Kekhrie Yhome
Th. Muivah today epitomizes the sum total energy of historical frustration with NSCN-IM peace talking since 1997 for solution. Collective memory is always objective and hence Indo-Naga talk is becoming unimaginative. Added to this social audit, warring factions are ever ready to heap rubbishy but third-degree Leviticusean profanities. Plus a petty bourgeoisie moralist class occasionally stunts public discourse with wise glamour, besides offering no direction. Otherwise, although all Nagas may have been affected by and large, the vast majority have no stakes or interest to what is going on. Fraught with everyday existence, politics is expensive and is limited to subsistence minus fear and trouble. A fresh generation also surfaces – little knowing, highly indifferent, but charged with disparate attitude for life. The irony nonetheless continues – to live and flourish in peace – only solution can effectuate a beginning.
What kind of solution is honourable to end conflict? Is there a possible formula framework – notwithstanding parleys of give and take – ultimate to satisfy all? Secondly, who is mandated to behalf a referendum sort of final endorsement? Is late socialism and political consciousness necessary toward such opportune consensus? Thirdly, what is acceptable in the pragmatics of present politics? Is a willingness to understand difficulties of India directly implied or is it addendum per se pre-1947 Naga position? What is the reality of contemporary politics? These questions aggregate the entirety of historical frustration and endangerment. Answers are again Naga-centric because it operates on the principle of desire and hope, to see change for once and for all. A deserving hurry?
Is ‘honourable’ concomitant to acceptability? Naga freedom struggle is interloped with wounds of what ifs: Coupland Plan, Hydari’s 9-Point Agreement, musings of Gandhiji and Rajagopalachari, Indira’s Bhutan-type cliché, Suisa’s Plan, 16-Point of Memorandum, etc. A monolithic narrative in straight line interweaves what began with ‘leave us alone’ metamorphosing into ‘Ura Uvie’ to ‘nothing short of sovereignty’, sealing no room for alternatives or discounting of realist perspectives, despite changing political equations. The usual Naga panorama of honourable is boldly enveloped in seeking recognition of historical rights and wrongs even so shyly not knowing what exactly it can translate into. Yet global politics and therefore capital times have moved – the movement failed to yield any ends during decolonization era or in using the spoils of Cold War – and Nagas are perpetually stuck with the benchmark of a political consciousness engineered at a time when anti-colonial fever worldwide was at its most infectious. Till today, with no solid outcome, political right holders have meticulously vented exasperation with accusations, foolishly, but also illustrating that it is easy to start a faction if imprudence verges on hatefully attempting to destroy the other completely.
As NSCN-IM entered into parley with Government of India – there was no dearth of incrimination hurled by warring factions claiming ‘sovereignty’ has been compromised! Today, a miniscule attempt to redefine sovereignty preludes – foregrounding post-EU governance generics like ‘quasi-federal’ or ‘supra’ and ‘shared sovereignty’– even with unabashed attempt to indigenize these terms through historical inference. These localized definitions are however constrained apologetics – cautiously but heuristically toying an entrenched sentiment through subtle public indoctrination and clearly conveying that a totally new lateral thinking on sovereignty is pertinent. Obviously, there is no need to hermeneutize or tautalogize ‘sovereignty’. Jean-Luc Marion warns: “[C]oncepts are mortal too. They can die of insignificance or at least become pure aporias.” The eminent deadlock for NSCN-IM today is their abject inability to explicate semantics of sovereignty. It has given arrows to shoot upon Muivah & Swu’s Achilles heels because NSCN was formed purely on anti-Shillong accordant stance. The shame of chewing one’s own words – and needless a feasibility of being forgotten as redundancies in history – seems all too clear, with warring factions and public opinion stemming, with carefully crafted and guarded process becoming apparently covetous.
As of today, only NSCN-IM is in status to provide structural leadership quality or experience to foray diplomatic pre-negotiation talks with Government of India. If NSCN-IM cannot broker a deal today, there is no need to hope that rival factions can bring a better deal. Valorising or patronizing that one can settle better than NSCN-IM is merely crying sour, with either impudence or envy. The fear of being forgotten befalls all, but mostly for those who see themselves as soldiers of a cause. Wanting to be heard is no excuse to get emotional with today’s realities. Vitriolic and virulent antagonisms – psychical, physical and linguistic – will lead nowhere – as it is just baby cries seeking attention. One does not become a King just by wearing the gown. The instance of ceasefire terms between NSCN-K (pre-split) and Government of India contrast with NSCN-IM spells acute polarities. NNC, original and duplicates, today, is but a busload of yore having no human resource or interest to even enter into talks with Government of India. In appreciating lifetime sacrifices and services contributed to a national cause, it does not automatically qualify as regal entitlement or certification of expertise and proficiency. Tomorrow another faction may do better than NSCN-IM; but there is no need to gamble waiting for future, dripped in fratricidal bloodshed.
However, NSCN-IM leadership is not knowledge equipped to specifically negotiate and has no think-tank to adjunct matters of governance and instruments of States relations. NSCN-IM is arrogant in perceiving themselves as the lone warriors competent to discuss intricate matters of polity, finance, legalities, and governance (read “competencies”). By the end of the day, it is just a shopping list for corporate and petty minds. NSCN-IM is also foolish in interacting with only those who mince what one wants to hear – especially post-Rio Naga civil society, apparently infested with wannabes – each gloating in parallel desire-space of narcissism, and carefully guarding its cultivated space of self-importance, knowing that beyond aspiration is one of denial and improbability. The instance of Naga Hoho, mooted into existence initially as a system blueprint for indigenous federal representation, is now but a select consultancy firm with nondescript lobbyism as its divisional extension. NSCN-IM is selfish in its unpreparedness to acknowledge others’ contribution or share the task of responsibility lucratively as ‘shared common’ ends. The begrudging principle of ‘impossible sharing from the same plate’ is Greek. To be powerful but insecure is the perfect recipe for enmity and regress.
