There can be so many ways to search the history. A youth in this part of the country has, however, chosen a unique way to go back to history and dig out from the past some stories, rich traditions and culture, which according to him can help build a unique identity for his community.
Yes. 28-year-old Mo Naga, a Naga youth hailing from Manipur’s Chandel district, has taken the help of tattoos — which existed in the Naga society since time immemorial — to bring to the fore the untold stories and rich cultural heritage and traditions of the society in the past and thereby to create a better identity for the Nagas.
“like many other tribal communities, tattoos have been an integral part of the Naga society. There are more than 50 recognised tribes in Nagaland and each of them has rich traditions of wearing tattoos. All of them use different tattoos for different purposes and each of them tells different stories,” said Mo while talking to The Pioneer.
“The tattoos are also a rich art form that existed in those days but unfortunately the art form had never been recorded properly and decoded. Some of the tattoos of those days have also been misinterpreted as no proper research has been carried out on them so far,” said Mo.
“A Naga tattoo has always been mark of achievement in the headhunting clans. A headhunter used to get a tattoo whenever he demolished his enemy and successfully collected his head. The more the number of heads he collected, the more tattoos he got on his body. For a woman, different stages of life- puberty, marriage, motherhood, used to be marked with a tattoo of achievement. But with the onset of Christianity and the ban on headhunting, these tattoos lost their significance in the hills of Nagaland. I want to revive this form of art and restore it to its old glory,” said Mo, a design graduate from the NIFT Hyderabad.
“I have started studying about tattoos since 2009 and been traveling to remote places of Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh where the Naga tribes are scattered and gathering first hand information about the tattoos. I have also been making visual documentation of those and trying to decode them by interacting with, anthropologist, litterateurs and intellectuals,” he said.
“I envision a day when a Naga tattoo will once again, be seen as an internationally recognised benchmark of achievements and Naga beauty. I believe, the day is not far when people from all around the globe will be flying in to the easternmost corner of India to mark their various achievements with a Naga tattoo symbolising his triumph in life,” said Mo, who had recently opened the first professional tattoo studio cum school in Guwahati — ‘Headhunters’ Ink’.