Imkong Walling
“We cannot change the past but the least the Government of India could do was acknowledge the excesses of its military... sadly, it has failed to do so.” This is a first person quote from a news story published by The Morung Express in September 2014.
The story was about the gruesome Matikhrü village incident of September 6, 1960, when the village in Meluri, Phek district, witnessed the execution of nine persons without trial.
The person made the comment on the 54th anniversary of the incident, a day annually observed as a ‘Black Day,’ a day of mourning by the Pochury.
It may not sit well with the military establishment yet it mirrors a general sentiment shared by the Naga populace vis-à-vis the excesses of the security forces, on the civilian population, during the turbulent phase(s) of the Indo-Naga political conflict.
Excruciatingly slow as it may be, time heals, they say. Still, memory is hard to erase and is not difficult to retrieve when events similar in nature happen.
The Oting incident of December 4, 2021 was one such event that not only reopened old wounds but also displayed the unmistakable tendency of governments to unashamedly pay no attention to the civilian side of the story, as far as military indiscretion is concerned.
What was recited in Parliament in the aftermath was for all to see; the silence of the military top brass, disappointing, no less. It seemed as if the powers that be were not aware of the implications on the ground i.e. years of relation-building wasted in one avoidable blunder.
‘Regret’ was the word fleetingly tossed about when it should have been a simple apology and owning up.
Regret and apology may appear one and the same but the use of the former in such a context fell short of public expectation. Apology is not only an expression of regret but also admission of fault, in other words, being honest.
There were however others, who felt that ‘Apology’ should have been the word. In an interview with Karan Thapar of The Wire, a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Zameer Uddin Shah opined that an apology was “very much in order.” He told Thapar, “If a mistake has been made there is no harm in apologizing.” According to him, it requires guts to apologise.
The comment brought to mind a set of qualities encouraged in the uniformed services. It is rendered as OLQs, short for Officer Like Qualities, among which includes ‘courage.’
And courage not only implies bravery in the face of the enemy, it also entails the conscience to own up when in the wrong, assuming the ambush was an error of judgment. In the words of one from within the military establishment, this quality was conspicuously missing in the damage control that followed the Oting incident.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
