A Generation that Knows the World but not Their Own Village

In many Naga homes tonight, a child sits before a glowing screen. The room is quiet except for the soft sound of a video playing from somewhere far away in the world. The child understands the language on the screen. The child follows the trends. The child learns about places they have never seen.

In the next room sits a grandmother who carries stories older than any book in that house. Stories of clan journeys, of morung nights, of shawls woven with meaning, of fields that taught patience, of a life where learning came from living. She waits, hoping the child will come and sit beside her for a while.

But the child does not come.

This is how a culture disappears. Not with noise. Not with force. But with silence.

Nagaland is changing faster than we realise. Our children are becoming digitally smart while slowly becoming culturally distant. They can explain artificial intelligence but cannot explain their own identity. They can describe global history but cannot narrate their own tribal story. They know how to search the internet but do not know how their ancestors lived without ever needing it.

Once learning in Nagaland began beside the fire. It began in the morung where elders shaped young minds through stories, discipline, humour, and wisdom. It began in the fields where children learned the value of work and respect for nature. Education was never separated from life. Identity was never separated from learning.

Today education is separated from both.

We are raising a generation that knows everything about the world except themselves.

The painful truth is that our greatest libraries are still alive. They sit in our homes every day. Our grandparents. Our elders. They carry history that was never written down. They hold knowledge that cannot be searched online. Yet we are too busy moving forward to sit down and listen.

One day they will be gone. And when they go, entire chapters of our identity will go with them. No backup. No record. No recovery.

We celebrate Naga culture during festivals with beautiful performances, but culture is not meant to be performed once a year. It is meant to be lived every day. It is meant to be spoken at dinner tables, shared in classrooms, remembered in conversations between generations.