In the twentieth century, it is said, the propagation of education will consist not in instructing how to read and write, but in imparting how to unlearn, learn and re-learn. Of course, literacy is just a step in the process of what they call formal education. “Informal education refers to the general social process by which human beings acquire the knowledge and skills needed to function in their culture.”[1]
Our ancestors were educated people. And when the British brought “the light” to them, it was the so-called “formal education” or otherwise called “the western education.” Judged by the glowing accounts left by the British, our ancestors did charm them. The British extolled their simplicity, honesty, truthfulness but the White men could not appreciate the education that nurtured such qualities; they would not differentiate between the education that our ancestors had acquired in the course of life and the education that they brought. On the contrary, our forefathers were all written off as uneducated lots. Our ideas of education thus began from a wrong footing.
There are two important issues:
· Education came from alien culture.
· Education was imparted primarily for religious reasons.
Imaginably, the British must have fascinated our ancestors too. Imagine how the ancestors could have regarded the weapons of destruction and the White men’s physical appearance, just to pick out two aspects.
The coming of the British, we all agree, is a historic event. It was a meeting of two alien cultures (where there was no meeting point). The British had long abandoned simple community living to become a modern state society. They had years of experience in every inconceivable ways of life – arts, philosophy, war, crime, corruption. Our ancestors must have indulged in some of these things, but our history is as far back as forefathers’ memory could take us. The sum of our knowledge was, as it were, merely stored in the folklore.
The contact between the two may be compared to an encounter between a sophisticated lady informed by years and number of amorous experiences and a young man with his “first moustache” in his first passion. Both are enamoured, the lady because of the young man’s simplicity and the young man because of her sophisticated wisdom. But such relationships are likely to fail. And so does John Keats dramatize in his poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” She could fall out of love without much emotional ado, but for the young man she could remain as the most enchanting figure in his memory.
In a sense, we are like the young man still ailing from the internalized enchantment with everything that pertains to the West, coupled with a self-defeating attitude. The situation bears a close similarity with what the Algerians are said to have experienced as described by Franz Fanon in Black Skin and White Mask. The British, it is needless to point out, had long erased the memory of such contact; at best, the memory of the “affair” is documented in some dingy volumes in some libraries.
These days, the modes of West-obsession are no longer ostentatious, more internalized than open, so to speak. Most flashily, it may be noticed in the desire to imitate western life-styles. Sometimes, it takes the form of what Chinua Achebe calls “Cargo Dream” (which is believed to be common among the post-colonial countries), i.e., dreaming that the West may someday bring cargoes full of goodies and save us from our backwardness. It seems to me, we no longer believe that freedom would come from ourselves but through western intervention – a “Cargo Dream.” Sometimes, it may manifest in such assumption as considering education obtained from outside Manipur as more desirable. In fact, the further one moves from Manipur, the more trustworthy and reliable he becomes. Otherwise, it makes little sense why we should be sending millions of rupees every month to our sons and daughters while we are reeling under poverty. In a subterranean mode, it may take the form of psychologically moulding our minds into entertaining complacent belief that the Underground would bring us real development. (Perhaps, it’s this belief that tricks us into taking such a long while to realize that the Underground are becoming the actual hurdle towards our development.) It may also take the form of entertaining such hope as to wait for the day when Christianity/Christ would bring us the times of happiness. However, that promised happiness seems more like in the next world than in this life. But we also believe in the dictum – “God helps to those who help themselves.” It’s not difficult to see then why the “quick-rich” attitude is so insidiously entrenched in our mindsets. Hard-work, saving pennies to build an “empire” is certainly not in our sense of dignity of labour. Most of us seem to demand, at least “unconsciously”: if richness has to come let it be here and right now – let the pleasurable times be instantaneous like the cargo full of goodies or the day of independence from India/Myanmar or from all worldly-sufferings.
