Rani, Heraka and the politics of religion

Rani Gaidinliu is for many people a synonymous figure with Heraka religion. We have failed to make a clear distinction between Rani Gaidinliu as a person and Heraka as religion. We tend to read the life and work of Rani Gaidinliu through the lens of Heraka religion as we seemingly know. We look at Heraka with the preconceived notion that Rani Gaidinliu was a blood-drinker, sacrificed human-being, and was an invisible magical woman. We are unable to establish any objective evidence till today. All we have is the record mentioning that she possesses some kind of divination gift. And who started all these allegations and defamation? It was mostly the first Christian converts. I do not subscribe to the belief and religious practices of Rani Gaidinliu. I have reservation even to spell out her name. But the more I dig deeper into her life and works, I am impressed by this mystic woman. The passion she carried for her people, the vision she had, the strategies and courage this ‘teenage girl’ developed to accomplish her passion and vision cannot be simply ignored. The methodology of using religion as the framework to establish the socio-cultural-political identity may be of interest to reflect.When we pluck out all the preconceptions against Rani Gaidinliu and the cultic religious elements she is associated with, we see one thing. Rani Gaidinliu utilized religion as a tool to set-up the socio-cultural-political identity of the people. Perhaps she understood that our Naga indigenous identity is deeply rooted in our religion? “Hera” referring to almighty god and “Ka” meaning pure, was a reformed indigenous religion whose main ideology was to protect and preserve socio-cultural-political-religious identity of the people. Therefore, against the common misconception, Rani Gaidinliu’s movement was never limited to religious liberation. Hers was very much a political fight coated in religious flavour and ignited by the “Naga Raj” movement of Jadonang. “The Naga Raj” movement precedes the NNC movement and the two occurred at uniquely different times. As a matter of fact, it may be a point of interest to scholars, and research whether this NNC movement, which later became the backbone of our Naga Political fight was either directly or indirectly impacted, in any way, if any, by the “Naga Raj” or Rani Gaidinliu’s Movement? Akin to NNC, Rani Gaidinliu’s Movement was a fight against any foreign invasions that would destroy the very socio-cultural-political fabric of the indigenous people. She saw the British invasion and Christianity which came along with the British incursion and was then considered a foreign religion, as the biggest threat to the identity of the people. Unfortunately, her political-religious fight could not do much when Nagas started to embrace Christianity because the power of the living God was too much to resist. Nonetheless, her fear came true. At one point of time, we Nagas have discarded almost all of our cultural artefacts when we renounced our indigenous faith and embraced Christianity. We took the Roman script, started using English as the common communication medium; discarded our traditional dress and got fascinated with western fashion. We have almost renounced our folk songs which are not simply songs but an instrument of worship, medium of communication, story narration, recording and recounting our history. We were threatened not so much from without but from within. We have fought bravely on the battlefields, handled jungle wars and rough mountainous terrains as a child would play in a football ground, banged the table with raw fists before the mighty Indians, but became a vulnerable group of people when we realised our socio-cultural ingredients have almost gone with the change of religion. The intensity of this threat was so strong that we became insecured, and each tribe began to draw our tribal lines with thicker walls, which in turn made us more withdrawn thinning the space for other community to join our fellowship. Some of us are arguing that the Museum of Rani Gaidinliu should not be here in Kohima because she was not from Nagaland. Could this be a subtle indication of the sense of insecurity that is in us? On a lighter zest, perhaps our craziness of putting all sorts of designated name plates in our vehicle and announcing our presence may be a faint implication to this fear of losing one’s identity? Today we are a confused group of people. Our conscience tells us to move forward with Christian values and practices, yet our instinct pull us to the primitive lifestyle. We have started our Christian journey long ago but are still romantic about our native practices. That is why we want to go to church and at the same time have rice beer in a bamboo cup. We come to the church to receive blessings and at the same time, ask the eldest of the village to pronounce some sort of indigenous spiritual blessings whenever there are community gatherings or festivals. We want to stand firm in our Christian faith but cannot resist the myth and superstitions. We accuse Rani Gaidinliu of practising witchcraft, and we are still fascinated by sorcerous elements painted in Christian colour. We are neither here nor there. We are so conscious of re-establishing our identity that we have recently started reviving our cultural artefacts, revitalizing the indigenous festivities, rewriting our folk songs to be sung in the church services and community gatherings, busy developing our tribal scripts and the best we can do is print Bibles and hymnals to be used in the church because there is limited platform to apply it. And as though this is not enough, in the name of our Christian faith churches are breaking apart on ethnic line. All for what? “Identity.” Today, we are re-working this quest for identity by wearing Christian coat. The irony is, what we are doing now was what Rani Gaidinliu was passionate about. In a way, she foresaw that such a day like this would come to the Nagas. The only two differences I can see are, Rani Gaidinliu used Heraka as the medium and we are using Christianity; and one was done in a primitive time and the other in a post-modern era. The vacuum of leaving out religion in the process of our political fight for identity was always felt from the beginning until now. Today many of us are sarcastic of the word, “Nagaland for Christ.” I do not see anything wrong when our then faithful freedom fighters pledged to put religious ingredients in their political struggle. They understood perfectly that our historical identity is connected to a Being greater than us. And the Rainbow image that is inscribed in our National flag has a spiritual implication to remind us of that pledge. In all these, religion was fundamental in the fight for identity. Indeed, religion is undeniably the element that is intrinsically connected to social, cultural and political life of the people. Thus, I see the objective of the fight is same in all the cases; the difference is in the methodology to attain the objective. The fight for identity to unite the Nagas is also the very agent that is disintegrating the Nagas. Nagas are known for our bravery and likewise we are arrogant group of people – from the illiterate to the so called intellectuals. Paradoxically, we have become very insecured over the time. Our prejudice occupies every bit of spaces in us that we hardly have any places left for other tribe or community to be part of us. Is this the best we can bring out from the Christian faith we have embraced? We are passionate about the identity from without but confused on the identity from within. How would we reconcile our Christian faith and our indigenous identity? Perhaps, this is the politics of mission we need to be working upon at this juncture. Dr. Vetso Koza