Nagaland: Book Recommendations (and Movies)

See also my post on music from Nagaland, and scroll down to the bottom here for a quick roundup of Nagaland’s cinema. For those traveling in Nagaland, I have posts on Dimapur and on Kohima, Khonoma, Kigwema, and the Hornbill Festival.

Nagaland doesn’t have the most exciting literary scene but there are a few big names in fiction, some good non-fiction books, and wonderful folk stories. Unlike other parts of the country where I try to read local language stuff in translation, everything I read here was originally in English, and I don’t recall seeing anything translated other than poetry.

Dimapur and Kohima both have nice bookstores that have good sections of local books. In Dimapur I went to White Owl. In Kohima I went to a lovely bookstore and cafe called The Common Room, and there’s also a Crossword and a very cute children’s library called The Book Home. I was impressed with the quantity of books on Nagaland that they all sold. There are some small local publishers who sell their books at various shops (look for Ilandlo stores) and cafes as well, which I found to be charming even though I wasn’t that excited by the books themselves.

Since most people don’t actually read books, I’ll start with a short piece (archived) from William Dalrymple, who is always great to read. This isn’t as in depth as his work in other parts of India but it’s still quite fun:

“I took eight heads in all,” he continued. “But the first was the one I’ll never forget. I was only 28 and when I came safely back, holding it in my hands, I can tell you — I had the pick of all the prettiest girls in our tribe!” His face broke into a broad smile.

Also, the always reliable FiftyTwo.in has the very good, engaging read Accord about Nagaland’s political history, insurgency movements, and peace process, written by Makepeace Sitlhou (nominative determinism northeast India edition), who coincidentally studied journalism at my alma mater Arizona State University.

And now, somehow, we have University of Arizona professor Richard Eaton’s 44 page Conversation to Christianity Among the Nagas : 1876-1971. I've mentioned Eaton's well known works on Deccan history elsewhere on this blog, and I want to reach out to him next time I'm in Arizona, so I felt compelled to read and share this, even though, let's be honest, it sounded boring. It was kinda not boring, though, and it goes beyond the topic of Christianity and acts as a historical account of Nagaland's modernizing and opening up to the outside world. Among the questions it asks and tries to answer are: “How can one explain the uneven pace of conversion through time and space? Why were certain Naga groups attracted to Christianity more than others? And if conversion to Christianity involved a repudiation of so much of Naga culture, why did it occur at all?” 

I learned a lot. The missionary efforts here were of course remarkably successful, but it was the Nagas themselves that did most of the converting, and most of the conversions happened after independence (see the image for the conversion timeline). “A total of only some two dozen American missionaries operated in the Naga Hills between 1876 and 1954, with normally only a handful there at any one time.” Village schools set up by “the Mission,” the only option of education most Nagas had, were a primary form of religious dissemination, and the benefits of western medicine were a major factor in convincing people. 

He also shows how variation in the rate at which different tribes converted is likely partly due the different belief structures of the tribes, as Christianity was better able to map onto some beliefs than others. I only skimmed through these parts and didn’t quite get it (I start to tune out when I hear words like “cosmology,” and I get bored when reading about spirit worlds), but it was interesting nonetheless. A theory given for why Angami Nagas were slow to take up Christianity is that unlike Naga tribes that practiced slash and burn agriculture and were thus migratory and had a more fluid belief system that absorbed influences of other tribes they encountered, the Angamis practiced terraced rice cultivation and thus had “more stable” agriculture and religious systems, making them “more resistant to change.”

There are many interesting stories in here. As the Baptists prohibited alcohol, there were cases of converted men giving up and then going back to Christianity several times so they could enjoy their drink and remain good Christians, in theory. There is brief discussion about the disagreements between the missionaries, who wanted to transform Naga culture, and the British rulers, who merely wanted stability and didn’t want to interfere. And one of my favorite stories was a missionary discussing the time a village elder interrupted his preaching, “saying he wanted us to desist from trying to spread these ideas any further in this country […] His intrusion did not cause us much dismay, however, but rather added to the interest of the people as we resumed speaking.” The Nagas had good reason to resist Christianity beyond just cultural change; converts ceased to work on Sundays.

