Nagas are civilized and educated not today. The oral history of Nagas migration depicts evolution of civilization in association with time, place, people and knowledge attains which ascertains wonderful ethnicity among indigenous people situated border to Southeast Asian countries. Had not Nagas emanated as civilized ethnic group, who Nagas are today would be far behind every contextual world. It is inevitable that Nagas civilization and education is not different from the history of the eastern world civilization where people nomad in search of good place and power struggle (Toynbee. 1934). The western world calls such nomad people as barbarian domination or wild people. Many Nagas introduce Naga identity as mongoloid or Chinese migrant. If so, the history of Mongolian precedes as evicted people by the Chinese dynasty (ibid). In this case the Nagas are evicted people from China. Subsequently, civilization and education concurrently moved wherever Naga people moved from place to place.
How Nagas are civilized and educated? Civilization from stone curving, half naked, digging wild potatoes, hunting wild animals and birds, gun making, head hunting, war among villagers, transportation on bare foot for miles, carriage load from one village to another village and education of indigenous agriculture culture, earning wisdom, indigenous poet and song composer, story teller, understanding religion, belief, tradition, brewing rice beer, blacksmith, traditional craft such as bamboo basket, mat, wooded bed, stool, table, curving rice pounding wood, fire ignition, myth, indigenous month, year, season, politics and other earlier way of life have gradually escalated to modern and postmodern civilization of technology and education of contemporary world. From farmer, carpenter, craft person, weaving, potter etc. to modern education of literacy remains connected. Naga people have become predominant to modern education and the literacy growth takes place every year. Though Nagas do not have or have Naga language/dialect like many other neighboring states and nations, every village remain civilized and educated in producing meanings and symbols in own language that connects to belief and culture (Geertz. 1973). Today English and Nagamese appear as contract language to exchange message among the Nagas. Whether Nagas will have own permanent language is still questionable.
The more Nagas embark on newer civilization and education, the greater and smarter Nagas become in every aspect. Political civilization is explicitly displayed by replacing the imminent Kingship politic which existed since decade, with modern Government law and order. However, there is a regretful introspection that Kingship politics embeds more honesty than the modern Government-ship where double corruption replaced the once uncorrupted society. The rationalization over this political civilization is whether corruption emerges from contemporary education where highly educated Nagas engaged in politics. Similarly education in religion and culture have become more questionable – the more educated religious leaders emerge the more divisions embroiled among the Nagas. Cultural civilization is another derogatory repercussion of educated Nagas which in the name of expediting education it remissions cultural values, yet Nagas are still educated.
There are three speculative stages of the Nagas. First stage belongs to the honest Nagas that could refer to older folks who grew among the traditional well-organized society which Tonnies calls it Gemeinshaft (Baum. 1975) of where moral and cultural values remained invincible every day. The second stage belongs to middle age Nagas who conspicuously ensemble as educated intellectual with higher literacy rate which give birth to more corruption and destroyed the Naga society in greed and robbery. The third stage belongs to maligned intention of young Nagas both self-claimed civilized and educated who in reality are among imitation, honesty, truth seeker, rethinker of past and present Naga society for the better future; some are those who claim ownership of every phenomenon emerges both in social network and virtual world.
First stimulating question for the current young Nagas is what kind of civilization and education do you prepare to transfer to future innocent Nagas? Second question is where is the voice, feelings and ideas of the old men and women who are crawling at villages who feel to share what they think about the Naga society but remain submerged? The civilized educated Nagas have made the voice of the old Naga folks vague and suppressed when too much explicit contemporary educated knowledge looks better and displayed, which is in fact not. In the current scenario of civilized educated Nagas, every Naga needs to go back to every grandparent to seek wisdom and knowledge, former education and civilization and other necessary which are almost forgotten, to reconnect what are missing between the good former society and the worst current society. Good society in this context does not mean the society without a single problem. Unless such revitalization takes place among the current civilized educated Nagas, the epidemic of deploring untenable society would remain the same tomorrow.
Lemwang Chuhwanglim Researcher & Activist Email: lemswang@gmail.com
