Among the many insidious memories of the British Raj, the one that steals the cake in the 19th century is the notorious practice of ‘begar’—coerced or forced labour involving tough and hard work with road building and porterage. Conscripting hundreds of peasants at a time, the Raj expected them to feed and shelter themselves. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did not. Like the time the sahibs found themselves face to face with the invincible warriors of a Naga village called Khonoma—a name that would strike terror into the hearts of the Redcoats.
Political Agent Damant sitting in Khonoma flips through the files to read: ‘22 raids between 1850-1865, 232 British subjects killed, wounded or taken prisoner!’ He had had enough of negotiating; it was time for an expedition to be mounted to crush the impregnable village. That would be a message to the other villages not to even think about an uprising.
Easterine Kire’s celebrated novel—the first Naga novel in English— takes the reader to the battles between Britain and the Nagas between 1832 and 1880. The Angami warriors of Khonoma were torchbearers of Naga resistance against the British, carrying out raids and disrupting the forced recruitment of the Nagas as bonded labourers. Life in the far-flung Naga hills was ordered by the seasons and the continuous labour of both women and men in the fields; by social taboos, rituals and festivals. Young men grew up on stories of valiant battles with rival villages, tigers, spirits and the British. Everyone had a deep connection with the land, and they were proud of fighting and looking after it.
The Khonoma warriors clashed with the British a number of times, stirring other Naga villages to join them as well. After the death of an officer in 1879, the British laid siege on the tiny village. But despite being outnumbered and ill-equipped, Khonoma held out against them for four long months, eventually signing a peace treaty on March 27, 1880.
This revised edition weaves together meticulous research and oral narratives to tell the story of a proud and remarkable community reckoning with radical change—within and without. We see the arrival of the first white medicine man carrying the Book, the Bell and the Candle—Dr Sidney Rivenburg. The doctor has already made a few converts in Kohima. But here he finds for all their health problems, the Angami turned to bone-setters, herbalists and chicken sacrificers. He goes back to America, attends two years of medical college and returns in 1894 equipped to serve these pepole.
Rivenburg’s school is unconventional: He prepares in the Roman script, primers in Angami, along with Mathematics and the Sciences. The author traces the first baptism to 1897, followed by ostracism for those who had accepted the New Faith. The new wave was to wash over the brave warriors.The glossary at the end of the novel is a primer initiating the uninitiated into the magical world of the Nagas.