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The Birth of Christian Enthusiasmamong the Angami of NagalandVibha Joshi aa Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford UniversityPublished online: 23 Oct 2009.

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The Birth of Christian Enthusiasm among the

Angami of Nagaland1

Vibha Joshi

Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University

AbstractThis article juxtaposes the notion of individual agency with the Durkheimian

concept of religious enthusiasm. Focusing on religious conversion among the

Angami Nagas of Nagaland, 90 percent of whom are now Christian, the article

shows how individuals may choose to change denomination even after having con-

verted to Christianity; not being bound to any one sect, they are able to switch affilia-

tion between a variety of denominations. Among the Angami, and in Nagaland as a

whole, breakaway churches are constantly being established and so are available to

new adherents alongside older sects. This fissiparous tendency is disclosed through

individual stories of conversion. Moreover, the new churches differ from the

longer-established ones in terms of their liturgical traditions and modes of religious

enthusiasm. The younger churches exhibit a more vocally-explicit form of worship

while the older ones are more muted and often celebrate their longevity through

the installation of monoliths and the wearing of specially-designed commemorative

cloths.

Key words: Angami, Christianity, conversion, fission.

A starting point for my discussion is the concept of religious enthusiasm. The

classical, abstract Durkheimian sense is that of effervescence, which is linked to

his notion of ‘heightened excitement’ (sur-excitation in French). This is that a

1 This article is largely derived from my unpublished DPhil thesis, ‘Christian and Non-Christian Angami Naga with

Special Reference to Traditional Healing Practices’, University of Oxford, 2001. The fieldwork was conducted

during several fieldtrips from 1991 to the present. I am indebted to my Naga friends and informants for being so

welcoming and patient. I would especially like to thank Chipeni Merry, Ati Sekhose, Medozhase and Dominic

Yazokie. The research was funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, London, Freer Scholarship,

Oxford and Emslie Horniman Fund, Royal Anthropological Institute, London.

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,

n.s., Vol.XXX, no.3, December 2007

ISSN 0085-6401 print; 1479-0270 online/07/030541-17 # 2007 South Asian Studies Association of Australia

DOI: 10.1080/00856400701714120

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community or society develops its solidarity through worship of a common image,

which may be the community itself or an object representing the community.2 In

practice, different collective religious enthusiasms are likely to co-exist in areas of

emerging, mixed religion, certainly in modern times, and for centuries beforehand.

Each is expressed through distinctive objects, icons, performances, and liturgies,

whose heightened emotional force sometimes imposes on each religious tradition

an uncompromising personal attachment and insurmountable separateness. In this

mixture of co-existing enthusiasms, however, individuals may in fact over time

shift affiliation between them. Sometimes family members may belong to different

religions as a result. Thus we can posit that religious effervescence presupposes

plurality and the possibility of switching enthusiasms.

To be sure, the above situation was not one that especially concerned Durkheim. But it

does accord somewhat with the position of Weber, especially regarding the dynamics

of religious conversion.3 Together, Durkheim andWeber shaped our basic understand-

ing of the sociology and anthropology of religion.What we have done since is to ident-

ify the regional circumstances and distinctiveness of particular cases.

The Nagas of Nagaland4 in north-eastern India are composed of a number of so-

called tribes,5 each having a distinctive language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman

language family. Indeed, few or even none of them are mutually and easily intelli-

gible (see Burling this issue). Nagamese, though, derived from Assamese and Hindi,

acts as the lingua franca. The Naga ‘tribes’—as the British called them—also differ

to some extent in their material culture, myths of origin and legends of migration.

However British control led to the imposition of more tightly-demarcated boundaries

between allied groups than had existed beforehand.

‘Traditional’ and ‘modern’ aspects permeate the way of living of the Nagas. The

Nagas’ head-hunting past gradually disappeared with the annexation of the region

in the nineteenth century by the British and the subsequent introduction of Christianity

2 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Collier, [1915] 1961).3 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1965).4 Nagaland state has an area of 16,527 square kilometres with a population at the last census (2001) of 1,988,636

which includes the officially-recognised sixteen Naga ethnic groups and Kuki and non-Naga immigrants. The

state is divided into eleven districts or administrative units, namely Dimapur, Kiphrie, Kohima, Longleng,

Mokokchung, Mon, Peren, Phek, Tuensang, Wokha and Zunheboto. These districts were carved out in accordance

with the predominance of particular Naga ethnic groups and were named after the most prominent village and the

administrative township that grew up around it.5 There are sixteen Naga tribes or groups that are officially recognised by the Nagaland state government. These are

the Angami, Ao, Chakhasang, Chang, Khiamneungan, Konyak, Liangmai, Lotha, Phom, Pouchuri, Rengma,

Rongmei, Sangtam, Sumi, Yimchungru, and Zemi. ‘Tribe’ is a consitutional category in India by virtue of Articles

330–342 of the Indian Constitution, which also provide for positive discrimination in the form of reservation of a

certain number of seats in educational institutes and government jobs. The Naga groups have thus continued to call

themselves ‘tribes’ to gain these advantages.

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by the American Baptist Mission. Yet contact with the outside world remained

limited until World War II when, for nearly three months (4 April–22 June 1944)

Kohima was at the front line of the fighting between the Allies and the Japanese.

With the Independence of India in 1947, Naga Hills became a district in the state

of Assam and subsequently in 1963 it gained statehood as a result of negotiations

between the Government of India and Naga political leaders.6 English is the state

language of Nagaland and Christianity is the dominant religion. Nevertheless for

the last fifty years the 1963 status quo has been challenged by a Naga secessionist

movement which has continually raised the issues of ethnicity and identity.

