The Yimchunger Nagas: Local Histories and Changing Identity in Nagaland, Northeast India *

Introduction Ethnic identity, as Stanley J. Tambiah writes, is above all a collective identity (Tambiah 1989: 335). For example, in northeastern India, we are self-proclaimed Nagas, Khasis, Garos, Mizos, Manipuris and so on. Ethnic identity is a self-conscious and articulated identity that substantialises and naturalises one or more attributes, the conventional ones being skin colour, language, and religion. These attributes are attached to collectivities as being innate to them and as having mythic historical legacy. The central components in this description of identity are ideas of inheritance, ancestry and descent, place or territory of origin, and the sharing of kinship. Any one or combination of these components may be invoked as a claim according to context and calculation of advantages. Such ethnic collectivities are believed to be bounded, self-producing and enduring through time. Although the actors themselves, whilst invoking these claims, speak as if ethnic boundaries are clear-cut and defined for all time, and think of ethnic collectivities as self-reproducing bounded groups, it is also clear that from a dynamic and processual perspective there are many precedents for changes in identity, for the incorporation and assimilation of new members, and for changing the scale and criteria of a collective identity. Ethnic labels are porous in function. The phenomenon of