Aheli Moitra
If you ask the elders of Yangkhullen (Ze-Mnui) village, they will suggest their settlement to be 2000 years of yore. This narration of history will be countered by archaeologists. Rock weathering suggests that Yangkhullen, one of the best preserved Naga villages, a museum of rock, could have been here for 200-500 years. But Naga archaeologists cannot investigate beyond the rock without facing the wrath of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which tends to reserve the right to any archaeological survey within national borders. Thus, Yangkhullen will have to be taken for what its elders suggest: its 2000 years of history.
And it’s not just rock, what most architecture in the village consists of, that could have weathered in this time. The weather must have weathered; the climate changed. The community coped. The knowledge system surrounding agriculture was, no doubt, developed over a large period of time. This time, again no doubt, was that of consistent migration, with the local communities in control of the movement, being able to judge when to move, or when to stay. To understand this were priests, scientists, village elders and chiefs who understood the climate through observation. Over seasons, birds came and went; over years, they stopped coming. Some insects disappeared, others moved location. New frogs appeared. The climate changed in continuance and species adapted.
Come the time of fixed settlement and nation states, the communities lose charge. Yangkhullen, more than 60% households of which practice traditional religions, is considered backward today. Your regular breakfast in the village starts with freshly brewed millet beer, boiled and locally herbed vegetables to go with. The lunch will be a local produce of rice and backyard pork. Modern markers place most of the village’s populace Below Poverty Line. Rational schooling is no more through a Morung, trying to understand the environment through agriculture and the indigenous study of species, but through the state syllabus. Its sister village, Poilwa, that started as the result of a shared vision lies across the border, in Nagaland. Yangkhullen is in Manipur.
Today, ‘experts’ are telling these extremely old, and bifurcated, settlements that the climate will change beyond their control and ‘we’ will tell you, the most vulnerable, how to adapt. ‘We’ will do this by setting up studies that will tell you all about your environment. And then ‘we’ will tell you how to rationally manage the impending flash floods and doom—in your language just to be sensitive.
Indigenous communities, their knowledge and systems, have been converted into victims. Indeed they are victims of statehood and repression. By overlooking their political repression, and securitizing their vulnerability, the international community overlooks empowerment. Now that states have been imposed on indigenous people here, they are being told that the state cannot do anything. After being uprooted, they are being asked to go back to their roots for empowerment because the states are too “top down”. When politics of the past are de-linked from modern variables, the language of empowerment remains just that—a language; one that holds key to funds but little for small communities to determine their fate.
The discourse on climate change, security and livelihoods, thus, has to be linked to the right to self-determination. Communities cannot suddenly be expected to rise and be “empowered” when they have been systematically stripped of it over the past decades. Modern and indigenous sciences/politics need to be given an equal chance to develop. In that, experts on climate change have to support political movements that promote recognition of indigenous science and technology, thereby giving the polity a fair contextual choice. That is capacity building. The continued imposition of everything modern will not do—whether through a state or its iNGO parallel.
