The apex head of all the Christian Baptist churches in the state, the Nagaland Baptist Churches Council (NBCC) had launched the Clean Election Campaign in 2012 just before the then assembly elections in the state that was held in 2013. The intention of the movement was to rid the election malpractices that was quite prevalent in the state of Nagaland. The use of violence, illegal diktats, inducements, and blatant buying and sale of votes had become so common during elections in Nagaland since the early eighties. During the launch of the campaign, the then NBCC leaders had stated that the laid down election code of conduct is good enough to conduct a clean and fair election. The campaign may not have achieved the desired effects in 2013 but it no doubt created an impact at least in the form of awareness. Then campaign for the current elections picked up tempo by 2016 and it was considered quite successful in many areas. The NBCC had even gone official to state the mission was to awaken the conscience of the Naga people and to help them see election as a moral and spiritual issue to help eradicate corruption. So far so good, but then a confusion that was created because of the demand for ‘solution before election’ and there was uncertainty in the air. The ECI went ahead with the announcement of elections on Jan. 18 and stated that the elections will be conducted as scheduled. The BJP then backed out of the memorandum that was signed by all the political parties on Jan. 29 against the conduct of elections. It was no secret that in the meantime intense parleys and lobbying by different political parties, especially the NPF and the NDPP, were going on in their attempt to form an alliance with the BJP as elections looked imminent. At such a juncture, the NBCC first sounded the alarm bell in Mokokchung on Feb. 2 conspicuously directed at the BJP warning its followers to be ‘wary while supporting any political party with communal agendas’. The bigger surprise came when the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) announced its seat sharing alliance with the newly launched Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party(NDPP) by discarding its long time ally the Naga People’s Front(NPF). The oldest regional party in the state its former avatar the United Democratic Front(UDF) had formed an alliance with the non-congress parties especially the Janata Party way back in the seventies. Then as NPF it formed an alliance with the BJP since 2003 and even won 7 seats that same year during the then assembly elections. Whether it was the seat sharing formula of the BJP-NDPP alliance or some other unknown reasons, the NBCC jumped the gun and gave out one of its strongest letter to all the political parties directly attacking the BJP. After many years of the NBCC preaching its followers to abide by the election code of conduct especially in its clean election campaign it technically also violated the code. Along with many others in the list, the use of religion to induce voters or to prejudice election of any candidate is also a corrupt practice. The NBCC also seemed to have suddenly woken up to oppose the alliance because all these years it was silent when the BJP was in alliance with other political parties from the state. It is also a fact that Christianity clearly talks about the separation of the state and religion and the teachings of Jesus Christ after whom the religion is named declared that his kingdom was not of the physical world. Any move to mix religion and politics would render the Church in Nagaland no better than the right wing Hindu organisations that has similar intentions. While not condoning the many crimes against Christians by right wing groups in the country, the church leaders in Nagaland should be able to forgive like the many Christians who publicly forgave for the crimes committed against them. Else when we rake up issues that are considered closed by the victims as well as the competent authorities it is nothing but hate speech with complete lack of piety. The young followers have already voiced out this time and it behoves the Church in Nagaland to retrospect else the day is not far when the present churches will be mere buildings without followers.
