By Dr. Paul Pimomo, Professor of English and Co-Director, Africana and Black Studies, CWU, Ellensburg, WA, USA

Introduction:

Honorable Chief Minister, Mr. Neiphiu Rio, council of ministers, political and civil leaders, my dear overseas friends, and ladies and gentlemen:

At this time in Washington State in the U. S., it’s midnight and I would be dreaming. It’s a real joy for me to be here in Kohima, a dream come true. I’m up here at the podium this morning, instead of down there listening, not because I know more about Naga society than the rest of you. I’ve lived in self-exile for twenty-five years in the United States. On the other hand, you live and work here, you run the government, you are the leaders of the Naga society; you know better than I do the needs of our people. But in general, everybody in this room knows as well as the next person what Nagaland needs for a better future: unity and peace, hard work and honest living, and goodwill toward one another. I have no new ideas to share with you today, only a new voice for the same truths in a different context from a different set of experiences. I make a living teaching literature, so I’m going to tell you stories from different parts of the world, including Nagaland, to illustrate the two central goals of human social life throughout history, namely the common good and personal happiness through acceptance and respect in the community. Most of you will recognize the stories, so I ask your indulgence. I shall end my talk with a comment on what I see as the most pressing need of our generation, because without it Nagas have no future as a people.

Being a Naga in the world sometimes feels like an ant among elephants in the forest. You feel tiny, vulnerable, almost non-existent. You can be crushed under foot by all sorts of animals, not because they hate you but because they don’t know you exist. So as Nagas, we learn to do two things to survive: First, like ants, we have to come together and build a large mound or anthill so that even elephants take notice of it and don’t walk all over us. Second, like some ants, we have to adapt, evolve, and grow wings with which to take flight and soar even above the elephants. I’m talking about imagination, vision, and acquired worldclass professional skills. Wings. And if there are enough of us who can fly around the anthill at the approach of other animals, we can ward off threats and protect our city and our spot in the forest. Every creature in the forest knows ants can bite and sting. Ants know that too, but that doesn’t carry us far. Every ant knows that it cannot survive alone; it must be part of a large anthill. This is true especially for small groups of people like the Nagas.

Let me say bluntly that Nagas have not built a viable modern community; we are too busy tearing down each other and carting away for ourselves nature’s goods in our land and the money that comes in from India, forcing the vast majority of people in the villages and townships into poverty, and an increasing number of individuals with wings to flee the anthill of our homeland. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. That’s why we are all here today. We are here because we believe in the possibility of a thriving Naga homeland. We believe in the common good of the Naga people and we know time is running out on us.

PART ONE: The Common Good.

If we were to look at world history we will see that every group of people that have contributed to human civilization has had the common good of the community as one of its core values. This is the case despite the diversity of cultures and systems of governance.

Ancient Greece
One of the earliest myths in the Greco-Roman tradition on the purpose of social life comes from the fifth century BCE Greek Sophist Protagoras. In his “Great Speech” Protagoras tells of a primordial time when the gods formed creatures and animals, including human beings, from the elements of the earth. They then appointed Prometheus and Epimetheus to distribute various abilities and gifts to all creatures in ways that would ensure the survival of each kind. Epimetheus messed up the distribution work. He was so liberal with the gifts in the beginning that by the time he reached the humans he had nothing left to give them. Humans were left naked and unprovided for. When his friend Prometheus saw the defenseless humans, he took pity and decided to steal a survival kit from heaven for them. Taking Prometheus’ gifts of fire and technical skills, humans were able to make food and build shelter for themselves. But they still lacked one critical thing: the ability to organize themselves into a viable group, not even against the threat of decimation from bigger and stronger animals.

Zeus feared humans would become extinct. So he sent Hermes to them with the gifts of justice and shame, that is to say, a sense of social right and wrong and mutual respect, which of course are the basis for community and government. Not wanting to commit Epimetheus’ earlier mistake, Hermes asked Zeus if he should give the gifts to every human being or just to a select few. Zeus’ command was clear: “To all, let all share in them. There would be no cities if only a few shared in them as with the other crafts. And lay down the law from me to kill anyone not able to share in shame and justice as a disease to the state” (Luschnig).

As you can see, Protagoras’ story is clearly an argument for a democratic form of government based on two foundational beliefs: the god-given human ability to appreciate justice as fundamental in our dealings with each other and the human responsibility to reason and to contribute to the well-being of the whole. These beliefs were the basis for the Greek city-state.

Judeo-Christian
A reinforcement of the theme of justice and reciprocity in the Judeo-Christian tradition can be found in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, especially verses 12 to 17:

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. . . .[and so on].

