The discussion on death is often fraught with discomfort, yet it is an inherent, inescapable, and ubiquitous dimension of human existence. The image of death and eschatology in the West has been shaped by notions of modernity with the perception of death as an intensely personal or individual experience and as an “act of closure” (p. 1).

Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife edited by Parjanya Sen and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty and published by Routledge in 2024, is a volume which brings forth thirteen essays from eleven contributors along with an introductory chapter by the co-editors. The edited volume is a timely intervention that attempts to formulate a new pedagogical approach to understanding death.

The chapters, ordered in a thematic orientation, attempt to shift the focus to alternate modes of imagining death, by exploring a wide range of eschatological practices and their representations: oral, aural, visual, textual and cultural memory across different communities in Northeast India, thereby foregrounding indigenous epistemes, which provides a point of departure from a Western modern discourse on death informed by Enlightenment rationalism.

Death, across the different communities in Northeast India, does not remain an individualized personal experience but becomes a collective and communitarian one (p. 2). Death introduces not only the notion of an afterlife but also an idea of spirit persons or persons belonging to a different order of being.

The editors point out at the very outset their commitment to ethical representation and sensitivity; hence, the book collates together academics and scholars from India’s Northeast and Eastern India who wrote first-hand accounts of the thanatological rituals and epistemes concerning their communities (p. 15).

In mapping death and eschatological practices, religion and other accompanying beliefs become central to the analysis (Sitlhou 2018). Malinowski in Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1948) contends that religion is the answer to the death crises. In contrast, Radcliffe Brown counters that religion is the cause of death anxiety as it gives men fears from which they would otherwise be free – the fear of black magic or the spirits, fear of God, of the devil, of hell (Donovan 2002).

Anup Shekhar Chakraborty’s chapter theorizes the ritualisation and performativity of “Songs for the Dead” among the Zo Christians. Death among the Zo people is marked by a call for a complex ritual of communal remembering and collective singing of Khawhar zai/Khawhar hla in Khawhar in (home in mourning). The gathering in Khawhar in transforms into a joyful one experientially through the singing in praise of heaven as well as the possibilities that the promised “Kingdom in heaven” holds in store for all believers (p. 24). Chakraborty, in the words of Arnold van Gennep, calls these rituals the rites of passage that transform and reintegrate the deceased into the community.

In relation to the changing nature of cultural death ethos in the Northeastern (Christian) societies, Hoineilhing Sitlhou (2018) posits that there is a continuity in the community’s involvement in the funeral ceremony, albeit one that is increasingly influenced by the prescription of the Church. This is evident in Margaret Lyngdoh’s chapter, which examines the processes through which non-convert Khasis are othered by the Khasi Christian Church for their traditional funerary practices such as cleansing. The concept of the ancestors, which formed a basis of Khasi epistemology and worldview, is now increasingly replaced with the concept of Christ who “lives and walks, always present” with a Khasi Christian person in a discursive reframing of the older belief of the constant presence of ancestors (p. 49). Durkheim (1954) notes a Church is not simply a priestly brotherhood; it is a moral community made up of all the faithful, both laity and priests.

Moving onto Manipur, Rekha Konsam’s piece Imageries of Life and Death: The Case of Kombirei delves into the popular imagination of the “ominousness” surrounding the flower Kombirei (bluish-purple iris flower used in Cheiraoba rituals) due to its association with the lore that draws on the romantic tragedy of Mainu Pemcha wherein Pemcha, the female protagonist, dies by suicide. Traditionally, deaths by suicide were not accorded customary rites; instead, the bodies were disposed of in the wilderness. However, this practice has changed today due to land scarcity. According to Durkheim (1952), the method used to commit suicide can carry different meanings within a societal context. Kombirei, once on the brink of extinction and avoided in domestic spaces due to its negative connotations, has today gained prominence in home gardens, with the call to sustain “tradition” and “indigeneity.” These changing “-scapes,” according to Konsam, have given a new “lease of life” to Kombirei.

