Akhum Longkumer
Kohima, Nagaland
Demonization of the Nagas is easy and will therefore, occur; circumstances being the way they are. Media sensationalization is just one factor amongst many. What occurred will remain a blemish on the history of the Nagas. Depending on your definition of who these protestors against the ‘women’s reservation’ bill were, these ‘protestors’ may not deserve your sympathy at all, but they do deserve your empathy, i.e. the ability to understand what, why and how these 'others' think the way they do. This has been clearly missing from most recent reports by media houses from the mainland on the protests occurring in Nagaland.
Look at the actors involved, superficially stripped of identities and histories and the story would go something like this- xx and xy were opposed to each other. xx being weaker called upon w. With the balance now tipped in favour of xx, xy sought the help of z, and found that their combined weight managed to outweigh w+xx. Before the reader dismisses this ‘story’ as facile, one should ask oneself, ‘How many actors were there?’
This most rudimentary of analyses yet requires at least four actors to tell a coherent story. Why is it that some media-houses told themselves that they could pass this story off, with half the cast missing, as a two-actor story- Man vs Woman- neat and tidy though it may seem. What of w and z?
Wilful ignorance, unwilled ignorance, sensationalism dictated by profit-motives, and chariness of uncomfortable issues brought up given Nagaland’s ‘disturbed’ and border area tag seem to be involved here. While the media must be lauded for performing their duty of laying bare societal hypocrisies, one must pause to consider whether a job left half-done was worth beginning.
Leaving aside normative questions, and dropping all pretence of masking the identities of the actors involved, one would be well-advised to inquire, in less cursory fashion than has been attempted, why is it that the anti-women’s reservation camp won out in the end. Scratching beneath the surface, one may find not just mere answers for why events came to pass the way they did, an exercise that has in some recent instances, served only the purpose of cultural schadenfreude, but rather, help point in the direction of a brighter and fairer future. The stage set, and actors accounted for, a simple filling-in of the details, a paint by numbers, is all that is required for a modicum of discussion to take place.
Within Nagaland, clearly, there were forces rallied across two opposing sides, the pro versus the anti-women’s reservation bill camps, all definitions being made ‘under erasure’. The one weaker than the other. But this is merely how the story starts and how it unfolded in terms of shifts in the balance of power, or rather the lack thereof, has much to reveal. That the one began as the weaker party indicates the presence of patriarchy. There is no gainsaying that straw-man arguments denying so, attempt to strike down straw men. The ULB elections have been stalled for a decade now, and in that course of time, some men in influential positions of society have made comments, on record, to the effect that women should not be allowed to contest in politics. Seeking a way out of this impasse, the High Court in Guwahati and eventually, the Supreme Court, were approached. The coterie of men that had opposed the passing of this bill thus far, now found the balance tipped against their favour, the might of the Indian Constitution stood against them. As was their wont, seeking a return to an imbalance more favourable to themselves, a counter-acting weight was sought. They managed to tap into a powerful and still prevalent sentiment, not of misogyny but desire for self-determination amongst Nagas.
It is no secret that the Centre’s National Integration project in Nagaland hasn’t nearly been successful enough. Despite it, most Nagas are still 'prickly' when it comes to incidents that make their state feel like a 'colony'. It is beside the point, for the sake of this particular argument, whether such feelings are warranted or not. The fact that the common Naga could be brought to bear to counter the Supreme Court injunction is a testament to this fact. But the mainland does seem distant. Reporting on the current imbroglio, major dailies have recently, and often, displayed random pictures of 'North-eastern' looking men who were purportedly the Chief Minister of Nagaland. Turns out, they weren’t even from the North-east. One was the picture of the current President of the People's Republic of China. A faux pas that made Nagas both chuckle and sigh.
Nagas are still coming to terms with the recent years of peace and on the lookout for any threats, imagined or not, to this fragile peace. Feelings of being under the 'occupation' of Indian military forces remain, and it is a fact that the military has a large presence in the state. The Nagas want peace and stability much as any other people would, but sometimes the existence and stability of peace is questionable without concomitant justice, and the average person in Nagaland would equate 'justice' in this case, given their history of violent conflict with the Indian military, with keeping the 'spirit' of Article 371A alive. They cannot all be expected to be well-versed with the law, but they do know that Article 371A was added to the constitution, not snatched out of thin air, but after years of 'the blood and the tears' suffered as lived experience.
