As part of the 40th foundation day of the Indira Gandhi Rastriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), Bhopal, a colloquium on oral and literary traditions of Nagaland was held at the Rock Art Centre, IGRMS Bhopal on March 23, 2016.
In his introduction, director, IGRMS, prof. Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri, who chaired the colloquium said that it was not only the celebration of the 40th foundation of IGRMS, but celebration of India’s North East, specifically focused on Nagaland. Having spent almost 25 years as an anthropologist in North East, he stated that Nagaland, from his perspective was a state of possibilities, reflected in the several programmes in the 3-day celebration of the cultural festival of Nagaland. He spoke about the colloquium as involving creative persons from Nagaland including writers, poets, and journalists from different generations.
Delivering the keynote address, prof. Temsula Ao noted that the cultures of North East India were already facing tremendous challenges from education and modernization and the loss of distinct identity markers does not bode well for the trends of the region. She felt that “if the trend is allowed to continue in an indiscriminate and mindless manner, globalization will create a market in which Naga, Khasi, or Mizo communities will become mere brand names, commonly cumulative markers stripped off all human significance and which will definitely mutate the ethnic and symbolic identity of a proud people”, and added that globalization in this sense would eventually reduce identity to anonymity.
Further dwelling on language, which she described as the one essence of “our” humanity which governs every aspect of “our” being, she said that, “we exist within the ambit of our languages which defines the significance of being what we are.” She held that in our world today, writing has become primary and the orality of language discarded as a relic of the past. Pointing out that literature of our people encompasses everything about them- language, history, customs, beliefs, stories, legends, myths, their lores of migration and settlement, arts, crafts, and every small detail of their everyday lives, she stated that this was the literature of the Nagas, and that, it resides in their traditions which constitutes “our” primary literature.
She observed that a new generation of talented young Nagas were emerging, excelling in their chosen field, in art and culture too and said that the youngsters deserve the best opportunities because they would be the inheritors of “our people who had such music and melody in their souls, who created the most amazing artifacts and textiles with their bare hands”. She also said that youngsters were creating a new literature of reality, fusing their modernity with new insights from their past.
In the meantime, she said that it was heartening to see that a host of young Nagas have taken to writing poetry and fiction in English, in which they explored the contents of their present circumstances of disillusioned youth. Though they write about the present mostly, she said, “glimpses of the past are incorporated in subtle ways to create a different kind of fusion and in that sense, we can say that what distinguishes the new literature is that the oral tradition provides the writers with a copulated calculated framework wherein they are able to explore the relevance of the past value on the complexity of their social positioning and contemporary context.” Others who gave paper presentations were Monalisa Changkija, Dr. Anungla Aier, Agnes Krocha Tepa, Vishü Rita Krocha, Phejin Konyak and Peter Bos.