One of the criticisms levelled against Anthropologist Evans-Pritchard, in his work on Nuer tribes of Sudan has been that he presented a fully constituted picture of their worldview while completely ignoring or glossing over sectarian simmers and conversions that were rife in Sudanese landscape including the Nuers. This de-contextualization and deterritorialization of tribes and their worldview from the larger landscapes has been a continuing legacy of Anthropology. In India, the tribal questions mostly have developmental or exploitative concerns and very less attention is given to the cultural details that have presented itself through the processes of encounters, interactions and conversions. The questions of cultural composition, cultural survival, their agility and collapse are fundamental aspects of tribal question and it is through these questions that we can explore the historical trajectory of the Tribes in India with the onset of colonialism. The colonial encounters documented in the form of archives, and the experiences of the people it contains should be re-read along the attempts to rebrand that experience as a form of indigenization and localization of global forms. Only through archives, we can make sense of the trajectory of some tribes, like Nagas in India from being one of the fierce warriors and Head-hunters to their total conversion to Christianity and their attempt to revive their ancestral festivals of stone pulling and Hornbill festivals while proudly claiming to be the first Baptist state in the world, as interesting and epical as the story of Aztecs, studied by Inga Clendinnen. This paper will argue that to write about the epical struggles preserved in the archives is also about critically examining the tenant of syncretism that are vogue in tribal studies.
