Vulnerability can become common strength

Niketu Iralu addressed Morung Lecture on ‘Embracing Tribal Identity: Overcoming Isms’

Morung Express News
Dimapur | September 16  

“Our fragility, our vulnerability, is our common strength.”  

Naga elder and peace activist, Niketu Iralu, said this today while addressing how the Naga people can embrace, but also look past, tribalism and envision a common perspective towards a shared future.  

While tribal identity continues to be core strength for the Nagas, the differences of dialect, minor differences in practices and customs, historical traditions, etc. continue to exist. Often, they give rise to to ‘Isms’ and remains a major deterrence to peace and progress. Tribalism has failed Naga society often instead of becoming its strength. Yet, empathy towards one another’s suffering, honesty and transparency can get Nagas out of the quagmire.  

These ideas were tackled and challenged by participants at the 10th Morung Lecture, entitled ‘Embracing Tribal Identity: Overcoming Isms’ delivered by Niketu Iralu at DABA’s Elim Hall here today.

Know yourself

Niketu Iralu is among one of the most prominent Naga thinkers of our times.  

He started the Lecture with a quote by Socrates addressed to the youth of Athens - “Know yourself. A life unexamined is not worth living.” He opined that its undoubted relevance and urgency for us today, more than two thousand years later is amazing.  

He felt that today, we can add this, “Any human venture or struggle for aspirations or dreams not examined and adjusted to new challenges and requirements that the ever changing world brings becomes impossible to continue and it inevitably destroys itself and the people it should be serving.”  

For Iralu, “We can say that today we are examining ourselves and our struggles produced by our longing to become a People and a Nation. The struggle is our response to the challenges that change taking place in the world brought to us in the 19th and 20th Century. Our history, like all histories, is the record of our response to challenges of change. The society we have produced together is a measure of the quality of our response. The motivation to be a people and a nation is a struggle, a process that comes from our intuitive awareness of the threat and fear we perceived for our survival and security. So, the motivation and the struggle cannot be suppressed and snuffed out.”  

On a lighter note, he stated that many Nagas at times surely wonder when God made the Nagas into so many tribes- did he make an unintended mistake because he was preoccupied with some larger projects of creation? And was it another mistake he made when he put the desire to be a ‘people and nation’ into the hearts and minds and feverish imagination of all Nagas?  

“The desire to be a people and nation is something so strong in us. We are so many tribes, each fiercely proud of ourselves to the point of unbearable vanity. Yet, the fire that we are a people and nation has burned with equal intensity in all Nagas. The Naga struggle for India and the world to recognize their Sovereignty as understood by our Pioneers was absolutely authentic, honorable and also right, I believe,” Iralu maintained.

Embracing tribal identity

The thing to do now, he said, is to understand what has happened and is happening and why- then truthfully claim ownership of the specific places where we have gone wrong. If we can do that compassionately, understanding of others will come. And we will begin to inspire and help one another to do the right things to build new relationships among our tribes.  

To this point, he felt that our weaknesses and failures must thus become our common strength. “To embrace our respective tribal identities which I believe is healthy and needed for our growth. All our tribes have come to a plateau where we are meeting one another today. The hopes, desires, and dreams of our respective tribes have preserved us and kept us going in our struggles. We have to inspire one another, mutual goodwill for and cooperation with one another,” he said.  

The Naga elder urged, “We have to be responsible—each one of us. There are much bigger challenges headed our way and we must be prepared. We are not going to be able to demand to let us live the way we want. We may soon be rudely shaken apart.”  

Addressing the student participants and the youth, he said, “If you had to take anything from this lecture, your generation will have to get ready for the future of the Nagas.”  

From ethnic identity to Tribalism, different forms of Isms, and its context to the Naga political struggle and solution- all these factors were discussed during the Lecture. The Morung Lectures is an initiative of The Morung Express.