The following two chapters share a common thread, weaving together the discourse of monumentality (see Chapters 6 & 7) about indigenous funerary customs. Mary Vanlalthanpuii’s chapter attempts to problematize the construction of the Mizo National Front’s Martar Thlanmual or Martyrs’ Cemetery in Aizawl, by mapping the gendered politics that has resulted in a public commemoration site that has “invisiblized” women in the indigenous identarian aspiration. Meanwhile, Deepak Naorem locates the local deaths of the twin battles of Imphal and Kohima during Japan’s quest in the Second World War that left the former Naga Hills and the state of Manipur as an extensive graveyard. Naorem notes how the deaths of locals are rarely commemorated in the war memorials and cemeteries across the region. This absence, he argues, ultimately leads to an erasure of local memories and narratives, thus creating a “cultural amnesia” that begins to pervade the community consciousness (p. 111).

Vishü Rita Krocha’s chapter probes into the discursive change of Naga ancestral funerary traditions vis-à-vis colonial encounter and proselytisation’s effect on the Ao people. Krocha’s piece is based on an ethnography of the people of Zhavame village in Phek District, Nagaland. She effectively captures the disputes between the values of Judeo-Christian origin, which is perceived as a non-indigenous religion and the animist faith that got its ontological legitimacy from traditional indigenous experiences and knowledge systems. Krocha foregrounds the personal by narrating the biographical accounts of her maternal grandfather, who made the transition from animism to Christianity.

Starting from a different premise, Talilula traces the politics revolving around the proposed repatriation of Naga ancestral remains housed in various European museums such as Pitt Rivers, becoming objects of colonial antiquarian collection that sought to produce a discourse of the Naga as “barbaric.” The chapter looks at the sustained efforts of the RRaD (Recover, Restore and Decolonise), a research team composed of native Nagas, founded in 2020, in “producing” a public opinion in favour of a possible repatriation. Through RRaD’s public engagements, one pertinent question has been raised: who will claim the relics in the event of their homecoming and what kind of funerary rituals and practices will they be accorded in a now Christian majority state? The chapter reorients the discussion towards the collective trauma of the Naga emerging from the postcolonial complexities such as AFSPA, which has subjected them to all kinds of human rights violations. Thus, Talilula asserts that these are all part of the same cycle of systemic violence and oppression:

Decades of violence and conflict inflicted on us, those that are self-inflicted, and the fate of our ancestors at Pitt Rivers are all intertwined (Talilula, 2024, p. 158, in Sen & Chakraborty, Eds).

Each chapter emphasizes that there is no unified cosmology of beliefs or set of cultural practices that can define the eschatological practices of diverse ethnic communities of the Northeast. While the volume’s scope is impressive, death in its immediate occurrence receives less notice. Moreover, the inclusion of a chapter or two on indigenous Muslim and caste-Hindu funerary traditions would have further enriched the discussion.

Nonetheless, the volume is a compelling addition to the existing scholarship on death, dying and the afterlife. It is crucial in terms of its rich ethnographic data, the interdisciplinary approach, the insider perspective and the diverse methodological interventions made by the contributors in the sustained focus on eschatological practices.

Although the book focuses on Northeast India, the broader focus on epistemological, sociological and phenomenological perspectives on death lends it a universal appeal. This work will be particularly valuable for researchers focusing on South Asia, Northeast India, and the social anthropology of religion.

References:

Durkheim, E. (1952). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. (Tr. John A. Spauld). New York: Free Press. https://www.gacbe.ac.in/images/E%20books/Durkheim%20-%20Suicide%20-%20A%20study%20in%20sociology.pdf

Durkheim, E. (1954). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin. https://monoskop.org/images/a/a2/Durkheim_Emile_The_Elementary_Forms_of_Religious_life_1995.pdf

Donovan, James M. (2002). Implicit Religion and the curvilinear relationship between religion and death anxiety: A review study. Implicit Religion, 5 (1). https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1450&context=law_facpub

Malinowski, B. (1948). Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. https://monoskop.org/images/4/41/Malinowski_Bronislaw_Magic_Science_and_Religion_and_Other_Essays_1948.pdf

Sitlhou, H. (2018). Changing face of death in Northeast India. In J. P. Saikia & P. P. Borah (Eds.), Sociology of Northeast India: Empirical reality and disciplinary practice (pp. 102-119). DVS Publishers. https://www.academia.edu/37488164/Changing_face_of_Death_in_Northeast_India?email_work_card=title

van Gennep, A. (1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/dam/ucp/books/pdf/course_intro/978-0-226-62949-0_course_intro.pdf

***

Hamiron Timung is a second-year undergraduate student of Sociology at Hindu College, University of Delhi.