Artificial ‘Development’

Before anything is said; I want you to picture this – a Naga. A head-hunting Naga, a half-naked Naga (or naked one), living with his pigs, chicken, pig-dung infested village. Now juxtapose that with another picture- the accepted understanding of a white man, or the civilized man in his coat suit, using a knife and fork and acquiescing with the accepted norms of ’civilized society’.

That’s where I would like to begin my article, before anything is said or uttered I would like the person reading this article to imagine that in his/her head.

Our imagined ‘Development’
Who are the ’Nagas’? Only perhaps god knows that answer. Some avarice colonials came to these hills and collecting neighboring information about the savage hillsmen tribes decided to call them the ’Nagas’. But that’s not important, that’s not the ’Nagas’ I’m trying to explain here. Rather, who were the Nagas before 1832? Before the 19th century dawned on them? Perhaps you would acquire a vague idea from anthropologists’ or administrators’ photographs of what would be a first encounter of ’outsiders’.

Mountain people. Rugged, wild, hardship of the land etched on their faces, a dirty child being carried on someone’s back. Unhygienic villages, sanitation at its least, but perhaps with a strong sense of community. The present ’Naga’ is a very different picture from That ’Naga’. I would remember someone mentioning that the ’Naga’ is no longer the mekhala-wearing woman in her village but its has expanded to the tee-shirt wearing ’Naga’ in jeans living in the cities of India now. Yet, this is a big transformation.

Trends
Please follow the pattern of systematic explanation I am trying to give above because that is the whole point of the article. The point is about our ’artificial development’, or rather our half-formed development, our half-hazard, too-quickly-transitioned development that we have today in our society. I believe it is a pressing issue needing attention which defines, if not, also slowly seeps into the villages, remote hinterlands overwhelming us without much reflection.

My childhood memory of Kohima is a sleepy town and sundays when we leisurely walked to grandmothers’ home after sunday service. It was a Sunday ritual which we enjoyed and not necessarily because we didn’t have a car. We didn’t have a car in the beginning but even when we bought ourselves a car we still preferred to walk that 30 minute trip to grandmother’s then take the car. Because Kohima was always quiet on sundays and you would bump into church-going or church-coming acquaintances, greeted each other and had long updating-conversations of the week’s events on the street where only stray dogs or the odd paan-dukan stayed open. Cars rarely drove past or just the odd one every 15 minutes. That is why those Sunday-walks to grandmother’s has also embedded itself in my wholesome childhood memories.

If my parents reminisced about their childhood memories of Kohima then back then there was only one car in the whole of Kohima town. It was a proper one-horse town then. Back then, Kohima villagers called Kohima town ’Tephriera’ or meaning ’the Plains’*. There were already some schools then but the well known ones were Kohima English school, Baptist English school, Government High school or National school. The DC office, post offices were wooden structures then still in their present location. Secretariat area was forested then with no resemblance of what it is today. Bayavu area was jungle, Kohima Science college area was jungle.

When grandmother reminisces then Kohima town was an even smaller town/British outpost. Kohima town started roughly from Teen Patti area, including Raj Bhavan (where the government servants resided in quarters on today’s ‘Raj Bhavan’ area), DC’s Bungalow. DC’s bungalow rested where we all know- even our generations. Bavayü area was thickly forested and grandmother would collect firewood there where it was rumored tigers and bears roamed. High school area was deep forested areas, lower Chotobosti regions were cultivated fields, in Razou point- UBC church area there were government quarters occupied by the Bengali clerks. There was a Marwari shop called ‘Duosao dukaan’ who spoke funny Tenydie dialect. That was Kohima town before the II World War, where some of the only Naga traders in town had a trader’s union called NCF, and the Post Office in Kohima outpost town had only one postman. A Nepali postman/peon who knew all the houses in Kohima town and village and probably lived in Daklane… The only ‘plains people’ in Kohima town back then were Marwari traders, Nepali ‘dhoot wallas’ and Bengali traders. I always feel Grandmother can always reminisce very nostalgically about Kohima town before the II World War. Down to Pawsey Chaha’s* and Suplee Chaha’s jeep that were the only vehicles found in Kohima town. And Dimapur town was only an isolated British outpost with a railway track, made known only because the Burmese refugees came to ‘Burma Camp’* in Dimapur during the II World War.

Three Generations and how many changes we have seen
If I should speak from my own experience of- for example, ‘Kohima town’, and three generations that has experienced ‘Kohima’ reflecting our rapid changes in Nagaland you can just tangibly see how many changes we have undergone from the 19th century to the 21st. This is what I want to talk about- the changes, transformations we Nagas have had to undergo in rapid intercessions or no intercessions at all. My grandmother’s ‘Kohima’ is so different from my mother’s ‘Kohimea’ and when it comes my experience of ‘Kohima town’ it has been bittersweet. It has been so many changes stacked up upon one another. My childhood ‘Kohima’ and my now ‘Kohima’ is so different from one another. There are more traffic jams, more cars, more affluent people in Kohima, more buildings, more ‘development’, more everything of what was not a part of my childhood, my mother’s or grandmother’s.

This ‘Kohima’ I have to know, must I say, is no part of my mother’s, grandmother’s generation. I look at ‘Kohima’ from a prism that I do not understand at all and somehow I have to absorb that it is the same ‘Kohima’ that I grew up with, my mother grew up with and my grandmother’s. It’s a very different ‘Kohima’ that we all know and talk over.

‘Artificial Development’
When I think about Nagaland’s development, that’s exactly what I think. The damned changes that had to come to ‘Kohima town’:- the changes that had to come to Nagaland state that I have still not abosorbed. It’s the same ‘Kohima town’ I have to struggle through, with its clogged traffic jams, VIP’s driving through its already congested streets and Kohima’s traffic that I would rather walk.

Where is our solution?
You shouldn’t ask me, Brother/Sister, because I cannot provide any answer. But when I think ‘Naga’, I see the unhygienic, dirty, snoot-nosed ‘Naga’ child in a blurred black and white picture that speaks to me that we are going through transitions too fast, too rapid and too stacked-upon-one-another. Tell me, ‘Naga’ Brothers and Sisters, am I not right?