Easterine Kire
Beloved Nagas, especially our three beloved sons who died at the hands of our policemen, we mourn your lives cut short like young promises before they were brought to fulfillment. May the comforter comfort your loved ones and may this never befall any family again. No parent should have to bury their children. What a heavy-hearted week it has been. It is difficult to focus on other things with the images of Kohima burning, and the Dimapur shootings, and the Longleng wounded on our minds. Because these are the places we love in spite of, and the wounded are our people, our blood, our flesh.
While all that was happening, there were some of our people bemoaning the fact that the national media was not covering our tragedy. Well, when they finally came in what did national media do? They projected us as barbaric, wild, former head-hunters still fighting amongst ourselves. They came in with preconceived ideas and collected images of Kohima burning to confirm their theories of us to their readers and viewers. Next time (even while one fervently hopes there will never be a next time) let us not wish for national coverage, unless we want more of national misrepresentation, continued reinforcement of the Naga stereotypical image and more creations of divisions among us. The same media that blew up the 5th March incident and made the whole world aghast at the barbarity of the Naga people wants to repeat the stereotype, sensationalize and interpret their idea of ‘Naga’ to the watching world. The proverbial wool pulled over their readers’ and viewers’ eyes was that Nagas were up in arms against their womenfolk. Will the real Nagaland please stand up? (And please take note how our own newspapers were treading very carefully and sensitively so they did not stir up anything with sensational reporting.)
We have to learn collective responsibility to accept accountability for collective actions especially when those actions were wrong. We elected our leaders: if we call them corrupt we are part of that corruption too, since we are the electorate, and they are our representatives. It stands to reason that they must also be representing something negative in us, our acceptance of a little corruption in the system, so long as our agenda is fulfilled, so long as our files are cleared, etc, etc. We have to identify with the mob that burned government buildings in Kohima, instead of standing to one side and judging them. The killings of our three boys could have been prevented. How? By the simple action of not electing leaders who reneged on their duties to our people and caused the utter frustration that erupted in the carnage of the past few days.
And India has to learn to make Nagaland state accountable, and not just expect responsibility from her. Delhi is a bad stepmother as stepmothers go. She gives one toy to one child and gives a bigger toy to the other child and steps back to gleefully watch them fight over it. Because they will do her job for her, they will finish each other off without a backward glance at her. A good stepmother would give responsibilities but also demand accountability by sending in people to physically confirm if good roads were really being built in remote places, (so that the sick can get medical help easily and not have to bleed to death in childbirth, my heart still weeps as I recount this case) and if hospitals and dispensaries have been made available with the money given for it, if every village is getting electricity, running water and free education. The very basics for human survival.
Let us learn. Let us learn together. Let us learn to live against the forces that are constantly judging us and condemning us and trying to make us stop believing in Naga brotherhood. We are bigger than that.
