Indigenous Spirituality: A Decolonial Perspective from the Tangkhul Nagas

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colonials introduced and imposed Christianity among the Tangkhul Nagas, resulting in a dualistic understanding of God and the God worlds. The colonial interpretation of spirituality often diverges from Indigenous spiritual practices. Considering this, I argue for decolonising Christian spirituality, in which attempts will be made to revisit colonial Christian spirituality and their perceptions of the traditional beliefs and practices of Tangkhul Nagas. This proposal for decolonising Christian spirituality seeks to reconstruct an interconnected view of Christian spirituality that brings together the divine, human, and natural worlds. To achieve this, the term “decolonise” or “decolonisation” is used as a methodology to emphasise the necessity of engaging in theological and historical analysis of precolonial Tangkhul Naga traditional beliefs and practises using oral traditions, such as folksong, folklore, and lived experiences, as opposed to relying solely on colonial sources, such as reports, letters, and findings.