Kaka D. Iralu
Every citizen of every nation has an intimate love and attachment to their native lands. Nagas too are no exception to this reality and have paid dearly for love of their lands. But this time as I walked again into Eastern Nagaland with my daughter and once again saw the beautiful and seemingly endless stretches of our eastern territories, some thoughts struck me. The first thought was: Do the present generation of Nagas still love their lands as passionately as their forefathers did? Would they give a damn even if all these eastern Naga lands, rich with mineral wealth and flora and fauna were all transferred to Myanmar tomorrow?
If one were to draw conclusions of land ownership and stewardship from the actions of those of us in the western side, I do not think any one of us in the west would care even if the beautiful eastern territories of our lands disappear right in front of our eyes. After all what did we do to our western portion over the years? Some of our political leaders in the early 1960’s just went to Delhi and signed it all off, as part of Indian Territory, in exchange for some miserly so called development and economic benefits. What of the others who continued to live in their mountaintop village? Believing that their lands and their resources were still securely under their feet because of article 371 A of the Indian Constitution, they started to sell of their ancestral lands to any buyers.
Over the years, they sold away their rich lands to others for temporal pleasures like driving a vehicle or owning an RCC house in some so called modern Naga town. Today, with most of their lands sold off, they cling on to their mountain top villages in abject poverty. Many of them are now buying even firewood from neighboring villages because all their mountains and forests have been sold away. As for their former fields in their former fertile plains, most of them are now owned by “Others.”
I am not too sure about land statistics of other tribes, but I at least know what Angami villagers have done with their lands over the years from the 1960’s to the present. To our shame and embarrassment, we Angamis have been very irresponsible stewards of our ancestral lands. Today, as (almost) “Landless Landowners,” we shudder at the bleak economic future of our children because we have rendered them “Pauper Landowners.”
Today, with most of our lands gone and also all the money from sale of our lands gone too, we have started quarreling with one another over land ownership and political affiliation and positions under Indian political systems through Indian elections. In short- A PEOPLE WITH NO SENSE OF PATRIOTISM OR LOVE FOR ONE’S OWN COUNTRY AND LAND.
And I must end by asking all my fellow Nagas: Am I just talking about my Angami tribe or am I also talking about you and your tribe too? God forbid that from a former nation of valiant warriors who were both politically and economically independent, we, in our generation reduce ourselves and our children to a nation of beggars pathetically subsisting on Indian dal and Burmese rice with no political or economic future.
