Recently, I came across an interesting article in Tehelka magazine which outlined how the Mizoram Presbyterian Church has taken the responsibility to ensure that the assembly polls in Mizoram are free and fair.
Following are excerpts from the article:
- A powerful moral watchdog, the Mizoram Peoples’ Forum (MPF) – sponsored by the Mizoram Presbyterian Church Synod will set up offices in every village to monitor the elections.
- “Our main aim is to ensure that free and fair elections are held. We’re working very hard to convince people not to accept gifts from candidates” – Rev. Lalbikmawia, Executive Secretary of the Synod Read the rest of this entry »
It is always a joy to communicate with Nagas who have achieved through hard work and determination. Over the years, I’ve interviewed many such Nagas for Kuknalim.com. We can learn so much from them. They inspire us to do more in life.
One such person I interviewed lately was Amongla Aier, the first Indian Police Service (IPS) officer among Naga women.
“Were I to claim that I am not a Naga, what will be the criteria to decide my identity?” I once asked this question to a fellow Naga friend who was then working on Naga nationalism for her university degree.
Her immediate reaction was “How can you say that you are not a Naga?” She was politically right in her retort though my hypothetical question was not dismissed there and then. It did pick up some discussion, but only to put us and also our audience into a very unsettling and disturbing situation. I was grappling with the issue of my Naga Identity then. Not that I doubted my Naga identity but that I was struggling to find some grounds on the basis of which various Naga tribal groups have come together to assert our unique identity and our rights to freedom of self-determination. Read the rest of this entry »
I always felt good people die early. May be there is a need for good people up there!
Last two days have been hectic, stressful and so much filled with emotions and pain. I lost my good friend Theja, a final year Information Technology student who already got placement in Satyam Info Systems. He was young, lively and was looking forward to work in one of India’s top companies. He had made plans to celebrate Christmas with his family this winter. And then comes death –when it is most unexpected. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s not every day that we get to see a Naga designer making waves at a National Fashion week. The Delhi Fashion week this year featured our very own Atsu Sekhose. Read the rest of this entry »
Every time I try to make a sense of our Naga culture, an inexplicable sense of procrastination somehow takes the better of me. Until now, I have kept myself from plunging into it. There appears to be some kind of ‘no trespass’ signboard attached to it, some kind of uncertainty or uneasiness about it, the kind that is perhaps normally associated with unpleasant discovery or realization. Some truths are not always a delightful thing to discover after all. Often certain truths are found to be covered with layers and layers of narratives, narratives involving lies and deceptions as well.
Thechano Kithan’s Whispering Rocks.Unistar Books, Chandigarh, India, 2006, pp. 62.
Perhaps the title of this collection of poems, “Whispering Rocks,” is best explained by the author herself in the opening paragraph of her introduction to the book.It refers to the “unshakable strength” of mute rocks that break their native silence in a language all their own because they can no longer bear their secret longings.If this explanation does not fully satisfy, the reader who becomes privy to the whispering rocks will soon discover the aptness of the image as a metaphor for the poet’s (or poetic persona’s) own lived experiences out of which these poems emerged.Read the rest of this entry »
A Review of Abraham Lotha’s History of Naga Anthropology (1832-1947).
Chumpo Museum Publication, Dimapur, Nagaland, 2007. Rs. 250.
History of Naga Anthropology (1832-1947)is a short monograph on writings about Nagas by British colonial administrators and ethnographers from 1832, the year Nagas first came in contact with the British, to 1947, the year the Raj dissolved and the British officially left the Naga Hills.The book is based on research Abraham Lotha did for the master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University in New York.He is currently working on his PhD dissertation at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Read the rest of this entry »
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