A People’s Message

On behalf of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, I stand before you all with a Heavy Heart filled with Pain and Sorrow. We share the same grief that overwhelms a father and a mother over the loss of their sons, sons and daughters over the loss of their fathers, brothers and sisters over the loss of their brothers, and above all the loss of husbands by their wives and the loss of a fiancé by a maiden. Surely, of anguish there is none greater than of two hearts that will never meet again.

This is our Naga story ever since our forebears chose to be true, to what they believe most deeply to be the Right, Natural and Honourable course for their people and declared Naga nationhood in the same spirit of Bal Gangadhar Tilak who proclaimed “Swaraj is my Birthright.”

Upholding the Truth of our History, many of our elders and leaders have died defending our right as a people. They gave their lives so that we may live with dignity and honour as human beings. The price they paid for doing so constitutes the Heart of what the Government of India and the media calls ‘Naga Insurgency.’ For us, the Nagas, it is our struggle for Freedom, Human Rights, Dignity, Honour, Identity and so forth.

The Oting Massacre on 4th December, 2021 and the brutal killing in Mon on 5th December, 2021 has once again brought forth the denial of legitimacy and of facts of our Naga struggle and today in our Brokenness we find strength in our Togetherness to defend the honour and dignity of the truth of our history. We stand with a firm conviction that Right is Might for as a child of nature we were taught the natural order of rights in the universe, that the Mighty Elephant has the same environmental and ecological rights as the tiny ant. Any disturbance in such an equation would surely cause a calamity till the restoration of the natural order in consonance with their rights. Such universal natural laws do reveal that any nation however powerfully armed with sophisticated weapons, nuclear or otherwise with the best trained soldiers is nothing in the face of microorganisms like CoronaVirus and Omicron of recent times.

I thank the Naga Students’ Federation for this Rally in awakening our Consciousness for we cannot go on living in Delusion, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty. The sooner we accept the Reality that Right is Might rather than Might is Right, the safer for humanity. In no uncertain terms can we dishonour or demean a soldier’s death in our land or elsewhere for their courage and sacrifice, even for the one from the Para Commando who lost his life at Oting. We grieve with the family in the universal principle of humanity, fully aware of what the Armed Forces Special Power Act can do as a double edged sword. Hereupon, we plead to all the family members, their kiths and kins of those who have laid down their lives ever since the AFSPA was implemented in 1958. May you rise with a daring courage for the repeal of such a Draconian Law for the sake of justice for all. Only then will the souls of those who have laid down their lives will rest in peace.