Dr Asangba Tzudir
The ‘Naga Caravan’ continues its journey but it has become quite a difficult proposition to envisage a future of the Naga Caravan and where it is exactly headed. The postmodern conundrum seems to have really hit hard. Caught between ‘form’ and ‘content’, seemingly losing its way into ‘formlessless’, this aptly describes the Naga Caravan.
Over the course of the journey which the Naga Caravan has so far travelled, and in the larger ‘civilizing’ process, there has been a failure to think positively and engage productively and have also collectively failed to understand the underlying truths and its associated realities in every aspect of social, political, economic, cultural, religion and the morals. The resultant effect has produced a more rapid movement towards fragmentation and dispersal rather than a confluence into a unified merger thereby adding to the moral crisis.
While the ‘good life’ is pursued, it has taken the ‘form’ of materialism wherein there is a constant engagement in the manufacturing of a socially accepted idea of ‘good life’ without care and concern for the other and its inherent consequences on the larger good of the society. The context of ‘good life’ shifts to struggle for power in the political domain. In the cultural domain, the Naga Caravan is adorned in a multi-coloured costume, made more ‘colourful’ by added sexualities which has only diluted the ‘Naganess.’ In the domain of religion, God is understood and worshipped according to one’s understanding and convenience.
Meaningful concepts and words abound but it no more stirs the feelings because they continue to reside in the tip of tongues but since the terms are not necessarily guided by the principle of the right and the moral, it has failed to convey its underlying meaning and essence, more so, the fact that materialism has become the new mantra of post-modernity, it has become the ‘God.’ The new ‘God’ leading, having endorsed as willing slaves, the Naga materialistic Caravan continues its journey into the unknown and the hopelessness.
Nothing can get more ironic for the Naga Caravan when ‘madness’ is injected into the Naga Caravan. Once injected, like Foucault’s discourse on ‘madness, it suffers from a conceptual exclusion and a physical exclusion and this reflects a moral condemnation. When ‘madness’ takes over, life traverses a trajectory wherein we lose all sense of our existence, our life and thereby meanings.
To salvage the Naganess, and to give ‘form’ and ‘content’ to the Naga Caravan, Nagas need to come together as a community – renewed and unified, rebirthed away from the present trend of ‘politicking’ that has for so long caused deep fragmentation, and more so, shed the materially calculated idea of ‘good life’ that breeds individualism and selfishness. Hope then finds injected into the Naga Caravan.
However, in the pursuit of establishing a new moral order, and in creating a way out of the moral crisis, it is not necessary to destroy everything or try building new paradigms. Often, it just suffices to begin by displacing the ‘stone in the middle of the road’ as a morally obligated duty. This will give impetus to the larger process of unity. But to see and displace the ‘stone in the middle of the road’ calls for shedding the attitudinal ego, of power, materialism and selfishness and then begin by seeing the ‘other’ as an equal partner in the journey of the Naga Caravan. Therein lie the coming Naga community.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir writes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
