Abstract
The article maps the changes in the geographies, political ideologies and splintered identities that has brought about uncertainty in the assumed homogenous category ‘Naga identity’. It investigates the influence of geographies in the ideological dilemmas and political engagements of the Nagas, and discusses how collective memory, nostalgias, desires and emotions tied to the Naga’s past implicates upon the conceptualisations of Naga identity. The article maps the collective memory of the World Wars, 1947, 1963 and how these remembering impacts upon the identity politics of the Nagas. Collective remembering and forgetting plays a pivotal role in the identification processes of their genealogies, brotherhood and clans. Today, the geo-body of Nagaland and its geographical division into central, eastern and western reflects the present political alliances of the Nagas. Naga’s political alliances and formations of Eastern Naga People’s Organisation, Tenyimia Nagas and Central Nagaland Tribes Council is a clear case of reconstructing political identity along the culture and geographies of Naga society. Discussions on the political life of the Nagas post 1947 and after 1963, the birth of a new state and post 1990s, brings out the compelling inter-linkages of Naga identity, Culture, Politics, Geography and collective memory.
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