Later the New Testament expanded on what it means to be an upright person and a follower of Jesus. This is shown tellingly in Acts 4 and 5, which describe the practice of egalitarian community among the early Christians:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was with them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put them at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need (Acts 4: 32-35).

For Ananias and Sapphira, the couple who cheated, the punishment was dire. What happened to them is reminiscent of Zeus’ law of capital punishment for people who become “a disease to the state” by their inability “to share in shame and justice.”

Buddhism and Jainism
Eastern belief traditions, especially Buddhism and Jainism from the sixth century BCE on, anticipated the New Testament teaching of benevolent empathy. Following Buddhism, Nattaputta Vardhama (popularly known as Mahavira), founder of Jainism, emphasized non-violence as the basis of life. The sacred Jain canon, The Acaranga Sutra, has a section on The True Doctrine of Non-violence, Ahimsa. The doctrinal link between it and “Thou Shall Not Kill” (of Exodus 20) is obvious. The Ahimsa rule says that “One should not injure, subjugate, enslave, torture or kill.” It was taught by Mahavira as a basic human responsibility necessary to the viability of any community. The Arhats (Blessed Ones) considered non-violence as the foundation of all knowledge. They proclaimed it as “axiomatic.” One of the earliest articulations of what has come to be known as The Golden Rule can be found in verses 25 and 26 of the Ahimsa chapter whose purpose is to teach empathy, to refrain from causing suffering and pain to others because no one wants to suffer and experience pain.

My point in reviewing and quoting from familiar ancient texts from both East and West is to suggest that the principle of the common good, starting with peaceable co-existence, was considered the primary universal human value.

Let’s move to Africa
Peace and the common good are further confirmed by beliefs indigenous societies kept current and transmitted down the generations through oral literature. It is common knowledge that traditional African folk cultures, despite their variety, believed in the continuity of life among the living, the dead, and people yet to be born. For this reason, the path in an African village leading to the burial ground was considered sacred. Chinua Achebe’s short story “Dead Men’s Path” is partly a retelling of this folk belief. In it, the village priest explains to the arrogant headmaster of a colonial school, which sits on the village path, why the path should not be closed: “The whole life of this village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born.”

Hence it was taboo to desecrate it or block it, for doing so would endanger the wellbeing of the village community — present, past, and future.

Indigenous Societies
An example of a similar worldview from another continent is the Native-American story of Gluskabe and Grandmother Woodchuck, narrated by Joseph Bruchac in “The Circle is the Way to See.” It is said that Gluskabe, the prototypical human being, had a hard time hunting, so he asked his Grandmother to make him a good hunting bag. After several unsuccessful tries, Grandmother Woodchuck plucked hair from her own belly and made one for Gluskabe. The young man promptly went out to the forest and announced to all the animals that the world was going to end and they would all die unless they came into his bag. All the animals heeded his call and walked into his bag. Gluskabe proudly took the magic catch to his grandmother, saying he needn’t ever hunt again because they had more meat than they would want for the rest of their lives.

But Grandmother Woodchuck was not pleased. She told the young man: “You have not done well, Grandson. We have plenty of meat now, but what about the future? What about the children and the children’s children? They will die of hunger. You cannot do this; you must do what will help our children’s children.”

Grandmother Woodchuck went on to tell her grandson that every generation has the responsibility of weighing the consequences of their actions on the land and its creatures for seven generations to come. It is said that Gluskabe obeyed his grandmother and did the right thing by releasing the animals back to the forest.

Grandmother Woodchuck’s long vision of intergenerational responsibility represents Native American social teaching. Bruchac goes on to show that, like Grandmother Woodchuck, Native-American oral culture functions from a worldview which sees not only all human beings as interconnected, but human beings as part of an interwoven natural circle of soil, water, air, light, plants, insects, and animals of all description. In short, humans are part of the natural order, not above it. We are earthlings not extra-terrestrials. Hence the need to recognize that the circle of life is the way to see.

PART TWO
The Naga Story: The Village and Colonial Legacy

Coming now to Nagaland and our culture, the Naga story can be seen as an abridged version of the world’s. In one lifetime, Nagas have traveled a civilizational journey that took some groups thousands of years. The journey from the rudiments of life in a self-contained Naga village to the Global Village of space travel, live global broadcast, the internet and email, mobile phone, instant messaging and twitter, is truly the stuff of dreams. But this highly contracted Naga journey has the two guiding principles in the global story of civilization that I’ve have been talking about: the Naga village was a model institution of the common good , and commitment to justice and human rights is evident in the Naga struggle for our identity against colonial occupation and postcolonial domination.

