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Some of those who voted YES had this to say:
• Yes. A rational discussion is missing in the Naga public discourse. Things become very personal and emotional. It is not constructive. We are sliding backwards.
• Yes. Reading the arguments we read in the newspaper it seems all Nagas whether we are former Bureaucrats or politicians or theologians, we all seem to have the same emotional temperament. Naga history is being destroyed and corrupted by personalization.
• Yes. Nagas are too emotional and without trying to dig out the truth they act. This is why Nagas can so easily be manipulated and misled.
• Yes. Mis-construed loyalty, expectations and attempts to obtain favours for subgroup members in exclusion or supercession of the more deserving people outside the subgroup in relation to non-private, public and governmental matters and resources is responsible for the gag on some and the blind one track support for fellow members. Clan, village, area, tribe, religious affiliations, etc., blinds the otherwise good, enlightened, social and community oriented citizens to focus elsewhere. We need to outgrow the gang mentality, dare not to conform nor expect it. We need to identify and expect as members of the state of Nagaland.
• Yes. Little knowledge is dangerous. Without any historical or rational arguments and facts most of the people like to talk according to their own kushi-kushi attitude and agenda. This is why we Nagas are so divided.
• Yes. Our emotions are getting the better of us and leading to mob mentality.
• Yes. 2015 Dimapur lynching and protest & violence against 33% women reservation (to name a few) are some horrific and regressive illustrations of our collective failure to stressed and rely on rationality in our daily public discourse. Impulses, not sensibleness rule over public narratives.
Some of those who voted NO had this to say:
• No. Emotions will remain but rationality should evolve with education and grow up with time.
• No. I don’t really agree. Maybe at the tribal level there are a lot of emotional discussions. But in many other platforms there are a lot of sensible and rational discussions going on. Unfortunately they are underreported.
Some of those who voted OTHERS had this to say:
• We have come a long way. At least we are slowly overcoming the gun cultures and we are beginning to have debates, lectures and arguments through words and not guns. This is progress.
• Can't quite say definitively. The answer is somewhat muddy and rather even tricky. The ones that appear on local dailies are often educated so they most likely rationalised what they feel? This very question is framed as though we are to give "personal feelings" by the inclusion of the term "feel". Even so, the Nagas are in dire need of non-fiction specialists who are active in local dailies. Their commentaries on social issues are highly needed, in the absence of which the public are deprive of intellectual stimulus. The ones that are active on local dailies are mostly non-specialist commenting on their non-expertise area often by their own admission. In national newspapers, the op-ed is mostly either written by university professors or current or former practitioners.
