S Varah
Fighting for the land robbing the people, fighting for the people robbing the land, fighting for tax cum oneness sounding freedom bell or living to accept meaningful sacrifice? We can make enemy out of differences: difference of vision, mission, faith, caste, color, practice, feeling and making history etc, etc. Being different is not enemy unless it is made out of these differences. When a Naga army fighting for Naga freedom runs away from one group to join another camp, it does not mean that he was in the enemy's camp if that camp is not a real enemy camp. One abandons his former camp partly because of strong feeling of rejection or, rather, due to excessive mismanagement of feeling of one's worth as a freedom fighter. We may term this as syndrome of want of comradeship for one, uneven distribution of substances, for another.
There are reasons attributed to these happenings in our Naga history of resistance even though we keep throwing the bugs to many reasons. We have, experienced that our going has been very tough. We have often been knocked down. There were times when we could hardly manage to lift ourselves up knee high; that is often the best moment to pray kneeling with contrite heart. These best opportunities created by variable circumstances always reinforce our relationship with whom we pledge our allegiance to. We now live in a vastly different time without those heart breaking times while we pretend to pick our broken pieces up. There is the shift of thinking and ambition: from the love of political liberty to love of money and other comforts. Our freedom fighters deserve them but in a more appropriate time and standard.
In the case of Africa, many filthy rich MNCs came down from Europe, US and other advanced and rich lands to exploit the riches in this so called Dark Continent. Along with these peoples' money come technology, fire powers and seeds of differences. These differences create appropriate conditions for fighting for the people robbing the land. The ultimate, as we know, is always civil war. There is little tear to cry for while vying for more land resources, more wealth while others are being reduced to mere living human skeletons, flesh trade, HIV/ADS and many more besides. This is the result of believing lies some people speak some times making ground for 'bluffing all the people all of the times' as Bob Marley sang.
There is comparative reduction of military operations today. But it does not mean that the fight between the natives and the powerful had ended. We are witnessing technical as well as cooperative fights between ONGC-Conaro-SRM as Changpang is spurting out crude oil profusely.This is just one example. We are going to witness more hydro power plants coming up in our frontiers very soon. The money groups will bring along with them more bones of contention and scrapes for our intestine quarrel. The next turn will be 'fighting for the people robbing our land and resources'. The Marwari colony along the Dimapur rail head is a matter of money cum vote bank. Any group which can make an impact out of fear psychology around this khel is an issue that is never related to Naga becoming one. It is simply stupid and blood letting matter for more hoarding out of this fear factor: a dull blood path sounding unification and Naga' s liberation from domination. We are witnessing not only underground defections. Over ground parties switching sides are more disturbing as well. They are more disturbing because they know that political power make money bigger than what some headless underground's gun can extort. They are adept at technical extortion than raw and brute methods. Different political parties are distributing tickets to power and money places. These are not different from running fire arms and ammunition business. This does not meant that installation of good and people based institution is foolish. About mid March, roughly a month or so, we are going to witness a vastly different situation. There will be coalition government because forming government by single majority is unlikely owing to different factors. And if popular government formation is delayed, PR may not be a better option either. PR will perform the task of face lifting which is, at the most, a more decent way to stop pilfering public purse. It can never create an atmosphere congenial to process for peace program in the final analyze.
It is more of a passing phase of time and condition suitable for reviving people's unrest for money making. Creating more splinter groups will perpetually encourage the shout for unity.
But functional or doable unity believes in principle without expecting a perfect and complete unity. Practical political treatment out of sincerity and commitment should first allow opportunity to the people who should own their political institution instead of arm chair management from high places. The idea to experiment settlement through morsel dose of autonomy promised plus transfer of some reserved forests to the existing 16th state and other unimplemented clauses as enshrined in the 16¬point document and, with the ambition to gratify section of some people group, will never be takable on the part of bigger portion of Naga who are temperamentally apprehensive and ferocious when it comes to land ownership. Today we are victims of unworkable experiments of the past. This is the age of keeping the water troubled, save settlement. GOI can give Naga one of the best: saying 'sorry for all wrongs done in the past' instead of supplying other substances which wean our eternal longing for rest and calmness. That will preach just peace and also help heal our hurts with the capacity to sink down differences inside the Nagas.
