Have You Accepted Religion or Are You a Rice Beer Drinker?

Have You Accepted Religion or Are You a Rice Beer Drinker?
Christianity and Modernization of Naga Tribes in Colonial India

Father Abraham Lotha, Nagaland. Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Nagaland prides itself as a Christian state in India. What accounts for the success of Christianity in Nagaland in a predominantly Hindu India? In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian missionaries and the British colonial government developed a collaborative relationship in the project for modernity in colonial India. Conversion to modernity was the locus where colonial control and salvation of souls converged. Some of the best examples of this collaboration between the colonial government and the missionaries in the project for modernity in India were seen in their encounters with the tribals. In this talk, I will use the Naga people in Northeast India as an example to illustrate the collaboration between the missionaries and the colonial government in the common project for conversion to modernity. In the early part of their encounter with the Nagas, the colonial military officers asked the help of the missionaries to ‘civilize’ the Nagas; later on, the colonial administrator-anthropologists accused the missionaries of destroying Naga culture. Even so they reinforced each other’s objectives.