Tribal Religious Movements of Northeast India: The Heraka Faith and Its Moral Beliefs (original) (raw)

Tribal people are one of the most religious people in the world. That is to say that there is no irreligious person in the tribal community. In fact, they do not know how to live without religion. Their religion and worldview are holistic in nature, as there is no separation between sacred and secular, and body and soul. Thus, everything is connected to their spiritual life. In other words, their whole life is religious and sacred. For instance, cultivating, farming, hunting, fishing, eating, dancing, celebrating, traveling, living, and so on are all sacred and spiritually linked. This religious way is the lifestyle of the tribal people. However, this religious life has undergone radical change beginning from the 19th century with the colonization of the northeast Indian region by the British Empire and the later entrance of Christianity and modernity. Several traditional indigenous tribal religions of northeast India are almost decimated with the introduction and expansion of alien forces. Today, only in the state of Arunachal Pradesh do the majority of the people practice the traditional primal religion, which they call Donyipolo. The arrival of a foreign religion nearly annihilated the natives’ tribal religions. This critical situation provided a religious transformation from within that led to the rebirth and the avatar of tribal primal religions in the form of religious movements such as the Heraka among the Zeliangrong (Hamai) community beginning from the 1920s in Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and the Donyipolo among the Arunachalis that was initiated in 1986. These two religious movements are the most well-known religious movements among the tribal communities of northeast India. They are the reformed versions of the indigenous religions. In this paper, the researcher will discuss the tribal religious movements of northeast India; however, it will limit its scope to the Heraka movement (of the Zeliangrong community of Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland) and its basic religious tenets.