Her immediate reaction was “How can you say that you are not a Naga?” She was politically right in her retort though my hypothetical question was not dismissed there and then. It did pick up some discussion, but only to put us and also our audience into a very unsettling and disturbing situation. I was grappling with the issue of my Naga Identity then. Not that I doubted my Naga identity but that I was struggling to find some grounds on the basis of which various Naga tribal groups have come together to assert our unique identity and our rights to freedom of self-determination. My own question continues to dog me until at certain point in time I decided to write out my thoughts. Today I feel that I made a little improvement though many more questions came about in the process. I am convinced that my Naga identity, above all other considerations, is primarily a political identity. For some, this is obvious but for me, it was different. I want to share some of the questions with which I have wrestled for quite sometime.

Suppose I were to be born and brought up outside my Naga homeland, unable to pick up my mother tongue, have no attachment to any Naga traditional or cultural values, will I be a considered a Naga? What if one of my parents is not a Naga? Perhaps with some reservation some may still be willing to grant me a Naga identity. But my problem goes further. Suppose all the Nagas en masse declare that henceforth we will not be called as Nagas but something else (on the ground that the very word ‘Naga” is not from our native language though I have heard of a native version somewhere from a friend), what will happen to my Naga identity? More, on what basis will the new identity of the people be constructed? Still pushing the doubt further, suppose all the Nagas were to forget our tribal languages, traditions and cultures and have adopted altogether new cultures and worldviews, then what will happen to our common identity, the Naga identity? Will we still call ourselves Nagas? What kind of meaning does the term ‘Naga’ connotes to the Nagas anyway? Do all the people presently identified as or claimed to be Nagas share similar perception towards the term ‘Naga?’ In other words, do all the Naga groups share the same sense of belongingness? What about those fellow Nagas who live in the present Myanmar or in the Indian states other than Nagaland? What will happen if the Bodos or the Mizos claim that they are also Nagas or vice versa. What will be the fate of our identity if, for instance, the Japanese or the Thais or the Chinese claim that the Nagas are their descendents and thus Nagas are also Japanese or Thais or Chinese? Is there any way out, that is, is there any basis or criteria to credit or discredit such a claim? After considering all these questions, I realized that neither race nor language nor place nor religion nor culture is enough to provide a criterion to decide my Naga Identity. Of course, I was not seriously considering the politics of my Naga identity then. I will now turn my attention to the political nature of my Naga identity.

“Is it possible to talk about my Naga identity without politics?” My answer is simple and straight – “No!” The moment I strip off politics from my Naga identity, I’ve lost my Naga identity. Perhaps, I may be an individual member of some group; for instance, a linguistic community, or a clan, or a village but definitely not a member of the Naga ethnic group. For out of politics and blood was born Naga identity. It is not so much about racial identity neither is it about linguistic or religious identity; so much less about the exotic terminologies of “nakedness” or “snakeness,” or of “pierced ears” or “mountainous folks” that have gone into the myth making of our ‘projected’ Naga identity. What I will call here, for convenience, as “others” or “outsiders” who in the opinion of some writers “narrated” us into existence is not what the Nagas were or are or will be. Of course, I don’t deny that others did their part to prepare the stage for our Naga identity to conceive and to be recognized. Without the others, as a matter of political fact, there can be neither Naga politics nor Naga identity. However, this is a question of a different order. But this is a very crucial point which I dare not ignore. For that matter, I will be grappling with this point again and again as I narrate the woes and wows of my Naga identity.

I am not Japanese

“Excuse me, are you from Japan?”

I hope Dr. Easterine Iralu will not mind for quoting her here. I must acknowledge that reading her poem – “Are you from Japan?” – which is made available to the Kuknalim readers, has in a big way inspired me to reflect and write on the present topic again. Today quite a sizable number of Nagas, the biggest portion of which is the group of knowledge seekers and bread earners, are scattered in different parts of India and abroad. Our initial encounter with the other people in India is often of this nature (we would be repeatedly asked): “Where are you from?” “Japan?” “Nepal?” “Korea?” “China?” “Thailand” and the list goes on. On learning that we are from Nagaland, some would ignorantly remark, “Where is that?” But some would curiously ask: “How is the ‘terrorist’ activity there?” Some are more sarcastic and pessimistic: “Do you think Nagas would survive on your own? What do you have to sustain yourself? Why are you asking for independence?” Still, to some, we are nothing but tribals who are simply surviving through the saving grace of the reservation policies. Only a handful of persons would sincerely try to understand our situation, empathize with us and also accept us to be part of the diverse Indian society. Somehow between the lines, it is visible in the expressions and in the attitudes of such people that we are a group of people who do not fit into the image of Indian identity. Not surprisingly it is on the basis of our interactions with various groups of Indian people, and also with other people at the global level, that the contemporary Nagas are continuously creating and recreating our Naga identity.

