Upon telling a nephew that I had just returned from Nagaland, he laughed because it didn’t seem that I was coming from abroad. The only “lands” he knew were Finland, Poland, Thailand and Holland. His school never told him anything about Nagaland.
- Extracted from Abhay Vaidya, “Travelling the distance to Nagaland”, The Morung Express, 15 August 2008.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Hla Oo // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:50 am
Since that BBC TV episodes of Monty Python’s Headhunting Nagas many a English speaking people know of Nagas and most laughed at me if I told them, as a joke, that I was a Naga from the Nagaland.
Being a Burmese, Nagaland is part of our mind set of geographical Burma. But a young Indian man being ignorant of our Naga Land is a shocker to me.
Apparently the authorities in India do not want their fair-minded people know about the Indian occupation of the home land of Nagas, including Assam, former Burmese territories during the Imperial times.
2 Moe Aung // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Burmese have known Nagas in the NW frontier of Burma along the Indian border from time immemorial what with their striking attire, physique and custom not least as head-hunters, and their inevitable presence in anniversaries held by the state . Better known in the past than the Wa in Shan State, the other head-hunting tribe now enjoying notoriety as the strongest armed group involved in the drug trade.
They were fighting the Indian govt and had also fought the Burmese govt. Military co-operation between the two govts in counter-insurgency measures has increased greatly in recent times. Like the Zomi, aka Chin or Mizo, farther south, they aspire to an independent state which spells trouble for both Burma and India if handled in a chauvinistic cackhanded way. Next door are the Chittagong Hills where yet another Mongolian race, the Chakmas, are fighting a rising level of state sponsored settlement by Bengalis. We certainly are living in interesting times.
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