24 September 2013, 01:00 PM IST
The year was 2000 and Jyotindra Jain had hung an unforgettable show by my classmate Pablo Bartholomew. The show was called "The Nagas - Marked with Beauty" –it was about the Naga tribes of Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh and the Venue was the Crafts Museum at Pragati Maidan.
Alas I was unable to get images and write about it-but today at the IIC Pablo has hung a few classic images from his culled collection and what an experience it is-it doesn't brim the margins of eulogy but it is a son's search-his quest for his father's roots.
Many moons ago one Christmas day Pablo had visited my home for a meal with the wonderful Francis Newton Souza and he had brought a beauteous Naga maiden with him. And Pablo started talking about his sojourn with the Nagas and their connections through his father's many tales (the art critic Richard Bartholomew).
At that time Pablo had said: "Together with other Burmese, my father and his family left Myanmar for India during World War II. They walked through Yangon (Rangoon) and Mandalay, and ended up at Ledo in the northeastern hills of Assam. Upon meeting the Naga people, my father's family were treated with great hospitality and kindness. They were given shelter and food. And when there times of no food in the village, animals or birds would be slaughtered for them. As a little boy I grew up listening to these bedtime stories that my father told. However unreal my ideas of the Naga people might have been, there were certain images that I had conjured up since I was a kid. And when I went to shoot the past was so much a part of my psyche that it was uncanny."
Francis Newton Souza sat stunned and fascinated and as they gorged on Kerala cuisine cooked by me, Pablo told us about his fascination for borders." India maintains such a long political boundary with other countries that it's hard not to be interested in borders-there is something so elusive and so historical about borders. I also noticed that more often than not, in these areas, cultures are never fixed or stagnant."
Today so many years hence, this show is more than a documentary tale of the hidden tribe from the North East. It is more a journey that spells the poignancy of elegy and the energy of primitive nuances that bring back the ethos of time past being time present.
While some aspects of the Nagas' animistic religious traditions remain, two-thirds of Nagas are Christians, reflecting the strong, influential presence of Baptist missionaries beginning in the late 1800s, who encouraged a complete break from many Naga traditions. Headhunting was once a custom central to all Naga tribes: warring tribes would use their enemies' heads in religious ceremonies, particularly fertility rites. Headhunting was eventually banned by the ruling British in the 1930s, but megaliths, which were erected each time a head was taken to symbolize martial power and virility, still stand in Naga villages.
"Coded Elegance" constitutes a mere fragment of Bartholomew's extensive visual anthropological documentation of the various tribes and people residing in the low Himalayan hills and valleys of Northeast India— a people whose lives are marked by tradition and transition. The series, an off shoot of "Marked with Beauty," his 2000 exhibition of rich, color photographs of the many Naga tribes, explores his journey and interaction with tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Nagaland—diverse communities with as many as 50 different languages—as well as the people inhabiting the valleys in that region. The preservation of their traditional cultures articulated through their dress, rituals, and rites of passage, forms the overarching subject of "Coded Elegance."
"This spectacular coded sense of dress, which incorporates self-woven fabric, peculiar headdresses adorned with animal parts, jewellery made from beads, brass, and silver ornaments, markings on the body and face tattoos, are functions of their traditions that often make contemporary fashion seem banal, flippant, and pedestrian," says Bartholomew about his curatorial intent behind the series which will have its India debut on September 24 at the India International Centre.
"Going beyond the vivid colors and graphic beauty of the textiles used, and the accompanying ornamentation, there exists an unwritten code; a visual language that governed who wore what and what it signified. This attire, derived from animist and shaman practices, comes from the deep relationship these tribes and people of the valley share with the lands and environments they inhabit. Their rites and rituals are a celebration of an amazing, nuanced grace and sophistication."
The show is dedicated to Bartholomew's friend and fellow photographer, Prabuddha Dasgupta who died on August 12 last year, and is an attempt at dialogue with Dasgupta's fashion photography.
Two Yimchunger women with a Khang (cane basket) , Kuttur village, Tuensang Dist. Nagaland
Thang-Ta is a traditional Meitei martial art form that originated in Manipur as a response to the threat of foreign invasion and even for dealing with internal conflict. A graceful, sophisticated art, despite its vigorous nature, the practice derives its name from the words thang, which means sword, and ta, which translates to spear, although it had earlier names like Huyen Langlon (Huyen means war, while Langlon means net, or art, or knowledge) or Huyen Lallong.
A Maring tribe choir and dance troupe, with their drum and gong are Naga tribal group and are closest to the Burmese border. Chandel District, Manipur
A Mishmi man wearing a woven jacket with elaborate designs.The Mishmis occupy the hills from the Dihong to the Brahmakund, in the north-eastern corner of the Brahmaputra valley.
This is one of the most spectacular headdresses amongst all the Naga tribes worn by the Tangkhuls of both India and Myanmar (Burma). Intermarriage still exists between the Northern Tangkhuls of Manipur in India and the Somra Nagas of Burma. The headdress is adorned with hornbill feathers, a brass dish and fringes of human hair. The jaw-piece is made of wood embedded with red and white seeds.
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