Kekhrie Yhome
For a nascent Naga society eagerly transforming itself directly from antiquity to cosmopolitanism, the mixed pleasure-business of NPF-led government’s initial road-side showing of a progressive modernity movement akin to 1960s ‘burning of bra’ through 2012 municipal elections and 33% reservation for women, is but striptease history now, while celebrating Nagaland Legislative Assembly’s proudest moments of legitimizing and confirming a male-bastion legislation. This paper has no claimant of expertise on reservation policies given its vast and compelling corpus of debates. Rather, what is chronic to an event of this proportion, summoning issues of equity and representation, also calls into question discourse of a movement, which inadvertently will become narrative forms of historical consciousness, many years from now when all the happy and proud protagonists of today are long gone.
The role and identity of a man and a woman is a social construct, not natural. There is nothing divine or customary about it. However, patriarchal authority is perpetuated using claims of divine rights, as was the history of western tradition, and customary laws, as is the history of Nagas now. The idea of Naga antiquity as an egalitarian society, least to say man and woman exist in perfect-equal harmony, is a recent petty-bourgeoisie morality and delusional wild thought. Naga society was no singular utopia on Earth. The uncodifiable jurisprudence of what is the core of customary law today is rudimentary, but male centric. It is a patriarchal order that enact, interpret, and execute. Even otherwise in the sense of community, there is no communism of the sexes. For example, Sekrenyi, an Angami male purification ritual, is but a reordering of ontological male order. Everyday life is thick with many such plots, be it labor, festivals, sociolinguistic, agri-culture, care-taking, communal, etc.
To therefore dwell on cultural practices and politics, it may be noteworthy to view tenets of Christianity, the most rapid-fire belief-faith system that almost totally displaced Nagas way of life in just over a hundred years, and the place of women. Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, the Ephesians and to Timothy particularly laid canonical role and divine space for man and woman. By using the schema of body-spirit dualism, the gender of God was projected, and also established the supremacy, institutionalism, centrifugal narcissism, and divinely acquiescence character of man: “…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his own body” (Ephesians, 5: 28-30). The exposition of a chaste male body-figure reinforces image edifices of supremacy (head), superiority, protectorate, benefactor and provider.
The shadowy existence of woman was illustrated in the story of creation. Woman was responsible for man’s fall; and, woman was assigned the procreating damnation as a punished body for such irresponsibility: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1 Timothy, 2:13-15). The life of “[a] woman is bound by the law for such time as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. But she is happier if she remains as she is, according to my judgment – and I think I also have the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 7: 39-40). Further, the qualities of a “proper” woman, one “professing piety” and exhibiting “good works,” is, ultimately and unabashedly, defined: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach, or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy, 2: 11-12). Lastly, the sacramental duty of the second sex is but “let the wife see that she fear her husband” (Ephesians 5: 33).
The sacred text paraphrased above, has no constituent difference, in semiotic, in theo-ontic, in logical construction, in textual signification, to the insecure language of those who today impose their objective will, under the garb of age-old cultural-customary metaphors. For a predominantly Christian society, re-interpreting elements of oppressive in the canonical, whether cultural or divine, which, otherwise, was the traditional entitlement of male domination, both in discourse narration and formation, will have more meaningful interventions, although discourse, however liberating, by itself, tends to perpetuate the very semblance of difference it tries to radicalize. The idea of man and woman or gender is one of the three main conjunctions in human relations, the other two being race and class. Even before a person is born yet into the world, the process of identifying, of identity, begins. Will it be a boy or a girl? The unborn is no more innocent, already sexed, already given an identity, through social/cultural construct. Customary laws have no basis if it fails to progress with the very culture it seeks to address.
Today, the sentiments of the ‘fairer sex’ are hurt by a simple municipal election. To many, it was an opportunity, although it may not be the most appropriate contestable space for showcase. However, the protesting angst, the definite no, expressed by many well-meaning organizations and individuals, pronounced like some medieval chieftains, lacking explanation but asserting authority, valorizing customary practices but void of any cultural denotations, is just a paradigmatic act of unfettered but unworthy desperation, outrightly crude and precise and, therefore, exhibiting no facade of original intellect, or having any decency of ability even with minimal interpretation, or comprehend relativity of cultural syntax. This kind of discourse is uncommon – semblances of such insecurities are documented in western literature. For, the response against such male chauvinism is neither an act of transgression nor subversion, but an offering to be emboldened, participatory, whose time of an idea is progressive. It is not feminism in radical contrast, but a misguided and confrontational and predominant male leadership has given a character to it… The writing of Naga literature has just started... and characters names are inked for posterity.