The Village community:

Like all peoples of the world, Nagas, too, have myths and folklore associated with our origin, migration, and settlement in the homeland. And, as important, the values that define us as a people. We are all familiar with the story of the founding of Khezhakenoma. Leaving aside the other details, I’d like to remind you of how Koza and his family were blessed with a Sacred Stone, which miraculously doubled whatever crop they placed upon it. You will also recall what happened to the stone years later. Mother Koza saw her sons quarreling bitterly over whose turn it was to spread the rice on the Sacred Stone. She realized then that the stone was becoming the source of greed and hostility among her sons, so she exploded it by lighting a big fire under it.

The thing to note here is the challenge Koza’s sons faced in sharing the Sacred Stone, the abundant source of the common good. That Mother Koza would destroy the multiplier of goods for the sake of harmony among her sons is a telling event. Like Grandmother Woodchuck in the Native American story, Mother Koza took a long view of life and acted decisively and with prescience. She got rid of the source of discord among the Koza people. The absence of the Sacred Stone did not destroy the Kozas, however. We’re told that they increased and multiplied and built six more villages, and some more and so forth, so that many of us sitting here today are the descendants of the Koza people.

Since the time of the Kozas, until recently, the village was the Naga universe; the rest could only be imagined. The village was the center of Naga life to a degree that constituted our very identity as human beings. (My friend Visier Sanyu, here, has done good research on this subject). Even today, economic circumstances have forced many of us to leave our villages, but the village has not left us. The yearning for community quintessencialized in the Naga village is deep-seated in the Naga being.

There is a reason for this of course. Our forebears did not have a literate educational system in the form of colleges and universities. But they had an effective oral and practical system of education within the village community. Those of us who are familiar with Easterine Iralu’s historical novel titled A Village Remembered know that it is based on Khonoma village, but we recognize our own villages in it. I want to quote a passage from it on the role of the traditional Naga dorm parent. He is teaching the boys of the Morung about citizenship in the village community. Here are Apfu’s words:

If you are at a community feast and take more than two pieces of meat, shame on you. Others will call you glutton, worse, they will think to themselves, ‘has no one taught this boy about greed?’ This is the key to right living – avoiding excess in anything – be content with your share of land and fields. People who move boundary stones bring death upon themselves. Every individual has a social obligation to the village. When you are a few years older and your hearts are strong within you, you will take the responsibility of guarding the village while others will go to earn a great name for our village. Your roles are different but each is as important as the other. Never be arrogant, respect yourself sufficiently so that you fulfill the responsibilities of manhood. (25)

Naga leaders, starting with the Chief Minister and his cabinet, state legislators, Naga national leaders, and church and civil society elders are the modern-day parents and Apfus of Naga society. A relevant question then is: How much of the Ten Commandments, how much of the traditional Morung guardians, how much Acts 4 and 5 Christianity do we see in the lives of our nationalist leaders, in the elite class of the state government, and among the church leaders in Nagaland? I’m not suggesting that there isn’t; only asking how much? For Nagas to survive as a people, our leaders must talk straight and live straight, and lead straight. They can’t just talk the talk; they must walk the walk.

The truth is, Naga society is in a crisis of leadership – of visionary leadership — for more than a quarter century: leadership with a plan to get us to the vision. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems everybody wants to be a leader but is clueless about the destination and the way to get there. And how can we talk about the common good of a people without good leadership — a leadership founded on values developed within communities and handed down to succeeding generations? For us Nagas, those values come from the village community, further reinforced by Christian tenets of equality, justice and mercy. Owe to us leaders of this generation of Nagas who break the sacred tradition of the community’s well being. Let me quote the words of the most powerful living person on earth, President Barack Obama, who said in his inaugural speech on January 20: “We cannot escape history. What we do will go down in history whether we like it or not.” This truth applies to the present generation of Naga leaders as well.

Colonial Legacy and Human Rights

The second goal of social life is to secure a community’s dignity as a people and respect for the individual within the community. Nagas entered modern world history in the form of British colonialism and American Protestant Christianity in the 19th century. And since 1947, the major issue has been the Indo-Naga political conflict. More than 60 years later, two things have clearly emerged. First, it is crucial for India to recognize that Naga resistance to outside domination has become constitutive of the Naga way of life. That’s who we are. Second, for Nagas, it is time to take responsibility for our lives in the present and for the future, including the kind of role we wish to play in the unavoidably interconnected world of the twenty-first century.

