In the Name of God
“Mine album is the savage breast, Where darkness broods and tempests rest
Without one ray of light; To write the name of Jesus there,
And point to worlds all bright and fair, And see the savage bow in prayer,
Is my supreme delight.”
-Mary Mead Clark,1907
Nestled within the embrace of ancient mountains, their peaks adorned with clouds and where thick forests weave a tapestry of green, lies my hometown like a wildflower, the home of the Aos — one of the tribes amongst the Nagas. Here, the air is thin, life is monotonous, time is slow and the mountains bring a sense of peace. In this Naga Hill at India’s periphery, the memory of our headhunting past lurks in every corner and because of this, I am a curiosity, an ethnic specimen for those beyond the borders of North-East. 1
In the past, our people were proud headhunters, always attuned to the distant echo of war cries; honour was often measured not in deeds but in trophies of human heads, a reality Mary Mead Clark captured in one of her many accounts. Heathen mythology guided their way of life, legends of the beginning of time, the realm of the spirits and the anger of nature were passed down to understand the close relationship between them. They lived their lives in constant fear that the enemy would sever their heads, but they also lived a life of bravery, protecting what was theirs. In fear of the mysterious gods of nature, they worked to please them and made sacrificial offerings because that belief kept them grounded and in unity. Now, these are but stories of the past— dark and barbaric. A past that one should be ashamed of. But what change swept through the hills that veiled the past in shadow and mystery? That first taste of change was Christianity — the white man’s religion. Today, 98% of the Ao population are Christians, the majority being Baptist, including me. I have been part of events where nothing starts or ends without saying a prayer, as Christianity has always been the norm for me. A way of life, as it was for my parents and their parents.
Swiftly and with impact, the religion and the ideas of the white man began to penetrate the fabric of the headhunting tribe, altering the rhythms of daily life. The white man had come to the hills with a mission, driven by power and name — to make disciples of all nations, to rescue the perishing and the lost. They had decided that this tribe was “lost” and spoke of a path of transformation found only in their religion; the natives were unaware that they were a tribe looming in darkness until the white man had said so. But the white man came in peace; he appeared to be harmless, and the grisly tribe was accepting of the new religion. As Veio Pou noted, they did not arrive with might or power to subjugate but with the ‘Good News’ brought by the missionaries. The hills now echo with hymns and church bells where war cries and chants once tore through the skies. Our transition over the span of a mere century has been uncommonly swift, as today the Aos celebrate 150 years of Christian faith in the hills. Now, the very essence of mission and evangelism is the force that drives our society, binding us together in faith and community.
The sun sets over the mountains in Bendangtila’s hometown in Nagaland, painting the sky after a heavy rain. The brief transition when day surrenders to night.
In the context of the hills, a clear distinction must be made between what I call the ‘coloniser white man’ and the ‘missionary white man’. The former came with conquest in his heart. His purpose was motivated by the thirst for dominion and extraction of what was tangible. While the latter came with a divine understanding of the White Man’s Burden. He did not come with the sword of conquest but what he believed to be the light of salvation and framed his presence as one of benevolence and divinity. Their intent may not have been in tandem at times, but the coloniser and the missionary were products of the same imperial mindset. The coloniser sought to dominate the land, while the missionary sought to dominate the spirit and as a result, the colonial traces in our society run deep. It is woven into our values and ways of thinking and has shaped the way we perceive the world.
Without realising it, we carry forward the legacy of that historic encounter. Together, the coloniser and the missionary have shaped us, sculpting our collective identity into something new. We have been shaped not only as a people for Christ but also as individuals who, in the eyes of history, have been emancipated from what was once seen as the depths of savagery. The layers of our identity are intertwined with the education that was handed down to us, the religion that was imposed and then embraced, and the cultural frameworks that were rewritten over time. The very faith that I practice is a testament to the success of the white man’s mission, a living proof of how effectively these forces of colonisation and conversion have intertwined with our way of life. These influences are not just remnants of the past; they are embedded in my being, shaping my thoughts, my actions, and my beliefs. They follow me wherever I go, present in every step I take, and every decision I make. The education I received and the faith I hold are not just personal choices— they are legacies of a broader historical narrative that still reverberates within me. Wherever I go, these colonial roots remain, ever-present, a reminder of how deeply the white man’s mission succeeded in shaping not only our society but also our very sense of self. It brings to mind what Jamaica Kincaid had written about the colonisers (the English) in Antigua: “Everywhere they went, they turned it into England, and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English.”
The civilising mission in the hills found its roots in education, with the American missionaries taking the lead as forerunners of this effort. The natives, once described by John Butler in 1847 as “hideously wild visages…reckless of human life”, had to convert and learn the language of the missionaries to understand the Good News and with conversions, education simultaneously spread over. For the missionaries, education and Christianity were intertwined, inseparable threads in the fabric of their mission. In 1892, Reverend Samuel Alden Perrine wrote: “In our school, the Bible is the textbook, with such other books as directly bear on the Bible.”
