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Kritika Kultura

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-9416-4975

Abstract

Colonization can be twofold: external and internal. For a socio-geographic space like Nagaland, a state in the Northeast of India, colonialism has presented itself through Britain, and even India itself; these multiple faces of colonialism have influenced and destabilized this hilly state. It was the British who had the maximum influence on Nagaland. India, even after its independence from the British in 1947, implemented certain strategies that smelt of British imperialism, whichultimately affected Nagaland and Northeast India as a whole. Thus, referencing the novels by the Naga woman writer, Easterine Kire, namely, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered and Bitter Wormwood, the article examines how indigenous memories challenge the colonial discourse about the Nagas, correcting their misrepresentation. To retrace the memory of the natives of Nagaland, who come under the category of “tribals,” it is necessary to decode the often colonized and contested identity of the “tribals” to decolonize their experiences. The characters in these texts often blur the boundaries amongst memories, histories, and tales while reflecting upon the past, and challenge the identity of the Nagas and the socio-political image of Nagaland portrayed by the colonists. As these were written by a Naga, the works highlight how the colonization of the natives is contested through writing. In Nagaland, where oral traditions predominate, writing is largely a legacy of colonialism. Kire’s works highlight the significance of orality in bridging the divide between oral storytelling and written literature. Tracing the overlapping nature of the individual and the cultural memory of the characters, this study displays how memory is often the only weapon of people belonging to an unstable environment where it is already difficult to make independent memories free of constraints. The paper also focuses on how memory helps in de-essentializing one’s culture in freeing the native people from damaging binaries, such as rural–urban and nature–culture. Finally, the article probes how memory becomes the fundamental source of establishing a postcolonial force that combats and questions identities assigned by those in power, both political and academic.

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