Paul Pimomo
If one were looking for the most recent proof of a total breakdown in responsible public leadership among the Nagas, one need only look back on two events in the last three months: the cold-blooded murder of innocent Naga civilians in Oting and Mon by Indian armed forces on December 4 & 5, 2021, and last week’s Nagaland State Assembly’s selection of the lone BJP-sponsored Rajya Sabha MP to represent the state in Delhi; we are not talking here about the individual selected for the office but the party the individual represents. These two events may seem unrelated, but they are and offer a postcolonial synecdoche of the failed Indo-Naga relations of over seven decades. They exemplify the policy and strategic failures of India’s relations with the Naga people during the latter’s most vulnerable and critical period of transition from autonomous village-states to a functioning modern democratic society, leading to a breakdown of civic and moral responsibility in Naga public life.
Responsibility for the Oting and Mon event falls on the Indian government, but neither Prime Minister Modi nor Home Minister Shah has taken responsibility for it. The Nagaland state leaders and MLAs are responsible for the second event. They have, individually and as a group, aligned themselves and the people of Nagaland -- without the people’s consent – with the Hindutva ideology of Modi, Shah, and the BJP, in exchange for power, personal career, and material goods that come with their alignment. Let’s remember these are two intimately related anti-Naga people events. The first abrogates Naga people’s right to life and hands it over to the Indian armed forces even in the Naga homeland, as laid out in the extra-judicial Armed Forces Special Powers Act; the second barters away Nagaland people’s right to proper representation in a parliamentary democracy.
About the Oting and Mon killings, the immediate public outrage showed the mood of the people and the extended aftermath demonstrated their will to resist AFSPA. They boycotted the Hornbill Festival, midway, in protest, and held public mourning and candlelight vigils for the dead, pleading justice for the victims; they organized mass rallies against the killings, including a Walkathon from Dimapur-to-Kohima for an immediate repeal of AFSPA and the Disturbed Areas Act; they made urgent appeals to both the state and central governments, issued public statements of condemnation, appealed to international bodies for justice and redress, organized online webinars on human rights violations by Indian armed forces and the militarization of the region going back to the mid-1950s, which have rendered normal peaceful life unfamiliar to more than two generations of Nagas. The response of the Indian government to the people’s outrage and nonviolent resistance was to extent AFSPA in Nagaland.
While the Naga public did what they could about the Oting and Mon case, in the selection of the Rajya Sabha MP by the Nagaland State Assembly, the people’s options were greatly hampered by the state politicians’ eagerness to please the BJP bosses in Delhi and by a prior inter-party agreement to send a BJP candidate. Some civil society organizations sent an urgent joint appeal to the Chief Minister and the leaders of political parties, reminding them of their duty to send an MP who would voice the will of the people of Nagaland in Delhi, especially in light of the BJP’s record of hostility toward Christians. Instead, the legislators promptly selected a BJP-affiliated MP to represent a state which is88% Christian and 8.7% Hindu and from a party that has only 11 elected legislators in a 60-member Assembly. The issue here is not religion, as such, but the core principle of democratic systems of government where legislators represent the will of the people.
By violating this principle, what the Nagaland government and legislature have done is put the new MP in a moral and political dilemma. Whose interests will she represent and advocate for in Delhi? The Naga people’s and their opposition to AFSPA and the BJP’s Hindutva ideology or be loyal to the BJP’s commitment to AFSPA and Hindutva? In selecting a BJP MP, then -- depending on how the new MP decides to conduct herself in Delhi –the Nagaland legislators have either silenced the voice of the people of Nagaland in parliament or chosen a representative to speak against the people’s interests. The choice is not between right and wrong, but between bad and worse. Either way constitutes a public offense against the people on the part of the Nagaland State government and Assembly.
Tragically, the abuse of public office and trust is not new among Nagaland state politicians. There are two living generations of Indian national politicians among the Nagas, from the 1960s to today, in the Indian Congress family of parties and in the current BJP. The role of this Indian cadre of Naga politicians, especially the leaders, has been the destruction of Naga nationalism, that is to say, separating and dividing Nagas so they don’t develop and advance as a people, but rather grow increasingly divided to serve the so-called national interests of India. The leading figures among them are notable individuals with the Congress party from the time of Prime Minister Nehru on to now and a couple of younger leaders in today’s BJP. They all have one thing in common. They are deeply committed to their role and purpose in life as Indian national politicians opposed to Naga autonomy and integration as a people. The success of their public careers, as well as material wellbeing, depends entirely on how well they collaborate with the Government of India in the slow asphyxiation of the Naga people’s yearning for a self-determined political future in an undivided ancestral homeland.
Then there are Indian national politicians among the Nagas in the regional political parties. Their success has been geared by an entrepreneurial use of two resources: homegrown political capital of Naga nationalism and the readily bankable Indian cash capital that the government of India advances liberally to fight Naga nationalism. This group has also garnered power and wealth. They use them both to corrupt the electoral system and, intended or not, to degrade public life at every level. Only an opposition-less government, a Naga invention in the history of democracy, would be confident enough to send a BJP MP from Nagaland just three months after the Oting and Mon killings. Their choice left the people helpless. Civil society organizations, with the honorable exception of four, were either too indebted and therefore gutless and fearful to even sign on an appeal letter to oppose a BJP-sponsored candidate. No talk of public protests or candlelight and prayer vigils this time around.
So, in the last three months, Nagas have seen the BJP government in Delhi extend AFSPA immediately following the Oting and Mon murders and the Nagaland state government select a BJP Member of Parliament to represent Nagaland. These are crime scenes -- actual and political – for all who have eyes to see. The history lesson here is that the combined forces of the Indian government and the two groups of Naga-born Indian national politicians have delivered the lethal jab-and-punch to Naga people’s long struggle for autonomy and self-determination. Naga nationalism has been buried alive by Nagaland state leaders working hand in glove with the government of India. And now even some NPGs are joining their ranks. Together, the Naga politicians have corrupted Naga traditional values and starved, then bribed, selected sections of the people to win electoral votes, including civil society organizations, even Naga Christianity, turning it into a helpless loud-praying but politically silent collaborator of the corrupt system. The Nagaland Assembly’s selection of BJP MP elicited no public outcry and agitation even from the Naga church establishment. The breakdown of responsible public leadership in the Naga society is total.
This, then, is a season of grief for the passing of Nagas as a people. Individuals and families belonging to the political and economic elite are set to make their way in the world and thrive anywhere, but the disadvantaged majority is on their own. We wonder if there’s a future for them. Because if there is, then there might still be one for the Nagas as a people, since they are the people. This is a question best left to the young people. The older generation has failed them and so it owes it to them to at least articulate the question clearly about what has been lost:
Is there any way for the Naga youth to resurrect the spirit of the brave and honorable Naga ancestors and ignite the noble cause of Naga self-determination in an undivided ancestral Naga homeland that is free of military repression by outside forces and where Nagas can build a peaceful and thriving society that is people-centered and ecologically healthy?
There’s nothing anti-India in pursuing this vision. And it has the added advantage of being pro-Naga for good reason: a healthy, thriving people taking care of one another and their homeland. What could be wrong with that? When we are down and out, it’s good to remember there’s hope as long as we still have life. Fact is, for now, the Naga homeland is still a beautiful part of Earth by any standards. On the other hand, it would be a real tragedy if we fail to recognize that we are about to lose it all and ourselves.
