Robert A. Silverstein
On February 22, 2017, in The Morung Express, the Nagaland Post, and the Eastern Mirror, an article by Nukhosa Chuzho appeared. It was titled, “Fide Non Armis,” according to the author meaning, “by faith, not arms,” and is the motto of the Naga People’s Front (NPF).
It is a lengthy and ambitious article, addressing the author’s views of what has transpired the last few weeks in relation to the issue of women’s representation on ULBs, and attempts to assign blame and makes suggestions on what should happen in the future. It also discusses the relationship between the state government, the people of the state, and the Government of India (GoI).
I’m only interested in addressing two quotes of the author’s, both seemingly logical when read by themselves, but together express a confusion that is at the foundation of so much of what, in my opinion, is seriously wrong with Nagaland.
The first quote is: “… [I]f the mistake of crushing the genuine apprehensions of the ruled (who have the right to lodge their complaints to the rulers) persists, then it is deliberately instigated by the rulers at the cost of the ruled, who has every right to rise against the established system in the form of movements, revolutions, or in extreme degree, civil wars.
Leaders ought to patiently read the signals that the people communicate to them intermittently.”
In the next paragraph the author goes on to compare the causes of the French Revolution that led to the overthrow of the French Court of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, and their execution, with the alleged wrongs of the present Nagaland state government. I am familiar with the latter accusations, as I have been following the articles in the major Nagaland newspapers for many months now, and certainly think some of them are serious.
But I can’t help feeling, after researching the causes of the French Revolution, that the analogy is not a good one, if for no other reasons than that Nagaland is a state within a nation, India, and it has a working court and political system, although admittedly ones that are imperfect.
But on to the second quote: “…Mobism is hard to be tamed.
Nevertheless it should not be taken as an excuse for arson, destruction of public assets and hence polluting a social environment with fear and vengeance. Reducing magnificent structures to ashes in a matter of minutes without much remorse by mobs caught the attention of many right thinkers. While peaceful agitation to convey our plights to the government is envisaged, at the same time, engaging in vandalism thereby trespassing the democratic limit of expressing our resentment need to be pondered by both leaders and private citizens.”
Now what is the reader to make of the two quotes?
The first argues that there may be the basis here in Nagaland for “movements, revolutions, or… civil wars.”
That is, after all, why the author brought up the analogy of the causes of the French Revolution, which was very bloody (one part of the revolutionary period in France was called “The Terror,” and was the basis for Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” the latter of which includes scenes of the guillotining of substantial numbers of the citizens of France).
The second quote condemns much of the vandalism of the last few weeks in Nagaland under the state-wide bandh. Admittedly, the author does not include the deaths of the people shot by the police. In relation to that, he states, “Liquidation and inflicting injuries on its own subject contravened the core ideal of the party. It is by faith that the people draws [sic] close to the party, not by arms; it is by faith that the people elects [sic] their leaders, not by arms; and it is by faith that the government functions, not by arms.”
“Liquidation” is a very strong word, more appropriate if the government fired at the crowd with machine guns with the clear intent of wiping all of them out.
Since the Judicial Investigation Committee has yet to be formed, more less come to any conclusions as to what specifically happened the night of January 31st, it is highly inappropriate to draw any conclusions on the cause of the incident where the men died, and certainly does not merit the term “liquidation.” But the immediately above is an aside. The main quote directly above the immediately preceding paragraph serves as a good beginning to clarify the two main quotes at the beginning of the article.
Yes, it is by faith that people join a party and elect its leaders, but is not by faith that the government functions.
The government functions because all citizens, those who were elected and those who elected them, have agreed (in political science lingo, it’s called a “social contract”) to obey the law. That’s the way a civilized state functions, because the people obey the law that they all agreed to obey, whether they like the law or not. If the people don’t like the law, the law generally provides ways to change the specific law that is unpopular.
Which gets us closer to the heart of the matter.
One should resort to breaking the law, up to and including revolutionary overthrow of the established government, when there is clearly no recourse to using the established law to attempt to change the laws you don’t like.
If people felt they had the right to resort to force to change a law every time the other members of society followed the law and put in place a law some of the others did not like, there would be no law, there would be chaos, which, by the way, is what we had in Kohima the last few weeks. You see, the NMA used the law to get a law passed that it wanted and those opposed to the law chose not to use the law, that is, the courts, to fight the NMA, but chose to use intimidation, coercion, and violence to get what they wanted. And they won, for now.
But, really, Nagaland lost. To use violence to get your way should be a LAST RESORT, after you have tried every legal way possible to change a law you don’t like, and even then, illegal force should only be used if the law you do not like goes to the heart of the society and revolutionary violence is warranted, which should be very rarely. So as readers, you should be focusing on all the thousands of laws that we all obey, from driving on the left side of the road, to the laws that allow the prime minister to drag the people into a war.
They are all in the same category, the law, period. And you should keep in mind that to casually break the law because your state government is so weak it lets you get away with it does not make it right, nor is it in the best long-term interest of the state. If you want to live in chaos, that’s your choice. But if you want to join the majority of the world and live in a world of laws, you should reserve law-breaking for the clear moments when things are so bad that revolution is the only solution.
(The one exception to this rule is civil disobedience, that is, breaking a law, allowing yourself to be arrested for breaking what the law-breaker argues is an unjust law, with the hope that the wider public will be sympathetic and assist you in eliminating the unjust law, using the legal tools available to do so.)
The author tried to address both a revolutionary situation and one that was not so, and he could not make up his mind which view of things applied to the present situation.
The state government is alleged to have done many things that have hurt its citizens, and done it illegally, but you are a part of a nation, and that nation has a constitution which provides protections, and it is the obligation of every citizen to utilize that system if he or she can. Only when the system has clearly failed you and the government has done things that shock the conscience of the people (think of the situation in Syria, where peaceful demonstrators were shot, arrested and tortured, and/or murdered), at that point and that point only, should you consider criminality.
.JPG)
