Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging: The Heraka Movement in Northeast India

by Arkotong Longkumer

Publisher:

Continuum

, 2011

Overview

Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging focuses on the Heraka, a religious reform movement, and its impact on the Zeme, a Naga tribe, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. Drawing upon critical studies of ‘religion’, cultural/ethnic identity, and nationalism, archival research in both India and Britain, and fieldwork in Assam, the book initiates new grounds for understanding the evolving notions of ‘reform’ and ‘identity’ in the emergence of a Heraka ‘religion’. Arkotong Longkumer argues that ‘reform’ and ‘identity’ are dynamically inter-related and linked to the revitalisation and negotiation of both ‘tradition’ legitimising indigeneity, and ’change’ legitimising reform. The results have deepened, yet challenged, not only prevailing views of the Western construction of the category ’religion’ but also understandings of how marginalised communities use collective historical imagination to inspire self-identification through the discourse of religion. In conclusion, this book argues for a re-evaluation of the way in which multi-religious traditions interact to reshape identities and belongings.

Key Features

Demonstrates how the understanding of conversion as a function of social and spiritual relations will be of relevance to furthering the understanding of conversion as a process of ‘reform’ and ‘generational change’.
Analyses the importance of ‘religion’ in relation to indigenous religious traditions that highlight the world religions ’paradigm’ and the larger implications this can have with regard to how a distinctly religious community is shaped and formed.
Reflects and advances the rapidly growing interest in South Asia in the areas of Religious Studies, South Asia Studies, Anthropology and the Sociology of Religion.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Circling the Alter Stone: Bhuban Cave and the Symbolism of Religious Traditions
3. Millenarianism and Refashioning the Social Fabric
4. Changing Cosmology and the Process of Reform
5. Negotiating Boundaries
6. Community Imaginings and the Ideal of Heguangram

7. Conclusion
Bibliography

Appendices

Praise for Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging

"This is a compelling and unusual book, written from the inside (by a Naga) and the outside (by a skilled anthropologist). It is a valuable addition both theoretically and ethnographically to a rich literature on the Nagas and to the rapidly expanding field of comparative religion. It is beautifully written and gradually reveals an extraordinary world with great sensitivity." - Professor Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., Emeritus Professor of Anthropological Science and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

The author’s personal encounters and fieldwork experiences enliven this greatly textured study... The references to theoretical sources...are useful for setting the data within wider socio-historical and anthropological debates.

Product Details

• Title: Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging: The Heraka Movement in Northeast India
• Author: Arkotong Longkumer
• Series: Continuum Advances in Religious Studies
• Publisher: Continuum
• Print Publication Date: 2011
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 274
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781441187345, 9781441196941, 1441196943, 1441187340
• Resource ID: LLS:9781441187345
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-23T00:00:10Z

About the Author

Dr Arkotong Longkumer is Visiting Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK.