The September 1 incident: Is anyone listening?
Our hearts and homes cry out for justice and peace today. Our streets are not safe anymore. We are not secure in our own land. Our children see evil tolerated and allowed to prevail in our schools and in every space of our society.
Our properties are at the mercy of vandals who seem to be without any scruples to destroy and to make society pay for their bitterness and unresolved conflicts. Or, are the vandals hired men acting as instructed?
The recent unfortunate incident in Kohima led to a series of violence and destruction of properties, serious injuries and even loss of life. If we care not only for today but for the future of our children, the mind and method shown in the madness are too ominous to be ignored. This cannot be overstressed.
Time and again we have been wantonly violated by our own people in our own land.
My father runs a line of business of which it can rightly be said he pioneered as a Naga in Dimapur. It has stayed open to fulfil its responsibility despite unending difficulties put in his path because he is dedicated to business which he believes is his calling. Sheer hard work and tenacity sustained by a vision has led him to what he is today. We, his children who know him, are deeply proud of him, whatever his human frailty. And we are outraged by the uncalled for, obviously targeted treatment he has received again just because he belongs to his tribe.
There are untold situations where businessmen and many others in Dimapur have been harassed and abused with impunity by Nagas, educated and uneducated, operating with confidence that they are a law unto themselves. On September 1st our properties were destroyed/vandalized and burnt to an extent which only those who have seen the damage will truly know. The same goes for the damages caused “beyond imagination”, according to Naga Hoho, (Morung Express, 6th Sept.’12) at Niathu Resort and other places further up the highway.
What is the meaning of the face, the hand and the vicious deeds manifested once again for all to see? Has not evil we have allowed to grow unchallenged in ourselves produced all that we are seeing now? How can one see what has happened again and yet do nothing significant about it because the wrongs to be righted are too big for individuals?
What is the truth behind what has been done to us? Is anyone listening? The truth is most likely to challenge all of us equally for the sake of creating a better society together. Today we are the targets. Tomorrow it could be any other. It could be you or your loved ones! I have decided to express what is churning within me because that is the first step for me in this situation confronting me. I agree with what Sir Edmund Burke said from the floor of the British Parliament during the debates that resulted in the abolition of the slave trade: “For evil to prosper it is only necessary for good men to do nothing”. Today it should be “and women”.
I am now a mother. I am seeing and accepting the reality that one of the truths my child must learn from the way her parents live out their lives is that doing evil to drive out evil spreads more evil.
And the warning to anyone of us who perpetrate evil is: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” John 3:20.
I am challenged and comforted by the promise in this verse: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.” Psalms 97:10
“If I am not secure in my property, then I cannot feel secure in my person. Violence directed at property is an implicit threat of violence directed at a person.”- Anon
In law, ‘mayhem’ is “the crime of wilfully inflicting a bodily injury on another, to cripple, maim or mutilate him so as to make him less able to defend himself”.
I have called what happened on NH 29 ‘mayhem’, because the frenzy of vandalism directed at my father’s business premises and those of others this time was nothing but mayhem. And I have used the American expression 9/1, instead of 1/9, to make my point. What my brothers, sister and relations have seen done to what our parents have built up has vandalized our thoughts, our spirit and our imagination as well.
For the information of the public the items damaged are given here:
1) T.K. Service Station: All 5 fuel vending machines, and lights
2) Progressive Motors: Signboard totally destroyed. ACP (Aluminium) boards, shutters, plants vandalized. 1 showroom glass door completely broken. A few broken car windshield glasses.
3) Dimapur Diesels: 2 new Tata Magic completely burnt, another partially. Blackened ceiling due to fire and smoke.
Bisevoü Peseyie-Savi
Daughter of Mr. T.K. Angami
of “T.K. Service”