By presenting 33% reservation issue with straight battle lines drawn, the hegemony of patriarchal dominance was rudely shaken. The culture shock was more with those who wield authority. The manner in which it was presented or enforced for public opinion also reconfirms how thick skinned and insensitive the presenters can be. Municipal elections were long overdue, but not opened for public reason, until the Court ordered for elections with women representation through reservation, which is but a simple legal procedure. The government showed all eagerness for compliance! A very Machiavellian show indeed! No sooner the hollering echoes of male insecurities receded, Naga Hoho (the perverse of male embodiment) does another haha show by sitting down with ENPO. From its ever-naive and victimhood advertisement of being different, ENPO quickly saw shared commons, by tying up with Naga Hoho, which, otherwise, was the shadow boxing politics Rio and Shürhozelie had assigned to their Hoho boy(s). Subsequently, the Government announced immediate review, arguing there is too much public protest! What protest? Men vs. women? But by then Rio-Shürhozelie duo had already played its trump card by refusing to capitulate on breaking glass ceilings! By recruiting individual mercenaries as the government’s shadow boxers, Rio’s government has undeniably groomed business smartness. What is of particular precariousness, of Rio-led government, is not only its ability to groom stooges out of average individuals, but also effectively use and corporatize civil society space and extract public opinion from such subjected, controlled medium. What is however most dangerous is individuals of no reliable merit exploiting the space of civil society, vending motivated articulations as if it reflects of public consensus. An elect government is subjected to vox populi – but the moment the voice of civil society is collaborated, it silences any sense of sanity. It is nothing short of autocracy. This also calls for an appraisal of public space and relevance of such so-called civil society.
An idea whose time has arrived but by advocating a lingam reference to Article 371(A), NPF-led government poorly attempts to reincarnate fossilized elements of ‘sacred’, as in customary or biblical, as authority, as ‘order of things’, as necessary for societal harmonization of power. It tantamounts to use of biological roles as justifying male superiority, which is equally hilarious to Village Council members challenging whether ‘women can climb trees?’ Clearly, there is a need for delinking conceptual history and conceptual pragmatics, and therefore the need to overwhelm petty-kibanuomia policy makers with informed opinions and right holders. The protectorate feature of constitutional provisions is not a benchmark for cultural dynamism or customary experience. A pro-people jurisprudential need to work the other way round! Apart from motivated enthusiasm, it is vainglorious legal activism!
For, the same government that gave passage to an Act, which allows anyone from India to contest municipal elections in Nagaland, and even own landed-property in municipal areas, the usual superficial art of mystifying Article 371(A) as a hermeneutic canon is a big repetitive public lie, and such art of politicization and minor legal battles have little connections to whatever is customary, when traditional land-holdings are land-marked for multinational corporation (read SEZ), when advocacy is so dangerously linked to calling the Nagas to liberalize traditional land holding patterns for bankable mortgages, when secretive and parallel talks with corporate(s) concur to establish conniving exploitation of natural resources (read ‘oil’), when the very idea of Article 371(A) is just a festive subject-matter equivalent to the carnival ‘spectacle’ of parading some micro-nude ENPO-member dancers at Kisama village, when the sanity of public reason is harshly silenced as eccentricity, when business is becoming politics.
In the war-torn capital of Srinagar, India, the deluge of stray dogs is becoming epic. It is not the fear of bullets but dogs that is terrorizing its denizens today. A lazy twirl and howl of the wind of no great provocation can send a pack of stray dogs madly rushing into vacuum, exhibiting their wild insecurities, but also in proving their ability to immediately organize themselves into a force of uncivil public terror. As the girl-child neat with her twin-plaited hair walks toward her school for liberating education this morning of the article’s publication, one is also boringly reminded of the versatile presence of brave cultural defenders and smart-tuxedo-attired custodians of customary laws, ornately exhibiting intellectualism behind thick-rimmed glasses, sealing lips with customary glees, but silently nurturing and roistering an All-Male-Representational-Crony-Regime: NPF Government, Naga Hoho, ENPO, etc. Rather than fabricating the whole society with some endless politicization that refuses adaptation to change, it remains to be seen which political parties will field women candidates for municipal election or the coming 2013 Assembly election, without any legal duress or customary juris. It also remains to be seen whether the forerunners of change in gender-equation are prepared to lead, where winning and losing is just a matter of gross statistics, where the call to participate is matter of exemplary rather than survival, whether there is 33% or 99% reservation or 0% reservation.
[The author is a columnist for Eastern Mirror’s Thursday edition, featuring A Little Chat]
