Neingulo Krome
Youth is often referred to as “the fountain of life”. So why not allow Youth to live its life to its fullness with the God-given beauty side of living rather than subjecting it to wasting its potentials on the evil side of life, such as having to combat with things like Terrorism or Violence. That will be my first question before we even discuss why Youth have to fight with its dear life in a political system where the world itself is a breeding grounds for terrorism and violence to grow. And it is ridiculous sometimes when people fighting so-called “terrorism” are called Heroes who uses higher level of violence than those who perpetrates terrorism through violent means of actions.
Nevertheless, since this theory of Youth against Terrorism and Violence is the subject matter for combating terrorist elements, let us first try and understand the meanings of terrorism and terrorist? In the first place, the dictionary meaning of terrorism is “to rule or maintain power by terrorism”. Secondly, a terrorist is “a person attempting to further his views or to rule by system of coercive intimidation”. Whereas, violence will simply mean “violent treatment or conduct” and “violent feeling or language” with the dictionary saying; “unlawful exercise of physical force”. But then again, what does the dictionary means when it says “unlawful exercise of physical force”? What kind of violence is lawful and what kind of violence is unlawful? The sad fact is the whole world is a victim of those who interprets these terms.
The word “terror” was never ever blown out of its proportion to such a degree if human beings were to recall even the most violent part of the human history, such as it was done when the September 11 incident of New York shook and shocked the world in utter disbelief. And rightly so as no human mind would have ever imagined that airplanes filled with people will be used as bombs and bullets as was the case in the 9/11 tragedy. But what followed after that was an insult to human intelligence in a sense when justice was equalized with “who can be a bigger or stronger terror”. In India, all civil society movements and organizations, clubbed with militant groups and political institutions associated with rights to self-determination were listed and send to the USA, asking the US to declare them as terrorist organizations and to hunt them down as terrorist as part of the US war against terror. What an irony?
I was attending a meeting on Conflict Resolution at Strasbourg in France soon after the 9/11 incident in the last week of October 2001. And in every session of the meetings this incident of 9/11 keeps coming up again and again. The President of the European Union at that time himself also complaint several times that the security personnel in New York airport who knew him very well for so many years took away his nail scissor which he carried in his coat pocket for 35 years. So I raised this question, why do you think 9/11 happened? After some quite moments, a lady from the EU said, “I was in the Durban World Conference against Racism till 7th September 2001. I reached my hometown in Europe on September 9. And on September 11, when this thing happened….I was not surprised”. From there I flew straight to Bangkok, Thailand to attend another meeting of Human Rights Defenders organized by Amnesty International, Asian Human Rights Commission and Human Rights Alert of New York from the 1st of November 2001 onwards, where “War against Terror” continues to dominate all discussions. So I shared what I heard in Europe, to which the Chairman of the Asian Human Rights Commission immediately responded by saying; “I was there in Durban too and I was also not surprised”.
I am sharing these stories at the risk of being misunderstood. But this in itself tells so much about human realities and how attitudes impacts human sufferings. If we just look around us in our own situation, we are all prisoners in our own homes. And within the confines of these Prisons we are perhaps discussing the dynamics of “National Integration”. But since we are talking about the responsibilities and challenges of the Youth with particular reference against terrorism and violence, we have no choice but to confront the elements that promotes or encourages those evils which have eaten deeply into the very fabric of our respective societies and communities. For the people of North-East India, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and the likes, we are reduced to “walking corpses” with laws such as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, and others which are equally dehumanizing, but needs no elaboration. In other parts of India, there would be many kinds of laws and ordinances that pretend to provide you security and take away your rights and lives as well. However we would be going too far if we get into them deeper from where we are and rather should turn back to see terrorism and violence from the eyes of the Governments as well.
But for those of you who came from outside of Nagaland and if I as a Naga were to talk about terrorism and violence in my situation, I want to say this in the words of Late T. Sakhrie which was true some few decades back; “We have no jail. We do not arrest nor even imprison anyone. Our civil authority is God in matter of life and death. And murder is very rare”. “We use no locks. Our granaries are kept outside the village and no guard is ever needed, for there is no one to steal from them”. Such was our life till the Indian military came and started burning down our villages and granaries, rape our women, arrest and torture and kill anyone whom they suspect to be “rebels” in a situation where every Naga, young or old was a suspect and a potential “rebel”….read “terrorist” post 9/11.
In today’s world, Youth has no age limits. Any healthy men and women who have the ability to do and think things is a youth. And where questions of social security and well-beings of the human society are concerned, it is the youth that builds and also destroys. In today’s context, Governments will like to disapprove people who associate with issues to land rights, social security, development through a prior and informed consent, proper health care and education, etc. The word terrorism is used against people who organize and mobilize such legitimate rights. Perhaps the means they use to achieve their ends may not be found favorable, which could be seen as violent, either through physical force or language. So also in the process, people in such movements tend to victimize the very people for whom they profess to champion, perhaps without meaning to. This gradually takes the toll on their movements and further hardens them to a position distasteful in the eye of the people. But this does not necessarily make them terrorist or otherwise?
On the other hand, no nation or people would enact laws which will potentially destroy the principality of its establishments of a nation and you can call it enthusiasm or the will to govern with strict morality. But no matter how well meaning it might have been, the existence of laws that provides extreme measures only enables the possibilities of it been misused. So people who use legal means of extreme measures are often no better, rather worse than people who are comparatively less accountable to the society. Such existence can also be seen through the very existence of “Death Penalty” over and above the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which legitimizes Military personnel “to shoot and kill”. The very words used to legitimize such extreme measures cannot be more violent in language itself.
Whatever and whichever may be the case, I would strongly insist, if the youth of today were to make a difference to the already sick society in a sick world, filled with ager and hatred, we should disassociate from the purviews of elements which dehumanize us in whatever ways and forms. And towards this, whether terrorism and violence are being perpetrated by people making assertive demands from dominant forces and Governments, or whether they are Government sponsored terrorism and violence, the Youth which embodies the compact structure of any given society should choose and learn to stay away from any measures that dehumanizes people and the society. But am not saying we should stay away from issues which make us “peoples”. But what I am saying is, we should learn to choose methods that are friendly and enhances our human hood. And the first thing that can motivate us towards this endeavor would be to never ever define or describe any fellow human being as terrorists and by other derogatory terms as we only make or create more of them by calling them names.
Thank you.
This presentation was made at the State Level national Integration Camp 2010, held at Indira Gandhi Stadium, Kohima: Nagaland on the 16th of February 2010, organized by Nehru Yuva Kendra Kohima, under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India.