To come back to the analogy of the femme fatale and the young man, imagine how damaging would be the effect on the young man if the lady has a design on him, if she, convinced of her superiority in every ways, attempts to recast him in her image irrespective of the young man’s feelings, beliefs, outlooks. A little background may help us better appreciate the detrimental effects.
From the “primitive society,” as said, the British had moved to a modern state hundreds years back. The shift to a “civilized,” modern society is believed to be attended by an important change of humans’ attitude towards the world around them – from viewing nature as animated with lives (that is, in terms of relation) to considering nature as an object (or as something to be experienced). With the advancement of science and technology, the West had been progressively successful in controlling nature. Nature became an object meant for humans to experience and to serve their interests. As early as in the eighteenth century, Rousseau perceives the danger of this notion and advocates the concept of what he calls “Noble Savage.” Spurred by such ideas, the Romantic poets began to find akin spirit in Spinoza’s idea of humans as a part of nature. However, their voices were drowned in the frenzy of progress intended to control nature; eventually some human beings become, like nature, objects meant to be controlled and meant to serve other humans. The revolutionary cry, “All men are equal” was applicable to White men alone, not even to their womenfolk for a long time. The American women, for instance, gained the right to vote as late as in 1920. The right to vote exists only in name for the African men and women until the Voting Right Act of 1965. In the words of George Orwell: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.”
The land that spreads the Words of God also disseminates the idea that the Whites are superior to coloured peoples. “Great Britain was the mightiest superpower in the world and its empire was built on the backs of slaves” and on the exploitation of the wealth of other nations. By sponging the water of the Ganga, the British emptied into the Thames. The Ganga was left dried and bleeding. “By the late eighteenth century, over eleven millions African men, women and children had been taken from Africa to be used as slaves …”[2] Common signboard written on the entrance of bars, restaurants, hotel, etc.: “Chinese and Dogs are Not Allowed” and so were Indian, Japanese, Negroes, in fact, any kind of people except the Whites. In other words, the Chinese and dogs are in the same category – both are lowly animals. Gandhiji was thrown out of a moving train just because he was a coloured man. Gandhi was rich enough to afford a first class ticket, but the White men assumed that they alone should occupy the first class seats. Until the middle of twentieth century, there were separate schools for the black and the white people. The assumption is simply this: the very presence of a black desecrates the sanctity of the institution, the place, or whatever.
The lands that spread the ideas of equality, fraternity, universal love, human dignity also witnessed two world wars that swept across the entire world. The human casualties speaks for itself the unspeakable inhumanity perpetrated in the wars. In the World War first, more than 10 million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. In the WWII, three-fourths of the world’s population (about 1.7 billion) took part. The human cost is estimated at 55 million dead—25 million in the military and 30 million civilians. The two atom bombs killed about 240,000 people according to Japanese estimate. Of course, US put the number of killed or missing at 100,000 to 110,000. About 5.6 to 5.9 million Jews were simply exterminated in the holocaust.[3] Their only crime was simply they were Jews.
Of course, one cannot help but appreciate the courage and the passion of the western pioneers who spread Christianity even to the peoples in the remotest parts of the world. However, it is also worthwhile to note that education came to us from the culture that preached love but killed, that proclaimed equality but enslaved.
