Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights hosts 22nd Morung Dialogue
Dimapur, August 14 (MExN): The Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) commemorated the International Day of the World Indigenous Peoples (IDWIP) on the theme ‘Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract’ on August 9. It was part of the 22nd Morung Dialogue is a talk series organized by NPMHR, Delhi, stated a press release.
Delivering the keynote address, Gam A Shimray, Secretary-General, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) dwelled on two key issues affecting the indigenous people i.e. on the reference to the social contract in the context of the Nagas and the question of border. He pointed out the need to contextualize the social contract to achieve its purpose.
According to Shimray, “One way to understand the new social contract is to go back to the establishment of the village republic”. In the Naga practice, the altar or stone symbolizes the rooting of the particular community in that particular territory or land. He questioned how much the people understand such symbols and underpinning “the need to uncover and recover the meaning attach to those symbols to give a meaningful identity”.
Shimray stressed on the need to recover and uncover the various meaning attached to collective heritage. According to him, when we are calling for a new social contract, it is for the uncovering and recovery of meaning. The aim is not just uncovering and recovering but enhancing them because the way we experience things is changing.
He cautioned that any leadership or platform that the people create can be without meaning. The institution will be valuable only when we give meaning. Therefore, in the struggle for self-determination, it has to be a process of meaning-making and peace-making.
Though border is a sensitive issue, it is fundamental and essential for human civilization and an individual existence/being. Shimray articulated that the fact is also that borders can be very conflicting, one’s identity is a border and that’s the reason why people are defending it. Even in that abstract sense, there are many borders.
He noted that borders can also give conception to the political ideas or identity and this can differ from one community to the other but the worldview of the indigenous people who is the custodian of whatever is within that boundary both living and inanimate being is shaped by its territory. He concluded by stating that borders can curb human relationships but there has to be a conception where there is penetrating interaction transcending the border universal principle.
Panellist Roderick Wijunamai, Lecturer, Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan articulated on social contract and economic benefits for all and what it means by leaving no one behind. He narrated how the sacredness of a boulder that was once marked by the ancestors is gone and slowly there was a change in people’s habits, attitudes, and relations with the ecosystem they co-exist. He stated that border has created conflict among the different species. He cited the differences and the increasing contention within the Naga community.
The Nagas have a particular season to plant (i.e jhum cultivation) or hunt or kill animals with certain reasons and its implications and it also has a certain ecological rationale which is giving time to the environment to regenerate and to replenish itself so that peaceful coexistence is achieved. He argued that the soil that we co-inhabit for centuries together has been given time to regenerate and replenish and by doing so we are considering the life of the soil, microbes, bacteria, plants, fungi, insects as an indigenous species.
Wijunamai stated that while reconsidering and rearticulating the social contract, “the indigenous perspectives have to be accommodated and for that, we have to go back to our roots. And also have to broaden the understanding of community and also expand the way we reimagine what is social and the need to expand our engagement with other indigenous communities while forming this new social contract”.
Railey Rocky Züpao, Asst Prof of Sociology, IIT Bombay began his presentation stated that “land is the key to understand our reality, a new social contract between the state and indigenous people and for that matter even the Naga political issue”. For the indigenous peoples, “land is the foundational base that conceived us being alive and not just a mere materiality or assets, not just a mere commodity”. The land is dynamic and alive. Territory which is generally holistic constitutes hills, rivers, natural mineral resources, air, water, and people. Indigenous people have an intrinsic symbiotic connection between their identity land and territory.
He argued that “people have lived without borders for ages and the people in the border areas need proper infrastructure such as roads, electricity, and not fencing. This vividly condenses the experiences and the implication of the international boundary fencing and material politics encounter by border tribes in their everyday life.”
Züpao believes that the development project and policies that are initiated in the Northeast by the Indian state are grounded heavily on a security approach or in other words strategy for counter-insurgency and with neo-liberal market-driven motives without a people-centric approach. So, due to such a fallow approach, there is an eminent contradiction in policies and processes which does not seem to be in consonance with each other.
He further stated that there is an asymmetrical underpinning in policies such as Act East Policy and Free Movement Regime (FMR), etc. The commitment to building border fencing points to some degree of insecurity of the nation-state (India and Myanmar) although it has stated its vision statement for open trade, free mobility, and deepening infrastructure development and yet on the ground the actions are still guided by the securitization of development or ‘undevelopment’. This has been the unstated policy for the tribal areas in the NE.
Thus, the vision of this Act East Policy is contradicted fundamentally by the state security and development agenda in which securitization of development or simply securitization of an insecure state in an indigenous nation such as Nagas, he concluded.