I probably just told you all the best parts, but I recommend reading it all if you want more on the topic.

As for books, my favorite was the non-fiction Nagaland by Jonathan Glancey. It wasn’t available in any stores in Nagaland, and I was running around too much to wait for it to ship, so I ended up reading it for free on Archive (I could have gotten the Kindle version but though I’m willing to spend excessive amounts of money on books I’m kinda cheap when it comes to digital books, my apologies to the writer).

This is probably the best introduction to Nagaland. It’s a very accessible, entertaining, informative, and opinionated book on the history and culture of the region, going from the early history and traditional cultures to the encounters with the British, WW2, and the conflicts that have plagued the state ever since. I found it to be a light, fast read, and I was never bored and wouldn’t have minded if it were longer, which is unusual for me.

I can see a lot of people getting frustrated with it, though. It spends a lot of time framing Nagaland in the context of “Shangri-La’s” and other tourist destinations that are less mysterious and exotic than their imagined versions. I liked this material, which is personal to the writer and informs his motivations and expectations which are impossible to live up to, but it’s overdone. “Get on with it, already,” I kept saying well into the third chapter, 50+ pages in.

Even after it got into the heart of the matter, it still jumped to other parallel happenings in the world. Did a 250 page book on the entirety of Nagaland need ten full pages of its WW2 chapter devoted to Subhash Chandra Bose? I enjoyed those ten pages and am glad I read them, and they were certainly relevant even if Nagaland plays a very minor role in those ten pages, but it seemed unnecessary. The book’s finale ties back to Bose in a thematically satisfying way, but I’m not sure that all added to the book more than some additional on-the-ground looks at Nagaland could have done. 

I also enjoyed the many portraits of adventurous westerners who came to Nagaland, but I felt like I got to know more about them than any individual Nagas. I did get a sympathetic portrait of Naga nationalism, though, and I felt it was very fair and well reasoned in the portions on the conflict. Despite my quibbles, it moved along quickly, and comparing this to other books and articles I read on Nagaland that covered similar material, this was better written, more engaging, and had more depth. I would read more from the writer, whose main beat is architecture. I was bummed he didn’t write about the awesome traditional architecture of Nagaland.

One extraordinary fact about Nagaland that I learned here and would not have discovered otherwise: “Nagas themselves judge the beauty of a person, or a potential partner, by the shape of their calves, for them the most erotic part of the body.”

And another detail, this one quoting from J.P. Mills, a civil servant who wrote some early 20th century anthropological books on Nagaland that I’m too lazy to read: “It is custom here to set up monoliths by the side of the path in the name of dead men, with a line of small stones at the side representing the various affairs of the heart in which the hero has succeeded in overcoming the scruples of the girl concerned. The best score I saw was 27.”

I wanted more of this stuff. Maybe I should actually read those anthropological books. Here’s the Archive link for The Naked Nagas by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf.

The biggest name in Nagaland’s lit scene is undoubtedly Easterine Kire. Between novels, children’s books, poetry collections, folk stories, and non-fiction she probably has dozens of works, and she is known for incorporating Naga history and folklore into her work. I read two of her novels, two of her folk story collections, and I sampled a non-fiction book. I’ll write about all of that here, in that order. It’s all recommended to some extent.

All of her novels sounded good, though I found it hard to decide what to read. Someone who has read them all should rank them. Someone should also update her Wikipedia. It’s very odd to me that I can’t find a list of her work in the order that it was published. 