Paradoxically, while seeking overall Naga autonomy, the movement has experi-

enced rivalry and competition among its members which have been expressed

through, and so have reinforced, internal boundaries and distinctions of ‘tribe’.

Similarly, while some high-level generalisations can be made about the Nagas as

a whole, it is crucial to recognise such internal distinctiveness. As an anthropologist,

I studied intensively one such group, the Angami, and, while my discussion is largely

confined to them, they are a basis for comparison with other Nagas.

The PeopleThe Angami are one of the largest Naga groups in Nagaland, numbering some

68,552 in the 1971 census,7 and are the dominant group in the district of Kohima.

They are part of the Tengimae group made up of seven tribes sharing a single

origin and migration legend, and a common ancestor.8 Tenyidae is the term used

to identify the officially-standardised and recognised language of the Angami,

largely based on the Kohima dialect. On the basis of differences of dialect and

ritual practice, the Angami recognise three groupings which are labelled in

English as Northern, Western and Southern Angami.9 The Angami regard them-

selves as organised in terms of a segementary, patrilineal descent system, which is

traced back to a single ancestor. They are further divided into two moieties or

kelhu. Each kelhu is divided into clans or thino, which are further divided into

6 In 1962, the Thirteenth Amendment Act of the Constitution of India was passed in an effort to give more autonomy

to the Nagas. Under the act Nagaland has special safeguards, which cannot be withdrawn unless the Legislative

Assembly of Nagaland decides to pass a resolution against them. These are with respect to: i. religious or social prac-

tices of the Nagas; ii. Naga customary law and procedure; iii. the administration of civil and criminal justice invol-

ving decisions according to Naga customary law; iv. the ownership and transfer of land and its natural resources. See

also Prakash Singh, Nagaland (Delhi: National Book Trust, [1972] 1995), p.101. With the constitutional safeguards

Nagas are in a privileged position, as they have private ownership of the land, forest and water resources, unlike in

the rest of India where water and forest resources are owned by the government. These safeguards are still current;

Indians from other states are not allowed to buy land or own businesses in Nagaland. Customary law is practised at

the village level, though homicide matters are now largely dealt with under the Indian Penal Code.7 Separate population figures for different ethnic communities are available only up to the 1971 census.8 These are Angami, Chakhasang, Rengma, Zeme, Liangmei, Rongmei and Mao.9 These groupings were initiated by the British colonial administrators. These English labels are now commonly used

by the Angami.

THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN ENTHUSIASM AMONG THE ANGAMI OF NAGALAND 543

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sub-clans or putsano. The clans are spatially segregated in the village with variably-

defined boundaries; each village has three or more thino wards or khel.10

The Angami ancestral religion is nanyu, the followers of which are known as

Kruna-nanyu, literally ‘those who follow ancestral practices’. The Kruna-nanyu

believe in terhoumia or spirit beings, with Ukepenoupfu11 as the creatrix of all

spirits and humans. Rituals, and the various restrictions attendant on these rituals,

punctuate activities associated with different stages of the agricultural cycle, and

with hunting, house-building and the various rites of passage from birth to death.

The Christian Angami are known as Kehoumia, meaning ‘those who gather to

pray’. At the time of the first conversions, the Christian converts were persecuted

and were made to leave the village boundary to set up new wards known as basa

khel and they are still known as such today.

The distinctiveness of religious enthusiasm among the Angami is based on the

following. Like other Nagas, they have adopted various versions of Christianity

despite, and perhaps because of, being politically part of India and exposed, at

least at a remove, to the main South Asian religions, including Hinduism and

Islam, against which their Christianity expresses their distinctiveness. Moreover,

some 90 percent of the Angami have converted to Christianity, most within the

last couple of generations. Successive waves of missionaries have made Christianity

an arena in which loyalties and enthusiasms are often fiercely defended or competed

for, sometimes with a rapid turnover of different memberships, a process that

nowadays is increasingly accelerated by the profusion of breakaway sects.

By contrast, there was considerable resistance to Christianity until late in the

nineteenth century. The first mission to arrive in Nagaland, the American Baptist in

the 1830s,12 was forced to withdraw and returned only in the 1860s, reaching the

Angami area in 1879. When the Angami rebelled against their British rulers in

1879, the missionaries were forced to flee; but they came back two years later after

the revolt had been quelled, and the American Baptists thereafter enjoyed continuous

10 Khel is an Assamese term which was used by the British to refer to the spatial divisions of the Naga villages. It is

nowadays commonly used by the Nagas to refer to wards occupied by a single clan that are, otherwise, known by the

term for ‘clan’ in their respective languages.11 Although Ukepenoupfu is a female spirit, she is conceptualised as incorporating both male and female aspects that are

essential for procreation, and is regularly propitiated by Kruna Angami during the calendrical rituals. In the Angami

Bible the term ‘Ukepenoupfu’ is used to denote the Christian High God. In his 1921 monograph on the Angami

Nagas, J.H. Hutton mentions in a footnote that the conceptualisation of ‘Ukepenuopfu’ is ‘undergoing a process of

change frommale to female’. See J.H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1921), p.181; and Joshi, ‘Chris-

tian and Non-Christian Angami Naga with Special Reference to Traditional Healing Practices’, Chap.3.12 One of the first missionaries to venture into a Naga village was Reverend Bronson, who had decided to work among

the Nagas and thus went into the area on an exploratory mission in 1839 The correspondence in the 1840s between

Bronson and Captain Jenkins, the British political officer posted in Assam, is notable for the suggestions made by

them for recruiting Naga villagers for tea cultivation in Assam. See H.K. Barpujari, The American Missionaries and

Northeast India (1836–1900 AD): A Documentary Study (Delhi: Spectrum Publications, 1986), pp.231, 252–65.

