REDEFINING STATUS AND IDENTITY:
THE CASE OF NAGA TEXTILES
Speaker: Vibha Joshi
The paper discusses the role of Naga textiles in the past and their continuing importance with regard to the contemporary socio-cultural and political issues of Naga identity. More than 20 groups of Naga living in northeast India and Myanmar have a unique set of textile traditions which portray the social status, gender and sometimes, within a single group, the clan affiliation of the person.
During the last hundred years the Naga in India and Myanmar have been subject to political changes and a majority have converted to Christianity. The paper will examine how these developments have affected the production and designing of cloth and have imparted new meanings and symbolism to textiles that were in the past associated with headhunting and providers of feasts, and with the indigenous animistic religion.
Naga nationalism draws on indigenous animism but also on distinctive Naga expressions of Christianity, in contrast to the otherwise dominant religion of Hinduism in India and Buddhism in Myanmar. This has given rise to interesting juxtapositions with regards to design and symbolism in Naga textiles. At a practical and secular level Naga textiles may be used for the manufacture of furnishing items. But at a level concerning questions of hallowed and ancestral representation, their use in ways that are not sanctioned by guardians of Naga cultural values is regarded as symbolic and ritual desecration. The paper will address these issues with examples of old and contemporary textiles from museum and private collections.
Introducing
VIBHA JOSHI
Vibha Joshi holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She is presently engaged in post-doctoral research on Naga textiles which concerns studying older textiles in museum collections and the contemporary trends. She is the author of the book The Land of the Nagas (2004, Mapin & Grantha Publishing) and has published articles on various themes concerning the Naga especially Naga textiles and Angami healing traditions. She is curator for the Naga section for the forthcoming exhibition on Village and Tribal Arts of India at the New Orleans Museum of Arts. |
