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Temjen Imna Along (extreme right) in Dimapur on Saturday. (EM Images)[/caption]
Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Oct. 19: Minister for Higher and Technical Education, and Tribal Affairs, Temjen Imna Along has appealed to the people of Nagaland to refrain themselves from spreading rumours and assuming situations when the state is going through an ‘indescribable time’.
He made this appeal while speaking at the Indigenous Games and Cultural Meet 2019 of Central Nagaland Students’ Association (CNSA) at DDSC Stadium in Dimapur on Saturday. The meet was held on the theme: Fraternity.
Along appealed: “When Naga people are going through a time that is indescribable, kindly do not spread rumours and assume that what you know is going to happen. You do not know the catastrophic implications it could have on our people. We know that solution is going to come and pray that good things will happen to the people.”
Let us not try to be ‘heroes’ by writing anything especially in social media, he said. According to him, ‘from morning till night’, propaganda is spread by people ‘whose interest we do not know’.
“There is a time for our people to be still, a place and situation where we need to voice out, and a time where we need to understand. A time like this is for us to find our unity in the diverse tribalistic society that we are today. It is not a time to accuse each other and take political mileage out of one’s wanderlust. We have to be wise; and many a times steadiness alone will give us the opportune time to chart an opportune future,” said Along.
Commenting on the theme of the event, the minister said that the word ‘fraternity’ itself was unique. “The opposite of fraternity is to fret and that is why we have a word call fraternity for CNSA. To fret is to be afraid and to demean yourself and not be able to stand for what is right, true, bold and what is visionary.”
The legislator also advised the CNSA to be careful and not to forget that they have a greater goal, which is not to ‘narrow themselves down to their respective tribe but be a blessing to the Naga community and to the nation’.
“Many a time, the biggest problem that has emerged in our state is the ‘groupism’ among the groups, which is the breaking up of society into smaller, wilder and bolder groups, to pursue our needs and meet our goals. It is a contradictory word to say during this time, but as we have come into being, we have to be not only persistent towards our goals, consistent towards charting the future but also be hard working at the same time,” he shared.
Along observed that the problem with Naga society today was that “we want to achieve our dreams without working hard for it; and we want to come together as a pack of wolves to destroy.”
But he was confident that the CNSA has come together to build each other, to be a fraternity to preserve one’s indigenous culture, games, sports and make the unity stronger than yesterday.
In these hard times, he said, he was thankful that Nagas have come together ‘searching for our traditions, our culture, and indigenousness’.
The legislator maintained that the “real essence of what we have to find today is the essence of our indigenous heritage which should not be compromised in our individual lives. It is not by any law enacted that can protect the people but it is by ourselves that we can protect the indigenousness of our people”.
He also encouraged the non-Naga student community to adopt Nagaland as their ‘karma bhumi’ (Sanskrit term roughly translated as ‘land of action’).
