Benito Z. Swu
It is very disheartening when it is not just any politically motivated fly by wire opinion maker but a local daily editorial that starts casting negative aspirations on the relevance of small regional parties in India. It sums up to no new phenomenon when the ruling national party, be it the Congress in the past or the BJP today, imposes itself upon small regional parties in the smaller states of India. In a democracy as in India, it is a given. And even more vulnerable are the small regional parties of the land locked north eastern states.
Regionalism in Nagaland, however, is, all together, a different concept. It was there even since before India’s independence and has evolved under different nomenclatures as according to the needs of the times to what it is today as the NPF. The regional charms in Nagaland can never ever fade or change with a change or no change in the national scene of India. Grandfather Phizo’s Naga nation theory with its DNA intact lives as it was and is today, and will live on by what we call it as regionalism, which is the other name of nationalism.
Whatever the proponent of the views advocating otherwise, the younger lot of Naga people have changed. We definitely are no longer lambs to the slaughter. The ease with which the seeds of discord could be sowed among tribes in the past was because of ignorance and fear. And today there is no more ignorance and fear. Today, there is the will to sacrifice. Today there is the will to not be exploited without reasoning but to exploit for the good and the whole and to do one’s small bit to bring about real change. No individual, or group, or any national political party will find it convenient to even dare dismantle the Naganess which we call regionalism for the simple reason that it was and is no less as sacred as religion.
Today’s Naga generation inherited a corrupted society. But all thanks and glory to the Almighty God, regionalism in Nagaland has evolved to a point where only the good must and can happen - where corruption in all its true meanings can be fought and checked. Yours truly sincerely believes that the 72,687 and growing figure of educated unemployed Nagas has this one vision of seeing a future only in this fight against corruption. When our, this evolved regionalism, needs to simmer to bring about this desired change, any talk about the fading charms of regionalism in Nagaland’s context is plain anti-Naga.
Our expressions can never become lamentations because, for us Nagas, this is the renaissance era. Maybe in the earlier generation Nagas, the times then saw to it that ignorance remained bliss. But we can be so sure that God was on their side for the very simple reason that we are existing today. Let us not belittle ourselves thereby belittling our fathers, gone and present, by belittling our regionalism as a fading charm. Everything will fade, but not Nagaism, which is only in regionalism. Today, NPF is not just a mere political party. It is the outcome of the very evolvement of Naga regionalism or nationalism. Let us together make it count.