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and exclusive access until the Catholics arrived in the 1950s at the behest of the gov-

ernor of Assam of which Naga Hills (as Nagaland was known prior to gaining state-

hood) was then a district. At about the same time, branches of the Revival Church were

set up—not however by outsiders but by Angami inspired by Revivalists based in

other parts of north-eastern India. And over the last thirty years they have been

joined by other Protestant groups such as the Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists,

and Assemblies of God—all these, too, derived from other areas of India.

But that is not the end of the story. Especially during the last generation, each of these

churches has, in turn, splintered into a variety of autonomous sub-sects. For instance,

in one Angami village there are three Baptist churches, one Baptist Revival church,

and one Catholic church. This fragmentation is even more pronounced in the more

cosmopolitan precincts of the capital, Kohima town, where there has been a remark-

able proliferation of church buildings established by different sects and each of the

sixteen Naga communities, to which only members of the particular community

belong. For example, the Ao Baptist church building is among the oldest while the

Chakhasang and Yimchungru Baptist churches are among the newest.

A Naga normally remains a member of his or her tribe, sub-tribe or clan through life,

but occasionally he or she can ask to be adopted by another. Changing membership is

also a feature of other Naga spheres, as in the changing of affiliation of political party

or underground movement and especially between churches. Thus within each such

group or community, individuals move between the different Christian denomina-

tions open to them. Choices are then made within what are otherwise firmly demar-

cated social units. This picture of alternating enthusiasms focused on individuals, yet

set within a wider context of denominational competition, gives a particular under-

standing of religious enthusiasm, for while it may indeed be driven by the collective

activities and prayers of a community at worship, that community itself remains

brittle and subject to internal fracture along the lines of individual worshippers.

Why, then, do individuals switch denominations or branches of a denomination, and

how do the denominations nevertheless each sustain the regular collective enthu-

siasm of their members?

I suggest that, in a sense, we are dealing here with a form of what may be called reli-

gious consumerism, meaning a situation in which church or sect leaders are con-

stantly under pressure to attract and retain worshippers. For their part, individuals

variously respond to what they perceive as religious offerings best suited to their

needs. The search for individual spiritual well-being is not of course unrelated to

that for material betterment. But the spiritual is not reducible to the material. It is

sustained by beliefs and convictions. Spiritual satisfaction may veer towards what

THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN ENTHUSIASM AMONG THE ANGAMI OF NAGALAND 545

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are regarded, at least for the time being, as the most compatible promises of future

security and well-being. People may seek improved material and medical conditions,

but this in no way invalidates the strength and sincerity of their spiritual involvement

and dedication. It is just that, in a modern world in which personal and communal

circumstances appear to change rapidly and to exact new challenges, the boons

offered by worship are a way of coping.

A History of ConversionLet me go back for a moment to review the history of conversion to Christianity

among the Angami. It will be recalled that the first mission station in the region

was opened in 1872. However this was in the Ao Naga area which remained

outside British administration until 1889. Shortly afterwards missionaries were

sent to the Angami and Lotha areas which were already under British control.

The Kohima Mission to the Angami Nagas

The American Baptist Mission assigned the Kohima field to Reverend C.D. King.

However, the arrival of King and his wife in 1879 coincided with the aforementioned

Angami uprising in which G.H. Damant, the then British political officer at Kohima,

was killed at Khonoma village along with other officials. This put the missionaries in

a dilemma—on the one hand they wanted to gain the confidence of the Angami and

win them over to their faith, but on the other, they were dependent on the British

for their protection. King’s report to the American Baptist Mission Home Board

outlined the dilemma:

The story of battle with savages, in which two officers and, perhaps, less

than a hundred sepoys fell, may make but little impression on most

minds. But everything has conspired to make this event come home to

Mrs. King and myself, and in a less degree, to all who were interested

in the new mission, which we were opening. On the one side are fighting

our Nagas—the people to whom we were led by so many manifest

tokens of providence, the people for whom we were, and are, hoping

to spend and be spent. Here is a tribe of probably about 200,000 souls

whom we have already come to regard as peculiarly our own people—

the stray sheep for whom we are longing and praying and for whom

we had begun labour. But they are savages. . ..13

In the event, the missionaries were able to make initial inroads into the Angami area

by opening primary schools and then secondary schools with the help of

13 C.D. King, unpublished letter to the American Baptist Home Board (27 Dec. 1879) (Valley Forge, Penn.:

American Baptist Mission Archives), pp.7–8.

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sympathetic British officers.14 Using Roman script, the America Baptists wrote the

first primers and catechisms in the local Naga language.15 The educated Angami

helped in the translation work and, independently, wrote handbooks for church use.

Thus the Naga languages acquired a script and became written languages. Then,

later missionaries used rudimentary medical knowledge to gain the confidence of

the locals and to show the compassionate side of the Christian God.16 For instance,

when Sidney Rivenburg arrived in Kohima in the 1880s he made little headway

through street preaching, but once he started to administer medicines to the sick he

found his patients and their families much more receptive to his discourses on the

Gospel.17 Seeing this as the way forward, Rivenburg went back to America in 1892

and studied medicine for two years, afterwards returning to Kohima as a medical mis-

sionary. The only problem was that as a qualified doctor, Rivenburg became so much

in demand professionally that he had little time left to devote to his real vocation.

