CONTINUED-37…
As the custodian of our Naga history and culture, this department had still not awakened from its deep slumber all these years to claim its rightful responsibility. I too spent most of the first year, wading through this routine, trying to find some meaningful option to justify our existence as a department. Till date, we had no clear idea as to where Nagas actually originated from. Our oral history mostly began from Makheil and Khezakeno and then get fogged up beyond this point.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE second cart without wheels before my horse was the Department of Arts and Culture. We were fated to an annual budget which even chickens and the inevitable politicians ignored. Imagine…politicians…who were prone to counting chickens even without the eggs…ignoring the existence of a Department, unless it had something to do with appointment of their election connected sycophants. The fact that even this bare minimum political attention that could have stirred an interest in a department was almost non-existent amply signifies the incognito status of this Department. It was no wonder that my ‘collegooose’ considered it as a punishment posting, for which I was a well qualified candidate. This is but a general observation and not in any way, casting aspiration on Mr. Yitachu, the Parliamentary Secretary in charge of both the departments of Tourism/ Arts & Culture. The Parliamentary Secretary with the portfolio of Arts and Culture before him made no bones about his being on a politically sidelined assignment. He must have felt the thirst of being in an open desert without the waterhole in sight. At least Mr. Yitachu had Law and Justice Department, in addition to Tourism/ Arts & Culture. This much I can say without any reservation that Mr. Yitachu was a perfect gentleman in his dealing with the bureaucrats…unassuming, accommodating and willing to listen to the technical views of the departments under him on any issue even while asserting his own. We had a cordial working relationship with him at the helms. The top cat was the Chief Minister in charge of the policy decisions of these departments, and we were the mouse battalion without the bell.
`The Arts and Culture Department was complacently flowing with the tide… busy catering to the existing routines of cultural exchange programmes, assisting the Cultural Unions /Associations with perfunctory financial assistance, registering rural libraries and library book distributions and coordinating with Tourism department on cultural programmes/ presentations for the Hornbill Festival, as some of its elementary departmental functioning. Apart from Mr. Alemchiba, the earlier Director of this department of Arts & Culture, who had spent time to write a book or two about the Nagas as his personal venture, there was no Departmental effort visible for the official documentation of any perspectives on the Nagas migratory history or origin, customs, traditions, festivals, folklores and so on. As the custodian of our Naga history and culture, this department had still not awakened from its deep slumber all these years to claim its rightful responsibility. I too spent most of the first year, wading through this routine, trying to find some meaningful option to justify our existence as a department. Till date, we had no clear idea as to where Nagas actually originated from. Our oral history mostly began from Makheil and Khezakeno and then get fogged up beyond this point. With the advent of Christianity came the written script for the first time which gradually but inevitably caused the extinction of our traditional oral history. Yet no effort whatsoever had been undertaken to document the oral history. The abundant wealth of knowledge concerning our past was being buried with the passing away of each of our elder generations. We were fast running out of time and as late as we already were, a concrete effort was urgently needed to be undertaken as a beginning. We had found our mission statement. I sought an appointment with the Chief Minister, Mr. Niphieu Rio and shared these concern requesting him for an appropriate separate budget to launch a Project on Anthropological, Cultural, Ethnographical and Archaeological history of the Nagas of Nagaland. Mr. Rio did not hesitate even for a moment. All he said was, “How much do you need”? after patiently hearing me out. He was convinced of the importance and the urgency. I asked for One crore rupees for the research team, for procurement of the research equipments, computers for data base storage and for publications in the aftermath. “You’ll have it”, he said and he kept his word. I forewarned him that a project such as this would be a long drawn out process and that this budget requirement must further be sustained in the coming years as well. He agreed. In coordination with the Anthropological Society of Nagaland a comprehensive Project team comprising of around 22 technically qualified members in their respective fields for Anthropological, Ethnographical and Archaeological wings were immediately deployed with Professor Anungla Aier as its Team Leader with Chief Investigators for each separate segment of research. They would deal with all their respective related subjects on a research mode. They were given the liberty to work out their entire annual project plans and equipment needs. The budget requirement as worked out by the Team was minutely scrutinised and was subsequently placed in their project account for an independent, unfettered management. Producing result was the only responsibility placed on their shoulders, with monthly progress report review being made mandatory.
Meanwhile the Department also determined to take a focus on the Festivals and the Folklores of the Nagas more as an introductory information to the readers in the form of storytelling, as a starter. Since the Directorate had a reasonable representation of Officers from most of the Tribes, they were assigned to make a write up of each of their respective Tribal Festivals focusing on the traditional values that each of these festivals invoke, rather than a mundane ‘day one day two’ kind of a routine description that we normally read about. It would later be compiled for a ‘coffee table’ kind of publication. It was absolutely presumptuous on my part to have believed that the output of my officers would be print worthy at that time. When this exercise was rounded up, the ‘value system’ that I had wanted them to highlight, was non-existent. It was then that I wrote about the Tuluni Festival of the Sumis and circulated it to the officers in order to make them understand what I wanted. Their second effort was not too different from their first and one had to cultivate an abnormal patience to decipher their English first before absorbing the contents. I commandeered all the ‘patience’ and tried to read each write-ups and finally gave up in horror. They had all sincerely given their best efforts but their best was just not good enough. A year had frustratingly been spent on this wild goose chase…on a miscalculated assumption. I finally engaged Mr. Rahul Karmakar, a Guwahati based writer, and Mr. Merimvu Doulo, a young self taught photographer, to accomplish this project. Mr. Karmakar was given the broad baseline intent. Appointments were fixed for him to meet with the senior informed citizens from each Tribe for an extensive interview and finally produce the final text of each Tribal Festival. Mr. Doulo crafted the pictures to qualify the stories woven by Mr. Karmakar. We carefully went through the editing process together and were now ready for the publisher. The Lawyers Book Stall publishers did the honours and a volume called “Where Warriors waltz”-on the Festivals of Nagaland was published for the first time as a departmental production effort. The Chief Minister was pleased with the performance of the Department and showed it off by having this book being presented to all the State guests that he received.
We now began our work on the second volume in earnest…to refine the identified folklores that the department had compiled. (A volume of on folklores and folktales had been published by the department some years back but the content was an embarrassment in as far as the reading quality was concerned. I had therefore recommended that it be removed from the shelf). Mr. Rahul Karmakar was again engaged and sent out on an extensive field tours to add flavour to the collected folklore of our past. The illustrations in this book was created by talented local artists who did a remarkable job to give a graphical depiction of the stories that had been suitably retold by Mr.Rahul Karmarkar. We titled it “Fables from the Misty Mountains”-Folklores of the Nagas. We had invested another year on this by the time it was published. Arts and Culture Department had finally registered a small presence within the departmental hierarchy in terms of value added output. The Research Project would add more.
The writer is a retired IAS Officer.
Forest Colony, Kohima
