Every educated person knows the pitfalls of being quoted out of context. It’s simple to sit back, pay no attention to what a person says or writes, then suddenly come to life when a word or sentence catches one’s attention and use it, out of context, to give a totally different colour to the original intent of the speaker or author.One famous quote, often taken out of context, is from Isaac Asimov’s famous sci-fi series,” I, Robot”. The original sentence is,”I see that you instinctively follow the great error-that the machine knows all.” People quote only, “The machine knows all.” Which, as anyone can see, gives a totally different meaning from that which the author meant to convey.
The Eastern Mirror has published the first part of a letter titled,” Debunking the Deniers of Patriarchy in Naga Culture”,(16-1-17) in which the last of my letters on Women’s Reservation has been mentioned and attacked. The author has not been named so far( persumably to be named at the conclusion of the series), but having read the letter, I feel I would not be jumping the gun in issuing a few clarifications.
1. I have never, in all my letters, which the Editors or, in the case of The Nagaland Page, the Editress, were kind enough to publish, denied that Naga Society was a Patriarchy. To my knowledge, all societies, races or cultures are either Patriarchical or Matriarchical; so the fact that Naga Culture is based on Patriarchical lines has no bearing on whether women should to entitled to reservation in any way, shape or form.
2. I have never stated that Women’s Reservation was either non-violative of or against Article 371A of The Indian Constitution. All I have ever stated was that the concerns of the Tribal Organisations should be addressed.
3. I have never claimed that women, in Nagaland, were on equal par, in all fields, with the men of Nagaland. All I have meant to convey was that The Women’s Reservation Bill was passed by Parliament because it recognised the plight of the vast majority of Indian Women and that Naga Women could not claim the same level of discrimination against them by Naga Men; and that we needed a different mechanism to ensure that women were represented in the various elected bodies.
4. If the abovementioned author had taken a little of the stupendous amount of effort he/she seems to have put into showing off his/her erudition and scholarship, to go through all the opinions expressed on Women’s Reservation in the various newspapers of Nagaland, or if he/she had the decency to look up my name in the search boxes of the websites of the self-same newspapers; he/she would have discovered that I had already written two previous letters on the same subject. And he/she would have found out that I was the only one to have even suggested a way out of the current trouble we are in.
5. I stand by all my views and opinions on the J.A.C.W.R. expressed in my last letter. I believe that I have been proved right by the fact that the J.A.C.W.R. has decided to withdraw its Special Leave Petition from The Supreme Court. I once again put forth the assumption that there are radical elements within the J.A.C.W.R. who have their own axe to grind, and having done so, they are willing to leave the vast majority of the women who have been unable to file nominations in the lurch.
I would trouble the abovementioned author and all those who would take my words out of context to know that if you insinuate, in any way, that I am against Empowering Women; you insult my late father, a barely literate man, who ensured that all his ten daughters got the best, in life and in education, he could afford, my mother, who stood shoulder to shoulder with my father in a time when Naga women were not allowed out of their kitchens, my sisters, who stood and stand equally strong with their husbands, my brothers-in-law who, uniformly, accepted their wives as equals, my brothers, who treated and treat their wives as their equals and seem to favour their daughters over their sons, my many neices, whose many achievements, no matter how small, have been obtained fair and square. And, most importantly, you insult me, a man who has always treated women with the respect and deference they deserve, a man who treats his wife as an equal in every way and a man who is trying to raise his three daughters to strive for and achieve the best that they can in life, without letting the fact that they are women hamper them and without expecting things to be handed to them on a platter because they are women.
