Roviso
University of Delhi
Political Discrepancy
A leading newspaper of India recently fetched headline as it captured the national intelligent chief RN Ravi in beautiful Naga shawl of glare sight -February 12, 2018 The Hindu. It quotes his role of helping the government restrain election boycott in Nagaland. The report mooted the dissolution of the new Assembly after election when an agreement would be seen in 2-3 months. Regardless of the authenticity of source, there’s obvious need to apprehend the continued heedless attitude of state and such remarks flooding the ‘national kaleidoscope’. The diplomat’s tone sounds anything political if not usual in so far as the Naga experience with the Indian state brims vividly. It may be relevant to reflect Shashi Tharoor’s quote in Pax Indica which reads, ‘Indian diplomacy is like the love-making of an elephant: it is conducted at a very high level, accompanied by much bellowing, and the results are not known for two years’. Whereas abroad ideas of the dialogue are been understood and exercises need to be seen, the nature of talk invites the volatility of aspects forming the Indian state. It leads to read closely the political landscape of India and its processes, briefly hinted.
Nobel laureate, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, with Jean Dreze has termed the Indian state to have brutally suppressed Naga’s independent movement by applying counter-insurgent strategies - An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. The study qualifies India as a firm constitutional democracy redeemed from colonial wreckage, which could then speedup considerable achievements. It argues however, that India’s glory was credited much by institutional strength and thus faces uncertainty to address the abysmal divide in society whose many questions go unanswered in vast dimensions of the state’s failure. Interestingly, many noted scholars in India who touched on the injustices suffered by Nagaland could not carry that exhaustively, except appropriated inclusively into their work. It is seemingly unchanged for the political outlook of India to evenly knit around national prisms of understanding various cultures and sub-national trends within the nation-state. The limitation to such idea of ‘nation/nationalism’ although espouses diverse framework would necessarily visit provisions rolled out from the governmental spectrum. Recent BJP’s invoke of election for solution and the unsurprising ‘complacent-refutations’ by Rahul Gandhi against ‘Modiji’s Naga accord’ - are but added instances of resonating a democratic India without political morale. The nuances of election despair in the state are to be seen in these glaring acts of the shrewd Indian business.
Democratic Claims, Inadequate Realities
Voting behaviour in modern times has been drastically shaped by values of national interest and change. Such upsurges in India are rather tuned on popular notion of engaging the state. Consequently, the outcome of this popular uproar makes way for strengthening state’s unjust practices by addressing the popular hues and leave behind the less popular ones from the government’s preferred list of action. Even the strong anti-graft movement led by Anna Hazare against state misappropriation was not free from otherwise its ‘relapse’ of appropriating state supremacy- one such critic leveled by a known writer Arundhati Roy.
All this hardly squares with the Indian state’s declared commitment to democratic functioning. Indeed, the hype about democracy obscures the imposition of what can be called a “structured democracy” that denies rightful participation to certain sections of the nation. Naga urgency was smeared, and would continue so in this twilight of India’s twisted democracy carrying tags like ‘undemocratic’ or ‘anti-national’, without proper understanding from commentators. Even the Left aligned parties whose socialist principles likened to Naga liberation have nudged into these circles of sounding critical on Naga settlement. While the Naga populace had wanted the India leadership to stoop down on new terms, unfortunately, the fateful disunity on election boycotts has mounted up good appraisals for India to falter Naga movement. Considering these realities of contradictions and divide running strenuous day by day, it appears that Nagas would not receive with open arms, any deliverance by the Indian system of deal.
Reality Check
The causality links to governmental preparation for its near landing. The task was allegedly determined on power concentration aligning Centre and states, with integral objective of the BJP to pull up the NE. This is indicative on the party society (RSS) been reported of active operation in the region for realizing its Hindutva goal. Given the strong Christian domain, Nagaland apparently lies within this brainchild of the saffron politics in India. Hence it served the electoral scheme to date Nagaland for a possible grip through the structural web. And without doubt, this would boost confidence for the Lok Sabha elections next year. There is perhaps no political party at the national level for the Nagas to rely on. In the regional front, neighbouring states have cautioned the Naga settlement to have bearings of disintegration.
All these moods of political antagonisms have consolidated the government’s job of relegating the Naga urgency, however grave, not beyond normal constitution. And pending later development, current negotiations are supposedly meant for extraordinary mechanisms and headway. One cannot stop thinking how Nagaland with its kind of political agenda would see passage in the representing theatre of India. Democratic processes and its maddening participants in the national scenes are necessarily hardened on Nagas’ disfavor. Where then is the scope of Naga solution? Who will solve it at all? Naga arguments on rights thesis which demands no freedom from India requires dealing these issues more steady than often. Whereas the Naga prospect through talks is not undermined, and certainly deserves hope to that respect, the people cannot afford the price for another political morass when it meets collision in the negotiation court which has been more than revealed with the onset of all governments.
Through appropriate basis, members of national political parties and leaders in Nagaland should convince their fellow compatriots to include Naga solution in the election manifestos. This can be channeled into constitutional rights provision and citizenship. Implications of such action would spur needed deliberations across national peripheries and in turn elevate the Naga urgency. Very sadly, it is heartening that in spite of India’s disdain record with Nagas which can’t escape resolution; many citizens of the nation are relatively ‘laid back’ and ignorant of the state-crisis, thereby suffers setback while the issue arise for its proper treatment in the political classes and elite societies, among others. In humble submission, it is felt, and proposes that the Naga bodies which endorses but not limited to the Naga Hoho, must explore representations to concerned political parties/organizations for inclusion of Naga solution in their stream of agendas to appreciate it as a national concern. The initiation would re-instill desirable measures of seeking possible solution involving the vast interfaces of India, which is a semblant factor of the long drawn crisis. The proposition shall be most desired as a noble concept to correspond with the enormous capacities underway, which on regular accounts are traditional though. Hence, any irrelevance to this note is duly solicited to ignore.
In all eventualities, Naga history should not be marked as contesting India’s structural domains unsuccessfully. Let the world know that the sense of political brinkmanship against India’s ‘brute state’ and its imposed system on the people is truly unjust, hence unwanted government. Those many sacrifices and the enduring commitments, however desperate today, are given in faithful hope to be groomed by the respectable facets of the Naga society. Kuknalim.
