The responsibility APO has given me to speak on this occasion today has touched me as much as it has challenged me. It has touched me as I am given the opportunity to personally mourn the passing of my closest college class friend when we were setting out on our respective journeys through life. We discussed and asked intense questions. And we eventually went on to answer them with the fullest commitment of our lives. Our paths in life took us in different directions. But I was always conscious that whenever we met the deep friendship of our college years had never dimmed. I have always valued this in Isak.
But I am challenged in even greater measure because, though I am keenly conscious of my limitations, today I am giving expression to Angami recognition of and respect for the sacrifice of a Naga leader who went all-out to proclaim and defend the political cause of our people, as understood by him. On this occasion I am conscious of what I know other tribes have felt about our tendency to value our sacrifices and contributions more than we value those of others. This seems to be almost a propensity in many of us others see and feel so clearly and we do not. We are beginning to recognize it. I should add that I have said this not on behalf of APO, but out of my own conviction that we need the help of others to see where we need to be different.
As Chairman Isak Swu played his political leadership role, he held on with evangelical fervour and zeal to his Christian faith which he had inherited from his pioneering father. Many have stressed this quality in their tributes to him.
I believe it can be said to his credit that Isak Swu never let go Christ’s imperishable injunction –“To give unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar and to God what belonged to God.” In the leadership he sought to give, there can be no doubt about the place he gave to this command, from above the battlefield of politics and life. I believe it will turn out that it made a crucial difference in our crisis, and it will be remembered with gratitude as his special contribution. Nagas will pray that the legacy of his commitment to his faith will be brought to bear on the tough issues still to be resolved in the common journey ahead of all of us.
No matter what has gone wrong thus far that has fragmented us and weakened us, we have a common foundation which is our priceless asset. And that is the struggle for our aspirations to be a people and a nation. The extremely high price paid by our national workers across the board, for the past seven decades, to defend our story and position has gifted us the struggle we have today. Let us not underestimate what the struggle from the start to today has achieved for the Naga people. It is the foundation on which the present generation will be able to build their future.
What was obviously Isak Swu’s deepest concern and vision as he breathed his last has been well expressed by Chairman of GPRN/NSCN Gen. Neokpao Konyak –“ Whether we are prepared to build on a legacy of peace and reconciliation strongly advocated by our leader Isak Chishi Swu, or whether we will again be tempted to pursue a tempestuous route of self-destruction in the name of freedom, …As we prepare to take this legacy forward, I hope and pray that his absence from our midst shall result in a rebirth of Naga consciousness, a sprouting of fresh thinking, a shower of unmeasured unity within our family.”
I have been announced in the programme as giving “Solidarity Speech”. On this historic and precious moment, as we bid farewell to Chairman Isak Swu, I want to fervently call for the forging of a solidarity that will be sustainable and productive because we will decide to “go beyond seeing only where others have hurt us, and be ready to see where we too may have provoked them to hurt us, so that forgiving and being forgiven will become possible.” This was the powerful pledge the Presidents of the different Naga tribes jointly read out at the launching of the Naga National Reconciliation Process in Kohima on December 20, 2001.
If we Nagas will be wise enough to rise to this level of truthfulness, responsibility and realism, reconciliation and unity that the departed leader repeatedly called for will be achieved as a matter of course. If we will not, we will continue to go down the road to “self destruction in the name of freedom,” because “Hurts not transformed are always transferred”.
Kohima was a very small town when Isak Swu came to study in the Government High School. He made lasting friendships with individuals and families here who value him and his family. There is poignancy and grief in the thought that this will be his last earthly passage through the Kohima he grew up in.
ISAK, through this public occasion, Angami people of “Ara Kezievi” bid you our respectful farewell. Be assured Nagas will rise to meet the need for change that will enable Nagas as a people to win together that you yearned for. The urgent question is which leader, party, group or tribe will show truthfulness.
