The Highlander Journal is an academic, open-access, and peer reviewed online journal, broadly concerned with the study of Asia's highland communities historically situated at the margins of the state, and is inspired by debates on the spatio-cultural aspects of 'Zomia'. This concept was used originally to imagine an alternate cartography of upland Asia, which in-turn spurred debates on state, culture, and social formation in the so-called peripheries. The Journal is a unique and accessible forum for multidisciplinary and comparative discussions, taking these concepts within and beyond Asia and thereby engaging with global conversations on interconnection and fragmentation.
Naga Performing Arts and Oral Traditions
This editorial introduces a special issue of The Highlander Journal dedicated to Naga performing arts and oral traditions, reflecting a flourishing research focus at the Highland Institute. The articles engage with a range of ethnolinguistic and cultural practices, including the use of Poetic Mongsen in Ao Naga folk narratives, the intergenerational role of Zeme women in oral transmission, and the contemporary reimagining of Naga history through music and performance, such as in Moko Koza’s Boy from the Hills (2023). A literary review of Bashabi Fraser’s poetry collection Habitat extends the issue’s scope to include ecological concerns and diasporic perspectives. Collectively, these contributions highlight the intersections of Indigenous expressive forms, historical memory, gendered knowledge transmission, and environmental humanities.
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The book reviewed here, Bashabi Fraser’s Habitat, is a poetry collection centred around our planet — its richness, beauty, and the necessity to protect it. Alternating simple, straightforward style and highly metaphorical poems, it oscillates between a fascination with the earth’s landscapes, fauna, and flora and a more rational concern over dangers threatening it, like deforestation and climate change, or a preoccupation with other universally encountered problems, such as colonization and exile. Whether the tone is one of wonder or reflection, most of the poems display remarkable aesthetic innovation that combines unusual imagery, unconventional rhyme patterns, and an occasional recourse to intertextuality.
This study investigates the morphological variations in terms of the compound word formation process between Poetic Mongsen, a near-extinct language used for traditional songs among the Ao people of Nagaland, India, and spoken Mongsen. Poetic Mongsen exhibits a derivational morphology similar to that of spoken Mongsen but also demonstrates unique features. Notably, Poetic Mongsen incorporates words from Chungli, another Ao language, resulting in Chungli loanwords, combining Mongsen and Chungli morphemes. Additionally, Poetic Mongsen employs metaphors extensively, leading to the formation of numerous exocentric compounds not found in spoken Mongsen. This article is based on fieldwork data gathered during interviews with nine consultants across five villages, which informs the analysis of these morphological variations. It attempts to contribute to the understanding of Poetic Mongsen’s word formation process and provide valuable insights into the unique linguistic and artistic features of a poetic language.
Collecting stories of moments from the past when young Naga women used to meet and socialize is not often talked about in oral traditions. This short essay briefly gives a glimpse of how ‘ordinary’ moments and traditional folk singing intersect in the world of Zeme women in the past. The narratives and life worlds of the female dormitory are brought in for this study. This is an ongoing work in understanding the role of women in Zeme oral traditions.
Rethinking the Past and Contextualising the Present
This paper critically examines Moko Koza’s music video, Boy from the Hills — and its account of the Japanese invasion of the Naga Hills during the Second World War — as a creative process of culture. It locates the video as a contemporary text shaped by an intricate network of tradition, shifting cultural ethos, evolving musical sensibilities, and the access aﬀ orded by the globalised domain of digital media within the local milieu. Accordingly, it argues that the video enables alternate, yet grounded, ways of reading history and understanding the Naga sense of selfhood in the present. The paper explores the oscillation between accounts from the past — voiced by multiple perspectives in the song — and their retelling by Koza from a contemporary temporal location. It further examines how Koza’s emergence as a cultural representative, embodying a new form of iconicity in the contemporary music scene, is central to the consolidation of his persona as an authorial voice in the reconfi guration of history. Finally, it analyses the role of folk-fusion rap — the genre of this particular music video — in the broader debate on cultural change and loss in Naga society and its connection to the study of history.
