Kaka D. Iralu
Of late, there have been a lot of expressions of concern over the un-going political developments in our lands. And as the write ups increased in volume, some have even derided these expressions as the sounds of barking dogs against a moving caravan that must go on. (Morung Express, Aug. 25, 2012). But despite their irritation, allow me to bark once again as the Indo- Naga caravan moves on with its unknown cargo to its unknown destination. Allow me also to add that only fools kill their barking dogs because barking dogs bark to warn their masters of impending dangers. Yes nobody likes to be awakened in the middle of a moving caravan by a barking dog when the masters are fast asleep after a hard day’s work. But woe is any master who would kill his own dog, who may be barking to awaken him from the caravan owner who is trying to steal all his goods and flee to a faraway country.
In the present context of the ongoing debates, several people, both in the media as well as personally, have reacted against my article “An interim government without a national consensus?” Some have even gone to the extend of saying that an interim government does not need a mandate of the general public as long as the national organizations agree on it. Others have hinted that the NNC was not mandated by the Naga people to resolve the Indo Naga issue except conducting the Plebiscite of 1951.Still, others are saying: Phizo was silent about the Shillong Accord; NNC and FGN has betrayed the nation; Muivah and Isac wrote three times to the Phizo but he never replied them in order to cover up his own brother. (On the other hand, the contents of the letters that Isak and Muivah sent to Phizo have never been shown to the public). Now, the list of indirect questions to my article can go on and on but let me stop there.
On my part, though writing in my own personal capacity, I have already written in the papers, details of Phizo’s letter to the London Times denouncing the Shillong Accord and also Zashei’s exoneration of the FGN in his three paged reply to L.P. Singh and the final total disregard of the Shillong Accord by Desai himself in his meeting with Phizo in London. I will therefore not insult my reader’s intelligence by re-quoting or re-writing all these facts. It is however simply amazing how some people would desperately cling on to obsolete and now irrelevant events in order to justify their own subsequent mistakes committed after the Shillong Accord. All these endless noise, when even the Indian government had consigned this invalid Accord into the dustbin of history!
I however feel that I owe my esteemed readers as well as critics an explanation regarding my former article.
1. When I argue that a national government- whether interim or through the electoral process- needs a national consensus, I am simply stating legal procedures because- as already stated in my former article- a national government is not a cooperative society or a tribal council.
2. As for a national consensus for our political stand, we do not need to go for another one when we already have the records of the Naga National Plebiscite of May 16, 1951. On the basis of this plebiscite, we have been defending our declared independence for all these sixty two years at the cost of so many lives.
3. If some of our Naga leaders (State government leaders or any others), want to have some other settlements with the Indian government and the Indian government is also willing to give it to them, they can go ahead. But these leaders can never make a final political settlement with India on behalf of all Nagas bypassing the Naga National Plebiscite of 1951.After all the national plebiscite did not authorize any Naga individual or group or tribe to make any Indo- Naga political settlement outside the terms and stand of the Plebiscite of 1951.
4. Our national stand as expressed in the national plebiscite of1951 has been betrayed by both individuals as well as groups of Nagas since the Indian General elections of 1957 and the 16 Point Agreement of 1960. At present, if there is a lack of national consensus, it is not because there does not exist a Naga national consensus but because Nagas themselves have turned their backs on their own national consensus and gone their own ways seeking their own personal as well as tribal interests.
