Reading Terror in Literature:

Exploring Insurgency in Nagaland through Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone

Abstract

For some places, literature can hardly go beyond the bondage of terror. North East India, which has suffered since the independence on accounts of sovereignty, language, and ethnic influx, and seen  unimaginable levels of violence and atrocity perpetrated both by the military and the insurgent bodies, finds little beyond terror when its literary writers try to explore its history and culture. This paper would like to study Temsula Ao’ collection of stories in context of the contentious history of Nagaland. Set in the 60s and 70s, when the Naga claims of separate territory and sovereignty were widespread in the hill regions, Ao’s stories explore the issues such as military violence, stolen adults, unmindful destruction of innocent lives and private and public property, etc that have tried to strangle life in Nagaland. In course, it also seeks to define and complicate the term insurgency. Many of Ao’s stories are woven around simple wit and humour which seem to bind the multi-ethnic Naga communities together. I argue that this might be one way of moving beyond the bondage of terror and foster a communal memory that has shared and survived those moments and remember them with the community’s everyday way of living life.