The Naga delegation with the Director and staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, in front of the Pitt Rivers Museum on June 9 during a week-long visit Museum to strengthen the process of repatriating the Naga ancestral human remains currently under the care of the Museum. (Photo Courtesy: Sanen Kichu/File)
Dimapur, September 10 (MExN): The Working Committee, Naga National Political Groups (WC, NNPGs) headed by N Kitovi Zhimomi today said that the repatriation, recovery and restoration of Naga artefacts and ancestral remains is a mission to correct the wrongs of history.
“We fully align with Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) and Recover, Restore and Decolonize (RRaD) on this mission,” declared the WC, NNPGs in a statement, while extending appreciation to FNR Convener Dr Wati Aier and his colleagues, as well as RRaD Co-ordinator Dr Ellen Konyak and her team for the process.
They have initiated people-to-people dialogue and invoked diplomacy and international laws on the unethical and illegal possession and display of Naga ancestral remains, historical items and artefacts at Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), Oxford, taken away from Nagaland during the colonial era, it added.
Accordingly, the WC, NNPGs noted that in gallerias and cupboards of Europe and elsewhere, the “soul and spirit of our ancestors cry out to be rescued, repatriated and reunited with the land and people.”
Every single Naga item at PRM denotes an unbroken heritage and an extension of the Nagas’ historical, political and cultural identity, it maintained, adding that it is a solemn moral responsibility and obligation to bring them home.
The FNR's RRaD effort, in essence, encapsulates the spirit of the Agreed Position of November 17, 2017 between the Government of India (GoI) and WC, NNPGs, by which the GoI “recognises the historical and political rights of the Nagas to self-determine their future in consonance with their distinct identity...,” the Committee further contended.
Whether it was Great Britain a century earlier or the GoI today, Naga history and identity must be restored and respected to ensure an enduring, harmonious and peaceful co-existence. Indeed, it is time to decolonise, it added.
