Crusaders

Crusaders

The following is an extract from “Holy Warriors” on Nagaland, homeland of former headhunters who converted to Baptist Christianity. The Nagas have waged war against India for sixty years to establish a separate Christian homeland called “Nagaland for Christ”:

“There is a village, perhaps two hundred kilometers north of Kohima,” said Achiilie, eyes luminescent in the dark as we bumped along the ragged mountain pass leading to the Naga capital. “I remember it clearly. I came across it after weeks of trekking. Inside the house of the tribal chief I saw a huge wooden bowl. It was placed in the centre of the room and inside I saw more than one hundred skulls.” He signified a slitting motion across the throat, sending a predictable shiver down my spine.

“When were the heads taken?” I asked.

“During battle by Naga warriors. Not now. Long ago, maybe 50 years back. But all are saved. In Naga culture, a warrior is judged by the number of heads he takes. They say the more heads a man takes, the longer his life. When women married they looked not at wealth, but the number of heads in a man’s house. This man must be from a tradition of great warriors.”

Achiilie leaned back in his car seat and we were silent as our minds conjured the haunting vision of a pile of blackened skulls; the only sound to penetrate the evening gloom were the low rattle of the engine and wind rushing through towering teak and bamboo forests. I had read somewhere that the Nagas believed the human spirit resided in the nape of the neck and in battle when they decapitated their enemy the spirit was freed and released into the skies. It was now complete darkness, the rain clouds had dispersed and the sun had set behind the blue-black mountains. Suspended over the jagged landscape was the first of the new moon, a sliver of silver engulfed by nightfall’s bruised skies.

Headhunting has ended but war continues to plague this isolated territory in the far northeast of India. These onetime headhunters were famed through south east Asia and beyond for fearlessness in battle. Through the last two hundred years, the Nagas have taken on armies of some of the world’s mightiest empires in a bid to preserve their distinct cultural identity, one untouched for almost two thousand years until the British settled in the tea plantations of neighbouring Assam. The Nagas took on the British and were never fully subjugated; they helped repel the Japanese in the Second World War, arresting its designs to invade India in the Battle of Kohima which was a turning point in the war. Now the Nagas were fighting India, a country which absorbed their mountainous terrain after Independence from the British Empire in 1947. For the Naga, India is seen as the latest foreign invader in its battle for sovereignty in South Asia’s longest running war.

In the eyes of the Naga people, it is not just a war for cultural identity, distinct from Hindu dominated India: it is a war of faith. When the British first established contact with the Nagas in 1826, the Christian missionaries swiftly followed, bringing schools as part of their evangelizing mission. While the Nagas never took to the foreign powers, they succumbed to the teachings of these latter day crusaders. Today more than 95 percent of them are Christian, with the majority following the American Baptist Church.

In the dark forests which provide sanctuary to separatist guerrillas, the battle cry of the various factions is united in a mission to create “Nagaland for Christ”. In the name of Jesus, militants are fighting for a Christian homeland.

Hell on earth takes place under the omnipresent sign of the cross, evident everywhere from the towns to tiny hilltop villages shielded from the outside world by dense woodland and near-impassable roads which bear placards proclaiming: “Jesus Died, So You May Live”. The influence of American evangelist missionaries is inescapable — the cross dangling from rear-view car mirrors, kids playing basketball in pot-holed alleys, the taped voice of Billy Graham’s fiery fundamentalist rhetoric blazing from car stereos, puritanical posters proscribing pre-marital sex. The choice of music of my driver, a hip young man with a shaved head and earring, is Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. The British and Indians may have controlled these tribal lands but it was the American Evangelists who conquered the people.”

Source: http://www.ednafernandes.com/holy-warriors-a-journey-into-the-heart-of-indian-fundamentalism/crusader/