Picto Diary - 06 December 2019 - Kigwema (3) Village Walk

Above: Catholic Church and Baptist Church. Kigwema Village, Nagaland, India. 06 December 2019.

80% of population of Nagaland is Christian. 55% Baptist, 25% Catholic and 20% other.

Baptist breakthrough occurred in mid nineteenth century when Baptist missionaries brought to animist tribals a cure for leprosy.
Catholics arrived in late 19th century from Kerala. The current Archbishop of Kohima is from Kerala, another Indian Christian stronghold.

Above. Walking through village. Kigwema, Nagaland. 06 December 2019.

Kigwima impressed with its cleanliness ..particularly as, ummm... this is India and, cleanliness is not always present outside of wealthy enclaves.

But, is Nagaland really India? The Naga people are Asiatic looking, tribal by heritage, and Christian by ancestral conversion. Nagaland reminds that India is not as monolithically Hindu as might be commonly perceived.

India's recently passed immigration reform legislation, which seems to give support to India's secular, multicultural governance approach, encourages and facilitates the return of Hindu and non Hindu exiles, alike, with Indian roots, to India. So far so good.

Except... except...the new immigration rules exclude Muslims. Opponents of the new legislation, rejecting the notion of the new rules being a reaffirmation of India's secular approach, rather, interpret the new law as a crack in India's secular foundation. In effect, say the legislation's opponents, by excluding Muslims from the new legislation, the Indian Government is "declaring war" on India's largest minority (200 million strong) religion.

Perhaps India, with its new immigration legislation, is actually in synch with most of the rest of the world, where tribalism, religious nationalism, racial nationalism and cultural nationalism (US) is on the upswing. Countries accounting for three quarters of the world's population are moving away from the progressive, multicultural ideal propagated in the West since the 1960's.... until, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, that is, both of whom are democratic, cultural nationalists (so is Putin, by the way), and both of whom broadly speaking, are more in synch with the world trends towards revived nationalism than they are they with the multicultural ideal currently espoused by Germany led Europe. That's why the left hates Trump, so much. He has bent Obama's left pointing, progressive arc of history, back in the direction of nationalism, prioritizing American culture ahead of kumbaya cultural relativism. The impact of Trump's presidency, to date, in this regard has been profound... on a scale unimaginable in 2016.

So, India concludes that minority religions pose no threat to Hindu cultural integrity and advancement as long as they are not Muslim. There are 200 million Muslims in India, now seen as being viewed by the Hindu oriented BJP ruling party as a cultural threat.

There are Muslim student demonstrations ongoing in Delhi to protest the new immigration rules. Though, in general, Hindus and Muslims have gotten along pretty well together in India since the seventeenth century Moghuls, sectarian tensions between the two religions have never been far below the surface. Modi is taking a risk of re kindling sectarian flames by alienating the Muslims with India's new immigration legislation. We saw what 1948 Partition brought... ten million displaced people and one million dead. But, then, today, the nationalist imperative trumps. Hinduism, or so the new story goes, deserves its day in the sun notwithstanding the risks of growing sectarian strife.

Above. Wood for winter. Kigwema, Nagaland. 06 December 2019.

Wood fuel heats and cooks in heavily forested Nagaland. Wood piles like this are ubiquitous in Kohima and Kigwema. Naga people do not appear not to be in to so-called green energy programs.

Above. Weaver. Kigwema. Nagaland. 06 December 2019.

Above: Rice Terraces. Kigwema, Nagaland. 06 December 2019.