To the British the Naga was just an ethnic group among hundreds of other groups in different parts of the world. That is to say, they never accorded the Naga any kind of special status. Some regarded the Nagas as “fine, stalwart race” (Rowney 99), but on the whole “cunning, vindictive and treacherous” (Mills 114); “snake-like in their habits” (Dalton 400); “feeble” who cannot aspire honour in the European sense, that is, “to court fame or victory in contempt of danger and death” (Robinson 539); with no religion but had “‘confused and faint ideas’ of divine power”; in short, “savages,” “a very uncivilized race … hideously wild” (Butler 515) or “wild uncivilized tribes” (Mills 284).[4] Henry Balfour wrote in his foreword to J. P. Mills’ The Ao Nagas:
My main point is that the Nagas, with their fine physique, intelligence, and considerable potentialities, are worth preserving and are capable of improvement if a process of gradual successive changes be adopted, and if they are allowed to absorb the ideas of higher culture in small doses whose effects may be cumulative (xii-xiii).[5]
In other words, Nagas are “worth preserving” like specimens in museums, and if required doses of “the ideas of higher culture” are injected, Nagas have the potentialities to progress (and perhaps become like white men ultimately). The Nagas were no more than a “specimen,” or an “object.” And the British largely succeeded in having us internalized the idea that development could only come not from within us but from outside. If Nagas have “intelligence, and considerable potentialities,” for God’s sake, they do have the power to improve by themselves. Well, introducing “the ideas of higher culture” (whatever it means) or simply knowledge from outside world would greatly help. Our life could have been quite different had the “medication” of “the ideas of higher culture” been administered as one would to humans and not to “specimens” or dogs.
The value of education was felt much later when few of the Christian converts, owing to their acquirement of little western education, became government officers and in course of time, leaders in every fields. It was perhaps when the idea of the West as an ideal took a firm form of idealized father figure, a shadow and an illusion. Since it is an ideal, we can never hope to attain it but only imitate its nature and be fascinated by it.
Education, as said, was introduced primarily to facilitate the proselytizing project. Since then education is inseparably associated with religion. Richard Haleng lucidly expresses the confusion: “The conversion of the Nagas into Christianity was the greatest revolution in the Naga history, which is more significant and important than British colonialism. It is through Christianization that schools and their institutions sprang up” (26). First, the British colonialism was not only important but also significant. However, secondly, the conversion to Christianity is far more significant; in fact, it is “the greatest revolution in the Naga history.” Perhaps, as an afterthought, Christianization is “the greatest revolution” because it initiates educational institutions. To consider British colonialism “significant and important” is atrociously confusing. Perhaps, Haleng does not understand the politics of colonialism, or he is so blinded by the desire to imitate the West. The phenomenon was once common among the educated peoples of the erstwhile colonial countries. Even Gandhi confesses of how he tries to become like an English gentleman.
We have a common expression: the British brought the “light” of Christianity and education to the Naga. It is interesting (rather, isn’t it pitiable?) to note that we are still using the exact parlance, which the West used to justify their exploitations of other peoples, that is, to bring the “light” of civilization to the barbarous Africans or Asians. Perhaps, it is no more relevant to ask if it is education that brings the “light” than to ask if it is the conversion to Christianity. However, one cannot help but wonder what brought the “light” to other peoples, the mainland Indians, for instance, or the Manipuris (who are much closer to us) even if they remained Hindus. If it is not for the fact that we are Christians, as far as I am concerned, they are at “higher level” in every field despite their stubbornness in holding on to their religion. We can hardly match up to them in terms of wealth, education, science and technology, arts and philosophy, I think, the list can go on interminably. If there were no ST reservation, to take an obvious example, more than 90 per cent of the Nagas would never have made it to the universities and the central government jobs.
The effects of the ways in which the missionaries employed in their proselytizing effort are manifested in many ways. There are some important methods of nineteenth century and the early twentieth century method of proselytization and homily:
- First, instilling fear into the minds of the converts (this is vividly depicted in James Joyce’s A Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist.)
- Second, elevating and differentiating them as the people of God, or simply as those who are saved.
- Third, renouncing all the ways that could be associated with the former lives of the converts.
In their passion and enthusiasm, the early missionaries often carried the methods too far. To the misfortune of the natives, besides the modus operandi, the missionaries carried with them baggage of prejudiced notions, which doubly fired up their passion in renouncing the culture of the natives.
Like the West-crazy attitude, the effects are rather embedded than explicit; the effects are highly expressive though. When I was young, elders used to chastise me by invoking the vivid picture of the suffering in hell. “Don’t cry, if you don’t want to burn in hell,” they would say. I used to be silenced immediately. But it seems such threats are not as effective as it used to be. Today it rather takes the form of turning back on our culture. It would not come as a big surprise if one day we awake to find our folklore – folkdance, folksong, folktale, folk-games – vanished or corrupted to the extend of rendering our folk arts and literature worthless (in terms of relating to our past.)
