Naga Identities:
Changing local cultures in the Northeast of India
by Michael Oppitz, et al
Snoeck, 2008
In 1939, an exhibition at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna showcased the Austrian anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf's collection of "bizarre", "exotic" Naga cultural artefacts. It was by all accounts a great hit. Seven decades later, a series of exhibitions across Europe is under way again to showcase Naga artefacts for the general public. The exhibition is also accompanied by a new book, Naga Identities, edited by the German anthropologist Michael Oppitz. Both undertakings offer important new opportunities by which to gauge the continued European fascination with the Naga, who for the past century have been one of the more 'exoticised' of Southasia's communities.
Some of the most aesthetic and fascinating – and little known – of Naga artefacts are assembled in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, primarily collected by the anthropologists Adolf Bastian, Lucian Scherman, and Hans-Eberhard Kauffman during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibitions are displaying these collections in several European cities, as part of a three-year project titled "Material Culture, Oral Traditions and Identity Among the Nagas", organised by the Ethnographic Museum of Zurich University. The exhibitions are divided into three parts: Ancient Times, which is reconstructed through beads and costumes; Historical Transition, a collage of black-and-white photographs; and Local Modernity, which includes slide shows and films. According to news reports, the Naga exhibition has been, again, a "big hit".
Why this longstanding fascination on the part of Europeans for the Naga? It all began with a massive oversimplification. During the 19th century, theories of humankind's evolution induced colonial anthropologists to study human evolution in terms of a spectrum that ran from primitive society to highly developed culture. In accordance with this mindset, colonial anthropology did much to satiate the hunger of the European intelligentsia, while colonial expansion provided the opportunity for European writers to portray themselves as heroes in adventures to unknown lands and encounters with 'wild' peoples. Inevitably, such accounts captivated readers in Europe.