Naga Hills · Northeast Hill Massif
The Naga hills have no dynastic history because they had no dynasties. The political unit was the village, and a village was a republic — walled, self-provisioning, at war or at peace with its neighbours on its own decision, and holding its own land. Constitutions differed from one ridge to the next. Ao villages were governed by a putu menden, a council of clan elders that held office for a fixed term and then handed over to the next set. Angami villages had no chief at all, only a ritual head who fixed the agricultural year and clan elders who spoke for their khel. Sumi villages had a hereditary chief; Konyak villages an Angh whose authority was hereditary, extensive and could reach across what later became an international boundary. Two adjacent peoples could therefore run opposite systems. What held it together was not a state but an institutional grammar shared across languages that could not be mutually understood — the morung dormitory that trained and mobilised the young men, the Feast of Merit that converted grain into standing, the mithun as the unit of wealth, and a textile you had to earn. So the periodisation here is not dynastic but administrative — it turns on when an outside power first came up the ridge, which was 1832, and on how long it took to get from the foothill to the watershed, which was about fifty years.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Nothing in this period is datable and the reason is worth stating plainly. Societies that keep no dynastic record produce no chronology, and the Naga village kept genealogy, oral narrative and the log drum instead. What the archaeology and the landscape show is a settlement pattern of large, fortified, long-inhabited villages on ridge tops with permanent water and defensible approaches, and two quite different farming systems side by side — rotational jhum on most slopes, and permanent contour-terraced wet rice in the Angami country around Khonoma, which is old enough that nobody can say when it began. The terraces are the reason those villages are large, old and fixed, while jhum villages could and did move.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| undated | The languages of the hills diverge within Tibeto-Burman to the point of mutual unintelligibility. There is no reconstructable single Naga language and no tradition of one. |
| undated, long-established | Contour-terraced irrigated rice is developed in the high Angami country around Khonoma and Kohima, producing permanent villages of a size and age that rotational cultivation could not support. |
| undated, continuing | The morung — the age-set dormitory known by a different name in nearly every language of the hills — functions as school, barracks, workshop and archive of the village. |
| undated, continuing | The mithun becomes the standard of wealth and the currency of the Feast of Merit, in which a man converts stored grain into public feasting and thereby into the right to wear particular cloth and raise particular stones. |
A state formed on the plain below and never came up. The Ahom kingdom was established in the Brahmaputra valley in 1228 and lasted six hundred years without absorbing the hills; instead it paid, in the arrangement recorded as posa, a settlement of goods to hill communities on the foothill edge — which is an admission that the ridge could not be taxed and had to be treated with. Below that, an old trade ran both ways: hill villages carried cotton, chillies, ginger, wax and forest produce down to the foothill markets and took back salt, dried fish, iron, brass and glass and carnelian beads. The beads matter, because objects that were ordinary commodities in Assam became heritable wealth on the ridge. Manipur's valley kingdom to the south had comparable dealings with the Tangkhul villages on its rim. None of this made the hills part of anything.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1228 | The Ahom kingdom is established in the Brahmaputra valley. Over six centuries it never brings the Naga ridge under administration. |
| 17th–18th century | The Ahom arrangement recorded as posa — an annual settlement of goods to foothill Naga communities — formalises a frontier that is negotiated rather than governed. |
| continuing through the period | Foothill markets exchange hill produce for salt, dried fish, iron, brass and beads. Beads and brass that were trade goods in the plains become inheritable valuables in the hills. |
| continuing through the period | The Konyak Angh system in the northern ranges develops a hereditary authority that can extend over several villages — the one office in the hills that looks anything like a chiefship over more than one settlement. |