Or it may have taken the form of praising Nagalim as a blessed land when actually we have little to brag about, or to exalt ourselves as God-chosen people like the Jews. Underground leaders take pride in drawing parallel of our struggle to that of the Jews struggle for Canaan thereby identifying themselves with Moses or Joshua while we, the Naga, are the chosen people. Well, I am not sure about that. Our Canaan seems to me not quite promising. In Feb. 1999, about forty years after, Fidel Castro made a speech at the University of Venezuela, Caracas. Castro said, “It would not occur to us today to tell anyone: ‘Make a revolution like ours’” because the most transcendental thing that happened in forty years is that “the world has changed.” “It is time,” Castro asserts, “to fight with ideas, to disseminate ideas” for “A revolution can only be born from culture and ideas” (69).[6] I hope, some day we will have a leader of Castro’s caliber who would understand the reality, the change of time and act according to “the spirit of the time” and who would be capable of resisting India not only physically but also ideologically as Castro has been doing against the most powerful nation in the world, the America.
“Forsake your old ways” is yet another still a familiar set phrase among the preachers. These old ways include traditional feasts, rice beer, traditional attires, ornaments, haircuts, in fact, all ways of life that were once associated with our tradition, our culture. The missionaries, for instance, denounced rice beer because rice beer was an important, if not the most significant, part of our life. To these days, alcohol consumption is identified with the ways of the heathens. Alcohol was, and it still is, the most important beverage drink for the White everywhere in the world. In the words of Fürer-Haimendorf, “what wine is to the Italian and whisky to the Scotsman, rice-beer is to the Naga” (48).[7] He elaborates the issue:
Drinkers of rice-beer, the Baptists teach, will burn in hell fire for ever, and the Naga not knowing that since the oldest times wine and beer have been drunk throughout Christendom, eschews his cherished national drink (48).
Social prestige, as Fürer-Haimendorf said, was gained not merely by possessing wealth but by “spending it for the benefit of the community” and thus enabled “smooth redistribution of perishable food” (47). Once Feast of Merit was forbidden, rich people tend to hoard their wealth,
With the community spirit broken, individualism begins to assert itself, and the Western idea of pride in the possession of goods, fostered probably quite unconsciously by the missionaries, replaces the [Naga’s] traditional pride in the lavish expenditure of his wealth.
Fürer-Haimendorf discerns the deleterious consequences that were being perpetrated to the Nagas by having them denounced their traditional practices. He points out few important points. First, an economic issue: the converts were obliged to wear shorts, shirts, blouses, drink tea (“greatly inferior in nutritive value” than rice-beer), sugar and other household goods. The Mission provided them; but since they did not set up any industries or introduce improved agricultural practices, when the Mission abandoned the Nagas, the Nagas were left with a taste for foreign goods but without any means to procure them and without any alternatives other than to fall back again on their traditional methods. Here is perhaps the beginning of imagining the West as the ideal. Second, an artistic issue: churches were built without employing any traditional artistry. And “there is neither incentive nor a scope for the Naga sculptor” (50) or no fresh scope was introduced. Third, a general issue: “Seeing his own customs condemned by the missionaries, he [Nagas] learnt to despise his own tribe and cultural inheritance” (49).
We wonder with Verrier Elwin why colourful Naga dresses, or for that matter, folkdance, folk-arts, folksong, could not be used for the glory of God. “Yet one would think that with little trouble an institution of an essentially social and economic character could have been remodeled so as to be compatible with Christian tenets. Were such adjustments impossible, Europe would have long lost its folk festivals and the Christmas tree would long ago have been condemned as a pagan symbol” (Fürer-Haimendorf 48).[8]
We need not condemn the British for forsaking us, or the missionaries for demolishing our customs. We needed outside help, for ignorance of the outside world had narrowed and stunted our ancestors’ world. We thank the British for bringing western education and the religion. But it is more than hundred years since the “lights” were shown to us. Let the “lights” guide us to some suitable changes to take us to a new world. As Fidel Castro said, Ideas shall be its basic weapons. An idea could be this: that real change will come from within us is something we need to learn and re-learn from our ancestors. To do this, in the first place, we might as well have to unlearn what was taught to us.
