The Remaking of Custom in the Naga Hills

Abstract

The British search for the custom within tribes to reproduce their knowledge which could be used for the imperial expansion in the Naga Hills of North East India. Nagas practiced oral tradition, therefore the colonial court judgment was based on how it understood what the litigants testified orally in the court without any prior documented directives. This way customary tradition of the people was interpreted back to the people according to how the court identified and understood what was customary. This strategically established symbolic authority, namely, favouring of ‘custom’ in the dispensation of justice. In addition to the British expansionist mission, there was also a very strong contender in the form of American Baptist Missionaries in the Naga Hills. Village life underwent a huge change as the Missionaries introduced the system of separating the village communities into the ancient ones and the converts khels (colony/block), which further altered the space for the operation of custom. In the process, the significant differences lasted as long as the imperial rule in the Naga Hills as is evident from many cases that read ancients/heathens v Christians lodged in the colonial courts in the Naga Hills.