The American Baptist strategy was to make the church self-sufficient and train local

evangelists to proselytise in interior villages, as they do to this very day. It was just as

well, because after Independence in 1947, all the American and other foreign mis-

sionaries were expelled from the Naga area due to their alleged involvement with

the Naga secessionist movement.18

Christianity has also been spread through various underground organisations.19

Conversion to Christianity was, however, a slow process at first, and only

14 See for more detail Joshi, ‘Christian and Non-Christian Angami Naga with Special Reference to Traditional

Healing Practices’, Chap.6.15 E.W. Clark, unpublished letter to the American Baptist Home Board (16 Oct. 1895) (Valley Forge, Penn.: Amer-

ican Baptist Mission Archives). See also J. Puthenpurakal, Baptists Mission in Nagaland: Historical and Ecumenical

Perspective (Shillong: Vendrame Missiological Institute, 1984), p.81.16 Missionaries have often combined evangelism with medical care (seen by them as work of compassion). Many

examples exist from around the world; see T.O. Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East

African Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); S. Frankel and G. Lewis (eds),A Con-

tinuing Trial of Treatment: Medical Pluralism in Papua New Guinea (Boston: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1989);M.T.

Huber, The Bishops Progress: A Historical Ethnography of Catholic Missionary Experience on the Sepik Frontier

(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988); and Terence Ranger, ‘Godly Medicine: The Ambiguities of

Medical Mission in South-Eastern Tanzania 1900–45’, in Social Science and Medicine, No.15 (1981), pp.261–77.17 Narola Rivenburg (ed.), The Star of the Naga Hills: Letters from Rev. Sidney & H. Rivenburg, Pioneer Mission-

aries in Assam, 1883–1923 (Philadelphia: American Baptist Press, 1941).18 See F.S. Downs, The Mighty Works of God: A Brief History of the Council of Baptist Church in Northeast India,

the Mission Period 1836–1950 (Gauhati: The Christian Literature Centre, 1971); B.B. Ghosh, History of Nagaland

(New Delhi: S. Chand & Co, 1982); and Hokishe Sema, Emergence of Nagaland: Socio-Economic and Political

Transformation and the Future (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1986).19 For more information see Julian Jacobs, Alan Macfarlane, Sarah Harrison and Anita Herle, The Nagas: Hill

Peoples of Northeast India, Society Culture and Colonial Encounter (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991),

p.177; Samir Kumar Das, ‘Ethnicity and the Rise of Religious Radicalism: The Security Scenario in Contemporary

Northeastern India’, in Satu P. Limaye, Mohan Malik and Robert G. Wirsing (eds), Religious Radicalism and

Security in South Asia (Honolulu: Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies, 2004), pp.254–5; and the web page

of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim [http://www.nscnonline.org/nscn/home.html].

THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN ENTHUSIASM AMONG THE ANGAMI OF NAGALAND 547

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gained significant momentum in the 1930s, a development due perhaps to the

sending of some 2000 Nagas to France in 1919 as part of an Indian Labour

Corps20 in the company of an American Baptist chaplain, J.R. Bailey.21 Even

so, it is only since the Second World War, especially in the decade immediately

following the independence of India in 1947, that the Nagas have turned to Chris-

tianity in a major way, to the extent that today probably 90 percent of the Naga

population is Christian.22 And again, the decisive turning point may well have

been the Battle of Kohima in 1944,23 during which many Nagas helped the

Allies by doing military reconnaissance work. The region had never before experi-

enced such a large incursion of outsiders. Indian and Japanese troops infested the

area at the height of the battle. Through interaction with these outsiders, the Nagas

gained a new window on the world, including the idea of Christianity as a global

religion different from the Hinduism and Islam of which they were previously

aware. As a result, with a heightened consciousness of their distinctiveness as a

20 According to Hokishe Sema, their numbers were a 1000 Sema, 400 Lotha, 200 Rengma and 200 Ao Nagas. See

Sema, Emergence of Nagaland, p.80. Prakash Singh gives a similar tally in his book, but divides the number of Lotha

recruits into 200 Lotha with the rest belonging to neighbouring Sangtam, Chang and Phom communities. See Singh,

Nagaland, p.23. There were supposedly no Angami among the Naga Labour Corps.21 J.R. Bailey to Huttington at the American Baptist Home Board, unpublished letter (27 Nov. 1917) (Valley Forge,

Penn.: American Baptist Archives).22 Richard Eaton, applying Horton’s theory of African conversions, writes that conversion among the Nagas likewise

followed the replacement of the ‘High God’ with the Christian concept of God. He explains that Naga groups con-

verted at differing paces due to the differences in their social organisation, and the way in which indigenous terms

were used to translate Biblicial concepts. Eaton bases his analysis on seven correlates of conversion, an approach

which may well provide insights. One concern, however, is that Eaton takes too unquestioningly the missionaries’

view that the Nagas had a notion of a High God, as distinct from a creative force, before missionary contact.

