A letter to a niece

 

Yes, there is a feeling of inferiority complex among many Nagas which I believe is the result of the two colonizing experiences we have gone through in the hands of the British from 1880 to 1947 and then, the Indians from 1947- 2009. You have rightly pointed this out in your outline.

I saw a picture of this pathetic inferiority complex played out right in front of my eyes way back in 1984, when I was working in Shillong. The incident was a Naga Laison Officer talking to his Indian Officer in Nagaland through the phone. In that conversation the Naga chap was prefixing and suffixing all his sentences including even some words with the word “Sir, Sir.” I think in his five minute talk with his officer, he spoke the word at least fifty times. My angry reaction was “What a pathetic Naga has this man been reduced to by Indian bureaucracy. To address a superior officer as Sir is right and in place. But to prefix and suffix every word uttered, with the word “sir,” “Sir” is total subservience and totally un-Naga.

Ours is a democratic society where everyone is equal to everyone else. Is is a society that has no words for Sir, Your Excellency, Your Honor, Your Highness or anything like that. All these are foreign and alien words for us. Because of this fact, we Angamis had to adopt the word “Kepethau” for Sir. Kepethau literally translated means “teacher”. But in the absence of a word for Sir, we have substituted Kepethau for Sir and use it for addressing someone who is a superior officer. But here was this Naga gentleman repeatedly parroting Sir, Sir, like a trained parrot. I felt terrible anger over the fact that Indian imperialism has reduced us to such a state of subservience.

Another picture that I want you to see of our past Naga culture of independence and self confidence is the following incident. Phizo and Pfiirhicha of Khonoma went to Shillong in 1946 to meet Rajagopalachari the first Governor General of India. Rajagopalachari was there to meet all the tribal leaders of the North East to ask their opinion about joining the Indian Union which was soon going to be formed. Pfiirhicha was attired in his entire warrior’s regalia. As they watched the other tribal leaders bow very low in obeisance, his instructions to Phizo were: “Look here Phizo, get this very clear into your head that we will never bow like the others. We shall talk as equals as we are also representing our nation. I shall do the talking but if I miss out on some important points, you add it.”!

Only three minutes each was being given to each tribal leader. When their turn came, Pfiirhicha pushed his chest forward and stood in firm attention with his spear in position. The Governor was taken aback by this posture of defiance and self confidence and asked his Secretary, “Who is this chap?” Before either Phizo or the secretary could reply, Pfiirhicha with his little knowledge of English replied, “I ammm a man-slowly and firmly emphasizing the word “am”. He then started stating how Nagas had always been unconquered and independent and their wish to remain so when the British left. The Governor was so fascinated by this Naga elder’s rhetoric that he went on listening for 15 minutes. When the Secretary reminded the Governor that the allotted three minutes had long expired, the Governor glared back at his Secretary and said “Shut up, I want to hear this man out”!

What I want to get across to you is this: If you want to go ahead with the present chapter on the inferiority complex, please keep these two pictures in the back of your mind because our forefathers were never a people with a subservient mindset or inferiority complex.

After all would a people with an inferiority complex have defied the might of the British empire for 115 intermittent years?( 1832-1947) Would such a people have subsequently dared to defy the might of two modern nation states- Burma and India- for 62 years against overwhelming odds? Would their ancestors have fought the mighty Ahom kingdom from the 13th century to the end of 19th century if they had an inferiority complex? After all they fought against canons and muskets with their daos and spears but never surrendered even one village to the mighty Ahom kingdom.

As for their other neighbors, this is what R.B Pemberton the British historian wrote: “Various attempts were made by the Rajah of Manipur, Kachar and Tripperah to reduce these savages to a state of vassalage, but uniformly without success. They steadfastly refused to acknowledge allegiance to either power…” (A singular race, Verrier Elwin, The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century, p. 87)

The British had also very clearly recorded that no written treaties had ever been entered with the Naga tribes, and that Nagas, were the only people who were never fully conquered by the British Colonial power. (C.V. Atchinson, Treaties, Engagements and Sanads, Vol. xii 1931)

Please note that the British who fought with our forefathers held us in awe and not contempt. One of their historians wrote that the battles fought with the Nagas far outnumbered all the battles fought with the Indians in the whole northern frontiers of the Indian sub continent. As for the present resilient resistance against India and Burma, my book recounts that story.

In my opinion many of our youth, despite all their degrees, have an inferiority complex because they simply don’t know their own gallant history. On top of this , my generation and that of yours too have been compelled to live under the tension of two political identities- That of India which is totally foreign to our own culture –and secondly that of being a Naga- an identity whose roots and history many Nagas are quite ignorant of. Under this dual identity we have become a very irresponsible people- not bothering how our roads are built as long as we get a huge profit- not bothered even if we poison or perennial streams and rivers with poison that kills not just the fishes but even the algae on which they feed- or even totally destroying our forests and in the process destroying the flora and fauna too. What I mean to say is that, even that which inherently belongs to us and needs to be preserved has now seemingly become somebody else under the present dual identity we have been forced to live under.

From a very independent people-both economically and politically- our people today have become a very dependent people helplessly looking to Delhi with our begging bowls. We are doing all these begging while sitting on top of mineral mountains and many endless prospects in agriculture, horticulture, herb culture etc.

I am therefore fighting for a re-assertion of our distinct political identity, our history, our honor and our future as a nation. Our original NNC political goal was to be a nation among nations with the political assertion that URRA is UVIE (Our Land Belongs to Us). Here we can never be anything in human history if we have an inferiority complex about ourselves or who we were and who we must be. Here, we don’t want India or anybody else to define who we are or should be. You will notice that the articles I have been sending you are assertions of this desire and goal based on cultural and historical facts- many of which are far superior to the British or Indian cultures. Even the British admitted that the purest form of democracy exists among the Nagas.