Dr. Lemwang Chuhwanglim
Researcher, Wagiem Ward, Mon
Nagaland, currently one of the States in Northeast India continues to carry the history of fighting for the Naga freedom since 1947 when India unquenchably pulled Nagaland within the Indian Territory. There are very good and invincible Naga freedom fighters who powerfully exercise vision of liberating the Nagas from the forceful Indian citizenships. Not many Nagas today have comprehensive understanding of the Nagas fighting for the freedom. Very often the concept of freedom is misconstrued as Dependant status than Independent. In numerous cases both old and young Nagas fear of empty Nagaland if Nagas get independent. In the sense that, the subsistence of Nagaland rely on the supplies from India. They say, if Nagaland gets Independence, Nagas have nothing to stand on or consume for there are no industries, natural resources, universities, companies, and institutions and so on. According to these people Nagaland is ineligible to fight for Freedom. Thus, freedom/Independence belongs only to the haves people and the place. However, the reality of Freedom is not expecting continues support from others or in the case of the Nagas, it is not the expectation of continues support from India even after post Naga Independence.
Freedom is responsibility, when India no more controls Nagaland, Naga people will take care of Nagaland with more responsibilities. It is like Children taking care of themselves when parents no more control them and when they are free from control, the create more responsibilities. Responsibility of self reliance, generate and regenerate from within. Nagas are obliged to work for themselves for the growth of Nagaland when freedom is declared. Responsible in Latin word is respondeo, means answerable and accountable (J.R.Lucas. 1970), Robert’s quote from Oxford Dictionary means a charge, trust, or duty. Therefore, freedom and responsibility are two sides of a coin (Robert. 2016). Naga people are responsible to remain answerable and accountable to freedom. It is the freedom to create new Nagaland by the Nagas, not by others, not the freedom to exist upon the Indian established Nagaland. Gustavo Gutterrez, a liberation theologian in his book “we drink from our own wells” (Gutterrez. 1983), says that people no longer depend on others to ascertain comforts, happiness, blessings, developments, spiritual strength and so on. They have to work hard and produce from within and prove the oppressors that they are not incapable people. When captivity ends and liberation begins, it establishes the real responsibility of the people. Responsibility to generate own needs, products, own markets, factories, import and export commodities. On the other hand is the fight of the people for self responsibilities.
Shiv Khera, an Indian writer says “freedom is not an ancestral property” (Khera. 2005), similarly, Nagaland is not Indian ancestors’ property. Therefore, Naga freedom fighters fight for their rights to remain independent in their own land with no authority of India. Nagas fight for freedom not because they have everything, they fight for their rights of free people and free to carry self responsibility to build own Nation. He also says “freedom is not free” that in attaining freedom, people are compelled to engage, participate, work hard and remain busier to build a nation than before.
Freedom is not readymade package liberation from captivity to bed of roses. Freedom means independent, the paradox of dependent. In an independent world, almost everything becomes new beginning from within with no more external spoon feeding or it is a departed soul from dependent world. Freedom is a power of self reliance which abrogates the power of oppression and expectations from others. Naga people do not necessarily have skyscraper, multimillion companies, factories, universities, malls, metro ways and well developed place and modernized people to have freedom from India. Freedom for the Nagas is the responsibility to preserve the inheritance of being independent people from the beginning, since prior to the Indian Independence. Freedom for Nagas is beyond development, it is a collective responsibility of all the Nagas. Eddy M. Soufrant, a scholar of global development ethics, collective responsibility means, the actions, choices, ramification and the condition that people inherit (2013). Freedom for Nagas is the collective action to create obligatory actions and implementations collectively. Fighting for the Naga freedom does not mean Naga people have developed everything. Freedom itself comes concurrently with the highest responsibility to start working on establishing or developing the Naga society in every single aspect to support and make Nagaland self reliance country. Every single Naga is called to engage in the rigorous responsibility more and more in the history of his/her existence to build the Naga nation as Independent Nagaland.
Like peace is not absence of war, freedom is not just absence of oppression, it goes beyond them. “the tree of freedom grows only when it is watered with the sweat of who love freedom” (Khera. Ibid), Naga freedom requires the sweat of every single Naga to beautify and grow freedom Nagaland. The beautification of Naga freedom emanates from the challenges, competition, discovery, invention, manufacturing, resilience, excavation and hardworking minds of the Nagas. Subsequently, these are the responsibilities proliferate from freedom. Hence, people should stop saying that Nagaland has nothing to get freedom. In fact that nothing itself is a well preserved space for the Nagas to create many things with inevitable responsibilities from freedom.