I started with Sky is My Father, her first novel and the first ever Naga novel in English (initially published as A Naga Village Remembered, and it’s apparently revised in the newer version). It is set in Khonoma village, today a popular tourist destination, and tells the story of the village’s conflicts with the British, who were based nearby in Kohima. The story begins as a low key tale of village life and later shifts to a textbook-like historical summary. While the material sounded interesting, I found all of its threads to be quite dull, and I stopped reading after 100 pages. I probably should have finished, it was only 150 pages, but I was pretty checked out at that point. The characters aren’t engaging, the story is too simplistic, and for a fiction book it had way too much detail into customs and festivals at the expense of the narrative. I did feel I learned a good amount from reading this, and I like the idea of fictionalizing this material in theory, but while reading it I felt I would have preferred reading an actual anthropology book or an actual history book. A picture book would be ideal. A documentary would be even better. As a novel it didn’t work.

Though this didn’t work for me at all, I wanted to read more from Kire. Thankfully, I liked When the River Sleeps much more. This falls into the folklore inspired half of her work. I couldn’t find enough reviews of her books in general to make any judgment on what her most acclaimed works are, but this seems to be up there, having won a big prize from The Hindu. Some locals I spoke to told me it was her best book. I picked it sort of arbitrarily before knowing any of that, I just liked the description. Oddly, it wasn’t available on Amazon (though you can get the Kindle version) or most of the bookstores I found in Nagaland. I finally found it at the Crossword in Kohima, and I think they had it at Common Room as well.

This is a quick (240 pages, with short chapters around four pages each) quest story rooted in the mythology of the region. It’s a compelling read from the first chapter, and I liked reading a bigger story that organically incorporates spirits and other elements from the short folk tales I’d read. This might be my favorite novel I read from Northeast India, and the only novel I’ve ever liked with the label “magical realism,” probably because unlike other magical realism I’ve read this is just interested in telling its story, rather than making elaborate metaphors for everything.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it from the beginning, given the very dull Sky is my Father. With that said, it didn’t excite me as much throughout. The very simple story, light characterization, and episodic travelogue feel worked for me for the first hundred or so pages, but as it went on I wanted more from it. It was a smooth enough read and I was never tempted to put it down (more than I can say about most books), but after a certain point I never felt very connected to the characters, nor especially curious about where the story would go. And while I appreciated the crisp writing, which was effective and conjured up images well without being overly flowery, I felt the dialogue was repetitive and stilted. And there was a dignified tone to everything, but I felt it was overly sedate and it didn’t fully come alive for me. 

Still, I liked it enough that I’d read more novels from Kire, at least if I were to spend more time in Nagaland (it’s not like there are a ton of other options). I kept thinking this would make a good movie too (perhaps animated), with the right director. It’s very visual and outwardly emotional, without a ton of internal depth. Perfect for the big screen.

More than the novels, I recommend her folk story collections. I got The Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man (I got this at Kohima’s Ilandlo store) as well as Naga Folktales Retold (I don’t see it on Amazon, I got it at the Kohima Crossword). I really liked and would recommend both, though they are different and each has their strengths and weaknesses. I say get whichever you see first, or go with both as I did (or one of her other folk story collections, which I’m not finding on Amazon).

With that said, if I had to pick one it’d probably be Naga Folktales Retold, mainly because it’s cheaper and longer. It has dozens of stories, mostly very short, and very simply written in a kid-friendly way. They range from quick little just-so stories to longer tales of battling tribes and various other Naga legends. I don’t have the book on me, but if I recall correctly there’s a whole section on animals that became husbands (“The Monkey Husband” and etc). 

The Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man is a bit more mature, with around ten stories that are slightly longer and sometimes feel more like short stories. However, while this one started off strong, her ambitions ended up falling really flat for me in the later stories that strayed from the folk story style and went in a more literary and creative direction (which sounds good in theory…). Still, I’d put the top stories here possibly above the top stories in the other collection, though the other collection wins on quantity. So whatever. Both are good. I think she has one or two other folk story collections as well.

(I spotted a number of other folk story collections in Nagaland, not by Kire, perhaps they’re as good, but not everyone is a good writer. One I sampled at a cafe wasn’t as good. At another cafe I read the picture book version of the legend Ukepenuopfu - An Angami Folktale Reimagined by T. Keditsu, illustrated by Alyssa Pachuau, and I thought it was totally delightful. I’d buy it for my niece and nephew if it were available in the U.S.)