Perhaps we might begin by separating religion from education. Since it is ingrained deep in our psyche, it could be exceedingly hard. For identifying education with religion had begun from the moments of their births. Just as the converts, under the stern eyes of the missionaries, identified their former ways of life with paganism, the supposedly “pagans” identified education with Christianity. That is to say, for the “pagans” going to school was as good as submitting to the new religion, which many of our proud, defiant great grand parents refused to do. For the missionaries came, not to spread education, but to preach different religion, different ways of life and asked to renounce everything that our ancestors valued, believed in, everything that they held dearly for generations; and thus put their whole faith to uncertainty, ambiguity, distrust, insecurity. Certainly, we cannot feel or experience the anguish of “losing one’s religion” (unless some powerful external force, say, the Indian government force us to adopt Hinduism). Anyway, it might help us to imagine such situation.
If we succeed in separating the “lights” (Christianity and education), we might also achieve in isolating religion from politics; perhaps, then, TBL and TBCA differences could never have arisen in the first place; then, we might better understand the reasons why Rev. Michael Scott, a member of the Peace Mission, quoted a renown remark of Ghana’s President Kwame Nkruma “which is inscribed outside the Assembly Hall: ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all things shall be added unto you.’”[9]
One significant factor that differentiates us from the “Mayang” is our sense of community living. It was the very fabric of our culture for, above other things, it held our culture intact. What we have now seems to me a vestige of the earlier form, yet it is strong enough to keep us together. If we are convinced that sense of community living is a valuable aspect of our society, it might do us considerable good if we relearn it from our ancestors: they seemed to have understood a desirable purpose of life that we should live together and live together well. That our ancestors live in “constant fear” because they were at “constant war” is a picture projected by the British to justify their rule. Arguably, it was the advent of the British that converted headhunting from a custom to warfare. The sense of community living has been instrumental in maintaining equality among us. Equality most essentially in material possession and that made all the difference. Protection of the equality in wealth and rights enable us to have shared outlook, purpose, manners, etc. However, beginning with the British contact, the sense of community living has been slowly disintegrating and alarmingly in a cumulative process. To understand and safeguard this “sense,” therefore, we must go back to the days of the British and beyond. Only then we may be able to relearn, so to say, redefine the traditional sense of community living according to the needs of our times.
[1] Gutek, Gerald L. “History of Education.” DVD. Microsoft Encarta Reference Library, 2004.
[2] Amazing Grace. Dir. Michael Apted. Edit. Rick Shane A.C.E. written by Steven Knight. MMVI Walden Media, n.p.
[3] Ziemke, Earl F. “Second World War.” DVD. Microsoft Encarta Reference Library, 2004.
[6] Castro, Fidel. On Imperialist Globalization. New Delhi: Leftword Books. 1999.
[8] “As early as the 17th century, Germans had transformed this pagan symbol of fertility into a Christian symbol of rebirth. According to legend, the Christmas tree tradition began with the founder of German Protestantism, Martin Luther. While walking through the forest on Christmas Eve, Luther was so moved by the beauty of the starlit fir trees that he brought one indoors and decorated it with candles to remind his children of God’s creation. In 1841 Prince Albert of Germany gave his wife, Queen Victoria of England, a gift of a Christmas tree. This was reputedly the first Christmas tree in England, but the custom spread quickly” (Restad, Penne. “Christmas.” DVD. Microsoft Encarta Reference Library, 2004.).
[9] Ngareophung, Ng. Legacy of Suisa. Ukhrul, 1976. p. 22.
