The Naga people of Nagaland in northeastern India have over two or three generations converted almost entirely to Christianity from their indigenous animistic religion. Situating the phenomenon of conversion in its sociopolitical and historical context, I begin by exploring how the concept of Christian ‘rupture’ with the past advocated by Joel Robbins (2004) can be applied to conversion among the Naga. Taking into account the history of Christianity among the Naga, I suggest that the role of healing in early evangelising, and its continued relevance in the current attempts at reconciliation among Naga themselves, modifies significantly the notion of rupture to the extent that it may have opposite consequences to those originally envisaged by missionaries. I further argue that among the Naga the theme of healing is the connecting thread which runs through the historical and contemporary role of Christianity and its continued importance in the shift from individual to collective healing.

It is true that early missionaries to Nagaland wanted to create a ‘rupture’ with what they regarded as the heathen beliefs and practices of the past, including the local religion of animism. Animism, however, comprised important traditional healing practices, which were not easily banned. At the same time, missionaries brought in Western biomedicine, which was eagerly accepted by the local Naga.

From the missionaries’ viewpoint, and that of the earliest Naga Christian converts, traditional healing and biomedicine were incompatible. However, this potential conflict in healing methods and accompanying beliefs did not result in a straightforward and unambiguous clash. For, although many animistic practices were successfully banished or marginalised by the missionaries, many traditional healers acknowledged the evident success of modern biomedical healing and so, rather than opposing this new mode of healing, grafted themselves and a selection of their traditional practices onto Christianity, by becoming Christians themselves. They therefore in effect created a bridge between traditional and modern healing in the idiom of Christianity. The missionaries had not intended this bridging of tradition and modernity through such conversion. It was therefore an unintended consequence of their teachings in the power and faith of healing, from both spiritual and biomedical perspectives.