| Summary/Abstract |
The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of rice-beer (zao) amongst the Zeme Nagas of Assam. Colonial officials and Christian missionaries brought new ideas into Zeme social and cultural practices, quite different from their own. One way to frame this interaction is to examine the tension between world-views held by indigenous religions and Christianity, and what this tension represents for the Zeme. I aim to demonstrate how the terms ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ can be understood by examining the position of rice-beer in Zeme society. I will show how these debates were influenced by nineteenth-century Victorian interlocutors, and equally how local discourses have appropriated these colonial concepts as a point of leverage for internal social dynamics in contemporary times.
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