Decolonising the making of Naga loyalism and British–Naga friendship: Deconstructing the Empire’s benevolence

The article delves into the colonial Naga history across the shifting and evolved geographies of the Naga Hills under the British Raj. The article narrows its focus on decolonising the idea of friendship and loyalty exhibited by the colonial excluded subjects of the Naga Hills, under the British legislation of ‘excluded frontier areas’. Discussion is centred on loyalty, friendship, trust and benevolence as methods of colonial violence. The article questions the reproduction of the colonial memory of the British–Naga friendship, which has become a popular memory amongst the Nagas themselves. Drawing from the framework of ‘the atrocity of sentiments and benevolence’ from Bayly and Harper’s work (2004), the article is an effort to decolonise the manufactured ‘Naga loyalism’. It contextualises the atrocity of the British’s benevolence in the existing canons of colonial literature on the Nagas and critically examines the sentiments of friendship between unequal people and unequal races—the British, who were interchangeably a friend, a father and the master to the Nagas, and the Nagas.