Conclusion

The argument to decolonise tribal-traditional religion of the Tangkhul Nagas is not to return to the pre-colonial indigenous beliefs and practices. Instead, it is to identify the pres­ence of colonial difference in the contemporary Tangkhul religious thinking and practices.

If that is the case, then, the dismissal of academic engagement with tribal traditional reli­gion and culture by the church or church leaders is unfounded. All along, from the colonial period to the present day, they have adapted the beliefs of traditional religion into the new faith practices. This reality invites the contemporary Tangkhul Nagas to reconsider and reread colonial texts and socio-religious values that are not necessarily biblical in nature or in origin. When reconsidering and rereading these texts and values, one must take careful attention to consider what is colonial or indigenous.

Notes

1 With the knowledge that the term tribe/tribal is an imposed term by the colonials, the term is syn­onymously used with the term indigenous or indigenous communities. Meaning, like other Nagas, Tangkhuls are an indigenous community of Northeast India. Hereafter, the terms ‘Northeast India’ will be referred to as NEI or ‘Northeast’ as NE.

2 Tangkhul Nagas are the indigenous community of the state of Manipur (India) and the North­eastern part of Myanmar. Through the Western missionary influence of the late 20th century, they are now all Christians. In fact, they are the first indigenous communities who became Christians in Manipur.

3 Frederick S. Downs is of the view that the “traditional system could not survive under the central­ised British administration and jurisprudence” (Down 2001:63).

4 In recent years indigenisation of church is an engagement in some quarters. In this chapter I have preferred concept decolonisation in place of indigenisation. The term decolonisation is used as an intentional effort to identify and reconstruct that which was planted/imposed by the colonials amongst the indigenous community. Indigenisation, however, would be an attempt to conceptual­ise something by relating to or connecting with the cultural context of an indigenous community of a particular place/region.

5 In the 1970-80s, a group of tribal theologians began to actively engage with tribal heritage in NEI. Tribal churches found such constructive engagement as syncretistic and unbiblical.

6 Though Boodoo focuses on Christian mission, this chapter focuses on tribal ‘religion.’ It attempts to do decolonial thinking of beliefs and practices of the Tangkhul Naga community.

7 Christianity came to the Tangkhul Nagas with both denominational colouring (in this case, Baptist denomination) and input of colonial cultural values.

8 Since Tangkhul Nagas follow oral tradition, there are very limited written resources on pre-colo- nial religion or Tangkhul traditional religion. Most of the socio-religious practices are not avail­able in the written form.

9 In the recent past, there has been much interest in the tribal traditional religion of the Tangkhul Nagas amongst the university students and professors.

10 During the arrival of the colonials, there were about 150 Tangkhul villages with their distinct dialects. For the purposes of spreading the gospel in the Tangkhul inhabited areas, Pettigrew made the dialect of Hunphun-Ukhrul village the lingua franca of the Tangkhuls. As I belong to this vil­lage, and my knowledge of tribal traditional religion is limited to Hunphun-Ukhrul village, when referring to the Tangkhul traditional religion and its terms, the focus will be on the beliefs and practices of Hunphun-Ukhrul village.

11 This seems to be a correction from his earlier writing where Thumra refers to the Supreme Being as Uri Ura (Thumra 1988:47-48).

12 Such usage is prevalent in the Tangkhul Bible, hymns, and other church documents.

13 Unlike the oral tradition of dream-like vision of the coming of Western missionaries, there is no written record of the current oral tradition (see Prongo 1996:5-6).

14 A similar belief and practices are found in other tribes (Pongen 2016).

15 The above features of Tangkhul traditional religion are not exhaustive. While providing the basic features of their beliefs and practices, it rectifies some misconceptions of the Tangkhul traditional religion. For a detailed feature of tribal traditional religion, see Thumra (1988).

16 He came to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the year of 1890 as a missionary of the Arthington Aborigines Mission. He worked amongst the Bengalis for two years and turned his attention to the kingdom of Manipur. This attention towards Manipur was triggered by an incident in 1891, which is known as the Anglo-Manipur War, or Khongjom War. It instilled a deep desire in Pettigrew to enter Manipur and began to fervently pray to “go and work in Manipur” (Pettigrew 1897; see also Kapai 2019b; Anonymous 2021).

17 The Gospel of John was the first book that was translated in Tangkhul, while the final translation was the book of the New Testament (see Pettigrew 1904, 1927).

18 Joy suggests that there is continuity from the traditional religion to the present context in the area of belief system, priest, offering, conflict resolution, burial, life after death, and festivals and rituals (Joy 2014a:4-5).

19 Robin Boyd is of the view that most, if not all, of the 19th century missionaries, who arrived in the NE region, were conservatives or evangelicals (Boyd 1969:88).

20 Their underlying assumption was to translate the Bible literally i.e., from English words to equiva­lent Tangkhul words.

21 It might be worth mentioning that as early as the 1960s, there were talks of Christian response to ‘tribal concerns’ in Northeast India and other parts of India (see Anonymous 1961:60-83, 1962:80-85 and Thomas & Taylor 1965).

22 The term Christian orthodoxy refers to right or correct beliefs of Christianity. For instance, Christians across different church denominations believe that God revealed Godself through the birth and incarnation of Jesus Christ.

23 In the meantime, traditional songs and traditional musical instruments are slowly fading away (KS & Arunkumar 2021:311-318).

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