Aheli Moitra
Imagine for a moment that journalists in Nagaland decided to report only events organised by institutions that are representative of all genders at every level.
Large swathes of our news would go out of the pages. The whole Nagaland Legislative Assembly would face a media blackout, most apex organisations, and students’ bodies, would get almost no publicity, most political armed groups would be left grappling in the air and most churches would meet the same fate. The State administrative set up would be covered marginally, registered non government organisations would gain and to fill up the pages, the journalists would have no option but to begin working with that niche called ‘women’s organisations.’
But if you are not from this brand of conscientious living, worry not. This is not about to happen. Those journalists who take such a radical measure to address the gender bias in every aspect of society will face near-complete ostracisation with their careers put to jeopardy.
That said, the stories they begin to discover may change the course of news, reading of history and the influence on young minds in a way we cannot yet comprehend.
When the Naga mothers shared some of their lesser known stories at The Morung Lectures on June 25, many young women were astonished at the extent to which the Naga narrative runs. Yet, Naga history has been coloured by the predominant, and singular, narrative of men capturing hills and borders, hearts and minds. The nuances of transporting grain in their hair, or money in their buttocks, for the armed men at the cost of armed torture during the years of the Indo-Naga war have been lost to the violence of forgetting.
Forgetting is an act of violence. It is unjust, towards our past as well as the future we want to carve through the present. It denies us of our existence as wholesome beings, creating half-moulds of what we could have been-- as a people, as an individual.
It is thus important for us to begin telling the stories of women who became partisans in the search for peace. We need to remember the women who took part in the Naga armed struggle for justice. They walked the same jungles as comrades in arms, went through the same guerrilla training, yet experienced different physical remnants the war left behind. We need to begin writing, talking and reading about them.
As early as in 1984, a group of Naga women saw that the answer to the effects of violence on Naga society lay in an unarmed nonviolent struggle that drew from the kind, steadfast, assertive and unconditional nourishment of motherhood. We need to deconstruct their struggles in order to learn their methods so that we are able to apply them contextually to our unjust times.
We need to begin learning even from their mistakes.
To be able to do this against a patriarchal tidal wave, that the system currently is, will be no mean feat. It will need teachers in schools and universities to suggest and take radical measures in education. It will need women in elite circles to come out of denial, and break the facade of equality. It will need professionals to insist on gender balance at work places. It will eventually get men in power to see that no sort of law has kept women from seeking justice—not then, and will not hence.
Any other telling of history may be sent to moitramail@yahoo.com
