Paper Short Abstract:

With an ethnographic focus on Naga churches in New Delhi, this paper explores the challenges and opportunities associated with Christian living in the mega-city at a time of deepening political and economic uncertainties and anxieties that Naga migrants experience there.

Paper Abstract:

For the past 20 years or so, New Delhi has been attracting increasing numbers of Naga migrants from Northeast India who have tended to cluster in certain neighbourhoods in the mega-city. They have been doing that both for greater convenience and social support but also for greater safety, given their precarious position as what I call ‘hyper-visible’ migrants who experience multi-dimensional forms of everyday violence, discrimination and exclusion in New Delhi. With majority Naga being Christian, it is not surprising that while creating spaces and places for themselves and their communities in the patchwork of urban living, Naga migrants have also established a multitude of ethnic churches in New Delhi. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in several such churches across New Delhi, this paper explores the opportunities and challenges that Naga pastors experience in establishing and running churches in the mega-city – and how religious-place making in a foreign, and often hostile, urban environment has propelled them to think of different ways in which they could innovatively cater to the spiritual and social needs of their congregants. The paper argues that in order to understand the complex ways in which the mega-city has had a transformative impact on Naga church and community life in New Delhi, we need to gain better ethnographic insights into the everyday lived experiences of Naga Christians amidst the ever-increasing uncertainty and precariousness of the urban mode of life for religious and ethnic minorities in India’s capital city.