Ashish Kothari
Over a hundred years back, advancing British troops found themselves facing a determined warrior tribe in the highlands of Nagaland. The Angami men of Khonoma, famed for their prowess and strategic skills, fought a resolute battle to safeguard their territory, inflicting heavy casualties on the foreign soldiers. Finally a truce between the two stopped further bloodshed, but meanwhile Khonoma village had etched its name into the history of Indian resistance to the colonial invasion.
Today, Khonoma is witnessing another historic struggle. In an incident reminiscent of the British invasion, in the mid-1990s the villagers had to physically resist timber merchants who came with several dozen elephants to carry out logging, unfortunately aided by some insiders. Over the last decade Khonoma, inhabited by Angami’s, one of Nagaland’s 18 tribes, has made giant strides in establishing or strengthening systems of natural resource management, conflict resolution, village administration, and appropriate development…all coupled with a resolute will to conserve biodiversity and wildlife. And all embedded in the traditional ethos of the village, without fighting shy of experimenting with new technologies and thoughts from outside. The results are impressive enough to warrant yet another key historic place for this village, this time in the annals of India’s environmental movement.
A People’s Sanctuary
In 1998, the Khonoma Village Council declared its intention to notify about 2000 hectares (20 sq.km) as a Khonoma Nature Conservation and Tragopan Sanctuary (KNCTS). This was motivated by some of the village elders, notably Tsilie Sakhrie, who in the 1980s had been a contractor dealing with the Forest Department. During this time he had been having discussions with forest officer T. Angami, who motivated him to consider dedicating a part of the village forests to wildlife conservation. In the 1980s, Tsilie proposed that the village do something to this effect, but could not achieve a consensus. In 1995, when he became a member of the Village Council, Tsilie again broached the subject. A number of villagers were opposed to the idea, since hunting was so much a part of their culture. But over the next 3 years, through extensive discussions in the village, the majority was convinced. The Sanctuary’s foundation stone was laid in December 1998; it was also decided to ban hunting in the entire village, not only the Sanctuary area.
Not content with simple declaration, the village set up a KNCTS Trust, with a formal set of rules and regulations. Office bearers were chosen from amongst the villagers; Tsilie was chosen the Chief Managing Director. Rules were laid down for the management of the Sanctuary, including penalties for violations ranging from Rs. 300 to 3000 depending on the seriousness of the violation. The village youth were requested to carry out monitoring, and to levy fines, which they could then use for their own village-based activities. Our young guides to the sanctuary, Megonilhu Viyie and Vivoselie Meyase, were highly motivated and enthusiastic; the latter was a warden appointed by the KNCTS Trust, to periodically check on the sanctuary.
The area included in the KNCTS is of outstanding value, from a biodiversity, water security, and aesthetic point of view. On the map it is about 20 sq. km, but if the contours are accounted for, the area may be 70 sq.km, comprising exquisite broad-leaved forests and dwarf bamboo grasslands. It is part of the Dzuku valley, which, though not many people would know this, was immortalised by Vikram Seth in his poem “The Elephant and the Tragopan”. The poem is about how the wild animals of the valley try to stop a proposed dam that would drown out their valley, reflecting an actual movement by NGOs in Nagaland against such a proposal in the 1990s. The idea of the dam has been replaced by a pipeline proposal, to take water from here to Kohima, a project that would hopefully have little ecological impact.
Dzuku is home to a healthy population of the severely endangered state bird, the Blyth’s tragopan (a pheasant). For this and other reasons, the Bombay Natural History Society considers it one of India’s Important Bird Areas. Dzuku and surrounding forests also contain considerable other wildlife, including Himalayan black bear, over 40 species of orchids apart from hundreds of other plant species, the endemic Dzuku lily, Serow, Sambar, Leopard, and so on. Once not so long back, all these species had dwindled alarmingly due to hunting and habitat pressures. Villagers assert that they are now again increasing due to their conservation efforts; in fact crop damage by wild pigs has become a menace! The hunting ban seems to be highly effective; less than 10 violations have been reported in the last few years.
Tsilie and others are now proposing an extension of the sanctuary to neighboring forests that are currently seen as a ‘buffer zone’. Currently no hunting or extraction of timber is allowed in the buffer. If accepted by the Council, the area (on map) would increase to over 3000 hectares (30 sq.km), on the ground over 10,000 hectares (100 sq.km) and Tsilie in his capacity as the President of the Western Angami Public Organisation (an institution that contains the entire western Angami tribal population) is already discussing with the Southern Angami Public Organisation to declare their areas also protected. Work could also be done to convince Naga tribes in adjoining Manipur, since the Khonoma citizens have relations extending into those villages. If successful, the entire Dzuku and Japfu area could be declared a community protected area, extending to perhaps several hundred square kilometers.