In the past, successive Delhi governments had resorted to various forms of colonial policies to deal with the Naga political question. The big mistake was their decision to sent armies to literally teach us some “imperial” lessons in our own homeland. They forgot that Nagas’ love for freedom constitutes part of their lifestyle, a question that cannot be settled by the use of force at any cost. Even the mighty British Colonial Raj realized the futility of attempting to subjugate the warring Nagas tribes. The Delhi Government learnt nothing in this regard from their former colonial master. The forceful occupation of the Indian armies backed by several draconian laws that led to a long history of untold Indo-Naga wars painted a black picture of the Indian image in the minds of the Nagas. It only resulted in bringing the various Naga groups closer and the Naga movement for freedom received a great momentum. The Nagas were forced to opt for armed struggle. What happened in the course of time to the Nagas has become part of our living history, too debasing and too dehumanizing to be recalled or retold in detail here. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the common struggles and pains and sufferings have become not only part of our history but more significantly, they have become part of our Naga identity today – that is, they have become associated with the social and political consciousness of our Naga identity by and large. Worse, the Nagas began to see the ‘Indians’ with nothing less than utter hatred, bitterness, distrust, shame, guilt, jealousy, remorse, etc. The only Indians most Nagas have seen and encountered in the past were the Indian armies. Many who live in the interior villages and greatly suffered in the hands of the armed forces and who never got the opportunity to see the other proud and honorable Indian citizens still identify Indian identity with the living image of those brutal picture of the cruel soldiers. When I go to a village, every home has some tragic story to share about their encounters with the armies. Let me tell one such story that happened to my tribe and which has been recounted by Kaka Iralu in his book “Nagaland and India: The Blood and the Tears” – out of the 64 Chakhesang villages that existed in those days (1960s), 60 villages were burnt during the army operation and one particular village, Porba, was razed to the ground 14 times in a single year. This is unforgettable. Being an oral society, such stories are narrated among the Naga folks again and again. I grew up hearing such stories. And over the years, this has accumulated into constructing a very tyrannical and cynical image of Indian identity among rural folks. Even today, to refer to, or to call someone “Indian,” for them, is to mean a debasing thing, perhaps with the same force as the term tribal is to some “orthodox” Indians. Of course, much has changed today. But it requires another essay to address the issues and problems of the changes that have come to grip the contemporary Naga society and Naga politics in the Indian context.

The point to note from the above discussions is this: with the contact of others or outsiders, the tribal differences gradually submerged and the sublime commonalities got manifested spontaneously. From one level, others have been constructing and imposing an identity for the Nagas, and at another level, the Nagas are realizing more and more that indeed the Nagas are different from the other groups of people. Thus, differentiating and dissociating from other sets (groups) of people enabled the Nagas to adopt a common set where they can become members of that set. The construction or rather acceptance of this identity, a Naga set, became almost inevitable as the differences with the other groups of people were increasingly becoming visible and the possibility of the Nagas either wanting to become a member of any of these groups or the other groups extending their core membership to the Nagas was almost ruled out. The others, in the meantime, contributed in this task of constructing the Naga identity by repeatedly pointing out that ‘the Nagas are a different lot of people having the following synonyms: head-hunters, savage people, naked people, beef eaters, pork-eaters, primitive, uncivilized, tribals, bloodthirsty people, rebels, terrorists, secessionists, etc.’ Having to share all these common perception of others – be it connoting a sense of shame or pride, defeats or triumphs, sympathy or apathy – nurtured and strengthened the feeling of being a Naga or Naganess. In short, contacts, conflicts and interactions with others of different kinds gave us the present Naga identity. Max Weber writes, “In our sense, ethnic membership does not constitute the group; it only felicitates group formation of any kind, particularly in political sphere. On the other hand, it is primarily the political community, no matter how artificially organized that inspires the belief in common ethnicity.” This seems to shows that there exists a strong relation between Ethnic identity and political identity. Being an ethnic group, Naga identity came about largely as a counter-product of Indian nationalism, which is understood by the Nagas as an act of Indian imperialism. While on other hand, the desire of the various Naga groups to live together, free from any kind of external control as has been in the past, resulted in the consciousness and subsequent construction of the Naga identity. This is my story. This is my Naga identity.

