Darlong Khawrua

Prior to the coming of the Christian among the Darlong tribesmen and women, the tribe had its own ethnic belief surrounding upon its natural surroundings. The belief was particularly manifested in the natural phenomena  and interpreted diversely in accordance of their experience and wisdom. This knowledge was crashed and broken down into fragments with the advent of the ideology like Christianity . The damage is to such an extent that the people fear to question the church about its ethnicity. At certain circumstances, "Where the mind is without fear/ And the head is held high" the young generation attempt to question the huge loss suffered aftermath of Christianization. Thus, it is sad to note that the Darlong (as a tribe) is in a state of dilemma to decide which identity should he follow; i) identity endowed by the ancestors (inclusive of the traditions, cultural heritage and the age old practices) or ii) identity given the Christian missionaries that demonstrated a nece...

     The Darlong tribe as a whole have undergone a drastic change after the acceptation of the Christian ideology. During the early days, every touch of cultural activities goes through the corridor of the ‘Bukpui’. The gradual acceptance of Christian ideologies toward the later part had endangered the cultural heritages of the Tribe. As a matter of fact, the community unconsciously abandon their identities, customs, religions and rituals blindly imitating the missionaries. No doubt, it is the missionaries that educated and upgraded the Darlong community in to their present state there by being unconsciously colonizing them in every aspect taking from their day to day activities to their intellectual set up. For instance, the Darlong dearly call themselves as ‘Sapa’ or ‘Sapi’, ‘Ngoii’ or ‘Ngoia’ which actually stand to mean ‘English’ or ‘white’. ‘Sap’ in the Darlong language also stands for ‘European’. This, in fact, is the psychological colonization laid down by the v...