Also, contrary to his view that the Angami did not migrate (a major factor in his correlative analysis), they did

expand, like the Ao and Sema, through migration and the settlement of new villages as well as practising shifting

swidden cultivation with wet terrace farming, and were very much engaged in trading relationships with other

Nagas and the Assamese. Moreover, in placing emphasis on the primary influence of pre-exisitng Naga cosmology

in determining the nature and direction of conversion to Christianity, he gives less attention to the availability in

churches of educational, healing and other material resources and their influence in shaping peoples’ varying

choices in conversion and (changing) sect affiliation in the wider changing political environment. The mission

records themselves emphasise the importance of educational and medical work in conversion which can still be

seen in Nagaland. In part explanation of our differences, it might be noted that while Eaton relies upon secondary

sources, my data combine secondary sources with primary data derived from extensive fieldwork over a period

from 1990 until the present time, and which has included lengthy life histories. See Richard M. Eaton, ‘Comparative

History as World History: Religious Conversion in Modern India’, in Journal of World History, Vol.8, no.2

(Fall 1997), pp.243–71; Richard M. Eaton, ‘Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876–1971’, in Indian

Economic and Social History Review, Vol.11, no.1 (1984), pp.1–43; E. Horton, ‘African Conversion’, in Africa,

Vol.XLI (1971), pp.85–108; Joshi, ‘Christian and Non-Christian Angami Nagas with Special Reference to

Traditional Healing Practices’; and Vibha Joshi, ‘Pluralistic Beliefs: Christianity and Healing among the Angami

Naga’, in Michael Oppitz (ed.), Material Culture, Oral Traditions and Identity among the Naga (Zurich: The

Ethnographic Museum, University of Zurich, 2008 forthcoming).23 See Vibha Joshi Patel, ‘A Pledge for Peace’, in The India Magazine (April 1994), pp.32–41; Arthur Swinson,

Kohima (London: Cassell, 1966); and Aditya Arya and Vibha Joshi, The Land of the Nagas (Ahmedabad and

Ocean Township, NJ: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. & Grantha Corporation, 2004).

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people, the Nagas later questioned the proposal to include them in an independent

India.24

The personal stories I heard during my fieldwork suggest that a range of factors have

influenced conversion amongst the Angami. It seems that conversion sometimes

took place after recovery from illness. Alternatively it appears that the inability of

a person to attend all the traditional ritual performances in a calendrical cycle

because of employment keeping him or her away from the village could also

prompt a decision to convert. During the British administration when outside jobs

became available to the Nagas, a number of men moved away from their villages

to work in the administrative services. Irregularity in the performance of village

rituals is akin to violating the proper way of conducting rituals, which could

provoke the wrath of the spirits. In converting to Christianity, absentees could

absolve themselves of such obligations to traditional spirits.25 Finally it seems

that today the younger generation among the Angami is playing an increasingly

important role in conversion. Apparently the younger set see Christianity as provid-

ing a wider network of beneficial relationships and influence. I came across several

cases where, within a family, first the children had taken up Christianity and then

talked their parents into joining the new religion.

As noted above, in the 1950s Catholic missionaries were allowed into the Naga Hills

by the Indian government.26 In particular medical sisters were invited to serve at the

newly-opened Kohima civil hospital, though on condition that they limited their pas-

toral ministry to the small non-Naga Catholic community.27 Nevertheless, through

their medical work, the Catholic sisters were able to win some converts among

the Angami community. As had happened with the American Baptist missionaries,

who had received support from some British officers posted to Naga Hills during the

24 The Second World War helped the Nagas form a united political front. After 1945, Charles Pawsey, the then

deputy commissioner for Naga Hills, formed the Naga Hills District Tribal Council (NHDTC) to bring the Nagas

together for the post-war reconstruction programme. See John Henry Hutton, ‘Problems of Reconstruction in the

Assam Hills’, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol.65 (1945), pp.1–7. Within a year the

NHDTC acquired political overtones and changed its name to the Naga National Council or NNC. See Singh,

Nagaland, p.89. Its leader was A.Z. Phizo from Khonoma, an Angami village. This was also a more consolidated

form of the Naga Club, which had been formed way back in 1919 by a group of Nagas who had returned after

serving in the Labour Corps in France together with Nagas who were employed as government officers and govern-

ment interpreters to confront the Simon Commission of 1935 in its negotiations for self-governance which were

taking place between the British colonial government and the Indian nationalists.25 For a detailed discussion see Joshi, ‘Christian and Non-Christian Angami Nagas with Special Reference to

Traditional Healing Practices’.26 Puthenpurakal, Baptists Mission in Nagaland: Historical and Ecumenical Perspective; D.R. Syiemlieh, A Brief

History of the Catholic Church in Nagaland (Shillong: Vendrame Missiological Institute, 1990); and O.M. Rao,

Focus on Northeast Indian Christianity (Delhi: ISPCK, 1994).27 Rao, Focus on Northeast Indian Christianity; M.C. George (ed.), Centenary of the Catholic Church in Northeast

India 1890–1990 (Shillong: Archbishop’s House, 1990).

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period from the 1870s to 1947 so, in the 1950s, the Indian deputy commissioner, a

Goan Catholic, encouraged the work of the Catholic mission by renewing their

contract in 1954.28

The entry of the Catholic mission was reportedly opposed by the Baptists.29 Indeed it

is claimed that the Catholics were unable because of Baptist pressure to acquire land

for building a church for several years.30 Nonetheless by the mid 1960s the Catholic

mission had opened its first school in Kohima. This was followed by others, creating

a network of schools that today is considered the best in Nagaland.31 Partly as a

result of these initiatives, small Catholic communities started to sprout up in the

villages around Kohima.32 In 1973 a Kohima-Imphal diocese was established to

serve Nagaland and the neighbouring state of Manipur. In the 1980s, the further

expansion of the Catholic Church in both states led to each being given a separate

diocese. In 1992 Kohima Cathedral was opened.33

Since their advent in the nineteenth century, the Baptists have always insisted that

their congregations pay a tithe of ten percent. By contrast the Catholics are supported

financially from the outside and have in recent times been able to set up good-quality

boarding schools and colleges (that charge a small tuition fee) teaching secular

subjects.34 Both denominations have also established theological schools in

Nagaland and neighbouring states which are well attended.35

28 George (ed.), Centenary of the Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890–1990.29 Such opposition has continued to date against competing sects. I have come across reports in the Naga local news-

papers as recently as November 2006.30 George (ed.), Centenary of the Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890–1990; Puthenpurakal, Baptists Mission

in Nagaland: Historical and Ecumenical Perspective, p.127; and Syiemlieh, A Brief History of the Catholic Church

in Nagaland, p.44.31 In addition to the convents and boarding schools such as the Don Bosco at Kohima, a Loyola school and college

run by Jesuit missionaries was founded near Jakhama.32 Some of the villages were Jotsoma, Keruma, Merema, Nerhema, Khonoma, Jakhama, Zubza, Kigwema and