Progressive movements are the need of the hour, but in the words of Saul Alinsky, an experienced practitioner in this regard, if there ever was one, to - “start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be”, would be advice well-heeded. Easier said than done. It would seem that a shroud has been placed over our collective eyes. The interpretation of Article 371A is open. India follows the common law for the most part, which by nature of its jurisprudence relies on the doctrine of precedence failing which statutory interpretation comes into play as well as appeals to moral virtue and common sense. Unfortunately, relying on precedent is not of much help in this case. The conflicted views that emerged regarding the oil resources of Nagaland is the other solitary case in point. A paragraph to describe the entire way of life of a people would necessarily be open-ended. But therein lies the double-edged sword- Article 371A also reveals the ‘existence’ of customary law, pulled out, as it were, seemingly from a hat.
Nagaland, yet again, finds itself on the margins of a discourse, this time, where the lines between the representation of law in India as following the common law or a mixed-system is blurred. This provides one way forward and out of this morass, where older essentialist dichotomies may slip away and offer new perspectives if one permits the space. The oft-repeated statement that Urban Local Bodies do not fall under the provisions of 371A because at the time of its introduction, the concept of urban centres did not exist was popularly perceived as specious reasoning. Hindsight is 20/20 but this was arguably foreseeable. This was a crucial mistake as a strategy, and not to be misunderstood as crude criticism of an ‘ends justify the means’ argument, in which case all parties would be guilty of commission, but rather in the progressive instrumentalist sense of setting a goal and figuring out how to get there. If something more substantive than instrumentalism is desired then surely the ramifications of placing a chokepoint on the legitimacy of institutions and customs by as crude a device as drawing a line in the historical sands at the year 1949, is self-evident. Criticisms directed at these old faltering customs and institutions for failing to keep up with the times may have been well-placed but in the same breath to prevent them from evolving to fit the times smacked of duplicity, especially since one is not just talking about any old ‘people’ but a ‘people interrupted’.
Perusing the local dailies, and reading articles and opinion pieces written by locals would have revealed a prominent voice, not yet investigated by the larger media-houses. No stretch of imagination is required to find it plausible that several saner voices called for exactly what this one is driving at. We cannot deny the existence of a ‘common good’ in this scenario. That the balance of ethics, globalization, self-interest and ground level realities at the time, pointed at the equitable and viable solution to the problem being, to allow women their fair share of representation, through reservation, not nomination, until the day that such laws be no longer required, but through organically-linked institutions built from the grass-roots up. Else all it would serve to do would be to perpetuate the same corrupt, inequitable power dynamics observed at present. Imagine the coup and the message it would have represented if successfully pulled off. A milieu-relevant Praxis of the ‘art of being ungoverned’. Instead of following the old tropes of redirecting violence at our fellow native, as Franz Fanon would have bemusedly observed, we would have embraced our subaltern identities and shaken them off at the same time. For, truly, in the words of Spivak - “Who the hell wants to protect subalternity? Only extremely reactionary, dubious anthropologistic museumizers”.
This is no utopian dream-in fact a dose of pragmatism would reveal several stories seemingly being brushed under the carpet. I will identify three. One, the decade-long, and as of yet, unsuccessful, struggle of the Women striving to get their rights recognized, under the constant duress of Patriarchy, shows that this will be nigh insurmountable a task. Secondly, the Men, their sense of duty as Protectors of their culture being challenged as obsolete relics of bygone days, when in fact the onslaught of modernity, globalization and nouveau colonialism, threaten to overwhelm all they hold dear, shows the moral quandary they’re in. Thirdly, as you may well have guessed by now- the essentialism that creeps so easily into narratives, and obfuscates a reality that we’re all already grasping for meaning and expression in.
Instead, a more sober assessment of the situation would be to admit that, indeed, the project ahead of us is large, and institutions all around us are failing. Social and political movements are out of sync and a ‘renaissance’ of either of them is a speck in the time horizon. This is not to throw up our hands in despair, but rather a call to rally, find new meaning through, as Temsüla Ao might have put it, “songs that try to say”. It is also time to take stock of the situation, and identify potentialities. Attention may be brought to the potentiality of the actor referred to as z previously. Not to do so would be to make an extremely unfair and untrue assessment of the gender-non-antagonistic common Naga ‘hirself’, as lumpen and wholly lost to a shared cause. Therein lies the second silver lining; we have reason to hope because our goals are congruent-Justice and Peace, and therefore the promise of an expedited ‘self-actualization’. Professing to value Peace before Justice, however, often hides its true implicit meaning of desire for passivity, the static, and therefore the fragile. I would advise that the wiser strategy would be to distil what you can of your values and greet the future. Where do the actors stand?
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