S Varah
What is in a name anyway? Is it a crime that students learn about the Naga even though the term ‘Naga’ may have differing or variable interpretations? Hindi text books for classes I-VIII (Nagaland edition) is compulsory subject. Is there anything about the Naga in this Nagaland edition? Or is it enough to be Nagaland edition with a string of comic images in the back cover, of the text book? The feeling of ‘Being a Naga’ has held us this far and are yet stronger than being divided to be totally destroyed. It involves identity, history and fate.
Even omission of Pochury and Rengma in sixth standard text book is not at all an ‘inadvertent’ mistake; it is deliberate because it is text book our students are being customized to. How about the rest of other Naga tribes outside present Nagaland. Is not the department concerned or the education department sowing the seed of divisions among us while the Naga have been screaming against ‘divides’? How about the funny stories of the Naga in the standard VIII Social Science text book ‘Nagas after Independence’? Being Nagaland Edition can give lakh of rupees to some chosen few; the idea as a whole is never to benefit the upcoming Naga generation; it is, at the most, destroying the Nagas.
Text books related to Naga need be totally reviewed before the next schooling session begins, or stop pushing down rubbish in the students’ stomach to make them expendable for rapacious interests by individuals. What is the sin if students learn their identity, heritage and grow up with it? Is it too beg a burden, on the part of education department, to go to our mothers, fathers and learn from them about Naga folk tales/ lores before they go down to the ground, leaving no trails of Naga glorious past to which we are jealously proud of? Is not our today’s confusion for failure -of harvesting human crops? How long should Naga afford to grope in the mists of botched up identity, cultural shocks? We are experiencing today the ghastliest crimes because selfish politicians are gambling with blood while feasting in the enemies’ banquette hall as the common majorities are confused with their own identities.