Every time I try to make a sense of our Naga culture, an inexplicable sense of procrastination somehow takes the better of me. Until now, I have kept myself from plunging into it. There appears to be some kind of ‘no trespass’ signboard attached to it, some kind of uncertainty or uneasiness about it, the kind that is perhaps normally associated with unpleasant discovery or realization. Some truths are not always a delightful thing to discover after all. Often certain truths are found to be covered with layers and layers of narratives, narratives involving lies and deceptions as well.

Such narratives are a product of culture and then go on to become part of culture itself. At times, they symbolize human intelligence and creativity. Perhaps, we have learnt it from our long history of survival games of life. But again, every once in a while, when some persons of uncommon intelligence and commitment probe deep into history and culture, they come up with insights to teach us how we can discern truth from falsehood, right from wrong and good from evil. They help us to understand who and where we are and where we are heading.

I am convinced that the time is also ripe enough for Nagas to start such a process of serious introspection into our culture. There have been sporadic attempts by few concerned individuals. But what we need is a sustained and concerted effort, not flirtatious attempts. Some truths are hard to unearth and more difficult to communicate. Here I write this with no pretension of having discovered some truths to talk about. Rather I write this with dual intentions: to invite every reader to give a thought about it and to invite those with more experience in this field to contribute more.

Today culture has become such a pervasive concept in the academic world. It is as broad as a worldview and as specific as a hairstyle. It is not everyone’s piece of cake to define it. Even giant thinker is found to falter and so more experienced scholars prefer to hint rather than to fix its definition. Sometimes, even after reading a whole book on culture, we tend to despair as it does more to problematize than to illuminate. Such is the nature of culture – inevitable and yet indefinable. Despite this paradoxical nature, culture is not something mysterious or incomprehensible. We all understand our culture and we live by it accordingly. Perhaps, one reason why culture is so illusive of definition is that it is always in a flux.  Another reason could be that no culture is ever pure and homogenous.

One common point that most Naga writers tend to do is clubbing together the ideas of tradition and culture. For this reason perhaps, I notice that they are at a loss whether or not to glorify our culture. They oscillate their views between rejection and acceptance. It is true that there is no sacrosanct distinction between the two. However, some subtle differences may be brought out. Fort instance, tradition is resistant to change but culture is open to change.  Let me put it this way: in the linear scale of time, while culture acts as the meeting point of one’s practice with the practices of others in the present, at the other end of the time scale lies tradition, the ancestral practices which were largely unaffected by the practices of others.

Culture can be created in the process of interaction with the environment. Tradition is better understood as the preservation of past beliefs and practices. A tradition tends to define our ethnic identity but culture helps to co-exist with others in the larger context. Tradition is more static and rigid but culture is more creative and dynamic. Tradition can be very selective, compromising only of those beliefs and practices which are deemed to be good and bear significant meanings in life. They are normally stated in the form ‘It is taboo to do ‘X’ or not to do ‘X.’ Some elements of sacredness and normativity are attached to it. Comparatively, culture has a loose mixture of both good and bad practices and thus commands less normative force.

A cultural crisis normally comes about by virtue of there being a meeting point however. Inability to communicate effectively with others at the meeting point creates a crisis. And that is precisely what we Nagas are facing today.  There are too many meeting points; each seems to be promising a way of life that is better. Elders are unsure of how to educate and inculcate values in their young ones and young ones are equally perplexed as whether or not to look back to learn from tradition when modernity demands that we ‘let go off the past.’ In such a situation, when social life fails to be regulated or guided by a well defined set of norms and values, both individual and social lives naturally degenerate. This results in confusion of all sorts – moral, social, and political.

A more radical culture from outside is here to confront us again – post-modern culture. The culture of post-modernism is such that the very idea of ‘culture’ is venerated as the ‘final’ arbiter of every human experience. This notion of culture is neither continuity nor respecter of the past (tradition). It is the ‘ultimate’ definer of meanings and values. It has cut the wings and tongues of any notion of absolutism or objectivity; truth for instance can neither speak for itself nor fly anymore above our ‘experience.’ We no longer discover truth. We either invent it or engineer it. The implication is that no one has the monopoly of truth; every one can create his or her own truth. This is reminiscent of a phrase which one of my (late) professors fondly used to cite: ‘I am the principal of this school. What I don’t know is not knowledge.’ Of course, the difference in the present time is that every one is a principal.