Let’s try to sort out both points in a nutshell. History matters. The Naga experience of being twice colonized has compounded and bedeviled the Naga national movement and Nagaland State politics. It was British colonialism that gave birth to Naga nationalism and it was postcolonial India’s domination that gave birth to armed resistance against India.

Let’s face it, the Indian government’s position on Naga self-determination was colonialist from the start. The first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, failed to recognize, so have successive Indian leaders since, the irony of the then newly independent India’s refusal to allow Nagas the same freedom from British colonial rule that it celebrated for itself in 1947. Nehru used the Indian military to stamp out a peaceful democratic Naga movement for independence. Nagas responded by raising a resistance army of our own. India countered by creating the State of Nagaland to de-legitimize the movement. After all these decades, we are still in a political impasse, more accurately, a very uneven stalemate.

Following a pragmatic of the doable rather than fanaticism of absolute principle, we can state the positions of the two sides dispassionately in hopes of getting out of the deadly impasse. First, Nagas don’t have to be an independent nation, separate from India, any more than, say, Sikkimese have to be. Second, equally possible, Nagaland doesn’t have to be a part of India any more than, say, Myanmar has to be a part of India. Third, it is easy to see that behind India’s stand is political expediency given the geopolitical facts of the region. Fourth, Naga commitment to human rights, specifically the right of self-determination, is something postcolonial India should be able to appreciate even if it is not politically expedient for India. The question is, where do both sides go from here?

Three Options.

Option One. India can relent its tough stand, invoke article 3 of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, allow a fair and internationally monitored Nagas referendum on the right of self-determination on the lines of the 1951 plebiscite (a lot of things have happened and changed since). Either way, India can take the result and do its best to help Nagas transition into self-sufficiency. This will be the most honorable and dutiful route for India to take. It will earn the gratitude of Nagas and the admiration from the world community.

Option Two. Nagas can give up our demand for sovereignty and enter into a fresh collaborative relationship with India on the principle of mutual benefit. For this to work, all three segments of the Naga society – Naga nationalists, state government, and civil society – must come together to deliberate and unite behind a new arrangement – whatever that may be.

Option Three. Do neither. Go on with things as they are and let them fester to the bitter end. This is the option to hell. And yet this is the road we are on as of now. Both sides are adamantly locked into their respective positions, and each expects the other to change while doing nothing on its part to change the unjust, inhuman situation they have created. The only way out is for both Indians and Nagas to get their heads out of the sand. That is to say, grasp the problem as something that can be amicably resolved through mutual respect and recognition of each other’s wellbeing and rights. That would change the way the problem appears to both sides. It would lead to a vision of a brighter future for both parties.

For India, Option One has crucial moral and historical implications. Indians might realize that their government’s policies and actions in Nagaland have led to too much suffering and caused unspeakable cruelty on both sides and have therefore created a moral burden for them and for India. They might see then that for India to refuse to settle the Naga Question once and for all is to be unworthy of its illustrious past as well as of its present status as a leading postcolonial nation in the world. They might also realize that having strong, friendly neighbors in the Nagas to the northeastern border will be good for India’s future. If nothing else does, as I said above, the 2007 UN Declaration on indigenous peoples’ rights offers India a timely platform for starting a new transformative relation with Nagas. Does India have the courage and the wisdom to act?

For Nagas, the economic advantages of Option Two are even greater. Tremendous opportunities may be had by aligning ourselves with India, a fast-growing economic power in the world alongside China, Japan, and South Korea. India is already improving relations with China, the leading nation in Asia. India is an official observer of China’s powerful Shanghai Co-operation Organization. Both countries are members of the ASEAN Development Bank, which, like the Bank of the South in Latin America and the Development Funds of Kuwait, UAE, and Dubai, not to mention the European Union, have begun to challenge to once unrivaled power of the IMF and the World Bank. In other words, the economic geography of the world is beginning to be redrawn at the present time in favor of Asia, particularly China and India, and an agreeable resolution of the Indo-Naga problem will doubtless put Nagas in an advantageous position. One caveat, however. A headlong rush into global capitalism without thought of its effects on other aspects of Naga society, especially the erosion of the traditional values of community and respect for one another, may not be worth it in the long run. But for the present, the immediate tasks are more urgent.

Conclusion:
To wrap up, historically speaking, twenty-first century Nagas are the political children of British colonialism and postcolonial India. Together, and with our help, they have exploded the Sacred Stone of our ancestral village community, and we are a groping nation of people killing one another and fighting over scarce goods. We can decide to stay mired in this dark, violent pit without exit, or, like our ancestors of Khezhakenoma, we can move on to build new villages in the brave, new global society. Nagas must choose quickly and wisely, or be a lost nation. There are any number of things we need to do, but two are foundational and indispensable: first, stopping the inter-factional violence; second, unifying the three constituent segments of Naga society (Nationalists, state government, and civil society) under one shared system of governance. Once this is done, we can begin the task of Naga nation building, which we hope will be an improved version of the Naga village in the 21st century.

