Thepfulhouvi Solo
One morning in Delhi more than a decade ago, a respectable very high Official of Nagaland came to my room and enquired what I would be doing in the daytime. I informed him I had finished Official duties and will be going to the Canadian Embassy in the afternoon on a standing invitation from the High Commission who, with his wife, was in my Village Kohima sometime back and said I could contact him whenever I happen to be in Delhi. I was thinking about discussing some Forestry needs of Nagaland which the High Commission, who said his Father, was once a Conservator of Forest in Ghana, showed great Interest. The Official said he would also accompany me and thinking ‘Two Witnesses are heavier than One’, I agreed.
However I was soon to find out he has his own separate Agenda for going to the Embassy he had tried before unsuccessfully. When I found out this later, I felt less than happy to have agreed to have him accompany me and of course my sense of honor for him dropped down from my forehead to somewhere near my Navel! People who utilize your friendship for their personal self Interest in small things betray their inner-Self and lose their Honor.
One expects good Taste and good Conscience from honorable Persons. Honor is deeper than Respect. Honor is something deep, warm and an indescribable fine good sense in the character in a person. Respect, on the other hand, is often only a formal outside exhibition for pleasing a person. One may not honor a person but may exhibit signs of respect to him just out of decorum or to simply please him for the moment. Honor is something a person always has deeply in mind and in the heart of the people.
Good Conscience is delicate; it is tastefully performed, more often seen in fleeting actions or in delicate apparently small behaviors. They however indicate great inner qualities. It differentiates the Great from the not-so Great. Good Conscience in Society indicates great people; the Society need not be big but good conscience indicates great Society.
Last year, some Members of the powerful Naga Council of Dimapur, a respectable and honorable Body, collected Funds from some rich made-to-measure “well wishers” of overflowing wealth for their exciting pleasure Trip to the Holy Land.
In Collection of such Fund, has the Naga Council misused its Official Position and Honor for a purely Private, Personal and non-Official purpose? This is a matter of Conscience and the Naga Council Members of Dimapur did not seem to have exhibited much of a delicate Good Conscience. One of the greatest principles of good conscience of the Nagas is:
‘Do not get too obliged to Any’
and of course the Scripture advices every one not to get too much obliged to another person.
Sometime back the Naga Council of Dimapur vigorously contested with the Government of Nagaland for collection of unauthorized Naga Commission from the world of Dimapur; but recently the Council very correctly and vigorously supported the Government’s belated effort to control the pests of Taxes by the hydra-headed indefinite NGOs and Associations of Dimapur. Good Conscience includes a consistent delicate sense to see Reality in a hazy situation.
Recently an upcoming Christian Institution of Repute in Nagaland invited persons which included Foreigners to an interesting gathering. The gathering was treated with Dinner where the dishes included many from foreign and more than the number of Tribes of the Nagaland.
After the meeting, the Invitees were surprisingly made good ‘well wishers’ and ‘made to sign’ Promissory note of Contributions to a great Cause of the Institution!
Nowhere, not even in the illiterate pagan Culture of the Nagas do the Host invite Guests to collect FUND. It is considered bad etiquette even in the Native pagan Culture for People to invite friends for food and then to ask for Alms. People from outside Nagaland may even get horrified and assume the Nagas have no Culture. Some unripe Christians may think one can collect Fund from any, at any time, any number funds if it is only not for personal purposes. A Christian cannot act Robin Hood for Christianity.
Sometime back some youths, all males from the rustic Village, attending to a common social voluntary work, were cracking jokes, about a not so honorable vulgar fellow in the Village. In the rustic Village life, often bad things about an undesirable person are describe in jokes. I was quietly enjoying the interesting jokes, when suddenly unexpected; a young maiden appeared serving drink to the busy youths. Suddenly and smoothly the youth narrating the male jokes changed his extempore subject at the sudden appearance of the new gender and saved her from great embarrassment. Good sense comes out of a good community.
The indigenous rustic Village life often exhibits great sensibility, equality and good sense. Today this good values of the Village is being unconsciously corroded progressively in the anonymity of modern culture. And Christianity plays a very big part in ushering modern culture often blindly into the solid native Culture.
It is the Christian educated in the Towns and Cities, no less than the village dwellers, to preserve the good Naga Village Values, Senses, its mutual concerns, attitudes, equality and the great democracy evolved in the Village . Good Conscience germinates from a culture. Culture is not instantly produced; Good Conscience takes generations of people living together to develop.
The Bible mentions “Tax is collected from Foreigners”, but in Nagaland today foreigners collect Tax from the Aboriginal Indigenous. More and more Nagas are coming to live in the Towns and Cities. Village life is becoming more and more distant and City life nearer and neared, and more attractive. The fabric of indigenous Naga Culture is becoming diluted more and more with unintelligible outside Culture: It is the responsibility of the Nagas themselves to conserve their good conscience and not be overwhelmed with those undesirable traits of others.
When they were engaged in the transport of baggage of the East India Company Forces from one Village to another in the early Centuries in Naga Hills, the Naga Porters vied with each other to reach the Company Camp first early in the morning. The Officers thought this to be a clever move to select the lighter ones first by those who reach the Camp first and leave the heavier ones for the late-comers.
Surprisingly the Officers found the first arrivals select the heavier baggage first and leave the lighter ones for the late comers and when the Porters very carefully, according to instructions, transported the fragile materials to its destinations without any breakages, the Officers wanted to give Tips (boshis) but the native Porters would refused saying they have already received their Wages in full. The Officers also later learned the Natives vying to arrive first to select the heavier loads first as the great sense of honor of not taking advantage a situation over their fellow members.
It is such acute small good senses in the supposedly barbaric Nagas and observing their acute sense of Equality, the Freedom a member enjoyed even to reject the decision of the majority and the absence of any formal Authority to rule over them that the whites described the ‘purest form of Democracy’ in the Nagas.
Once an energetic Youth from the Village was about to accompany a Group to a foreign Trip asked me how he should behave himself in the foreign Country: I advised him: ‘Do not behave what you are not’.