Kidima in Kohima district.33 The cathedral, built with the money donated by the Japanese, British, Nagas and others, is dedicated to the

memory of those who died during the Battle of Kohima in 1944. Its opening ceremony included the ceremonial

laying of Naga spears at the altar by visiting Allied and Japanese war veterans, which symbolised peace and friend-

ship between the two. The round building is supposed to reflect the traditional architectural style of a Naga youth

dormitory. See Patel, ‘A Pledge for Peace’, pp.32–41.34 One of my young Baptist Christian informants (who was also the principal of a village primary school) commen-

ted that the lack of funds for education in Baptist churches was responsible for the poor standards of their schools as

they cannot afford to hire good teachers. He resented that, in comparison, the Catholics were doing far better in the

field of education as they have access to outside funds which they can use for paying better salaries, and hence are

able to employ better teachers. He was critical of the Catholics for not being self-reliant, saying that they depended

on non-Naga leadership as the majority of the Catholic clergy in Nagaland is from other parts of India, especially

Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.35 In 2007 the number of theological colleges given by the Higher Education Department in Nagaland was 19

[http://nagaland.nic.in/functionaries/department/human/higheredu/main.htm].

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An indication of their long-established status in Nagaland is the celebration in recent

years of the Baptist centenary and the Catholic golden jubilee through the installa-

tion of commemorative monoliths about one and a half metres high—a practice

which echoes the local custom of honouring ancestors and feast-givers. This is rel-

evant in the light of the Vatican II declaration that as far as possible ‘native’ tra-

ditions should be respected within Catholicism. In fact in Nagaland the Baptists

have always opposed any accommodation with customary beliefs and practices,

and their agreement to allow monoliths and folk-festivals was due solely to the

fact that these are now regarded as secular and therefore do not constitute a religious

challenge.

This has been a brief history of the Baptist and Catholic churches in Nagaland. I want

now to describe how, in recent years, there has been a marked proliferation of

churches associated with the Christian Revival Movement.

The Revival MovementThe Christian Revival Movement began in the neighbouring state of Mizoram in

the early 1900s. Revival movements intensified in 1920s, bringing back the use of

drums and dancing during prayer meetings and became ‘increasingly ecstatic and

emotional in the period after the Second World War when the Pentecostal influ-

ence became widespread’.36 In Naga Hills the revival wave hit during the first

half of the 1950s. With the revival movements, certain traditional ways of

worship that had been banned by the churches came back into practice and ‘revi-

vals became instruments of indigenization’.37 The result of the movement was a

rift between revivalists and anti-revivalists in many churches, which in some

instances led to schism and the formation of small separatist denominations

such as the Seventh Day Adventists, Assemblies of God, etc.38

Presently in Northeast India there are several charismatic Revival churches

belonging to different denominations. Sometimes one finds more than one

Revival church in a village. Such Revival churches are always part of a wider,

global set of affiliations. For example, the Pentecostal churches in Northeast

India are affiliated to the Universal Pentecostal Church of the UK and the New

Testament Church of the USA.

36 F.S. Downs, History of Christianity in India: Northeast India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Banga-

lore: Church History Association of India, 1992), p.100.37 Ibid., p.99.38 Ibid., p.100.

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Several stories were told to me about miracles that had taken place when the move-

ment was new—some of these likened by my informants to the prophecy on the

day of Pentecost as outlined in Acts 2 of the Bible.39 One related to an incident

which occurred in the 1950s in a village called Cheichema. People saw two

spheres of fire coming down from ‘Heaven’, which gradually spread across the

sky. The spheres of fire, it was said, were also seen by people in neighbouring

villages. Another story related how two girls from Meguzouma village experienced

the touch of the Holy Spirit and correctly prophesied that food would fall from

Heaven. As a consequence of the prophecy a number of villagers in Meguzouma

converted to Christianity and founded the Revival Church. Where there were

once no Christians except the two girls, today the majority of the villagers in

Meguzouma are Revivalists. In yet another incident related to me, an encounter

took place between the security forces and the Naga insurgents during a Revival

church service in which members of the underground outfit were part of the

congregation. Even though there was a heavy exchange of gunfire between the

two parties, the bullets did not harm a single member of the congregation.

Stories about the persecution of Revivalists by fellow Nagas also abound. On

one occasion in Cheichema village when the people were praying inside the

breakaway Revival Church that was housed in a temporary thatch-roofed structure,

the pastor of the parent Baptist Church incited the Baptists to burn down the

Revival Church. While the whole building was burnt to ashes, it seems nothing

happened to the people who were inside the church. Being witness to such miracles

has induced some Angami to convert to Christianity; others have been inspired to

move to the Revival churches, and have found in the experience the strength to

resist the Indian Army.