That would require change both internal and external. And there are inspiring models to draw from other parts of the world – the African American experience, for instance.

African Americans made their long, painful march to freedom, human rights, and finally into leadership of the wealthiest, most powerful country on earth where their ancestors were once slaves. They did this through commitment to community and to one another and through faith in God. From slavery, when they were uprooted from Africa and orphaned through slave auction blocks, they cried out in songs of lamentation and grief as in “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.” And when their masters introduced them to Christianity, they empowered themselves through unwavering faith in the steadfast goodness of Jesus. They relentlessly held on to their dignity as children of God and worked their way to physical and spiritual freedom in the person of Jesus, as testified by their spirituals of hope and freedom like “Steal Away to Jesus.” That was the 300-plus years of African American journey from the cotton fields and swamps of the South to the White House.

Nagas have had it much easier despite the challenges to our rights and dignity as a people. But we have a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the world. In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic speech, “I Have a Dream,” and declared that the Negro was not yet free in America and that America had given blacks a bad check. 1963 was also the year Nagaland became a state in the Indian Union and many Nagas cried foul on India. In the United States, the government and the people heard Martin Luther King’s cry, and African Americans marched on ahead – disciplined and united in faith and in a nonviolent struggle. This year, in 2009, forty-four years later, the United States has its first Black President, Barack Obama. This year, 2009, forty-four years after the creation of Nagaland State, the Government of India is as adamant as ever on the Naga political question and the Nagaland state government is presiding over a society almost entirely dependent on India. Nagas are still under military domination by India as well as at its financial mercy. Naga nationalist factions are engaged in a deadly confrontation with each other. And the Naga people in towns and villages have become powerless prisoners of the system from forces within and outside the Naga society. Colonialism ended for Indians, but not for Nagas. Religion, which is supposed to see people through the hardest of times, seems ineffectually, tantalizingly caught up in rituals of worship and endless prayers with precious little work – bereft of practice. We’re like ants without an anthill, scattered and trampled upon by every animal in the land.

But Nagas, too, have a dream — of a peaceful Nagaland where every child, woman, and man is fed and housed reasonably comfortably; where the traditional values of community and respect for the individual prevail, and where we are free to work and prosper, to worship and praise God, and to create and celebrate our rich cultures and nature’s bountiful gifts in these hills. We need to start building the mound, our own anthill in the global village. For that, we need everyone’s commitment and contribution starting with, I repeat, first, Naga Unity — bringing all three sections of the Naga society under one political system. We cannot fly with one wing alone. Second: learning to live in the fast changing and an interdependent global society. Nagas cannot live alone. We need our neighbors and the rest of the world, starting with the good will of Indians and India.

To the young people in this room, as a Naga elder, and in the tradition of the Morung parent advising the youth, I like to say: No matter what, hold on firmly to “Thou shall not kill” and the noble path of non-violence. Whatever you do, please don’t kill for Nagaland; and don’t die for Nagaland either; instead, live and contribute toward a better Nagaland in whatever way you can.

To our valiant national workers, I have no words of my own but those of the Israeli writer and peace maker Amos Oz: “wherever right clashes with right, a value higher than right ought to prevail – and this value is life itself.”

To the state government and the business elite, I have no right to tell you anything other than to voice the cry of the common people of Nagaland. Even a casual observer of our society can see there’s something radically wrong with the system of distributing the goods and resources of the state. For the sake of our people who are so much in need of the basic things of life like safe drinking water, roads, healthcare, food and housing, stop the excessive, crippling corruption. Reform the hugely unfair and immoral distribution system so that a livable portion of the goods trickles down to the villagers and the poor in our towns. Institute a just distribution mechanism with an independent monitoring agency, something that allows for responsibility and self-respect in public service and hope for the common people.

Lastly, where there is life, change is possible. But no one can change us unless we have the will and a plan to follow through. We have faltered as a people because we do not have a will and a plan for success. We know success doesn’t just happen; success is made. The best others can do is appeal to our better natures; they cannot change us, they cannot make us succeed. Change and success start with us, must happen in us and through us. Today is all we’ve got; tomorrow doesn’t belong to us; for that we depend on grace. Let us have the courage to change. Let us plan for success starting today.

Thank you for your patience!