Monalisa Changkija
Throughout history, myths, lore and stories have been an intrinsic part of the human race, as much as the air we breathe. They were told in numerous forms—through oral traditions, music, dramas, plays, movies, paintings, sculptures, needlework, designed into fabrics, embossed on architecture, handloom and handicrafts—in fact, every little item of usage in our daily lives, the food we cook and eat, the ways we cook it, our attire and jewellery, our interactions with others, our habits, beliefs, cultures and traditions, our intentions, choices, ideologies, politics, religions, our friends, our foes, our agricultural practices—yes, everything about us is a consequence of the myths, lore and stories we have been told, as children and as adults, which we too are retelling and perpetuating.
Then came the written word, followed by technology, and these myths, lore and stories were disseminated farther, wider and faster. The human race needs these myths, lore and stories, for they justify everything about us—the way we live and love, or hate. Besides, they also meet our need to fill a void within us, offering an escape into a world we want and a life we wish to live. Clearly, we cannot live outside fiction, or we have been made to believe that we cannot live outside fiction, for that would make life very sterile. What, after all, is life without our imagination?
Devdutt Pattanaik, author of 50 books on how myth shapes culture, in an article titled Trusted Tales (The Telegraph, July 7, 2026), writes: “…myth is not fiction. Fiction is individual fantasy. Myth is cultural fantasy endorsed over generations. Transmitted as stories, symbols and rituals, it establishes an operating system in the mind: a series of metaphors that grant meaning to life. We inherit these metaphors in the first few years of our lives from our family and modify them as we go along.”
“Humans need myths to survive. Animals do not. That is because humans need to justify human behaviour. No other organism needs to do that. We need to justify our borders, our spaces, our property, our values, our choices. Because we have imagination, we conjure up concepts, problems, solutions, ideas like marriage, which is technically unnatural but culturally necessary to enable property transmission. Property itself is a cultural concept. In nature, there is territory. No one has a right to territory—you kill for it. But property rights shape human society.
“We need stories to justify why a rich man can own a forest. We need stories to justify why mothers—but not fathers—have to cook and clean. Why monogamy is ideal. Even why it is okay for some revered figures to have many wives.”
The problem is that myths, lore and stories are not necessarily verifiable truths; nevertheless, we believe them, and they become more important than human life itself. The problem is that they are also diversionary and divisive. The problem is that they distance us from reality and from the realities we can create by living our own stories. The problem is that they can limit the possibilities of our own lives because we absorb and live in others’ myths, lore and stories. The problem is that they can limit our capacity to distinguish fiction, mythology and history, thus impeding critical thinking.
Pattanaik writes: “Culture is based on tools and tales. Engineers create tools. Poets create tales. Tales justify human action—even genocide.” And it may be added here that the elite, the powerful and politicians manifestly make maximum use—or rather misuse—of both the tools and the tales. Therefore, there is the unabashed enforcement of majoritarianism through political power, the media and movies on history, culture and education—indeed, on all aspects of our thinking process and lives. So great is the bombardment of majoritarianism that no space or scope is created or given to think, to reason and to arrive at one’s own conclusions. The changes made in school textbooks, education policies and even citizenship rules are evidence.
On July 5, for the first time, Nagaland BJP celebrated the birth anniversary of Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee—in a democratic society, anybody’s birth anniversary can be celebrated. However, he had absolutely no connection with Nagaland or Naga history, politics and culture. Most Nagas have not even heard of him. Soon, not only the State BJP but all our educational institutions and government offices may be asked to celebrate the event annually—like the government directive on Vande Mataram. Thus begins the normalization of celebrating ideologues or the subconscious assimilation of alien religions and ideologies, myths, lore and stories, and heroes of majoritarian organizations and a political party. We have our own greats too. How about political parties and even governments celebrating them across the country?
Such celebrations create myths and stories that create imported and imposed remembrances, which gradually and eventually weave themselves into our histories, politics and culture. It takes awareness, critical thinking, reason, and exhaustive, extensive and impeccable study and research to separate the wheat from the chaff. It takes a whole lot of courage to fight off majoritarianism. It also takes immense pride in one’s own history, politics, culture, myths, lore and legends to own and assert them. Otherwise, our identity, our presence, our memories, our cultures, our traditions, the ownership of our land—in fact, our entire history, which is woven into our collective life—will get erased. Much like the innumerable means of disseminating myths, lore and stories, there are innumerable ways of colonizing the mind, and we are already victims of such colonization. Such colonization changes our past and, more critically, shapes our future.
For the elite, the powerful and politicians, the vision is the next election; for others, the next few decades; and some aim for a century. But time has a way of upending the best-laid plans of mice and men. What was is no more. What is will not remain the same. But myths, lore and stories have a way of surviving time, and we need them. So, do we perpetuate them mindlessly, or do we rehash, recreate, rewrite and reinterpret them as all-encompassing, liberating cultural tools and tales that spill into all aspects of our lives? There is also always the option to create, write and interpret new ones that will determine the quality of the future.
Monalisa Changkija is a Dimapur-based veteran journalist, poet, and former Proprietor, Publisher, and Editor of Nagaland Page.