Writing the ‘Savage’: Representation of Nagas in Nineteenth Century Colonial Writings
By Lipokmar Dzüvichü
In the nineteenth century, colonial officials produced various written accounts on the Nagas and the Naga Hills, and drew particular conclusions about the people, their practices and the landscape. Through various registers and forms of representations, officials not only constituted the Nagas as “savage”, inferior and “tribes” stuck in the past. The imagery produced in these writings also became a dominant way of organizing and framing the Nagas and their landscapes in the colonial texts. It is through such ideas and representations that Nagas and their practices were made familiar and knowable to the colonial government as well as to the colonial metropole. These writings also occurred in a context where the foothills along the Naga Hills had emerged as significant spaces for colonial capital and the efforts of the colonial government to contain the “unruly” violence by the Nagas in the frontier. Besides, the writings not only established and shaped colonial representation of the Nagas and their landscapes through European frames and ideas. The genre of colonial writings also remains important because it constitutes a key domain to understand the relationship between writing, forms of representation and imperial rule in the margins of empire.