One will find in many of the websites how hornbill festival of Nagaland is celebrated. One reads like this, “the aim of the festival is to revive and protect the rich culture of Nagaland and display its extravaganza and traditions. For visitors it means a closer understanding of the people and culture of Nagaland, and an opportunity to experience the food, songs, dances and the customs of Nagas. To encourage inter-tribal interaction and promote cultural heritage of Nagaland, the government of Nagaland organizes the Hornbill Festival”.
Now the question we ask ourselves is, do we really showcase our culture and tradition in a truest Naga way? To my humble opinion, we have been failing miserably time and again to display our rich culture, food, songs, dances etc etc. we witnessed a resentment from certain intellectuals for the “JAI HO” Naga way when Shri. Narendra Modi graced the Hornbill Festival as our Chief Guest. And as though that error was not enough, this year we are witnessing a massive unprecedented changes at our heritage site; a worry for me personally. The following are some handful events that already took place.
A traditional blessing is invoked by a “Guru”. I am pretty sure, the title Guru is accorded to him for his excellence in tribal music by certain academy which is well taken, however seeking a traditional blessing bypassing the village chiefs/Anghs/etc amounts to demeaning our own respected Naga elders. Thank you Rev. Moa Longchari for the invocation prayer despite the fact that your name did not even figure in the official program circulated by the organizers. Your humble prayer as a Reverent is a wakeup call for the Government that as a Christian state we ought to beseech the blessings of our Almighty God, before and after any occasion, though superseded by the Guru.
Tourists were taken by surprise while witnessing a superb show of Bihu dance by Assamese troupes that lasted for more than 30 minutes. Even the various cultural troupes were wondering how the Assamese troupes took the limelight (not in terms of excellence) but in terms of time allocation. The local tribal troupes were given a strict 15 minutes and 10 minutes each to perform and exit. A denial of display to our own cultural troupe on their day when they were prepared to perform all day long.
Up next was the tri-colour salad at the Naga Heritage village. What a display of traditional Naga cuisine! Please let us not confuse ourselves with our traditional eating habits to that menu provided at the stars. A criminal tainted politician from Bihar Rajesh Ranjan, famously known as Pappu Yadav infamously known for assaulting a crew member on flight with his chappel, coming and gracing as a guest tells all. Have we run out of even guests? Have we reached our saturation point where we can have a state guest from whom we can learn and look up to? He might be a five time M.P. of Lok Sabha where he won elections while he was inside the prison, but that does not qualify us to go his path. Kindly bring us a zero criminal record guest in the coming years.
The above few events have taken place in our Hornbill Festival 2016. Do we really need to be content with the way it is celebrated? To my observation, we need a lot more of dignity and reality that showcases our true values and ethos with our various tribal and village cultures. Kuknalim.