For us, to be educated was to be Christian, was to be saved. Missionary schools were not just places of learning but temples where the mind was shaped in tandem with the soul because the missionaries understood that to truly convert, the natives needed to understand the message, and understanding the message came through language. So, the indigenous language was cast aside and the English language was embraced, and that became a vessel through which salvation would be delivered. Learning English was, in itself, a form of submission, a relinquishing of the old ways to make way for the new. It reflected the Christian identity and Western ideals the missionaries so passionately believed in. Missionary education was never a neutral path to knowledge but a conscious project of identity reconstruction — one that sought to erase the “savage” and impose the “civilised.” Through education and literary practices, the colonial-missionary logic justified its civilising mission in the hills.
With the arrival of print culture in the late 1800s, the missionaries took on the monumental task of printing the Bible in various Naga dialects. In doing so, they not only shared their faith but also bestowed upon these dialects a written form, using the Roman script to capture their essence. Yet, this transformation was a double-edged sword, for the roots of hegemony began with the literalization of select indigenous dialects, carefully crafted by the missionaries. This steady transformation came at a cost as some dialects blossomed and found their voice in ink and paper; many others faded into obscurity. What emerged was a landscape where the chosen dialects stood tall and proud while numerous others slowly vanished from memory, leaving behind a complex tapestry woven with threads of both enlightenment and loss. Today, many believe that the Nagas, including the Ao community, would have remained far behind the pace of modern Indian society had it not been for the changes ushered in by British rule and the influence of American Baptists. People like Asoso Yunuo accredited the works of the Christian missionaries as “an inward machinery which brought modernisation, western ways of life, education, the renaissance of Nagaism and unity among Nagas.”
Back home, education is deeply intertwined with Christianity. Many who went on to achieve greatness in various fields received their foundational learning in Christian schools and even today, these schools persist, diligently imparting knowledge while embedding Christian doctrine. I, too, was a product of this system— 17 years of my life spent within the confines of three different Christian institutions, absorbing their teachings without question. It was all familiar and nothing felt foreign to me because I was immersed in this environment. I was simply learning and practising what was the norm. From my very first day as a wide-eyed four-year-old in a classroom to my very last day in college, Christianity was ever-present. It lingered in the prayers that began each day, echoed in the hymns we sang, and was most vividly felt in the Bible, which was not merely a spiritual text but a subject we were required to study and be examined on. I accepted it all without question, never once pausing to think about the broader implications— that I, along with countless others before and after me, was under a system shaped by colonial narratives. It was not until much later that I understood the deeper layers of the colonial influence that was felt right from the moment I sat in a classroom. To the missionaries, this was a noble act. They adopted what Kanato Chophy termed “puritanical” measures to civilise the Nagas. This realisation has become clearer over time, forcing me to reevaluate not just my education but the very foundations upon which it was built. In this Christian land, there is a widely accepted notion that the missionaries “rescued” us and brought us into the light of civilisation. We often ask the rhetorical question, “What would have been our fate if the missionaries had never come?” We see the life of the past as devoid of meaning and lost in ignorance. But this notion often overlooks the crucial truth— we were not devoid of knowledge or wisdom; we simply existed outside the framework of the Christian worldview. We, though termed “subhumans”, also had a way of life; we had our own ways of knowing and we had values that carried the essence of who we are. My answer to that rhetorical question may ruffle some feathers, but I believe that our fate without the missionaries may not have been one of darkness but one where our cultural heritage remained intact. In asking that question, we must also ask another question: What was taken from us in the name of saving us? The answer to that is something far more complex. The story of our hills is a story of loss, adaptation and acceptance of people whose fate could have been their own to shape, had history unfolded differently.
Today, in the name of God, the Aos operate our Christian mission from Impur— the centre of missionary work and a spiritual landmark in the hills. From this place, our mission and evangelism reach across Southeast Asia— toward communities where Christians face persecution and toward regions where people live in “darkness”, awaiting the light of the Good News. We understand now that it is our turn for evangelism and ‘make disciples of all nations’2, just as the white man might have understood 150 years ago.
Footnotes
Chhangte,Cherrie L (2011). “What does an Indian Look Like” in Tilottoma Misra (Ed.) The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, Vol. I & II,P.76
Matt.28:19 (NIV)
References
Chophy Kanato (2021). Christianity and Politics in Tribal India, P. 2
Kincaid Jamaica (1988). A Small Place, P. 24
Butler John(1847). A Sketch Of Assam, P.149-150
Clark, Mary Mead (1907). A Corner in India, P.132