Postcolonial Identities and the Politics of Resistance in Temsula Ao's These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone

Abstract

Temsula Ao's These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War Zone is based upon the Naga separatist battle for autonomy which started since the end of the British domain in India in 1947. Seeking a separate identity of their own, the Naga people started an underground rebellion to establish themselves as a separate kingdom, free from the Indian touch.  Describing how ordinary people cope up with violence, how they negotiate power and force and how amidst violence and terror they find secured spaces and time for enjoyment,  Ao describes a way of life under threat from the forces of modernization and war. Violence spares none- the young, the old, the rebels, the lay men, everyone comes under its iron grip. Ao's book documents not just the state of affairs in conflict torn Nagaland but it is also a significant manner in which the peripheries talk to the centre in the modern nation state. These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone may just be read at one level as the typical Postcolonial narrative of resistance.  This paper seeks to understand the crisis of identity faced by the Naga people in their homeland and also how politics and the instrument of violence used for domination effected the lives of the people  who underwent various atrocities powered by the Indian army and also the underground rebels in many instances.