How about juxtaposing the above idea of post-modern culture to our received tradition and culture? The above idea will be found appalling to both church leaders and conservative elders alike. But that is what more and more of the younger Naga generation will be learning, if not in the institution of formal learning, then from the mass media that have come to invade and pervade our society today. Interestingly, in the tug of war between the younger and the older folks, the latter seems to be fighting a losing battle. This has subtle but serious ramifications. For instance, with the decline of traditional values, the influence of elders is becoming very minimal, even annoying at times.

Let me illustrate the above point with my personal observation. I have come across some elders who never hesitate to point, “You youngsters care nothing about our tradition-and-culture” and sometimes some others, who in a nostalgic and regretful tone, express, “We are forgetting all our tradition-and-culture.” But the hard fact of life is that mere statement of ‘what is’ or ‘what ought to be – a wish’ hardly brings about positive change. One has to put an effort. Often, as if a rule, one has to be the change one wants to see in others. This is sadly found direly wanting in us – both young and old alike. If our elders and leaders allege that we don’t have enough young, daring Esthers in our society today to take risk or initiative to save our past and our identity, so also we don’t have enough of elderly Mordecai who dared to rebuke and challenge and inspire the younger generation of Esther. I seldom see an uncle or an aunty, or parents spending time with children teaching folk songs or telling them folk tales. For a long time, I have not seen a Naga leader (elders included) dressed in traditional attires or singing a folk song with a motive to inspire or to educate the younger generation, except occasionally during the festivals. Their lifestyle is hardly consistent.

Not long ago, I read an article in a newspaper written by a young couple. It was about the story of their struggle and contentment in relation with their son who was born with certain infirmity. The boy is unable to compete and win any medal but the parents confessed, hopefully candidly, that they are only so happy and proud that their boy is growing up with the attitude of self acceptance and self confidence under their loving care. To the increasingly selfish and competitive world, he may appear to be a born loser but to the parents, he is their beloved champion, their joy, their hope and their achievement. The boy gives meaning to their lives as parents. This is what I call ‘parenting.’ Parenting does not mean only looking after the most promising or potential children. Among others, it also means owning and nurturing even the least capable ones with a sense of pride, to inculcate in them a worthy self esteem as well. It is both believing in and bringing out the best from a person.

How are we ‘parenting’ our culture? This is the issue at hand. We have inherited a lot of traditional and cultural heritage from our ancestors. But sadly, we are apparently losing them while looking out at the outside world either to imitate or to learn. Indeed, we have been watching the ever restless and imposing foreign cultures for too long, like an innocent boy glued to TV with amusement and amazement. We are not doing enough either to understand what is coming from outside or what we have inherited from our ancestors. The outcome is simply threatening, if not, devastating.

While not denying the merit of embracing various aspects of modern and foreign cultures, we should not give a step-motherly treatment to our ancestral culture and tradition which gave us our present ‘Naga identity.’ I am not here to advocate the doctrine of “Back to Vedas” type. Partly, I am trying to remind ourselves how hypocritical and how inauthentic we have become as an ethnic group of people claiming to be having a unique identity. Interestingly we have argued our case for national aspiration in the light of this presupposition. It is true that we cannot live in the present world with the entire baggage of the things of the past. It is also true that in so many aspects, our former belief systems and practices were enslaving and non-progressive and that, on the contrary, some of the promises of modern culture are quite liberating and progressive. However, all this does not in any manner give us the reason or the right to denounce our past or ill-treat our culture. We need to foster motivation for what I term here as ‘parenting culture.’

In the event of cultural confusion, a society usually witnesses a drastic decadence of moral standard. The moral degradation of our contemporary Naga society needs no further explication or explanation. The other day I was so distressed to read the news of four young men who gang raped a pregnant mother. The many expressions of contempt and desperation for that unforgettable act do little to cheer me up. They all seem to reflect our present cultural crisis. It is a fact of history that moral decline is intricately connected to the decline of even mighty empires and great civilizations. One only needs to merely flip a few pages of any standard history book on the downfall of empires or civilizations to learn this fact. To recapitulate our point, it is cultural confusion that always precedes and leads to moral confusion. As such, it is a costly affair to forget our past. Let me wind up in my typical manner, this time by citing a Chinese proverb: “To jump further, go back further.” 