Kire also has the non-fiction book Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland, which I think is basically an anthropology book that is more up to date than the colonial era books on the same topic, with a wider range of scholarship and personal experience to draw from (though it probably skips the more perverted details that I mentioned above). I read the first chapter, available in the Kindle sample, which gave an excellent overview of the origins of different Naga tribes. I would read the whole book. I don’t need its descriptions of the flora, fauna, and landscape of Nagaland, nor do I think I’ll ever know individual tribes here well enough to make good use of her sections on the customs of specific tribes, but I suspect it is all very good and I’m sure I would like the history sections and find the sections on contemporary Nagaland valuable.

Another non-fiction book I read was His Majesty’s Headhunters: The Siege Of Kohima That Shaped World History by Mmhonlmo Kikon. This gives a short history of Nagaland with a focus on the coming of the British in the book’s first half and on WW2 in the second half. I liked it, though I won’t say it’s a great book. It can be dry and confusing (I hope you already know the history of Nagaland, Manipur, Myanmar, etc… but don’t worry, I didn’t know much either). It also rambles a lot. I often felt pages could be cut down by a quarter, gaining clarity without losing any meaning. It sometimes felt like a series of blog posts on the subject rather than a very well structured work. Nonetheless, it has a lot of good historical and cultural information, with something interesting on each page. One of my favorite chapters was the short one on the relationship between the Japanese generals Sato and Mutaguchi, though it did feel kind of extraneous to the rest of the narrative, whatever it was. I didn’t mind the lack of focus though, I had fun with it. Only 140 pages, I wish more history books were this short (probably could have been 100 pages, but whatever). There was some great information in the endnotes but I had to stop reading them as there are so many lengthy ones they disrupted the flow of reading too much. I don’t recommend this to most people.

The major Nagaland author I didn’t read is Temsüla Ao. She has a few short story collections, a novel, a memoir, an essay collection, and some poetry. I sampled a few things at a cafe and it seemed good. The non-fiction interested me more than the fiction.

I mentioned above how there are some local publishers. One prominent one was PenThrill, whose books were available at many shops and cafes. There were a few others, and there’s quite a wide range of books available. There’s a lot of poetry. Books about Naga politics. Books about Christianity. Folk story collections. Naga historical action/adventure novels. Not very “local” looking youth romances. Not very “local” looking children’s books in addition to more local ones. I even saw a manga-esque graphic novel. I’m not sure what’s really worthwhile here but it was nice seeing these things. It added to the quirky identity of Nagaland.

I did try reading a few of these “local” books. I didn’t like them. It feels kind of mean to criticize them? I really feel bad criticizing anything, but I feel more at liberty criticizing a critically acclaimed book from a big publisher while I don’t want to pick on the little guy. But anyway. 

I thought The Case of Longti Village by Sentilong Ozukum sounded fun and different from most of the books I saw. “When a strange writing appears mysteriously on the church walls of the otherwise quiet Longti Village, its inhabitants are perturbed by a series of inexplicable events.” I couldn’t find it at any bookstores, but it was free on Kindle Unlimited, so I decided to read it on my wife’s iPad one night while we were in a village with limited internet access. I thought it was well written and enjoyable for what it was, but it was too simple for my tastes, too plot and dialogue driven, and it lacked sufficient local color that could have made it stand out. I decided to stop reading after getting 35% of the way in. I think it’d be good for kids/young adults though, or people who like simple plot driven stuff like this. It kind of reminded me of Satyajit Ray’s horror short stories, also too kiddy for me (it’s kinda funny that that’s my reference point, I guess I just don’t have a good frame of reference here).

On the opposite end of the spectrum was a book called Once Upon a Time in Kohima by Konaei Shongdok. I flipped through it for a few minutes at a bookstore, thought it looked singularly kooky, and bought it. It had more literary ambition than the above-mentioned book and was more interesting with its alternate history plot where Nagaland has independence and there’s some former rebel leader returning to Nagaland after a long stint in prison and a young journalist studying at an advanced utopian YA-novel-esque university in Kohima (I think that’s what’s happening with all of this, I never really figured it out). Unfortunately it was overindulgent and quite clunkily written. I gave up after 50 pages. 