Territorial deities that can travel, speak, dance and bathe are integral part of the indigenous traditions of the Kullu Valley in the Indian Himalayas. These deities are active social beings whose existence is associated with action, particularly the movement of their chariots or raths. This photo essay explores how the rath becomes a vital symbol of divine corporeality and how it performs the deity’s identity in front of its followers. Created and carried by its followers, the rath not only materializes the deity’s relationship with its followers, but also performs its identity through behavioural patterns rooted in oral traditions. This idea is discussed through the example of the bathing ritual of the deity Naag Dhumbal where the deity’s human-ness is highlighted. The journey of the deity and its followers comes across as an important way of projecting the deity’s identity and accessibility. Divine presence, in its tangible form, is achieved through the cumulative eﬀ ect of reverberating music, incense, movement and touch. The pictures attempt to enable a level of visualisation of the deity’s physical presence generated through an intense sensory experience, at the centre of which is the deity’s moving rath.
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This article reflects on the challenges and responsibilities of conducting fieldwork and producing research in Northeast India, emphasizing the deeply political and humanizing dimensions of scholarship. Moving beyond rigid methodological frameworks, it advocates for an engaged and reflexive ethnographic approach that connects local experiences to global debates. The discussion underscores the importance of clear academic communication, the interplay between theory and ethnography, and the necessity of critical engagement with the researcher's own positionality. By interrogating the expectations placed on scholars—both by academic institutions and local communities—it calls for a rethinking of research as not merely an intellectual pursuit but as an ethical and transformative process. Ultimately, the article urges scholars to move beyond extractive research practices and towards a methodology that acknowledges the complexities, anxieties, and lived realities of fieldwork in Northeast India.
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Highland Asia as a field of anthropological study
This article critically examines Highland Asia as an anthropological field of study, proposing a shift from the dominant hill-valley paradigm towards internal comparative analysis within the region. Engaging with and moving beyond James C. Scott’s Zomia thesis, the article argues that the conceptualization of Highland Asia as a space of anti-state resistance often oversimplifies the historical and socio-political realities of its diverse populations. Instead, it advocates for an approach that recognizes the internal heterogeneity of Highland Asia—spanning multiple linguistic, political, and ecological contexts—while also challenging the methodological nationalism that has shaped past scholarship. Drawing inspiration from the Field of Anthropological Study framework, it calls for transregional ethnographic comparisons that transcend the artificial boundaries imposed by nation-states and area studies. Ultimately, the article urges scholars to rethink Highland Asia not as a monolithic entity defined by resistance, but as a complex and dynamic space requiring more nuanced anthropological engagement.
This article explores the potential of developing a theory from the hills, advocating for a shift in perspective that reframes highland societies not as peripheral spaces of escape but as central sites of knowledge production. Engaging critically with James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed, the discussion challenges valley-centric ontologies and highlights the need for scholarship that originates from the vantage point of upland communities. Drawing inspiration from Jean and John Comaroff’s Theory from the South, the article calls for a reorientation of theory-making that foregrounds indigenous epistemologies, contemporary socio-political dynamics, and environmental challenges. By addressing pressing issues such as gender politics, resource extraction, and climate change, it argues for an empirical and conceptually rigorous engagement with the lived realities of highland Asia. Ultimately, the article urges scholars to move beyond colonial archives and engage with the hills as generative spaces for new intellectual frameworks.
Towards a historical anthropology of Upland Laos
This article critically engages with James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed through a historical anthropological analysis of upland Laos, particularly Houaphan province. While Scott’s framework emphasizes purposeful statelessness and state evasion among upland societies, archival records, oral histories, and ethnographic evidence from Laos reveal a more complex reality of negotiation, interaction, and mutual appropriation between highland and lowland communities. Rather than a simple dichotomy of state versus non-state spaces, upland Laos exhibits hierarchical relationships within the müang system, cycles of resistance and collaboration, and evolving socio-political structures shaped by both indigenous agency and external forces. The article calls for a nuanced historical anthropology that moves beyond rigid binaries to better capture the dynamic processes of ethnogenesis, political ecology, and transregional exchange in the uplands.