Today, although Baptists and Catholics still predominate in the town of Kohima

and indeed in Nagaland as a whole, the region boasts a number of Revival

churches founded by former Baptists and Catholics bearing such names as

Revival, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventist and so on.

That these churches engage in spiritual healing is another reason for their popu-

larity. Members of a family may follow one who has converted to a particular

church, but sometimes they choose different churches. In Cheichema village,

there has overall been a breakaway flow from the Baptist to the newer Revival

church. And a few villages have no Baptist church at all but up to three

Revival churches.

39 Acts 2 : 1–4: ‘When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the

blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what

seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the

Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them’. (From the King’s Bible).

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Sometimes breakaway Baptist and Revival churches have been set up in protest at

what people regard as a lack of ‘purity’ on the part of the parent church. Purity on

the part of Revival church officials and laity is defined as ‘living God’s way’—

being faithful to spouses, avoiding hypocrisy, practising as well as preaching high

moral standards. It also refers to visibly-evident devotion to prayer, and closeness

to the Holy Spirit. Not only do churches compete to be seen as the most pure in

worship, they may each internally fragment as factions compete for most pure

status. This segmentary process has resulted in a steady increase in the number of

individuals changing church membership and the number of churches.

Formal Structure of the ChurchBuilding

The prominence of church buildings in the Naga villages and towns is an integral

part of what could be called a Christian landscape. The sheer size of the church

buildings sets them apart from other structures. And since the villages are located

on spurs or shoulders of hills, a church of this type generally stands out. Moreover

their size is also a reflection of how prosperous the church is. As almost all the land is

privately owned, unavailability of a suitable site can often delay construction of a

church building.

Church Offices

The Baptist churches are affiliated to the Council of Baptist Churches in Northeast

India. A Baptist church has a pastor, an assistant pastor, evangelists and five

deacons. Most of the pastors and assistant pastors in the churches in Nagaland are

not trained in theministry, and amajority are not officially ordained but have received

a licence from the Council that amounts to ordination.40 The pastors are generally

from the local community. The deacons are chosen from among the elderly from

various khels for a period of five years.

The Catholic churches, in contrast, normally have a Jesuit priest, an assistant priest

and sisters who are non-Naga and predominantly from South India. The first Angami

priest, Father Neisalhou Carlus of Zhadima village, was ordained in 1989.41 In recent

years some Angami girls have also joined the order of nuns.

40 See also Downs,History of Christianity in India, p.226; and Rao,Focus on Northeast Indian Christianity, pp.36–8.41 Interestingly, the photograph of the ordination published in the Catholic Church Souvenir shows the Angami priest

in a white ordination robe which had been made from the traditional white ceremonial Loramoshu cloth of the

Angami Nagas. See George (ed.), Centenary of the Catholic Church in Northeast India 1890-1990. I was told

that the Angami priests have the option of wearing the upper cloth made of either Loramoshu or plain white cloth.

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Among the Revival churches, the Pentecostal church too has pastors and nuns or liethu-

mia, i.e. those ‘devoted to worship’. There are only a few Pentecostal Angami pastors

and nuns, as the majority belong to the neighbouring Chakhasang Naga group. The

Revival churches typically have a pastor, an assistant or associate pastor (depending

on the size of the church), a church secretary, a few evangelists, and ten deacons.

The pastors and deacons have no restriction on their number of years in office, while

the secretary and evangelists are appointed for a three-year term. In addition, there

are women and men who are appointed prayer managers or prayer housekeepers.

Known as kehcu-ki-kepfe (lit. ‘prayer-house-keeper’), they are generally unmarried

and devote their lives to praying. (Upon marriage they are expected to leave their pos-

ition as prayer managers.) I was told that pastorship is a sought-after occupation.

Although the pastor I interviewed had been trained in a theological college, he said

that most pastors of the Revival church are ‘born’ to be religious teachers; they get

their vocation from God, hence do not need formal revival training.

Liturgical Service

Each denomination has its own kind of liturgical service. The Baptists conform to

texts more than others, are less voluble in personal prayer, and do not use musical

instruments such as drums and guitars in their services. The congregation is

divided into three columns: the choir of young men, women and older children

sitting on the left; other women sitting in the middle; and other men sitting in the

pews on the right. Five deacons from the village face the pastor sitting on the dais

on the extreme right. The pastor delivers his sermon in the relevant Angami

dialect. Then the choir moves onto the dais wearing the white shawl with brown

and black stripes typical of the Khonoma group of villages and, after hymns, every-

one says a personal prayer, followed by more hymns sung in Angami.

Catholic services also start out solemnly, with the priest’s sermon delivered in

Angami, Nagamese or English.42 This is followed by hymns and personal prayer

spoken—very loudly—in Angami, with the eyes tightly closed. Mass culminates

in the sacrament and a procession to the dais to receive Holy Communion from

the priest, money having been collected meanwhile.

By contrast, Revival church services combine exuberant singing during which some

worshippers go into a trance-like state and speak rapidly and incomprehensibly,

but allegedly ‘in tongues’. In Kohima there are two Christian Revival and one

Baptist Revival church dating from the 1960s. Within the Revivalist fraternity,

there is less uniformity in the structure of services than among the longer-established

42 The language of the sermon is chosen according to the language proficiency of the speaker. Non-Naga Catholic

priests prefer to use English.

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Catholic and Baptist churches, but I take as a fairly typical example that of the

Baptist Revival church.

This also begins with the pastor reading a sermon in Angami. This is followed by a

contribution from the choir, usually made up of five men including a healer. The con-

gregation then join in, interspersing their singing with cries of ‘Praise the Lord’ and

‘Hallelujah’ and accompanying it with hand-clapping. After that a guest is some-

times introduced. At the church I attended, a woman brought in from a Pentecostal

church prayer group delivered a sermon from the dais on the power of the Holy Spirit

as the offertory bag was passed round. Finally there is a period of personal prayer.

