Nagaland: Cheap replicas sold on e-commerce sites as authentic Naga attires irk concerned citizens

Traditional ethnic apparels of Northeast (NE) India and especially of the diverse Naga tribes have been on display in India's burgeoning e-commerce platforms. These dresses have received the ire of the concerned citizens. The reason being that most of the outfits lack authenticity and are actually cheap replicas of actual Nagaland ethnic attires.

India's popular e-commerce platforms including Flipkart, Amazon and others have all started to sell the aforementioned products without any real authenticity and permission. This has enraged a lot of people in Nagaland as well as in Northeast India. Inside Northeast spoke to a few of those who have been vocal regarding the issue.

Theja Sekhose, is a local designer of jewellery and apparels in Nagaland who feels it is "wrong" from anyone's part to make these duplicates. He explains in a technical way. "The Northeast traditions are woven with hard work and intricacies and such mass-producing makes it vague and lightweight. The usage of such traditional wear is not meant for commercial. There are even problems with certain western jewellery fusion but this is different". On the issue of the demand of ethnic traditional wear of the Nagas outside the NE market, he responds by saying, "Yes, people can still buy but they should go for the authentic ones and there are many places where they will find, which is also now available online". He sums up saying, "this is just the tip of the iceberg and we don't know what more these people are selling".

Cultural appropriation

A big debate involving the matter amid the unfair practises by the proprietors has been the issue of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures.

To discuss the idea further, Inside Northeast spoke to Merenla Imsong, who is one of the active voices that has criticised the e-commerce players and the associated practices of selling copy-cat costumes in the name of traditional wear. Merenla Imsong is an actress and assistant director, known for Axone (2019), The Passing (2018) and The Anushree Experiments (2013) and has a popular Youtube and Instagram page.

On the dilemma of modernity vs customs, she said, "clothes are sacred, although things are starting to get modernised but how do you adapt a Naga shawl into a gown? There should be an understanding of the textiles. I remember once going to a college fest where they customised Naga attires into a Ghagra and it looked really bad. That doesn't mean I am against modernity but they have to do it in a proper way without losing the significance of customs".

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A lot of these costumes are available due to the recent demands of the Northeast attires online. As such, people who purchase give this logic that "what's wrong in wearing them?" This comes down to an overall lack of sensitivity about Northeast India. Merenla also thinks the aspect of "ignorance". She said, "travelling to someone else's state, one should understand the norms. In Nagaland, there are attires made particularly for men and women. You can't mix them, although I believe that there should be equality in the choice of clothing, this will be an issue of customs vs modernity". However, the case here is of misrepresentation done in a cheap hybrid form to which is the reason people are objecting.

A silver lining about the incident has been the awareness created on Social media. People have taken their complaint to Amazon and Flipkart and as per sources some of the attires have been taken down, although there are platforms who are openly selling them. In this regard, the role of the neo-age social media influencers come into play with the likes of Imsong raising the issues on the Internet. "People who do buy these things, they have no hatred but mostly ignorant. Now, we do have a voice and need to use it judiciously. People on the Internet are already riled up with trolling and hate going about in the comments section at times and we have to be really careful as to how we voice this outrage".

Going forward

The need to go ahead is through awareness and sensitisation instead of ranting or trolling. In the recent instances of the issue of Dog Meat ban, one social media post went viral which had "racist undertones" against the Naga people. Yet, in the comments, some of the comments had been transphobic directed against the person that dilutes the actual issue. Thus, the concerned stakeholders have to be careful in not making these issues as us vs them and instead educate the masses regarding the cultural diversity of the Northeast, counter misrepresentation when needed and spread the issues of the region through the new modes of communication dissemination.

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