This editorial introduces The Highlander: Journal of Highland Asia, a scholarly initiative dedicated to the study of highland communities across Asia, particularly in regions historically marginalized by dominant state-centric narratives. Drawing on the foundational contributions of Willem van Schendel’s concept of Zomia and James C. Scott’s theorization of state evasion, the editorial critically engages with how highland societies navigate the tensions between state incorporation and local autonomy. The discussion situates these debates within broader transformations in area studies, advocating for a methodological and conceptual shift that moves beyond rigid geopolitical boundaries. By embracing an interdisciplinary and open-access ethos, The Highlander seeks to foster new dialogues on the histories, politics, cultures, and futures of highland Asia, challenging conventional paradigms and promoting scholarship from within these communities.
Review of The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century by Thomas Simpson
Thomas Simpson. The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century. 2021. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Delhi & Singapore. Cambridge University Press. 350 pp., €87.23 (Hardback). ISBN: 978-1-108-84019-4
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Niam/Faith/Hynniewtrep – 100 Unaddressed Picture Postcards from Khasi-Jaintia Hills is an ongoing photographic reflection on the ideas of faith, religion and conversion among the Khasi-Pnar community. Begun in 2006, the series engages with the question of colonial Christian missionary encounters in the Khasi-Jaintia hills and its changing meanings in the postcolonial Hinduised Indian state. The exhibition was supported by the Chennai Photo Biennial, Diﬀusion: Wales International Festival of Photography, and India Foundation for the Arts.
‘This is Io’ – photographs from Tamlu, Nagaland, 1902
I acquired a family archive of colonial documents and photos taken in the first years of the 20th century, the majority relating to the Naga Hills. The most substantial and interesting of these is a diary, enhanced by images, which covers tours made by Connie Shakespear while accompanying her husband, the commandant of the Naga Hills Military Police based in Kohima. To determine what could be made of her record, in December 2019 I went to some of the villages she had visited to provide background for a potential publication of the diary. Whilst my visit was an informal exercise and not made for anthropological purposes it did provide experience of a kind reflected in academic texts linking photography with anthropology and history (Morton: The Anthropology of Photography). By showing photographs to people living there today I hoped to guage their level of interest and to ask for comment and my presentation of these images in the village of Tamlu is one focus of this essay. A second focus is to show how Connie’s text and photographs from Tamlu refl ect her interest in the village and her engagement with the people, an important element in deciding to publish the diary. The third aspect of the essay addresses the villagers’ attitude to the camera and the business of being photographed, also relevant to assessing Connie’s relationship with them. My visits to Tamlu and other villages made it clear to me that the diary and photographs belong in the public domain.
The Ritualistic world of the Tiwa community
This photo essay on the ritualistic world of the Tiwa highland community is a product of long-term field research carried out since 2015 in West Karbi Anglong district in Assam, and Ri-Bhoi district in Meghalaya, India. Unlike their lowland counterparts, Tiwa highlanders embrace the older traditions as evidenced in their ritual and cultural practices. The images in this essay are drawn from ongoing fi eldwork, and are supported by preliminary textual descriptions, though seeking in an ethnographic way to present a general picture of the socio-cultural and ritualistic life of Tiwa highlanders which is largely unfamiliar to scholars in an otherwise rich Northeast Indian ethnographic record.
This essay is about a drawing I produced over eight years between 2011 and 2019. The drawing is big (1.6 by 0.9 metres) and very detailed (Image 1). The subject is Mumuret 1, a high-altitude valley skirting Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. I have represented the valley divided by the river which runs down its middle. Trees creep up the sides while, lower down on the valley floor are clustered settlements, single buildings, and people. The perspective shifts throughout the drawing, moving between a ground-level view and a bird’s-eye view. At one end, the valley folds in on itself, and we see it from high above, winding its way through the serried peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains.
