History in Your Face

By Patricia Mukhim

‘One has always been intrigued by the claims of “uniqueness” of the Naga people and their history’

If there is one thing the Constitution has granted its citizens, it is the right to freedom of expression. This is a right one holds very dear to one’s heart although it comes at a price. You are always on the wrong side of the powers that be; you are the ant in the pants of the high and mighty; you are a gadfly, nay a pest, the state can do without. And also you are a nuisance to people who thrive on rhetoric because you analyze the rhetoric and expose the shallowness of it.

But you still live to see another day and continue hammering on the keyboard. For this very action is life itself and as natural as breathing. Any threat to the Freedom of Expression is, therefore, a threat to life itself. India is a democracy where dissent cannot be snuffed out just like that, although ever so often there are people who play God and decide who lives and who dies. They also believe that the gun is the only symbol of power.

As a student of history, one has always been intrigued by the claims of “uniqueness” of the Naga people and their history. My Naga friends say this claim is legitimate because the Naga community declared its independence from British-ruled India on August 14, 1947. To that extent, it can be said that unlike other indigenous communities, they never acceded to the Indian nation after it was born on the midnight of August 15, 1947. So if there is no accession there can be no secession either. This sounds like a legitimate argument. History, as memorized by the Naga community and narrated by A.Z. Phizo who led the Naga National Movement during its early stages, is that the Naga people had demanded independence from the British several times but not in writing.

‘Flawed’ facts

Phizo says, “The only written record submitted by our people to the British government was in the year 1929, January 10 when Simon Commission, under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon, came here in Kohima seeking our people’s opinion about the ‘New Reform’, as it was called. Our Naga people demanded independence and said, ‘Leave us alone, and when you — the British — leave us we shall be free and independent again.’”

History and memory overlap as we read of the Naga peoples’ struggle for independence from the Indian state. But history is a narrative of the victors, not of victims. The history of oppression and human rights violation by the Indian state on the Naga people clearly does not form part of modern Indian history. In any case, history never records the processes by which victory is achieved but only tells us the names of war heroes and their heroic deeds, quite forgetting those who bear the scars of war. Notwithstanding the shadowy past about the word “Naga” and how it was derived, at least two generations of Naga men, women and children have suffered indescribable trauma that are yet to be healed.

But is the Indian state the only victimizer? The Naga people cannot gloss over the atrocities committed by them on themselves on account of internecine conflicts and the pursuit of aspirations for superiority and control of resources. These atrocities are as detestable as the actions of the Indian state. Every Naga narrative assiduously builds on the notion that inter-tribal rivalries are a divisive tactic of the Indian state and its intelligence and security outfits.

But is the demonizing of the Indian state not too simplistic? If the Nagas share a common vision and a shared aspiration, how can an alien force succeed in spreading the toxin of divisiveness? Is this the only truth or is there more to the rivalries than meets the eye?

Enemy within

On several occasions, we have seen the NSCN (I-M) use the word “traitor”, perhaps alluding to those who do not share their ideology or believe in doing things differently. How can two million human beings scattered over two or more states share a common vision? And if they do have a dissenting voice they are gunned down as traitors! Are the young and entrepreneurial Naga youths, who have now come up to claim the economic space of Nagaland and Manipur through sheer hard work, able to articulate their options? Or should they not have options but be prisoners of received wisdom?

If there is a shared vision among the two million Nagas, should not all the Naga frontal organisations be treated with equal respect? By this I mean the NNC, the NSCN (K), the Nagaland Baptist Church Council,civil society groups and Naga Hoho(s). Why have some groups been ascribed negative traits?

Is this not the reason why some indigenous communities feel less privileged than others? If the Naga nation-building project is inclusive and tolerant of all aspirations, then why do we have the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation (ENPO) comprising Konyak, Yimchungur, Phom, Sangtam and Chang communities from the four backward districts? The ENPO and its student wing had asked way back in 2008 that unification of the different Naga frontal organizations should have preceded talks with the Indian state. If the Naga people are one, it is difficult to comprehend why the subject of “unification” is such an arduous task. Naga internecine clashes have claimed several lives and there are families whose pain remains alive.

To be deeply hurt by the loss of a loved one is an honest human emotion. It needs to be dealt with at some level. So why is the reconciliation process which is so Christian in its thematic content and principle, jettisoned as a dangerous project? Some of these issues raise uneasy questions in the minds of those who have followed the Naga history closely. While the Indian state as the “enemy” is clearly profiled and every Naga person has an avalanche of the choicest rhetoric to define this demon, it is the enemy within which appears to be more chimerical and slippery.

What’s in store?

If the Indian state plays games with the Naga peace talks, it is only behaving along expected lines. India will perhaps not cede an inch of its territory to an external power, much less to a people who claim to a pre-1947 independent status.

Also what about that section of Naga people who have been co-opted into the corrupt and sleaze-driven Indian bureaucracy and who share the Indian worldview? One can understand the angst of the ordinary Naga men and women who live for the day when they would be citizens of a sovereign nation and leave behind the ordeal they have suffered under the present “Indian” system. But will that new dispensation also give birth to a new generation of Naga people who will begin politics on a clean slate? Greed is a human trait, not just an Indian trait.

As a journalist and student of history, one raises these questions without being judgmental of any group but only as an attempt to understand the future of Naga history. By the way, there is no history that is sacrosanct and cannot be written by “outsiders” — meaning people who are not from within the indigenous community. In fact, real history is shorn of romance and rhetoric. It deals with facts as a writer observes at a particular point of time. As a columnist, one also enjoys the liberty of critiquing not just different movements but also of the life and times of those who lead and inspire those movements. If there are differences in perception, those should be put forward as rejoinders, not as intimidatory tactics.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)