In 1832 Captains Jenkins and Pemberton crossed the hills from Manipur with an escort, looking for a route between Manipur and Assam, and the fifty years that followed were an argument about whether the ridge could be administered at all. The Company tried a foothill line, then withdrawal, then a headquarters at Samaguting in 1866, then Kohima in 1878. The decisive year was 1879. On 14 October the Political Officer G. H. Damant and about thirty-five men were killed at Khonoma; Kohima was besieged; a campaign through the winter took Khonoma on 22 November, found it abandoned, and finally received the surrender of the fort above it on 27 March 1880 on written terms — firearms given up, the village rebuilt without fortification, revenue in cash, rice and labour. The Naga Hills was annexed as a district on 27 March 1881. What followed was administration rather than conquest, and two things came out of it that were not intended. Some two thousand Naga men from many communities served together in labour corps in France in 1917 and 1918, and out of that shared service the Naga Club was formed at Kohima in 1918. And on 10 January 1929 twenty of its members — Angami, Sema, Lotha, Rengma, Kacha Naga and Kuki, most of them interpreters, teachers and clerks in government employ — put their case to the Simon Commission in writing. In the southern hills the Zeliangrong movement of 1930–32 ran on entirely different ground. The war reached the region in 1944, when the Japanese advance was held at Kohima between April and June in fighting that destroyed the town.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1832–1878 | Captains Jenkins and Pemberton cross the hills from Manipur with an escort — the first European party into Angami country. Half a century of expeditions follows, and an administrative headquarters is established at Samaguting in 1866 and moved to Kohima in 1878, fixing the administration inside the hills rather than at their foot. |
| 14 October 1879 – 27 March 1880 | G. H. Damant and about thirty-five of his party are killed at Khonoma and Kohima is besieged. Khonoma is taken on 22 November 1879 and found deserted; the fort above the village surrenders on terms on 27 March 1880. |
| 27 March 1881 | The Naga Hills is annexed as a district of British India. |
| 1917–1918 | Some two thousand Naga men serve in labour corps in France. On their return the Naga Club is formed at Kohima in 1918, the first body in which men from different Naga communities sat together. |
| 10 January 1929 | Twenty members of the Naga Club submit a written memorandum to the Simon Commission asking that the Naga Hills be left out of the proposed constitutional reforms. The signatories included Angami, Sema, Lotha, Rengma and Kacha Naga men and one Kuki. |
| 1931–1932 | Haipou Jadonang, a Rongmei Naga religious reformer from Puiluanh, is arrested in February 1931 and executed at Imphal on 29 August. His cousin Gaidinliu continues the movement and is taken near Kenoma on 17 October 1932 and sentenced to life imprisonment in December. |
| 4 April – 22 June 1944 | The Battle of Kohima. The Japanese advance into India is held at the town, which is largely destroyed; Naga villagers served as porters, scouts and stretcher-bearers throughout. |
Rulers and commanders
Hereditary authority over a village and, in the greater Anghships, over a group of villages — the closest thing in the hills to a chiefship above the single settlement. At Longwa the Angh's authority historically reached villages on both sides of what is now an international frontier.
Seat: Mon, Longwa and the northern ranges
A council of clan elders holding office for a fixed term and then handing over to the next set in an agreed rotation. Authority was borrowed for a period rather than inherited, which is a written constitution in everything but writing.
Seat: Mokokchung and the Ao country
Hereditary village chiefship with rights over land allotment and a share of produce. Sumi and Ao villages sit within a day's walk of each other and ran opposite constitutions — a useful check on any account that treats the hills as one political system.
Seat: Zunheboto and the Sumi country
The ritual head who opened and closed the agricultural year and fixed the days on which work could be done. Angami villages had no chief; authority sat with the khel elders and with this calendrical office.
Seat: Khonoma, Kohima and the Angami country
Rongmei Naga reformer whose movement standardised Zeliangrong religious practice around a supreme being, Tingkao Ragwang, reducing sacrifice while retaining the harvest gennas. It acquired a political dimension and he was tried and executed at Imphal in August 1931.
Seat: Puiluanh (Kambiron)
Took up the movement after her cousin Jadonang's execution and led resistance across the Zeliangrong country of Manipur, the Naga Hills and North Cachar from 1931 until her capture in October 1932. She was sixteen or seventeen at the time.
Seat: Longkao
The officer through whom the administration dealt with the Angami villages, and whose death with about thirty-five of his party at Khonoma triggered the campaign of 1879–80 and the annexation that followed.
Seat: Kohima
The history of Naga Hills from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (7)