Imkong Walling
Nature works in mysterious ways and it is unthinkably amazing. Everything just seems to work uncannily, yet in harmony – like the parts of a machine falling into place – giving, producing and enabling life. From sub-atomic particles to microbes, from chemical processes to weather phenomena, from photosynthesis to the food chain and the resultant inter-species interaction, all share in a seemingly clockwork mechanism.
This harmony is yet so fragile. Disturb it a bit and the organic clockwork would lose rhythm; pull them apart, isolate them and there will be no chemistry. Nothing works in isolation. It is an intrinsically interconnected network, in which one cannot live without the other.
This composite system is today vulnerable threatening the existence of the human race. The threat though is more anthropogenic than the natural clockwork deciding to go out of beat. Humans, who are part of the network, tend to take more than it can give back drawing energy from the environment while flourishing via a fairly parasitic association.
It was the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdowns that restricted human activity and the resultant phenomenon of other life forms reclaiming the rivers and forests that seemed to validate the notion of a parasitic relationship and thereby, inducing a reconsideration of humanity’s place on the planet. Anyway, that is for another day.
The Naga ecosystem, build around the idea of a ‘one people,’ is relative to the natural clockwork. Reminiscent of the natural order, a microcosmic conglomeration of erstwhile self-governing entities that decided to turn into one cohesive unit; the once isolated villages giving, taking and sharing in a social chemistry to sustain a larger body that came to be known as the Naga.
This pan-Naga chemistry, built over a hundred years of enlightenment, honestly, is not as strong as it is projected to be. Battle-lines, or to put it another way— individual blocs are palpable, evidence of a social bond in dissipation.
From one Naga Political Group to multiple breakaways, one pan-Naga body to the now different blocs, from Nagaland state to the call for bifurcation, all these are counterintuitive to the grand vision of a unified people as projected outwardly.
Like in the natural order of things, the tendency should be to complement, irrespective of the difference in characteristics.
Sodium reacts violently with water, chloride poisons when inhaled, but combine the two, there is salt in the kitchen. Hydrogen is explosive, oxygen promotes combustion; unite them, there is water to douse the fire.
Nagas cannot afford to exist in isolation, independent of one another. The Naga situation, today, rather should be complementary, like a close-knit community of dolphins, in shark-infested waters, protective and supportive of each other.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
