past the Kisama Heritage Village are also quite picturesque - but that's for another post). It prides itself on being a 'green village', and there are rubbish bins all over the village which to my eye are actually used. To my surprise, I learnt that the village still has a functioning morung, a kind of dormitory where young men were sent to learn about traditional ways and to form bonds with members of their peer group. (It was even more of a surprise for me because Hutton in his book The Angami Nagas mentions that the morung wasn't very significant to the Angamis). Some villages also had a female equivalent, although I was told there was none in Khonoma at the present time.

The streets are generally well maintained, with competitions between the various peer groups, known as peli in Tenyidie (the standard Angami dialect used in church and schools). Here, one can see the work of one peli working on a section of road, so that they don't get outdone by other peli who are in charge of other sections of the same road.

Khonoma village


Khonoma village

My Angami friends in Kohima organised the visit for us. We had a local guide named Michael, who used to be the president of the students' union here (I believe), and who was very knowledgeable about the village's history.

I don't normally do such recommendations, but I was quite impressed by his role in organising the members of the village to maintain its cleanliness and preserve the local wildlife. I would say that many villages in Nagaland could benefit from learning from Khonoma's system of organisation, but I don't want to inflate the villagers' egos any further!

If you are interested in visiting Khonoma village, you can contact Mr Michael Saphi (Khonoma Tours & Treks) at +91 98 5655 9394.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Hornbill Festival 2012

So the Hornbill Festival at Kisama has come and gone. This year I brought a friend from Australia along to enjoy the festivities. After my experiences at the festival last year and the year before, I didn't really want to spend all week in Kisama, since many of the shows start to feel repetitive after a few days. I thought it'd be best if we arrive on the 4th day for the last few days, then stay back a few more days to enjoy some of the sights around Kohima when most of the other tourists would have moved on. I think it was a good decision (as I sit here typing this in our now empty guest house).

My friend quite enjoyed the whole event, which his colleague in Melbourne had described last year as 'better than National Geographic', which makes me laugh a little. Sadly, in this post I won't be waxing lyrical about the festival, but would like to point out a few things that made me quite unhappy and in the process, perhaps raise a few questions about the future of the festival.

Looking at the photo below, you might notice the big black stage that was set up right next to the performance area, taking up a large chunk of what was previously audience space. This stage was used for the opening and closing ceremonies of the festival, on the 1st and 7th of December respectively. In between those two days, it seems that the stage was not used at all.

Hornbill Festival 2012


Hornbill Festival 2012


As far as I could see, additional seating had not been provided (apart from some reserved seats for soldiers and their families), even though a third of the previous years' seating was now taken up by a stage that was largely non-functional for the majority of the festival. And when it was used, the sight lines were so bad because of the large speakers, that many people sitting in the audience area (myself included) weren't able to see the actual performance onstage and had to resort to watching a small screen at the back of the stage. It seems the only people with a proper view of the stage were the people in the VIP area.

This non-consideration of general audience members was apparent during all the cultural performances too. While some performances were geared to the audience, most of them, especially the song items were not oriented to the general seating area, but to the VIP booth.

Hornbill Festival 2012

The Zeliang cultural troupe performing a song for the VIPs

If I now asked: "Who is the festival really for?", the answer would be rather straightforward. Not Nagas from all over the state. Not tourists, domestic and foreign. It's the small group of people that the organisers have deemed 'very important'.

I'm sorry, but people didn't come all this way to see performers' behinds while they perform. (Okay, maybe some people did, but only to take photos of them in costume.)

I was particularly disappointed at the closing ceremony - it didn't help that I could barely see the stage. At one point, the performers from the various cultural troupes had to get up and form the usual lines to welcome the Chief Guest who, as custom dictates, arrived late. In the middle of their chanting and singing, the 'pre-entertainment' started on the opposite side of the performance area, where singers on the big black stage started their renditions of ABBA and Bruce Springstein, while Bebop dancers popped and locked to Michael Jackson and the Black-eyed Peas. Given the much louder competition from the stage, many of the cultural troupes eventually stopped their own singing to watch the concert, as it was unclear when Neiphiu Rio was actually going to turn up.

What could have been 'cultural fusion' had turned into 'cultural confusion', with modern pop music drowning out the traditional (or rather, the acceptable version of 'traditional').

Hornbill Festival 2012


Once the Chief Guest arrived, the audience was treated to a concert, but it eventually took two hours for the large bonfire to be lit. During the concert, audience members were encouraged to come and dance, and many did, even though my friends and I thought it would have been much better to finish the formalities, like lighting the fire before asking people to jump in and let loose. I felt quite sorry for many of the cultural troupes, especially villagers from the eastern parts of Nagaland who looked cold as they shivered through the concert. A large bonfire while the concert was going on would have much more comfortable.


The question here I posed was: "Who is the concert for?" Maybe it was to expose the villagers, especially from the eastern regions to modern culture? It didn't look like many of them enjoyed it though. Maybe it was for the tourists, to show people them that 'Nagas are modern'. But after 2 hours of listening to Adele, Celine Dion, Psy and ABBA, my friends and I were saying, "Yes, we get it: Nagas are modern. Just light the damn fire already!"

Perhaps it was most obvious, when in the middle of the show, there was a request made to the Chief Minister to let the youth 'party a little bit more'. What could have been interpreted previously as an act of education, I now simply viewed as an act of self-indulgence, at the expense of all other audience members. Of course, even before the fire was lit, many younger audience members had already left, presumably to the Hornbill Rock Festival at the IG Stadium on the other side of Kohima.

Hornbill Festival 2012


In a number of ways, I think this year's festival truly reflected Nagaland in its current state. You could see the over-privileging of a small elite, the over-indulgence of youth consumerist culture, and the general struggle for a sense of cultural identity in today's world.

I don't think there's an easy way to address any of these issues. However, before I encourage other friends to come attend this festival (which itself was a creation of the government), I think the organisers need to sit down and reflect on who the festival is really for: Nagas (and which ones in particular), tourists (domestic or foreign) or just the VIPs?