It is true that “modernization,” commonly understood, was born in the west, but it is incorrect to attribute all aspects of modernization to the western worlds. Each society has evolved its own form and style of modernization with the passage of time, in certain cases distinct and distinguishable from that of the west. I’ll try to highlight some of my points here.

Let us take a brief tour to history and try to understand how modernism was born before we go into more details of westernization. We know that modern age was immediately preceded by feudal age. The question to be asked is ‘What led to this transition?’ On this, different people will have different things to say, but for the present purpose we will limit our discussion to what I feel is most relevant and worth considering; it concerns the notions of power and knowledge. By power, we mean mainly political power, the power to take decision, control and regulate the actions and activities of the people living in a society. People who exercise such power derive their authority from some source; and this brings us to the question of knowledge.

Feudalism, or feudal life and culture, was characterized by a strong appeal to faith. Metaphysical and religious belief systems were inevitable part of day-to-day feudal life. Let me explain this in more concrete terms: The Bible was the source of power not only for justifying the action of the people but also for regulating their actions and activities. It was the standard for judging the actions of the people – to say that an action was right or wrong, good or bad, worthwhile or useless etc. The power (authority) of the Bible was absolute. No one could even doubt it or question it. There was no provision for such inquisitive spirit in the feudal age. The Bible became the source and backbone of the Divine Origin Theory of kingship and of the state. This theory empowers the rulers to such an extent that no one can question the behavior or authority of the rulers! They were the representatives of god on earth. Their words were law and they were revered as the fountain of justice. To go even a little further, biblical knowledge was used to explain natural phenomena as well. Everything that happens is purposeful. Without reference to God or something mysterious or supernatural, no explanation was meaningful or adequate. This gave a lot of space for the few learned people with twisted minds to discriminate and exploit the common mass to the maximum. Common people were made to believe all kinds of tainted teachings blindly. The Bible was not accessible to the common people then; not until the arrival of Martin Luther in the 16 th century. So it used to be the case that knowledge and power were concentrated only in the hands of the privileged few, people belonging to the state or the church. The life of the common people was characterized by different kinds of obligations whereas the higher strata of people enjoyed maximum rights or liberty. There existed in any society a great divide between the rulers and the subjects. Simply put, people were not born equal. No wonder this age is also called in history as the Dark Age in Europe. Dark Age in a different cultural mask was also prevalent in the East, particularly in the Indian sub-continent. However, we will skip the Indian case here.

We will now come to modern age or modernism. Descartes, known as the Father of Modern Western Philosophy, a renowned 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, is known for his famous philosophic dictum: ” I think therefore I exist.” He was the first person to say that one’s existence can be proved only by thinking. Humorously put, a Cartesian would say that when one stops thinking one ceases to exist. To him, only thinking as such is indubitable. Descartes asserted that everything else can be doubted. That means not even the Bible or one’s own body is self-evident. The point to mark here is that Descartes introduced a rigorous reasoning method into knowledge seeking and knowledge acquisition activities. Nothing is to be accepted as knowledge without examination and subsequent validation.

Central to the idea of modernism, then, is reason. The source of power for the early modern age was reason as opposed to faith in the feudal age. Thus there was a shift of paradigm from faith to reason, from God-centeredness to human-centeredness. Man, not God, became the measure of everything. Reason became the main tool for acquiring knowledge. From then on, human actions and ideologies needed to be justified not in terms of Biblical principles but on the basis of humanistic principles. For instance, stealing is bad and condemnable not because the Bible says it is, but because it is harmful for peaceful social existence. Extreme belief in the power of human beings replaced the faith in God. A rainbow occurs not because God wants to show a miraculous sign of His benevolence to human kind but because of the laws of nature – laws of optics and other related theories. A natural phenomenon is mechanical in character following specific laws and not teleological in nature. The demand of the time was the urgent desire to discover such laws in nature, laws which can explain and predict natural phenomena. Discoveries of laws of nature obviously led to industrial revolution. Since then, there has been unceasing technological development till date. In other words, human actions were explained and justified in terms of humanist or enlightenment principles, and likewise natural events were explained and predicted in terms of laws of nature. If there was no theory to explain an action or event, then it was not accepted as valid knowledge. Thus, then as now, to have a law for explaining something is termed science. The gist is that ‘ to be modern is to be scientific.’ Modernization means theorization. Science became the epitome of knowledge. The term ‘science’ thus became the in thing in the academic circles of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a trend to convert every academic discipline in social studies to social ‘sciences.’

