Paper short abstract:

There's a multi-layered conflict and division within a single Christian denomination. The tenets of religion (Christianity here) as believed and the core-belief (the way it is lived out) is found intricately linked with traditional customs - believe and practices.

Paper long abstract:

Studies on the north eastern states of India have usually tended to concentrate on problems of ethnicity, militancy, identity, and the politics of cultural and religious differences. This paper also takes familiar terrain by way of looking at the history, but goes beyond them to explore much ignored and missing perspectives on customary practices, conflicts arising out of religious core-beliefs and historical influences. This paper is a sociological enquiry of a micro and localized crisis in Yimti village in the North-East Region (NER) of India, attempting a broader understanding of conflict and the role of religious worldviews. Yimti village is a 161 household village in Nagaland, inhabited exclusively by the Ao-Naga tribal group. With its rather hostile social history towards mainland India, the village has been subject to colonial and post colonial control and influenced historically in uniquely different ways. Distinctly, Yimti has an unusual conflict within a church, socio-economic politics and conflicts within and without - all of which demand equivocal inquiry so as to look through and beyond easily evident and commonsensical constructs of institutions.