Towards the end of this worshippers again start to clap, their bodies sometimes

shaking vigorously and cries of ‘Hallelujah’ are heard, accompanied by some ulula-

tion, while the praying itself tends to become ecstatic, with everyone standing and

extending their hands above their heads, and some hold aloft Bibles. At this time

too members of the congregation are invited to bear witness to tales of miracles.

When I was there we heard of a woman whose terminally-diagnosed cancer was

cured after she and her husband took relatives’ advice to join the Revival church

and asked the prayer group to pray for her health.

While the Baptist and Revival forms of worship clearly differ in almost every respect,

among the Revival churches the Pentecostal stands out as distinctive. For a start, at

least in the case of Kigwema village which I know well, the Pentecostal church

building does not have a dais nor rows of pews, apart from a couple at the back—

indeed is devoid of furniture, with the floor space covered with straw mats for the

congregation to sit on during the prayer service. Footwear has to be removed on

entering the building. The pastor, dressed in a white shirt over a white sarong,

opens proceedings by giving a short sermon in Nagamese,43 after which the congre-

gation sings hymns to the beat of a drum played by a so-called ‘nun’, also dressed in a

white sari. In a short while, during the singing, the pastor begins to sway and his upper

body jerks, as he and then somemembers of the congregation enter a trance-like state.

This is followed by increasingly loud and rapid drum beats and cries of ‘Praise the

Lord’, ‘Hallelujah’, and ‘Ukepenuopfu’ (‘God’), with some worshippers trembling

and swaying. But after the crescendo there is a sudden calm and a return to normal

singing pace, during which the collection plate is passed round.

Pentecostal faith-healing, the refusal of Pentecostal followers to administer conven-

tional medicines to the sick, their loud prayers (often late at night at home), and the

use of drums and guitars during services (the Pentecostal predilection for ‘noise’) are

all features unique to that church and are widely disparaged by non-Pentecostal

43 The pastor was from the neighbouring Chakhasang Naga community.

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Angami villagers. Another notable difference between the Pentecostal and other

churches is that the former allows hymns to be sung in any of the three languages

of Angami (the Tenyidae standard), Nagamese and English, reflecting the wide pro-

venance of Pentecostal church members who come from a range of different commu-

nities. This contrasts with Baptist churches which are mostly focused on single tribe

membership, and those of the Catholics which are staffed mainly by priests from

non-Naga communities, who prefer the use of English.

ConclusionReligious enthusiasm can of course be aroused in many different ways and its

expression, too, can take many forms: from the subdued and even silent to the down-

right vociferous. For Durkheim, ‘sur-excitation’ was an essential feature of early

forms of religious worship and effectiveness in creating social solidarity. It

implied agitated verbal and bodily ritual focused on, and invested in, objects,

actions and images involving and so representing the participants. Although the

power of modern religious commitment is clearly not dependent in any absolute

sense on such differences in performative ‘noise’, the latter may be one of a

number of resources which competing religions may draw on in competition with

each other.

Thus among Angami Nagas, the vocal and acoustic expression of religious enthu-

siasm of the Baptists is subdued, whereas that of the Revivals and Pentecostals is

noisy—with the Catholic churches somewhere in between. Putting this another

way, the spectrum from Baptist to Catholic and thence to Revival and Pentecostal

is also—to use Durkheim’s expression—from low to high ‘sur-excitation’ or enthu-

siasm.44 Broadly speaking, this spectrum coincides with the longevity of church

establishment: the relatively-subdued Baptists have been in the country the

longest, while the highly-vocal Revivalists are the most recent.

And there is another distinction. The Baptists and Catholics who have been in the

area longest have commemorated their duration by setting up monoliths of up to

three metres tall, whose representative power lies in their silent solidity. The mono-

liths may be seen as continuing the commemorative practice of the traditional reli-

gion: a rich married man would sponsor a series of lavish feasts of merit, at the end of

which a stone monument of between one and four metres height would be erected in

his and his wife’s name, and sometimes in the name of an ancestor whose visitation

had been revealed in a dream. Revivalists do not as yet have permanent standing

memorials of stone or other solids. Their most distinctive form of identification is

44 Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

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performative—the publicly-powerful expression of their faith through prayer, hymn,

healing rituals and prophetic pronouncements, reinforced by vigorous bodily move-

ments. The humanly-vocal and materially-silent thus emerge as alternative markers

of religious distinctiveness.

In summary, let me here use the term ‘noise’ as a situationally-relative concept to

refer to the performative and expressive intensity of religious enthusiasm. From

my description of Naga church services, we can say that the longer-established

religious institutions worship with the least ‘noise’, while the most recent exhibit

the most. Needham described how ritualised percussion marks the transition

between social states.45 In Angami Christianity, differences of religious ‘noise’

mark denominational separation as well as longevity. Moreover, ‘noise’ as a variable

of religious performativeness appears to have some kind of inverse relationship with

silent monoliths as alternative markers of religious distinctiveness. From the view-

point of individual worshippers, such differences of ‘noise’ and silent materiality

may also be interpreted as indicating differences in spiritual efficacy, and so may

encourage religious seekers to change church or sect membership. Individual

mobility therefore seems to occur against a background of more-enduring but

still-evolving institutional contrasts.

45 Rodney Needham, ‘Percussion and Transition’ in Man, Vol.2 (1967), pp.606–14.

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