Introduction

The Nagas are a mountain people, of one million individuals, who live at the meeting-point between China, Myanmar (former Burma) and north-eastern India, a remote and inaccessible region of dense forest, broken up by steep valleys and watched over by the imposing Saramati (almost 4,000 metres high). The origin of the name Naga is still disputed. Some philologists say it derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "mountain men", others from "naked people", and the latest research points to the word nok, or "people", of some Tibetan languages. Nevertheless, the term was not used by the Nagas themselves until a few years ago. They were given this name by the people of the plains and later by the British colonists.

Some of the oldest accounts referring to the Naga cultures appear in literature written in Sanskrit, which according to the anthropologist Verrier Elwin described the Nagas as "mountain men who live chiefly from hunting, on fruit and roots, dress in skins, have a warlike appearance and carry formidable weapons. They were good-looking people and emphasis is always placed on their golden colour, unlike the dark skins of other peoples of the plains". Elwin also describes the Nagas as "excellent people...strong and self-sufficient with the free and independent appearance of mountain people everywhere...with an innate instinct for colour and design, friendly and cheerful, with a good sense of humour, talented, with splendid dances and a love of singing".[note 1]

The Nagas are made up of more than twenty different peoples, amongst which are the Angamis, the Aos, the Konyaks, the Semas and others. This makes it difficult to give a very specific view of Naga culture, as there are differences and similarities between the groups belonging to it, as well as aspects shared with other cultures in nearby regions.[note 2] Even so, it would be fair to speak of a common spirit based on four pillars: the "Feasts of Merit", the head-hunting tradition (now abandoned), some religious ceremonies and, often, the system of sovereign, democratic and socialistic townships. At the beginning of the 1960s, the researcher Von Fürer-Haimendorf wrote, "In a world of rapidly improving communications and the resulting levelling of local differences, there is no room for archaic, isolated societies. Their once vigorous and widely varying cultures must gradually disappear before the impact of one of the great modern civilisations"[note 3]. Strong words which could nevertheless be tempered, because in spite of increasing trade with the plains, European colonisation and Christianity, two world wars, violent conflicts with India and the impact of new technologies, the Nagas still retain plenty of their characteristic features. Some of them are genuine cultural pearls. The radical democracy of the Angamis could be one example of this, as we shall see later.