Last Christmas, Santa-India was tipped to bring goodies, of wine and purse – the lethargic silence of expectation but stifling scramble was felt almost from within. Rather than Hebron deputing its financial gurus, a bureaucrat team from Nagaland landed in Delhi to preposterously meet up with the Planning Commission. The elated feeling that one is process-creating history avowed with jealous fear of involving others is a shabby debasement fable, dating Aesop. The ramification of satiating politico-historical hunger, it appears, will have fatality precipitated not by insufficiency but as a result of intemperate rush to gulp down the goodies. Inasmuch politico-historical conflicts are based on inequities and violations – an outcome to solving such situations find deserving conclusion only when, paradoxically, tactility is first addressed to phenomenon of the struggle rather than conditions of the exigencies that firstly instigate such process. Talking about goodies before statesmanship is always bad history, dangerous romance in politics. Photo ops for sops are no solution. One should read Giuseppe Garibaldi and, even, war theories.
The goodies principle of solution is an ancient form of appeasement applied only when vulnerability of pettiness is accessed and exposed. Statesmanship ought to precede honourable solution today, based on conciliation of memory and humility, through conceptual vitalism, rather than goodies or crude instrument of competencies. Memory – because the practice of history is fraught with blood and sacrifices; humility – because solution is not possible within the meaning of Vattelian-Westphallian definition. Hypothetically, the I&M of NSCN has to prove dignified statesmanship on this two-fold principle: 1.) Swallow pride and admit that Shillong Accord was the best at the worst of times – this will lift all radicalized conjunctions promoting genuine reconciliation; 2.) Thereby, invoke Naga public that the verging proposal for solution is the worst at the best of times or the worst at the worst of times. The audacity of humility will be tested – silencing detractors, since the public is prepared for a closure. It will also lay magnanimity for warring factions to toe in and participate – and if they refuse, public opinion will deride them. A failure to do so will result again in patently midwifing a backdoor settlement – stimulating new talents for rewriting a harrowing history. This rather teleological model should not give suspicion to gimmicky models, articulating destitution of approach by some jobless hoho-haha activist: reconciliation first then solution vs. bring solution first and reconciliation will automatically follow vs. solution and reconciliation can go hand in hand. The ultimate solution is conceptual. It should propel a positive flux of halo to install the Consortium Collective comprising/composing all Collective Leaders to sledgehammer a solution through conceptual closures, with the Naga public constantly appraising Aristotelian conceptions via von Bismarck’s heart of politics as the art of the possible.
By picking up on the ruins of history, Forum for Naga Reconciliation has generated a fictional metaphor of possibilities, entailing protem hubris. A devoted cluster of resourceful individuals has also selflessly entitled upon themselves the autonomous task of seizing an imagination, utilizing Kantian tools of spacing void and violence in time. It has even evolved a policing adherence, engaging Robespierre-via-Bush paragon – by imbibing ostracizing syndrome of non-participation akin to if you are not with us – you are against peace. The latest development with FNR is in creating a prospect towards solution, which NSCN-IM has unilaterally reviewed. The journey no doubt is tough. Its moment of truth has also come to not only rationalize a time-frame approach using proper nouns but also become emboldened and move from usual ‘comfort zones’ to a more impossible but important task. One recalls Nelson Mandela’s advice to North Irish politicians: “You don't make peace by talking to your friends; you have to make peace with your enemies.” Apart from hosting all-party meet through media hollering, FNR today is tasked to informally dialogue with untouchable non-parties, while keeping in mind that it is no picnic. Today FNR is the grandest singular factory manufacturing political consciousness through social/media mobilization, exemplifying virility and popular support, in enchanting a confluence of conformity and possibility. On such progress, and after re-reading 1950s history, the currency of hope cannot afford to overlook its wealthy claims of well-meaning open-endedness. Either a cautious approach or an epileptic enthusiasm may prove proverbial and expose its hotfoot to co-author history. It is yet a risk worth betting. It requires tenacity of politics and diplomacy because FNR has remarkably become the third front.
The crisis of representation haunts the Nagas although such niceties are not prerogative to rational choice. The absence of poetry in Naga struggle is a testimony to this. Some feel abandoned; some feel central; some feel deserving; some feel caretaking; and, yet, some feel contractual. The lack of poetry is an indicator that feelings are insular and portent. To, therefore politic, write poems, is also to philosophize… about a sublimate injunction, beyond the reach of subjective experience, about beauty that arches without any personal entities, about a composite that retraces its prospects, in rhizomic inordination. When Nagas encountered events in history – there was an exalted feeling of exclusion, neglect and violation. It hurt some feelings but hardly mattered to some subaltern. What feelings are strongly felt? Why did it not matter to some? It was all about an aesthetic. From victimhood, to a changer of time… A solution for the Nagas require what Agamben says: “The original task of genuine revolution, therefore, is never merely to ‘change the world’, but also – and above all – to ‘change time’.” A formula for Naga solution therefore should never be about the solution – but who will be affected by the solution. It is not about a solution for the past – but a solution for the future. In it remains the primacy of consensually legitimizing a conceptual corpus. Political and historical settlement does not take place with overbearing self-elucidation – it is always a marriage between how one feels and how the other reacts. Frustration is subjective and diachronic to desperation. Does the mourning of a depressed nation require a deserving hurry?