I’ll also share what I found on Nagaland’s cinema, though there isn’t much to discuss and I haven’t personally seen anything. I’ll start with fiction films and then move to documentaries. As far as I can tell there's no real industry here, and there are hardly any cinema halls either.

The young director Theja Rio has some good looking short films that have been going around the festival circuit. I’m very excited to report that the 2019 Konyak language Angh and 2024 Tenyidie language Ade were both shot on 16mm, quite unusual for Indian films today. He has some other shorts that I didn’t find info or trailers for, but I’d like to see his work. I’ve linked to trailers but don’t know where to watch the full shorts. Thankfully, a feature called Angh (with a similar story as the short) is in the works, also shot on 16mm! From the Variety article: In 1960s Nagaland, a proud Konyak chief struggles to protect his dying traditions when an American missionary arrives with promises of aid that threaten his people’s identity. As his wife’s health deteriorates and famine looms, he and his mute son must make an impossible choice between survival and staying true to their ancestral ways. Looking forward to this!

Another very promising film project set in Nagaland is being made by outsiders. The upcoming action-adventure Konyak is to be directed by the gifted cinematographer Pankaj Kumar, known for his Hindi film work, and it will be shot in both Hindi and in the Konyak Naga language (I guess that’s the only way to get a budget for this). I’m looking forward to it, the Konyak version of course, hopefully this actually gets made. I’m expecting a fancier version of those Tanghkul Naga movies I told you about in the Manipur post. 

When I asked people for recommendations, I was told that the Nagamese language Nana: A Tale of Us (trailer, full movie) is the best film from Nagaland. I believe it. It doesn’t excite me but maybe I’ll watch it one day. The people behind the film have a Youtube channel called Dreamz Unlimited, with short comedy videos. I didn’t watch. Here’s an article about them.

Moving to Naga related work outside of Nagaland, Axone looks very good. It’s a well reviewed dramedy about migrants from the northeast and the challenges they face living in Delhi, including complaints about the titular stinky fermented bean paste from Nagaland. The director is half Naga, I believe, and when asked in an interview about his next film, he said: “I've written this epic film, which is set in Nagaland and tells its history of over 50 years. Nagaland has had a very checkered history, from calling for independence from the state of India in 1947 itself, to the fight between the army and the underground, thereafter the main underground groups splintered into a couple of opposing groups and then the problem of drug abuse. Remember that it's close to Burma, Laos and Thailand, and there's this golden triangle, straddling these three countries where 80% of the opium is manufactured. So a lot of drugs come into the North-East very easily.” Hopefully this one gets made!

The Headhunter looks fun too. This is about a Wancho Naga headhunter, from Arunachal, confronting the modern world.

There’s also the Nagaland based second season of the police thriller series Paatal Lok. It looks good. The reviews have been great.

There are numerous documentaries about Nagaland. I hoped to watch some and share about them, but as usual I didn’t actually bother watching the documentaries I found.

I am most eager to watch Pan Nalin’s documentary The Nagas which is probably the best recorded document of the old Naga way of life. The footage looks amazing. I also gotta watch the old Films Division documentary The New Rhythms of Nagaland.

Beyond that, I don’t know. There’s Scratches on Stone, I think about contemporary life and politics in the shadow of the conflict, or something (why do independent filmmakers frequently not seem to want me to know what their films are about?). There’s Last Headhunters of the Nagas, giving what the title promises. Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence is about human rights abuses and sounds depressing, but it was shot by Rajeev Ravi. Japan in Nagaland is about a cosplay festival in the state. There’s a WW2 documentary, too.

And copy and pasted from my music post, on music documentaries: A.R. Rahman produced one called From Headhunting to Beatboxing (as of writing this it’s not available to watch). Songs of the Blue Hills (trailer, full movie) is about folk music, as is Up Down and Sideways (trailer, director interview), specifically about “work songs.” They look good.