Let us now do some thought experiments with this historical background in mind. It is said that the practice of terrace cultivation among the Nagas is highly scientific in nature. If so, the question is, ‘Is terrace cultivation a modern or a western practice?’ I wouldn’t part with this achievement of our forebears by attributing it to the westerners. The diet of the Japanese people is considered to be highly nutritious. Does it mean that it is scientific? Yes! Is it modern? Yes and, perhaps, no. “No” because it is ancient and “Yes” because it is scientific. But can we say that it is western? Definitely not! Again, is the principle of non-violence struggle for freedom, satyagraha, started by Gandhi against British colonial rule modern? Yes, because it happened in the twentieth century and the movement was not violent or barbaric. But was it western? I certainly doubt it! We do talk about folk or indigenous knowledge of medicine that are very ancient. But we can modernize this knowledge by interpreting them in terms of modern scientific tools or theories. But we would not speak of them as an act or process of westernization. It is worthwhile to note that scientificity or modernity has a universal appeal and is not confined to western culture or regional culture alone.

Not everything western even today is modern either. I mean, look at some of their dirty languages and their messy-horny-scanty dresses, especially those of the so-called celebrities who we are very apt to emulate! Such lifestyle is driven not by ‘necessity’ but often by reasons of sexual proclivity. How can we forget some of their music? They can be very disgusting. Their fast food life is not healthy at all (despite its attractive ads). It is sheer ignorance of the philosophies of the west, coupled with blind desire to imitate them, that actually resulted in the decadence of many of our ethos. Through various forms of mass media, especially Hollywood production, we only get to see their outer superficial world. We don’t know what really drives them. The point is, they are rich and we are not rich like them; their youth can afford to party, dress in style and drive expensive cars because they earn. How many of us, the Naga youths, earn money to enjoy? How many of us drive our own cars? Countable! It is indeed pitiful or rather painful to see some of our youths going to fish market in attires fit for a party at a star-studded hotel. We just don’t know when to start and when to quit the art of copying!

In the meantime, as seen above, we should also note that not everything about modernism is compatible with our social and religious beliefs and practices. Thus, any thinking religious person will not remain unperturbed if conclusions were to be drawn from the above reflections. Due to excessive belief in scientism and humanism, for instance, Darwinism and social ideologies have come to replace the creation theory and biblical values. To be known as an atheist among the intellectuals has even become fashionable in the universities and other centers for higher learning.

Formal system of modern education and Christianity are two forces that have come from the west to our society. They have come to stay, and they should, as a matter of fact, for our own good. If our society has to catch up with the fast changing world, it is imperative that we forego part of our traditional beliefs and practices to meet the demands of the time and at the same time embrace many promises and packages of the west. We should not be so worried about part of our cultures being transformed by the modern or western lifestyles. In saying this, I don’t mean that we should reject our culture in favor of modern or western culture totally. Rather, we should be more concerned about aping the outside cultures without really knowing their meanings and implications. We should be geared to encounter the western negative aspects of individualism, materialism, capitalism etc., which are almost alien to our cultures. These forces can be extremely harmful to our society as our societal structure is predominantly communitarian and spiritual (non-materialism). I am aware that in recent times, certain elements have come out in the open to criticize the impact of Christianization in our society. However, I would rather see our animistic beliefs and practices fade away than reject modern education and Christianity in the name of preserving our traditional ethos. On the contrary, I am convinced that we need these two things to enhance the quality of our present and future living and also to preserve and appreciate our past life (culture and tradition) better.

What follows naturally from the discussion above is that our immediate task should be to sharpen our knowledge of modern education so as to interpret and understand the western world better, which may, at the same time, help us to cope with the needs and desires of the fast changing world, the unstoppable age of globalization. I feel that our urgent concern should be to fill the communication gap between the west and the east, between foreign culture and our cultures. Otherwise, our cultures would soon dissolve into foreign cultures even without our realization, and our own cultures would, as a result, become things of historical interest only. We will thus lose our authenticity and originality. This will have adverse effect on our Naga identity, especially the upcoming generations. Finally, any talk on westernization vis-à-vis modernization would not be complete without involving issues and concepts such as individualism, materialism, capitalism, liberalism, or humanism and enlightenment, or even globalization and post-modernism, and for those who have are ultra current, post-post modernism or trans-modernism. But it is not practical to touch all these in such a short time and space. And, I’ve not even started to answer which of the two is preferable – a westernized trigopan or a modernized hornbill. A bold, adventurous reader and thinker would therefore certainly not end his or her reading here. I hope you are one!