Ao-Naga environmental ethics in dialogue with deep ecology

Abstract

The environmental ethics of the Ao-Naga, a major tribe from Mokokchung in the state of Nagaland, northeast India, are examined to create a theoretical space to engage with deep ecology. The first section shows that Ao-Naga ecology resists modern instrumental rationality. Anthropocentric reasoning is certainly not the core of their conception of ecology. Ao-Naga worldview is rooted in non-anthropocentric reasoning and the full measure of its radicalism becomes evident due to an antimodernist stance. The second section argues that deep ecology as developed by Arne Naess shares certain common features with the Ao-Naga ecology. Narrative, poetry, place, ritual and self fit into the conceptual framework that forms Ao-Naga ecology, which deepen the ethics and ontology of deep ecology. The concluding section suggests that identification with nature not only results in an adequate moral theory—the practice of non-violence, but the moral theory is itself based upon strong ethical reasoning.