This article explores scenarios of blurred boundaries between ethnic cultures in the Ri Bhoi District of Northeast (NE) India. These geographical and social spaces are where shared experience defines the people as much as their ethnic group, and where cultural assimilation or transmission has been taking place over many generations. The case study of this article is an empirical study of cultural transmission through the example of textiles and traditional textile technology. It explores transmission of knowledge and skill across the Khasi Bhoi, the Karbi and the Khat-ar Lyngdoh ethnic communities of the Ri Bhoi District of Meghalaya, and transmission of cultural aesthetics in terms of garment, cloth and motif. The fluidity of the textile culture between these communities in the Ri Bhoi District is striking, with designs borrowed, traditional technology adopted and tricks of the trade shared, leading to a shared textile heritage of the Ri Bhoi District existing alongside their distinct ethnic identities. The case study sits as a micro example of scenarios that are played out across the region, exploring the notion of an ethnic identity of NE India that transcends political and state boundaries, of identities at a time individual yet communal, ethnically distinct yet aligned as a region.
Review of Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India by Erik de Maaker
Review of Erik de Maaker. Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North East India. 2022. Oxford and New Delhi. Oxford University Press. 328 pp., £54 (Hardcover)/₹1695 (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-8-1948-3169-3.
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This essay records a series of events that occurred within my Kashmiri family shortly after I moved to India in 2005. Over the years, I had heard many stories of spirit possession from friends living in Himalayan states, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to observe the phenomenon at close quarters. The scenes described in the text took place in Delhi over several weeks in the winter of 2005–2006.
The health consequences of urbanization in Nepal
What new challenges to health do recent rural-to-urban migrants in Nepal face? How do newly urbanized individuals navigate and seek healthcare in the city? This photo essay offers a glimpse of the answers to these questions from the perspective of newly urbanized people living in Kirtipur and Pokhara, two rapidly growing urban areas in Nepal. It draws on a nine-month participatory study which used participatory photography, amongst other methods, to better understand the health opportunities and risks faced by new rural-urban migrants. All photographs presented in this essay were taken and selected by research participants and are accompanied by their narrations of what these images represent to them. Consequently, this essay provides insights into how the newly urbanized themselves understand threats to their health, and how they understand the urban health system they are confronted with as service users.
The Implementation of Awiq-Awiq for the Protection of a Forest in Highland Kakong, Lombok Indonesia
This article focuses on local legislature stemming from customary practices installed by the local government of the dusun (hamlet) Kakong in the highlands of the kecematan (district) Gangga on the island of Lombok in Indonesia to protect a lush forest surrounding a water spring. This water source is responsible for the distribution of drinking, washing, and farming water in three desa (municipalities), indirectly providing water for thousands of people. The legislature, or in other words, awiq-awiq, entails that if someone cuts down a tree in the protected forest, they have to replant 100 trees as punishment. I argue that the installation of this local type of legislature has transformed the perception of the inhabitants of Kakong concerning sustainability, biodiversity, climate change, and weather variability. Examples of adaptation processes and lively discussions about anthropogenic change are manifold in Kakong, as the effect of such change is highly present, materializing in a higher rate of precipitation, the entry of new pests such as the white fly, failed yields, and shifting temperatures. Effective leadership at the dusun level, in combination with the initiation of a new political role in the village (pekasih [canal manager]) for the empowerment of the awiq-awiq and adat, supports the adaptation and conservation eff ort area in Kakong. Based on qualitative data collected in 2022, I argue that local leadership and customary legislature and practices positively support adaptation and conservation processes in the highlands of Kakong, Lombok.
In this article, I examine the meaning of the oral accounts of a Sumi Naga family whose narrations I heard in the village Surumi in Nagaland, where I conducted fieldwork with the wax cylinder recordings of the British administrator-anthropologist John Henry Hutton (1885-1968) in February 2022. In response to a song recording featuring the voice of his Sumi Naga interpreter Vikhepu Ayemi (d. 1919), two of Vikhepu’s indirect descendants shared with me anecdotes on Hutton and their ancestor, including a dream they said that Hutton once had. Aligning Hutton’s notes and other British colonial sources providing information on Naga interpreters with these oral accounts, I discuss how British colonial conceptions and Sumi traditional notions of social and cultural hierarchy influenced the interactions of the two men and examine what significance their connection has for Vikhepu’s descendants today. I argue that Hutton’s representation of Vikhepu serves as a means for the family to underline their longstanding involvement in governmental matters and thereby reaffirm their high social status and leadership role in the village of Surumi. Furthermore, the oral accounts seem to act as a mechanism for them to recollect differently and redraw the power relations that existed between Hutton and Vikhepu, as they reverse the notion of Vikhepu’s subordinateness and, more generally, Naga subservience that emerges from Hutton’s publications and other colonial sources. In a wider sense, my article thus throws light on the way how members of a Naga community process legacies of colonial domination and racial discrimination through the proposition of alternative oral histories that inform their collective remembering of past events.
