As Zunheboto rages with its charged-up emotions last December and our nation was engulfed in marred confusion, my immediate reaction was to recede to a comfort zone of silence, for one being the perceived Tangkhul and the other not to hazard any political risk in the given volatility. Likewise, the voice of reason and the intelligentsia took to their heels once again. Be that as it may.
Leaving aside the sensitive question of political legitimacy or its socio-political ramification for the historians to decide, what captures my imagination in the civilly acultural Flush-Out Mission is the muffled sentiment of reason calling upon all UGs, groups and factions for unconditional reform and transformation. The political message of the masses echoed in it may not be simply rebuffed as a mere outburst of typical Sumi outrage by questioning the apparent ethical content of the war-cry. That is neither to justify, nor to delegitimize the alleged mission of the flush-out. The point is the progressively mass sentiment shared by the general Nagas is already taking the proportion of a movement across the borders and this emerging common conscience can no longer be ignored.
However, what is deeply disheartening is the proportion of tribal passion and hatred that is already overtaking our national imagination. The schismatic propensity to proscribe and counter-proscribe each against the other in response to imaginary fears and threats within the paternalist-conceived hierarchy friction is potentially turning us into predatory tribal zealots. Consequently, many of our attempts at great reformation have ended up being monopolized by the rhetoric of tribal passion and hatred.
While tribal assumptions and presumptions are increasingly shaping our political behaviour and perceptions, the worldview of the Nagas is all the more slipping into the antagonistic persuasion of tribal chauvinism. Our ontological conception of historical “Naga” has degenerated to such an extent that tribal identities have run counter to the homogenous fabric of our traditional Naga identity. The apropos question is whether the Nagas, as individuals, groups, factions and communities, have collectively failed to imagine as a nation.
The fictional projection of tribal identity within the artificial boundaries in a constitutionally-set legal regime of post-independent India has hijacked our traditional conscience of social brotherhood. At the same time, the ideological discourse of Naga nation making has failed to counter this colonial articulation or to capture our imagination and visualize the Nagas as one whole traditional community.
The local interest of a given group, faction or community has been indulgently equated with the larger Naga national interest. The love of an individual, group, faction or community in the name of patriotism and filial piety has been impulsively confused with the practice of true Naga Nationalism. We have jointly and severally failed in our imagination as an emerging nation and unless we fundamentally transform and reconstruct our historical identity based on higher political imagination, our process in essentializing the idea of “Naga” is bound to remain problematic and conflictual.
The narratives of constructing Naga history in a propagandistic structure within the stylistics of NNC/NSCNs conflict in particular has failed to evoke the envisaged pacific “Naga” and “Naga Nationalism” which in turn aggravates our present confusion and imaginary tribal conflict vis-a-vis the schemata of Nehruvian Imperialism.
We must revisit and reconstruct our history and the idea of “Naga” and “Naga Nationalism” from the archives of Naga historical/traditional memories based on the notion of liberty and dignity of Naga Warriors and legends against the Brahmanic didactics of Indian multiculturalism. The popular slogan “Nagalim for Christ” has for one thing raised the idea of Naga nationalism to the level of religion and the political originality of the same cannot be disputed though. However, the discourse of constructing Naga identity from the biblical narratives of Jewish-Egyptian conflict based on the Judeo-Mosaic notion of Israelite liberation is inherently problematic in the sense that it is materially incapable to articulate the true idea of “Naga” or “Naga Nationalism” and in particular to evoke the notion of colonial enemy in the post-modernist conception of nation-state.
Naga history does not begin from the soil of Canaan or Israel-Egypt, neither does it begin with Simon Commission and nor does it end in Shillong Accord. We must stretch our historical memory back to the forest where our forefathers fearlessly hunt, myths are invented and reinvented, folktales are told and retold and the aesthetic beauty and harmonious co-existence of nature are inherent in their traditional values and cosmological worldview. From the legacy of this fabric of ideals, legends and ethos, we must re-imagine our nation in the polity of republic of free villages.
At the risk of stoking all sceptical odds to begin with, this writer would call for a Naga National Conference to shake off the past dust and take the solemn customary oath of national reconciliation by invoking the spirit of nature, by sacrificing animals and by biting the soil that the Nagas are brothers in blood, flesh and spirit and no individual, group, faction or community can rupture this sacred consanguinity and natural peace; that Naga national interest transcends all and no individual, group, faction or community shall act against or rise above this common interest; as the wrath of the spirit awaits to befall upon the generation on transgression of these sacred utterances. Customary law sanction works on the typical Naga social psychology unlike mass prayers and paper resolutions.
by: Sira Kharray
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