\nThe show is as comprehensive as it is visually compelling. The new films and photographs bring us right into the contemporary Naga scene, while the old artefacts \u2014 ranging from bamboo warrior-baskets adorned with monkey skulls and rugged spears to embroidered cowrie shell-decorated costumes and carved totem poles \u2014 take us back to their ancient ritual life.
\n The exhibition has an additional dimension in the form of works by the contemporary artist Cristina Fessler. In her work cycle, \u2018Nagaland-Transfer 1992-2008\u2019, the Zurich-based sculptor deals intensively with Naga art and what her own imagination sees in, and draws from it.
\nThe show, which will run until May 2009, has been curated by Richard Kunz, head of the museum\u2019s South-east Asian art section, and anthropologist Vibha Joshi of Oxford University.
\n\u201cThe idea of holding the show developed after Peter Fanham, who authored \u2018Hidden World of the Nagas\u2019, saw the Basel collection in 2003 and suggested putting it together with the great Naga collections in Germany,\u201d says Kunz. \u201cVibha Joshi and I then worked together with the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, the State Museum for Folk Art in Munich and the Ethnography Museum of the University of Zurich to put the show together.\u201d The curators also travelled together in Nagaland extensively in the last five years to study the current scene and add new items to the show.
\n \u201cThe exhibits date from the late 1870s to the early 2000s. The Berlin collection is the oldest, dating back to Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), the founding father of German anthropology, who was among the first to conduct research among the Naga in 1878-79,\u201d Kunz says. \u201cThe Basel collection is more recent but covers a longer time-span: 1930s to the early 2000s. It includes artefacts gathered by three anthropologists: the German Hans Eberhard Kaufmann (1899-1986), the Swissman Paul Wirz (1882-1955) and the celebrated Czech-Indian Milada Ganguli (1913-2000), who, as an Indian citizen, was able to travel extensively in Naga territory between 1963 and 1992, during a period when the region was officially strictly closed to visitors.\u201d Milada Ganguli\u2019s photos of Naga life are evocative \u2014 her shot of a Sangtam Naga girl sorting cotton lingers in the mind\u2019s eye long after you quit the show. And some of her artefacts shed light on little rituals, like the three types of carved wooden spoons presented by young Angami Naga men to their lovers (or by men to their unmarried young daughters and nieces) that are used in rituals at the spring festival.
\nThe exhibits are all fascinating, though a few, like the \u2018Panji basket\u2019 (for bamboo spikes) adorned by a circlet of tiny wooden human heads, are more eye-catching than others.
\n(Continued on page 5)
\n This basket is the only known piece of its type in museum collections. But my favourite are three simple things: an exquisitely woven four-inch-high, fibre weighing-scale for opium; a snail-shell container for betel-lime; a girdle made of glass beads.
\nI found the video-films on the contemporary Naga scene \u2014 shot by the curators \u2014 engaging too. \u201cNagaland is a volatile region, as you know. I will not dwell on the politics of the place \u2014 that\u2019s not our brief,\u201d Kunz says. \u201cTheirs is a complex reality. The ritual life of the Naga has changed dramatically. But I was as surprised by the continuity as by the changes \u2014 and by their burning desire to document and preserve their existing material and oral culture.\u201d
\nMany Naga traditions, including head-hunting, are a thing of the past, as is much of the ritual lifestyle associated with it, but the Nagas are evidently returning to other rituals to reconsolidate their identity \u2014 such as making giant log drums from carved-out tree trunks, eight or nine metres long, which take three to four months to prepare (as shown in a film) \u2014 and are also expressing increasing interest in their pre-Christian rituals and legacies.
\n \u201cHeadhunting is alien to all but the oldest of the tribe, but the Nagas like to exhibit their ancestral head-hunting tools and large panel-carvings from their morung (ceremonial house) depicting dramatic scenes from head-hunting expeditions and buffalo worship, and to remember their heroes,\u201d Kunz reveals. \u201cThe term \u2018headhunting\u2019 evokes images of exotic and barbarian practices of wild, uncivilised and remote tribes in our imagination. But the rationale behind headhunting was never wanton killing. It was always part of making war. And there was a religious background \u2014 life force and fertility. The Nagas believe that life force concentrates in the head before death and that a head\u2019s force passes to its slayer and can in turn be passed to clan, family, animals and land.\u201d
\nThe practice of bringing home war trophies, evidence of one\u2019s own victory, has always existed, and continues to do so, even in so-called \u2018civilised\u2019 societies, the curator points out. \u201cThere were \u2018skull trophies\u2019 in World War II \u2014 as Life magazine exposed in its May 22, 1944, issue, which carried a photograph of a young American woman posing with the autographed skull of a Japanese soldier sent to her by her Navy boyfriend. During the Vietnam War, US soldiers picked up countless \u2018trophy skulls\u2019. Six such skulls are still to be found in the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC. There is also evidence that US troops in the first Gulf War under George Bush Senior removed body parts of slain enemies.\u201d
\nBarbaric indeed \u2014 but there\u2019s little anthropologists and museums can do about it. But can his museum bring the Naga show to India?
\n \u201cThat will be difficult, but we are considering having a virtual exhibition,\u201d replies Kunz. \u201cWe also intend to work together with the Nagaland Museum and Nagaland University in the long term. We are talking to the museum in Kohima about how we can help them augment and analyse their collections and develop exhibition content. We are trying to work out exchange programmes in the field of anthropology with the university. Oxford University has already begun a scientific exchange with them and we will follow suit. That will enrich us all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"