Understanding Nagaland And The Formation Of Its Nature - Eastern Mirror
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Editorial

Understanding Nagaland and the Formation of its Nature

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By EMN Updated: May 05, 2016 9:55 pm

Al Ngullie

Some of our esteemed readers have written in seeking amplification–even an interpretative context–of a portion of ideation in ‘How Nagaland is Poisoning Itself,’ the editorial for Friday, April 29 in Eastern Mirror. 

Indeed, your support accentuates Eastern Mirror’s renewed endeavor to build a platform for news information and a space for conversation that is not only qualitative but fruitful. Your constant support to the publication’s endeavor to carry a voice that speaks about the common refrains of our society is what forms the basis of good conversations. To those who wrote in, we thank you, as always, for the wonderful feedback that you continue to offer us and much more all through the years. 

For those who came in late, this is the passage about which a number of our readers requested elaboration, and by context, an interpretation of the idea that the concurrent condition of Nagaland might be contextualizing.

The text below is the portion:

“Within ordered systems, societal collapse tends to offer an unconvincing, washed-down image of a system that speaks remotely only about lack of visible corrective processes.

However, if one were to muster courage to look into it deeper, societal collapse always carries with it a stage of disintegration that is prolonged.

Hence, societal collapse in its strictest term is the fall of the space for conversation.

Hence, again, societal collapse, in the opinion of this column, is the loss of space and opportunity for remedy and redress.” (‘How Nagaland is Poisoning Itself,’ editorial for Friday, April 29 in Eastern Mirror)

Here is an expansion of the idea:

Generally stating, there are a number tangible and intangible factors that most likely engender a condition in which a community’s social wellbeing, economic substance, and political capital could collapse. These factors are a range of movements that embrace both ideological enthusiasm and factual posturing. In the opinion of this column, the complexity of the process that leads to societal collapse is made even more precarious by the fact that it needs no specific reason. 

Hence, the factors that activate a process of breakdown  could be economical, social and cultural, and even environmental. Each or any of them could create a condition that could set off a domino effect. The only difference is in the pace of the fall. 

Example: March 5 Dimapur lynching 

An illustration to how economic, social, political and cultural factors can create perfect conditions for collapse to start showing may be the March 5 incident in Dimapur. On that fateful day, a mob lynched a man accused of rape. Initially, the accused was reported to be an illegal immigrant. Whether or not he was an illegal immigrant is a premise that can be corroborated only by the agencies of the law and the administration. 

However, during that time, news began to fly thick and fast that he was an illegal immigrant. That may have offered a rallying point–an easy spark to set off hay collected over a decade of anger against the Nagaland government’s failure to institute stringent, decisive state policy to curb the influx of illegal immigrants in Nagaland. 

The Naga population in Nagaland is not lost to the fact that much, much prior to the incident, illegal immigrants and the issue of illegal immigration in the state had been a rich source of news for the wrong reasons–from high-profile criminal activities to being a worry for the cultural capital of the Naga and the state.

The indigenous Naga is well aware of the concern about the loss of lands and Naga ‘daughters’ to illegal immigrants. The indigenous Naga is well aware that there are no political safeguards from the government to offer a challenge to the issue. 

Student activism against illegal immigrants (especially the campaigns of the Ao Kaketshir Telongjem and the Angami Students’ Union during the past more than 10 years) is not a new story. The campaigns are in their-selves a small but profound clarification of the context. 

Another fact that continues to incur the local community’s wrath against policy makers is that even a decade of outrage against illegal immigration could not provoke successive Nagaland governments into instating checks and policies to arbitrate the problem.  

How said environment shaped Nagaland's character 

In any case, the Dimapur incident illustrates how various factors viz., social, political, cultural and economic failures could often work together to create a spark and converge at a point of collapse.  

Hence, a disruption in one sphere can set off tremors in another; the ripples can, then, also cascade into others more. Broadly, society is a self-contained institution of anomalies perpetuated by consistent lack of intervention (timely correction, redress and resolution).

The lack of intervention was reaffirmed over a period of time until consequences began to appear. The consequences were, for instance, disjointed policies, their inherent failure; weak judiciary and law enforcement (with lawlessness being the natural outcome); unstable political leaderships and volatile community ties; poor public services and failed / failing local economy etc.

Subsequently, the fractures solidified to establish a new system with its own unique set of rules. What rules? That only bribery accomplishes tasks; corruption spreads commonly  enough to be considered essential to accomplish something; power mongering becomes a tool for political vendetta and the corporate holds sway over the overseers of welfare.

In other words, the absence of the Rule of Law—which is itself a flexible tool that can be used to oppress—creates a vacuum. Because power needs a space to fill, the only trajectory it can travel is to fill the space created by the absence of the Rule of Law.

Hence “societal collapse in its strictest term is the fall of the space for conversation”.

Meaning, because there is no more space for redress or solutions ('conversation'), one can only go with the flow: using bribery and money power or guns and threats to get something done.

When it does that, the sovereign state—the lone overriding reference of control—transforms into its most natural, primitive form: a free beast whose behavior, even unlawful behavior, receives de-facto legitimacy.

Legitimacy even for the unlawful? Yes, because the very system it professes to fight against, is the actually the same source that the system feeds on.

Nagaland is seeing the emergence of that new monster. We created that monster.

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By EMN Updated: May 05, 2016 9:55:28 pm
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