Paper short abstract:

The paper will present a comparative account of colonial and post-colonial conversions among the Naga tribes of Northeast India and argue that in both periods Naga conversions have been underpinned by perceptions of modernity and attempts to assert ethnic distinctiveness and political autonomy.

Paper long abstract:

Christian conversions in India are often explained in relation to the changed socio-economic and political realities brought about by the colonial encounter and by foreign missionaries, or as a tool for social mobility and empowerment, especially among tribal and Dalit groups in the post-colonial era of India's independence. In the far northeast of India, however, conversions of tribal communities to Christianity have often served the purpose of constructing difference and maintaining distance from what is perceived as the mainstream of Indian civilisation. Drawing on the ethnographic example of the Naga from the state of Nagaland in Northeast India - the highest density Christian population state in India, the paper will explore the motivations which have underpinned mass Naga conversions to Baptist Christianity in the course of the 20th century. The paper will adopt an ethno-historical and ethnographic perspective in order to demonstrate that from the beginning of foreign missionary work among the Naga in the late 19th century conversion has been conceptualised through discourses of modernity and identity change which have translated into a political project of converting to Christianity in the late colonial and in the post-colonial period. The paper will argue that the unfolding of geopolitics in the Indo-Burma borderlands throughout the 20th century has served as a strong catalyst for Naga conversions to Christianity as conversion became an ideological tool for constructing ethnic distinctiveness and asserting Nagas' right to self-determination and political autonomy from the Indian nation state.