People, races and nations go through a process of gradual or sudden evolution. The speed of this process of evolution determines how we handle the changes that come into our lives. If the process is gradual, we adapt well, but if it is sudden, society collapses or goes into shock.
We Nagas are in a state of cultural shock. I don’t know about other tribes, but according to J.H.Hutton, in his book, “The Sema Nagas”(1921), there was only one blacksmith among the entire Sumi tribe in his time; and now we have none. And that is the paradox of Naga evolution. We have been dragged from the stone/iron age to the age of computers without the benefit of the evolutionary steps in between. We have all the world’s knowledge without the ability, judgement or wisdom to use it.
We are like the three students in the Hindu folktale:- Four students were returning from their gurukul(resident schools run by teachers in ancient India), when the happened upon the scattered bones of a tiger. The first student boasted that he could assemble the bones of the tiger, the second boasted that if the first could do that, he could put flesh and fur on the bones, the third boasted that if they could do that, he could put breath into the tiger. They set about carrying out their boasts. The first assembled the bones, the second put flesh and fur on the bones, but just as the third was about to give life to the tiger, the fourth student stopped him and asked him to wait while he(the fourth student) climbed up a tree. As soon as the fourth had climbed the tree, the third student breathed life into the tiger which came to life and promptly devoured the three students.
This is exactly what is happening to the Nagas. We have acquired knowledge and a modicum of wealth, and in our hurry to show off our knowledge and wealth we are destroying our society because we lack the judgement and wisdom to use them. Our concept of development means having a palatial home. owning luxury vehicles and buying all the designer clothes, gadgets and gee-gaws we see on television and in the movies while all the time we fail to realise that the people we see on our t.v. and movie screens walk out of their palatial homes onto good pavements, they drive their luxury vehicles on good roads, they have running water to wash and clean their designer clothes and they have a steady supply of electricity to power all their gadgets and gee-gaws.
We have acquired all that we have, not by the process of developing the skills and the labour force required to build them, but by employing others to build, mantain and repair all that we have; and in the process, we have lost the ability or become too too embarassed/lazy to practice those basic skills. There was a time when Nagas weren’t too dignified to pull rickshaws now we wouldn’t be seen dead, sitting on a rickshaw. Some of us even employ “Mias”(illegal Bangladeshi immigrants) to sift through the rice we cook; the most simple, easy and basic of all the tasks.
We are a society of the Nouveau riche-newly rich. A society that has acquired its wealth, not through hard work and enterprise but by feeding off the teat of the Indian breast. So, we don’t value money as those who have earned it, through the sweat of their brow. In other societies and cultures, those who acquire wealth know it is solely due to the society they live in, they therefore feel a social and moral obligation to pay back their debt to society in the form of taxes and charities and by performing acts of charity. But since all our money comes from the Indian Government, we do not feel obligated to give anything to anyone, let alone society at large. We go even further, by taking the share of others, and the sad thing is that those who are deprived of their share do not have the urge to fight for what is rightfully theirs because they, in turn, have done nothing to earn it.
Our sense of moral and social obligation begins and ends with paying our thites and donating money to our respective churches. And many of our church leaders, who know better or should know better, are guilty of fostering the thought that a person’s social, moral and spiritual obligations are fulfilled with the act of donating to the churches and their various organisations.
The papers have recently featured stories about Nagas who are starting small businesses, becoming street vendors, cobbling shoes, cutting hair etc. That is a very encouraging trend. They, and the countless thousands who work in private schools and business across Nagaland and India, the daily wage workers and all those who live and work in the villages and farms across Nagaland, are the future of Nagaland. They form the skeletal structure and flesh without which a society or nation cannot come into existence. Because we are being spoon fed by India we do not realise their value. If you consider yourself educated, where do you think the Indian Government gets the money to pour into the bottomless pit that is Nagaland? It is by taxing the hard working Indian citizen that you get the money for your salaries and your departmental budgets. Their taxes buy the food from the hard working Indian farmer that feeds you. No nation, state, society or culture in the world is built solely by and on corrupt politicians and greasy bureaucrats who don’t generate a paisa of income. We Nagas are the only people in the world who think so.
Mr. Robert A. Silverstein has written a number of articles on Nagaland and the Nagas. I am grateful to him for holding up a mirror so that we Nagas can see what a caricature of a people we have become. He is perfectly right in his conclusion that Nagaland is a failed state. We are like Pakistan, which would collapse without the aid of the U.S.A; except we are more corrupt than Pakistan and India is propping us up. But I disagree with him when he states that India would need its army to annihilate the Nagas, if push came to shove. No, Mr. Silverstein, all India would need to do is turn off the supply of money and you’ll see the starving Nagas turn on each other like rabid dogs until none of us were left standing.
I admire Mr. Kaka Iralu as a courageous man with the courage of his convictions, and although I do not agree with some of his conclusions, his scholarship and research is impeccable, I hold him to be one of the few Nagas who lives by the principles he espouses and that he is a true and thorough Gentleman, in every sense of the word. But I’m sure even he would acknowledge that for Nagaland and Nagas as they are, nationhood is an impossible dream. For although, outwardly, we have all the trappings of modernity: culturally and mentally, we have not had time to adapt to the concept of towns, cities and states, let alone nations; and we still put our village, our clan, and tribe , in that order of priority, first into every decision we make and every step we take. My prayer is no longer “God Bless My Nagaland” but “GOD SAVE MY NAGALAND”.
G.B. Hevishe Village, Dimapur
kahuto107@gmail.com
