Monalisa Changkija
Another edition of the annual 10-day Hornbill Festival, which begins on December 1, coinciding with Nagaland’s State Day, is done and dusted for 2025. Apparently this year decibels of the hype and hoopla increased and our State Government wears more feathers in its cap with several partnerships with foreign countries such as UK, Ireland, Malta, etc. ~ its aspirations and ambitions to make this Festival more ‘international’ and to use the Festival to attract investments cannot be missed. Obviously, the Festival is veering more towards monetization.
But what of the foreign tourists, who come to this Festival? Per local media reports, most of them seemed to enjoy it ~ judging by their tactful and diplomatic comments widely covered by our local media. That boosts our people’s morale but it seems to warm the cockles of our Government even more giving the impression of a kind of pubescent hankering for approval and validation and nothing better than when they come from boga manu. Apparently, so warmed is our Governments’ cockles that it patted itself on the back. Evidently, the colonial hangover persists.
Still there are boga manu, who aren’t that impressed. During the Festival, a report by senior journalist Kallol Dey, “What the World Comes to See in Nagaland, What It Doesn’t: More Authenticity, Less of Imported Spectacle”, published in the news portal Nagaland Tribune, went viral. It quotes Eleni Michael, a food anthropologist and fermentation educator: “If I could, I would return to Nagaland as early as next month. But I don’t think I would want to revisit the Hornbill Festival.” Dey reports while she found the Festival’s opening ceremony “almost transcendent” and “the traditional performance unexpectedly overwhelming”, her enchantment dissipated, as she reportedly said, “I didn’t come all this way to listen to speeches by Europeans or to church choirs and gospel songs. I wanted to hear more Nagas speak on stage ~ to hear their voices, their stories, their perspectives” while referring to speeches delivered by representatives of the Hornbill Festival’s partner countries and the performances by the NBCC choir during the opening ceremony of the Hornbill Festival.
Dey further quotes Eleni, who described the evening concerts as “her deepest disappointment”: “It’s a shame. I don’t think people travel from the West to hear western music in Nagaland. I expected folk music or even contemporary interpretations of traditional sounds ~ not young musicians belting out Coldplay numbers. And instead of church choirs, I had hoped for indigenous choirs, voices rooted in the land itself”, adding Eleni was particularly critical of what she described as an incongruous Christian presence at an event meant to showcase indigenous Naga culture and tradition. “I found the Christian element in this festival a little forced. The Biblical quotes outside some morungs and in the coffee shops felt out of place.” Reportedly, she would have preferred to learn about the prayers of Naga ancestors instead of hearing gospel renditions”, but clarified she holds no bias against any religion but felt that the very essence of the Hornbill Festival was compromised by overt Christian elements woven into a celebration intended to honour and preserve ethnic Naga culture. Her critique extended to some of the architectural choices at the venue too, which she felt did not reflect the spirit of Naga culture. Reportedly she also said: “There were many aspects that felt out of place in the Kisama setup. The one exception was the morungs.”
Another foreign visitor, Lavrenty Repin ~ an artist by profession ~ said the experience was “better than expected”, praising the “authentic Naga culture it showcases and the calm and charm of the people” and was delighted at being able to see the whole of Nagaland in one beautifully set venue. However, he cautioned that “external and foreign entities should not be given space to use the Festival as a platform for their own agendas. He warned that the event could lose its essence if multinational sponsors were allowed to dominate a celebration meant to foreground ethnic Naga heritage.” Dey concludes: “… voices like Eleni Michael and Lavrenty Repin remind us that the Hornbill Festival’s greatest strength ~ and its greatest responsibility ~ lies in authenticity. The world is already saturated with borrowed sounds, imported agendas and generic global culture. What visitors to Nagaland come seeking is the heartbeat of a land steeped in ancestral memory, carried in its songs, its oral traditions, its rituals and its resilient people. As the Hornbill Festival grows in ambition and scale, its challenge is not merely to entertain but to remain unmistakably, unapologetically Naga. Anything less risks dimming the very flame that draws the world here in the first place.”
Over the years many Nagas have held similar opinions that the Hornbill Festival is increasingly diluted by commercialized, consumerist and pop cultures that are alien to Naga culture. True, today no community can claim cultural purity due to political, economic, social and cultural colonialism, which includes language, education and religion, technology and the world shrinking into a kind of architectured village designed and dictated by multinationals. However, because of preserved oral traditions that are passed down, there are still communities and tribes like ours that preserve several aspects of tangible and intangible aspects of culture on the strength of our remembering. It is understandable why a geographically small and isolated, economically impecunious, political variable and governance deficit State would resort to a mélange of glister desperately passing it off as gold to salvage itself and find its feet in the world. Though there is always a changeable line between religion and culture, an unambiguous line is imperative and a cultural festival maintains its cultural authenticity. Today culture has come to mean an eclectic incorporatization of showbiz and fads and fashions creating the space and the scope for multinationals to appropriate cultural platforms by dictating and promoting their agenda to dominate markets, influence personal choices and dictate what constitutes culture.
Because the very concept and definition of culture has been unrecognizably altered to cater to a capitalist, commercialized and consumerist global society ~ not necessarily an informed society ~ via mass media, anything that looks and sounds different are mistaken for authentic traditional culture. So governments and multinationals are cashing in on that, which actually defeats the whole purpose of traditions and culture. The Hornbill Festival has fallen prey to that ~ compounded with it being designed and organized by politicians, bureaucrats and their sidekicks and sycophants, whose forte lies more on PR and marketing than culture. That’s the problem with small States like ours with an opposition-less Government, which enables and empowers undiluted concentration of power in a few hands that brooks no dissent, difference, disagreements and criticism. But all is not lost because nothing is constant and the Hornbill Festival will undergo many adaptations and evolutions till it hopefully crystallizes to what it was originally meant to be ~ an genuine Naga cultural showcase ~ if it hopes to reclaim its reputation as an authentic cultural experience for the world to savour.
(The Columnist is a Dimapur-based veteran journalist, poet and former Editor of Nagaland Page. Published in the December 24, 2025 issue of Assam Tribune)
