Robert A. Silverstein
New York, USA
This is my reply to Mr. Solo's article of October 24, 2016, addressed to Kaka Iralu and myself. It was published in The Morung Express and the Nagaland Post. I appreciate that Mr. Solo felt that what I had to say in my article of October 12, 2016, “LIFE VERSUS TRUTH AND JUSTICE,” was “honest writings,” but also states, further into his article, that I stated, “... it 'is immoral' to give up the good life and comfort of today for the dead in the Past and immoral too to sacrifice the good comfortable life of today, for the future ….” Mr. Solo goes on to state, “'Respect for the Life of Today' is great but 'to live for the Future' is more sublime.”
Prior to these quotes he refers to the Hebrew Scriptures, and more specifically, the story of Saul, David, and Goliath, and after the above quotes, he tells the story of the Jews committing suicide on Masada, rather than fall into the hands of the Roman soldiers. He rightly feels that I will relate to these stories because I was brought up as a Jew. In fact, in early 1974, I climbed to the top of Masada and watched the sun rise over the Dead Sea. It was very beautiful and moving. I was in the middle of a six-month obligation to Israel which I accepted when I left for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, in October 1973. I worked at a kibbutz (Ashdot Ya' Akov Meuchad) in the Jordan Valley, just below the Sea of Galilee, and was invited by the Israeli government to visit Masada.
As moving as Masada was, and as moving as Mr. Solo is in discussing the death of his mother who, like my own, also lives within me (she died in 2008 at age 93), it is my view that our first responsibility is to those who are alive now. He says, “'to live for the Future' is more sublime.” But what does that really mean, when you talk about the dead before you and those coming after you?
Did I really say that it is immoral that we should sacrifice the dead of the past and the those of the future for “the good comfortable life of today”? I don't think so. I was not just referring to the education and jobs provided by the rights as a scheduled tribe, which I did do, but to the actual right to LIFE. I was contrasting that to the possibility of death due to a conflict with the GoI over the Naga demand for a sovereign Naga nation. That is a realistic possibility, as every Naga knows who either lived through the 1950s and '60s or who had relatives who did so.
I also find that Mr. Solo did the same thing here that Mr. Iralu did, which I point out in an article dated October 18, 2016, titled, “Response to reply by Iralu to my article.” In it I stated, “If you define your terms so broadly that it is self-seving, that your definitions bootstrap your argument, that is, by defining your terms in such a way that your conclusion is determined to come out the way you want it to, then that is intellectually dishonest and, in relation to public debate, demagoguery.” In Iralu's case, I was referring to his view of justice. I pointed out that the corrupt and violent Nagas of Nagaland, including the NSCN-IM, politicians, bureaucrats, contractors, police, et al., were doing immensely more harm to their fellow Nagas than the GoI.
In the case of Mr. Solo, he has set up a false dichotomy to support his view of the reasonableness of dying for those in the future and the souls of those in the past. In the closing sentence to his article, he states, in part, “The Naga … will never accept the Status of a Dalit of India and would continue to fight for political Truth and Justice from India by means he thinks best, to live a 'separate life' but 'together'.” I have worked for months on mainland India, in slums and elsewhere, and studied the treatment of Dalits in India, and there is no evidence that India is now, or will in the future, treat Nagas as they treat Dalits. As I stated above, your fellow Nagas are treating you much worse, on a day-to-day basis, with coerced “taxes,” extortion, unpaid salaries, roads that never get repaired, etc., than the GoI has ever done, with the exception of the war and atrocities of the 1950s and '60s, and that is exactly what I am trying to prevent from happening again!
All Naga leaders, opinion-makers like Mr. Solo and my friend Kaka Iralu, have an obligation to use language properly, and defend their case as honestly as possible. If they are going to ask those alive now to possibly die for the future, they should make sure their arguments stand up to scrutiny.
