The Context
India’s Northeast (also spelt as North-East) comprising eight states has been an anthropologist’s paradise and folklorist’s delight. The more than hundred ethnic groups residing in this space speak languages and dialects numbering more than 400 with some of them spoken within only a few square kilometres.
The advent of institutionalised religion is recent among most tribes who preached (some of them are still practising) indigenous faith earlier. With the absence of written script among the tribes oral literature had a position of prominence. The rich oral tradition of the tribes still determines the identity and existence of the people. Caroline Marak in her essay Relevance of Oral Literature has opined that:We live in a period in which orality, print and electronic media overlap. If orality is dependent on the spoken word in oral, non-literate cultures, that orality will continue though a part of the society has become literate... Oral transmission continues, and it carries with it the bulk of a community’s traditions. In the context of North-East India, oral literature and traditions matter, and must be taken seriously.
(Marak 2007:16)
It is through this rich oral tradition that the contemporary society has inherited various customs, traditions, and beliefs that define human existence. Humans have always held on tightly to these pillars of the society in testing times. The relationship between orally transmitted folk knowledge (oral literature) and written literature in which the oral forms shape the writing of a folk group can be figuratively presented as follows:
It may be surmised that oral literature is the base upon which the body of written literature of the folk groups is formed. Considering the fact that the span between the time of formulation (followed by exclusive oral transmission) and the moment of inheritance of such customs, traditions, and beliefs can be substantial questions regarding their relevance and mode of acceptance might be raised, but their universality and contemporaneity can be easily gauged in most cases.
However, it cannot be denied that the gradual transformation from a totally agrarian and forest based society to a gadget prominent industrial society might have led to the disappearance of many of the beliefs and customs that our forefathers had adhered to. Looking at the issue from a scientific perspective, it appears that the generations that primarily depended on the orality did not initiate customs and fostered beliefs without sound reasoning aimed at making lives comfortable and socio-economic progress sustainable2.Easterine Kire is one of the most prominent English writers of contemporary India. She has vividly presented the folk beliefs of the Nagas in her novels, short stories, and poems. Her novels include A Naga Village Remembered, A Terrible Matriarchy, Bitter Wormwood, Son of the Thundercloud, When the River Sleeps, Mari, Bitter Wormwood, Don’t Run my Love, and A Respectable Woman. The author has been very vocal as regards to the sociopolitical upheavals disturbing the Naga society and has beautifully presented the sociocultural milieu of the Nagas for the readers. She is acutely aware of the politically troubled times that her home and Northeast India by extension has been witness to, but at the same instance she is deeply aware of the vibrant and pulsating myths and legends of her people and the time-tested customs and beliefs that have sustained the socio-cultural fabric of the Naga society through thick and thin. Kire’s novels cover themes as wide as status of women in Naga society, pre-independence as well recent political history in addition to the rendering of legends and myths. The people she paints are common people suffering, challenging, and attempting to triumph over the odds; but a significant feature of her works is the space that she provides to the folk customs and beliefs which adds to the aesthetic charm of her works.
Kire’s A Naga Village Remembered is regarded as the first Naga novel in English. Though the work is viewed by many as a historical novel centring on the famous Battle of Khonoma3, the socio-cultural life of the people of the village has been very beautifully depicted.
Caught between the warrior spirit and the dominating and marauding colonial troops, the warriors try their best to overcome the harrowing times, but with very limited success. The author also brings in the issue of the advent of Christianity into the Naga Hills, something that was to change the entire socio-cultural scenario within the next few decades. The subject of the novel has been captured in the following words:the rich cultural life that fostered the spirit of the people of the village is captured...
Warriors jostle with enemy warriors and with the spirits in a pre-Christian world of taboos, rituals, and festivals where women worked as hard as men and men strove to live up to the obligations of manhood-protecting their village and their womenfolk, making the name of the village fearful and ensuring the survival of the old religion in the face of the ever widening influence of modernisation.
(Kire 2016a, blurb)
Set in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, A Terrible Matriarchy is about the status of women in the basically patriarchal Naga society (Tenyimia4 culture to be more precise). As the title suggests the novel portrays how the concerted efforts of making a woman fit into an already existent social mould are made with the overt support and active participation of the matriarch(s) of a family. The novel seems to dispel a commonly held notion that the status of women in the societies of the north eastern states is encouraging by revealing how patriarchy designs its customs, beliefs, and propagators for its sustenance and transmission. In the process, the author has been able to elaborately present to the reader the various rituals, practices, and beliefs shaping the Naga way of life.
English writings from India’s Northeast and violence for a separate homeland are inseparable entities. A considerable quantum of literature deals with the subject, showing the various contours of the movement. The mainland-periphery divide is one of the common concerns of the majority of the authors of all of the states of the region, though it has to be accepted that there has been an increase in the number of refreshing exceptions as regards to the subject matter.
Many authors have taken up oral literature, social customs, and beliefs as their literary material. Bitter Wormwood portrays the troubling times of the Naga society with insurgency and counter-insurgency operations sapping out the people both physically and psychologically. The title of the novel is significant as it has been named after a herb (scientific name: Artemisia absinthium), which is believed to have curative qualities along with the faith that if tucked beneath the ear can dispel spirits.Son of the Thundercloud is the novelist’s attempt of fictionalising a legend by utilising literary devices like magic realism which can be defined as the literary practice wherein:
Realistic details and esoteric knowledge are intertwined with dreamlike sequences, abrupt chronological shifts, and complex, tangled plots. Magic realists also frequently incorporate fairy tales and myths into their works.
(Murfin & Ray 1998:195-196)
It relates to the legend of a woman living secluded in a small Angami village whose husband and seven sons were killed by a tiger. She waits for an event that would change the course of her life and that happens in the form of a raindrop falling on her that subsequently leads to her conceiving a child who would go on to avenge the death of his father and brothers. Though that forms the main fabric of the story, the picture of the Naga society is equally appealing and precise.
Easterine Kire’s novel When the River Sleeps bagged her ‘The Hindu Prize for Best Fiction’ in 2015. The gripping story telling technique of the author keeps the reader deeply sheltered in a world where dreams, spirits, and other supernatural entities and developments shape and reshape the life of the protagonist. The man-nature interdependence that forms the core of most indigenous communities of the region seems to be another concern of the novel with the protagonist strongly asserting that the forest is his ‘wife’ while trying to avoid the issue of his marriage as and when tossed up by his enthusiastic aunts.
While attempting to study Naga folk beliefs it has to be pointed out that the term Naga is more of an umbrella term used to denote many groups who together forge the Naga identity. The groups are: Angami, Ao, Chakhesang, Chokri, Khezha, Kom, Konyak, Lotha, Maram, Nocte, Phom, Sangtam, Sema, Tangkhul, Tangsa, Thangal, Wancho, Yimchunger, Zeliangrong, etc. Thus, it is distinct that when one speaks of an author writing about the socio-cultural life of the Nagas, he/she is in all probability not portraying the life and times of all of the groups who identify themselves as Nagas.
6.1.1 Objective
The objective of the current research is to make an analytical study of the patterns of representation of social customs and associated beliefs of the Nagas as portrayed in select novels of Easterine Kire. The research concentrates on the relevance as well as socio-religious influence and contemporaneity of such beliefs.
6.1.2 Methodology
The research is qualitative and based on five primary texts of Easterine Kire. The novels short listed for the study have been objectively analysed focusing on the fictional representation of various beliefs of the Nagas and the patterns of impact of various beliefs and belief systems in their socio-cultural life and their contemporaneity. The latter is based on the researcher’s interaction with Naga friends over a period of two decades.
6.2