‘I have fought against white domination; I have fought against black domination. The ideal of a free society is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’
– Nelson Mandela
The principles of Western models and the principles of indigenous models in reference to relationships are socially and culturally constructed. However, with the globalized tendency towards westernization, humanity has experienced in greater depth the western models of relationships with fellow humans, nature and structures.
The reduction of humanity by the western knowledge system to two perceptual categories – the Individual and the State – has resulted in an intolerant non-existent relationship with the multiplicity of human cultures and units of social organizations. Further, dichotomy between man and woman, individual and community, person and nature has broken down the complex web of human life based on interdependence, interconnection and interrelation. This paradigm feeds on power, domination, profit, violence, capitalism, imperialism and production. These energies are channeled through a rigid institutionalized structure that sustains on a legalistic understanding of the world and aspires to dominate development, nature and gender relations by promoting itself as the agent and model of development and change through sophisticated scientific expertise.
In the process, a system that is quite evidently non-sustainable and inequitable has evolved, and sustains itself on the basis of living at the cost of the future. It believes in maximizing through technological solution and seems least concerned for conservation. The internal contradictions within its knowledge system have risen to one of crisis of order and freedom. Can the mind in crisis offer solution?
Humanity has a history of war, violence, injustice and domination. It has reached a point in time where there is a need for a paradigm shift in terms of how humanity relates with one another. Has western paradigms lived off its usefulness in contemporary politics and is it time to turn our attention and focus towards indigenous paradigms?
The recovery of indigenous principles is a response to multiple domination and deprivation of nature and non-western cultures. It sustains its very existence on the principles of accommodation, diversity and sharing through an inclusive process that seeks to recover nature, woman and man in creative forms of being and perceiving. There is thus, a shift in the concept of activity from one of destruction to creation and the concept of power from domination to empowerment. Its nature of assuming the role of a sustainer and provider needs to be recovered for the survival of all life.
The indigenous knowledge system disagrees with the dominant perspective of universal prosperity as being the soundest foundation of peace. The indigenous principle is closely related to the system of nature that tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting and self-cleansing and propounds the need to have a system of technology and a model of production that is humane in nature. It constructs the meaning of freedom, democracy, equality, dignity and self-determination in terms of peoples and not in terms of goods!
As we work towards a more progressive respectful society that functions on the principles of freedom, justice, equality and truth the Nagas have to begin seeking and creating paradigms that would sustain all forms of life in a sustainable way.