A Social Transformation
Conservation is only one of the elements of social transformation at Khonoma. Visitors to the village will be confronted with a bewildering number of activities and processes that its residents seem to be engaged in. Some of these are new, some age-old. Khonoma may well be the only village in India that has a global citizenry with an active self-identity; every year, 1st September is celebrated as the village’s ‘birthday’, with Khonomaians from far and wide coming to the village to celebrate, or carrying out celebrations where-ever they are. There are even Khonoma Students Unions in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi!
Given its historic past, Khonoma also plays host to many tourists; it is on the tourist circuit of those who visit Kohima. Some years back the Government of India recognised the potential of the village to organize itself, and granted it a substantial Green Village fund through the Tourism Department of the state government. The money is being used to provide basic civic amenities and hygiene measures, reinforce community infrastructure, and prepare the village to receive and show visitors it’s past and present. NGOs like EQUATIONS have helped the local Khonoma Tourism Development Board to carry out an Environment Impact Assessment of tourism, in case the village goes in for much larger visitor influx.
Khonoma is also well-known in agricultural circles, for its sophisticated cultivation techniques. In shifting cultivation, farmers use Alder (Alnus nepalensis) trees interspersed with the crops. These trees return nitrogen to the soil, thereby helping the land to rapidly regain fertility when farmers abandon it to move onto the next plot. The village overlooks a wide valley that has been converted into terraced fields, made with such precision that apparently their productivity has remained stable over centuries. Khonoma is also home to over 60 varieties of rice, and a diversity of millets, maize, Job’s tears, citrus fruits, and other crops (grown without using chemical pesticides or fertilizers). All this has made the village a model for emulation in many other parts of Nagaland through the efforts of the unique inter-departmental Nagaland Empowerment of People and Economic Development (NEPED) programme. This is especially useful where shifting cultivation has become unsustainable due to shorter cycles of leaving the land fallow after cultivation.
Amongst the factors that makes all this tick, is the strong and clear ownership of land and natural resources within the village boundaries. Such ownership provides a strong stake in working out sustainable modes of land management. But this would not be enough in itself (for such ownership could also result in individuals destroying their lands), were it not coupled with very strong social and political organisations. The village is divided into 3 hamlets (khels), each with several clans, each clan comprised of several families. The clan itself is a decision-making unit, and selects members to represent itself to larger village level bodies. These include the Village Council (overall responsible for all affairs), the Village Development Board (recipient of government funds for developmental purposes), and the ruffono, a recent innovation to bring all village institutions under a common umbrella. Traditional institutions such as decision-making by the gaon burras (village elders) have been integrated into the Village Council’s decision-making. The youth are part of either a Students Union or a Youth Association, the women are members of the Khonoma Women’s Organisation. In addition, all villagers are part of an age group. Such groups are formed by boys and girls in the age group 12 to 15, and carry out social activities like construction of rest houses and village paths, and formation of singing and dancing groups. The bond lasts a lifetime; members stick together till they are into their 60s and 70s!
Khonoma’s success is also dependent on the links its citizens have with the outside world. Many of its one-time residents are now in government service (though this does not seem to have helped in improving the awful road that connects Kohima to this village!).
There are, of course, blemishes aplenty. Women obviously do command a great deal of respect, and reportedly are very influential at the house-hold level, or through their own committee, but they do not occupy formal positions in most of the decisive institutions such as the Village Council. Some youth told us that while they have stopped hunting in their own village, they still occasionally hunt outside…though apparently this too is on the decline. The capacity to handle tourists seems rather limited, and there is a worry that a large-scale influx could be counter-productive….hence the importance of the tourism EIA mentioned above. Ironically, the ban on hunting has created the problem of crop damage by wild pigs and other wildlife, for which the village is contemplating selective lifting of the ban….but residents are worried about whether this may have other negative consequences. An increasing tendency to plant cash crops in the jhum (shifting cultivation) and terraced fields, is reportedly leading to loss of agricultural biodiversity. Documentation of the area’s biodiversity is rather minimal, a start having only recently been made by the biologist Firoz Ahmed in association with some of the village youth. Marvelling at the level of traditional knowledge, Firoz reports that of the 20 species of frogs and toads he found in Khonoma, 14 were already reported by villagers!
A State-wide Revolution
Khonoma’s conservation initiative is all the more noteworthy if one looks at the enormous decline of wildlife across Nagaland in the last few decades. Hunting has been rampant, according to one resident perhaps fueled by the jump in fire-arms availability since truce was declared between the Nagas and the Indian army in the early 1980s. The tribes here eat virtually everything, and though this may not have earlier damaged wildlife populations due to limited hunting technologies, it had of late assumed severely destructive proportions.
Khonoma’s story assumes even greater significance because it is only one of dozens of similar initiatives across Nagaland. Our visit took us to 8-10 settlements in Phek and Kohima districts, and virtually everywhere we saw notice boards warning would-be hunters with severe penalties, declaring community forest reserves with stringent restrictions on resource use, and so on. Slowly but surely, wild animals are making a come-back, a phenomenon that even a decade back seemed virtually impossible.
