In 2009, the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie while presenting “The Danger of a Single Story” during a TED talk eloquently pointed out that, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
Indeed, a single story cannot represent or embrace a people’s dignity as it negates their diverse experiences and stories while selectively creating a dominant narrative that sustains a culture of power through domination and dispossession of justice.
The Nagas, too, are in danger of being subsumed by the single story. Today, the manner in which the Nagas are responding to the many crisis confronting them is based on a dominant single story, which is proving to be limiting and counter-productive. Above all, the Naga worldview has become frozen, hardened and is spiraling into a parochial regression. Consequently, this invasive narrative is reducing the Naga people’s many positive attributes and opportunities to evolve.
There is much the Naga heart can learn and reflect from Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story.” The reflection process can be initiated by questioning why the complex, diverse and rich stories of the people have been reduced into one story that begins with the arrival of colonial powers. This timing in itself is false as Naga history began generations before the colonial project was instituted. The Nagas need to ask why the ‘Nagaland State’ of 1960 is the yardstick which gives legitimacy of being ‘Naga.’ The reflection process needs to systematically debunk the many stereotypes and assumptions which project false images of who Nagas are.
Nagas can muster the courage, the collective will and heart to break the narrative of the single story and embrace the diverse and rich texture of stories which constitute the Naga realm. Undeniably, Adichie is urging the Naga heart to speak out “the stories that only [the Naga heart] can tell, about [its] experiences, hopes and fears, helps break down the power of clichés and stereotypes.” It is in recovering and sharing the many stories that the Naga journey towards rehumanization can be strengthened.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is encouraging the Nagas to reject the single story and states that they will realize that there is “never a single story about any place,” and when it does so, the Nagas will “regain a kind of paradise.”
