It’s always darkest before the dawn

(Implementation of Framework Agreement or Peace Accord) 1) Firstly, a metaphor: A pregnant woman will deliver when the time comes. But the baby is not visible before birth. Until then, there’s a time of uncertainty and suspense; an atmosphere of speculations and guesses, anxieties and fears, hopes and anticipations. Whatever will be, will be. What transpires here? Respite or restive? It all depends on us. “If faith fails, the unseen fades, and the glare and glitter of the world takes over.” – Bernard C. Martin If we fail to apply our ‘inner man’, our ‘outer man’ takes over. Reflecting over Good Friday and Easter events this spring season, I observed that man’s macho or machismo doesn’t always work. If we recollect, it was the women group only (when all men abandoned Jesus) who steadfastly stood through the storms up to the Crucifixion. It was also first to a woman that our risen Lord appeared after the Resurrection. Will our Naga women group rise once again at this crucial moment for a smooth transition? Only the women know what actually birth pangs or labour pains are. 2) Secondly, we are the people for whom our National Workers have stood and continue to stand. We are the people for whom the Movement was first launched and for whom so much sacrifices were made. We are also the people who hunger and thirst so much for peace and harmony now. We are the people for whom Nationhood and Peoplehood matter. Read the times. Discern and study the writings on the walls. We hail the advent of democracy and peace-building in Burma/Myanmar. May our people there rise to the task! Can we, on this side of the border, also rise to a comparable occasion? We are fed up of incessant conflicts and divisions, producing more confusions and ill-wills and bitterness amongst ourselves. It is now time we publicly identify with our Christian faith and love. We must never underestimate the capacity of human relationship (personal, social or political) to improve or recover even when the prospects seem most wretched. We must live and let live. Powers and chairs are temporary; peoplehood and nationhood are not. The Naga family must learn to keep on moving forward to be a vibrant and thriving society and nation. No one (individual, tribe, faction or party) alone can take the monopoly or be the sole arbiter of our fate. We all must contribute our best in our time and in our capacity. We have had several agreements and settlements in the past, and we may come across many more in future. We can no longer allow petty distortions of any past, ongoing or future political developments to weaken us or to keep us divided and in acrimony. It has been cripplingly detrimental to our common Naga movement in the past and present and has cost us too much already. Let us no longer hesitate to take it upon our individual selves to be fair and transparent to one another, so that we may diminish or snuff out the mistrust and misgivings that have abruptly crept into our once normal societal lives and peaceful coexistence. We must all come together again and make the best use of all our difficulties as well as our potentials once more. Nevertheless, we have not quite arrived yet. We are BECOMERS with faith in the eventual institution of a positive settlement! The Peace process should not be confined or reduced to the negotiation table only. It must be taken to every home and soul. This is the Naga way of getting things done, following the footprints of our pioneers. For the ongoing Dialogue, too many cooks may spoil the broth. Let those who already possess the right experience and skills do it, but let the rest take the message of the Peace Accord to every village or area, in trust and in understanding. Life must go on (while the earth remains). The best way to be ready for any eventuality is PREPAREDNESS! Let’s prepare our hearts and minds for the post-settlement period, or at worst – a failed political settlement period. Whatever the outcome of the present negotiations may be, the commencement of a new period is at the threshold and it is drawing ever nearer day by day. More responsibilities and perhaps greater tasks, including those unforeseen so far, will definitely be ahead awaiting critical and decisive responses from a united and collective society! 3) Finally, i) “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” – Aristotle ii) “We should make it a rule never to try merely to prove that we are right” – Dallas Willard iii) “At the individual level, there is a simple choice, (a) Will we be tribes – people and responding according to our group allegiances? (b) Will we be idiots (in the old Greek sense), people who are just after their own individual interests? (c) Or thirdly, will we be citizens, people who can fight for their own interests but always with a respect of the common good, recognising the rights of their enemies and the smallest minorities they happen to oppose?” – Os Guinness iv) “Too many Christians today are tribes-people. Would that they were citizens in the best sense of the word” - Os Guinness “It’s always darkest before the dawn” – John Willard Peterson Dr. Dietho-o ‘South Corner’ A.G. Road, Kohima