This year’s inaugural editorial is penned against a backdrop of a significant milestone—the Highland Institute’s 10th anniversary on 10th June. In this past decade, the institute has matured into a reputable, independent research centre, and as a journal under its wing, we are honoured to have participated in this critical decade of growth and maturity. The institute and the journal perceive research collaboration as a cherished asset in our contemporary era. Navigating the tumultuous transformations underway in Highland Asia - economic, political, social, and indeed climactic – necessitates a certain tenacity for such fundamentals as equitable partnership, quality data, unbiased analysis, and resistance to censorship. Indispensable to truly maintaining this ethos is nurturing a spirit of openness, while maintaining independence from any kind of interference. In a world where the allure of social prestige, profit and the erosion of intellectualism can undermine even the most respected scholarly organisations we take pride in the Highland Institute’s and Highlander Journal’s steadfast commitment to these values.
Based at the Highland Institute in Kohima, The Highland Film Club, launched in February 2023, shows a variety of films by indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers on the last Friday of every month. The films, usually documentaries and feature films, from all around the world feature a range of topics, including environmental stewardship, indigenous culture and knowledge and social issues. Wherever possible, the film director is invited to attend, in person, or online, and the lively discussion after the fi lm is a key part of the event.
Special Section - Highland Institute Research Community
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In their everyday lives, Naga women have many responsibilities and perform many tasks and duties, not just for themselves but for their families and communities. On most occasions, these go unnoticed, as though the women are invisible as they perform them. Our fi eldwork was carried out in an attempt to understand and measure the time Naga women spend on diff erent activities. The pictures below depict the wide range of work done by Naga women from diff erent parts of Nagaland, including Phek, Kohima, Dimapur, and Wokha districts.
The URBALTOUR project examines the intersections between urbanization and tourism in the mountainous regions of South and Southeast Asia. With the signifi cant rise in domestic tourism, hill stations and cities established during the colonial era in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia are undergoing rapid transformations. Funded by France’s National Agency for Research, this multi-sited project is based on two hypotheses about tourism: (i) It acts as a potent catalyst for the dissemination of globalized urban models. (ii) It also contributes to restructuring the systems of actors and infl uences the modalities of public action in terms of planning, town planning, and economic development.
This paper details preliminary research for the global joint project MyCClimate, which intends to improve academic and policy understandings of the relationships between confl ict dynamics and climate change activities in regions bordering Myanmar. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Nagaland state, India, it examines environmental conservation initiatives and climate change perceptions in three different villages.
This article describes exploratory fi eldwork in Noklak District, Nagaland, conducted by the Earthkeepers team based at The Highland Institute, Kohima, in April 2023. The Earthkeepers Project is an environmental humanities initiative funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, and the team comprises three Canada-IDRC Myanmar Research Fellows and one coordinator. Broadly, the Fellows are mandated to carry out climate-change-related research along the Indo-Myanmar border from the Indian side. Specifi cally, the team is collecting indigenous ecological knowledge and farmers’ perceptions of climate change. In this report, we describe our Noklak study area and the Khiamniungan community residing there, give short notes on the villages visited, and briefl y record our observations on the local people’s climate change perceptions and the challenges facing a community divided by an international border.
Miguel da Cruz holds a Bachelor in History from the University of Campinas, Brazil, and is a member of the Ekologos project, an international research team in Environmental Humanities situated in the network Brazil-Norway-India. In the text, he shares some personal impressions and refl ections on participating as an exchange researcher at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø during the months of September and December of 2023.