Kethoser (Aniu) Kevichusa
Today, September 23, 2012, marks the twentieth death anniversary of my late uncle, Chalie Kevichusa. To call an article marking this day ‘Chalie’s Rule’ sounds odd: for Chalie never ever ruled any sort of people. But Chalie was a man who lived under the higher rule and law of an enlightened conscience, and died believing that right is greater than might.
For many years, Chalie was also the publisher of the newspaper Ura Mail. In his editorial for the November 14, 1984, issue of the newspaper, Chalie addressed the growing menace of the modus operandi of those groups of people who, unable to have their political views accepted by the people in accordance with established norms and procedures, resort to killing and eliminating those who are perceived by them to be obstacles in their political causes and goals. The editorial was titled ‘Assassins and Assassinations’.
Though brief, as editorials usually are, this piece gives an invaluable insight into assassins and assassinations. Chalie says, ‘[A]ssassins, or would be assassins, believe that they will achieve something by means of this crime…. Leaders, great and small, and throughout the world, are being threatened with assassinations. As long as there are people who continue to believe that they can achieve something with this particular crime, violence will only increase.’For confronting and countering the culture of assassination, Chalie says that ‘mere condemnation of the acts of this tribe of criminals [i.e., the assassins and those who direct or abet them] alone would not serve any useful purpose’. Rather, he says, ‘[P]ublic opinion should now be gradually moulded so that any cause espoused by any assassin would have automatic condemnation and total rejection…. [A]cause, however just it may be, if it is ensured of loss of public sympathy, those espousing it will certainly think twice before acting.’
Little did Chalie know then that he would one day himself fall to the bullets of assassins, whose leaders and paymasters perceived him, for some reason, to be a political threat and obstacle. On this day twenty years ago, Chalie was killed in broad daylight by waylaying gunmen as he drove his daughter to tuition. He was forty-nine years old.
Although this particular editorial focused on the specific issue of assassination, it offers a broader, profoundly relevant, philosophical principle and practical road map for confronting violence and the use of violence, especially in the context of violence-rife Nagaland today. I propose calling this practical principle ‘Chalie’s Rule’. And the Rule, paraphrasing and broadening Chalie’s words, is this: ‘Any cause or ideal, no matter how just, noble, or right, espoused by anyone who resorts to and uses violence for that cause or ideal, should be automatically condemned and totally rejected.’
According to this Rule, the fundamental condemnation and rejection must not so much be of the means employed – violence – for achieving a certain cause or ideal(although it includes that); neither must it primarily be of the people espousing and using violence (although it can include that too); rather, the fundamental condemnation and total rejection must be of the cause or ideal itself. In other words, in the face of violence and men of violence, it is not so much the actors and their acts, but their aspirations – irrespective of what they are, noble or ignoble – that must be fundamentally undermined and automatically rejected. Only this, according to Chalie’s Rule, can stem a society’s headlong fall into violence.
This basic rule of thumb can be applied to many cases, beginning with the home. Suppose, for example, that my third and youngest son forcefully snatches away my second son’s favourite toy from his hand; in response, and to get his toy back, my second son resorts to violence and hits his brother on the head; a back and forth of blows, a miniature of a brawl, and a cacophony of bawls ensue. Typically, there are two sensible approaches that I, despite the bumbling-bungling father that I am, can take in resolving the conflict and stopping the violence. According to the first approach, I can let both the brothers know that I disapprove of their recourse to force and violence, perhaps punish them both, and then let my second son have the toy back – since I continue to affirm his right ownership of the toy and his just cause to have it back. In the second approach, I can reprimand them both, and then let them share the toy – since I affirm my third son’s right to his share of play with the toy, even if it does not rightfully belong to him.
But if I apply Chalie’s Rule to the situation, I have a third approach available to me: I let neither of them have the toy. In principle, my third son has a right to a share of play with my second son’s toy, even if he does not own it; but, according to Chalie’s Rule, he loses this right the moment he forcefully takes it away without regard for acceptable norms of behaviour and procedures of action. In principle too, my second son has a right to be aggrieved that his toy has been unlawfully taken and has a just cause in wanting it back; but he too, the moment he resorts to violence, bypassing proper procedures and other available recourse and avenues of appeal, by virtue of Chalie’s Rule, forfeits his right to the toy and undercuts his just cause to have it back. This is the alternative that Chalie’s Rule provides for me. Only this approach, Chalie’s Rule would say, can effectively communicate the message to the two young toddlers that violence does not work, and, thereby, meaningfully address the growing problem of violence in them.
The above illustration of Chalie’s Rule sounds trivial; and it is. But it seems to me that the Rule can be applied at various levels of Naga society. Take, for example, the obvious case of Naga nationalism. For long, the standard, traditional position of almost all Nagas and sections of Naga society, including the Naga Church, has been to condemn and reject only the means (namely, assassinations, threats, thuggery, and violence) through which the Naga nationalists have been striving to achieve their nationalist goals and political rights of independence, sovereignty, self-determination, integration, factional legitimacy and superiority, and the like. More recently, given the scourge of the factional feuds, and the other appalling behaviours and activities of the nationalists, the response of the Naga populace has been to subject the nationalists themselves to resentment and opprobrium, if not outright condemnation and rejection from society. In other words, the condemnation and rejection has been of the acts and the actors.
While these two basic approaches sound right and reasonable in principle and theory, they have also been hopelessly inadequate in stemming the tide of Naga political violence. However, if one were to apply Chalie’s Rule to the case of Naga nationalism, there is a third alternative available to the Naga people, and it would require the Naga populace saying something like this: ‘As long as any group espousing Naga nationalism resorts to and uses violence for Naga nationalism, the cause, goal, and ideal of Naga nationalism will itself be automatically condemned and totally rejected by the Naga people. ’The fundamental target of condemnation and rejection, so long as violence is espoused and used, must go beyond actors (the Naga nationalists) and their acts (violence and its siblings) – to their aspirations (the cause, goals, and ideals of Naga nationalism, even Naga nationalism itself).
In the same manner, Chalie’s Rule can also be applied to other levels and cases of conflict in Naga society – inter-personal, intra-family and inter-family, intra-clan and inter-clan, intra-village and inter-village, intra-tribal and inter-tribal. The Rule can, it seems to me, provide an overarching framework and guideline that will enable the Naga people to say something like this:‘In Naga society, any person, group, or tribe that bypasses established norms and procedures that govern civil society, and resorts to and uses violence to redress or settle a matter, will, automatically and totally, have its cause rejected, its right lost, its case dismissed, and its ideal spurned, no matter how genuine, just, valid, legitimate, right, or noble all these may be.’
Granted, in the context of ordinary and normal situations, Chalie’s Rule can be debated and disputed in theoretical detail and philosophical minutiae. But the situation in Nagaland today is not an ordinary situation; it is an extraordinary situation. It is not a normal situation; it is an abnormal situation. Such a situation requires radical proposals, and Chalie’s Rule, as a radical principle of practical philosophy, provides a promising alternative.
Besides being promising, it is also threatening: for it potentially undermines and relativizes many of our long-standing and cherished personal, communal, tribal, political, and nationalistic dreams and ideals. Indeed, it is promising because it is threatening, albeit non-violently. (Perhaps Chalie was himself killed because of that.) But it was the desperate proposal of the desperate man that Chalie was. Desperate times require desperate measures, and desperate people take them. Whether or not Chalie’s Rule will work in rescuing the Nagas from the vortex of violence that we find ourselves in, we do not know. But we will never know, so long as it is never tried and tested. And that has yet to be done in Nagaland today. So perhaps Chalie might say.
