By Moa Jamir
For yet another year, the latest Crime in India 2024 report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has placed Nagaland at the bottom of the national chart for crimes against women. By official metrics, both in crime rate and in the absolute number of cases, the State once again appears to be India’s ‘safest’ for women. It is a distinction that has repeatedly generated pride and headlines.
The comforting data, nevertheless, raises a disquieting question: does it reflect the ground realities? Statistics are crucial for tracking patterns, informing policy, and measuring institutional response, among other things. However, crime data only captures what is reported, registered, and processed through formal systems; not the culture of silence, societal and cultural pressures, or lived experiences, which are often internalised. What lies beneath the surface has long been the central focus of discussions on women’s safety and rights in Nagaland.
Recent deliberations categorically affirm that reality.
A 2025 community survey on gender-based violence presented in Nagaland found that emotional and psychological abuse was the most common form of violence, affecting 45.4% of respondents, followed by sexual abuse at 32.6% and physical abuse at 25%. More troublingly, 64% of survivors said they never formally reported their experiences, citing fear, stigma, distrust in institutions, and uncertainty about where to seek help. Over half identified family members, intimate partners, relatives, or known persons as perpetrators. Nearly 40% said the violence occurred within the home.
Further, at another multi-stakeholder event in November, gender rights advocates described Nagaland as facing “a crisis hidden in plain sight,” pointing to the normalisation of domestic abuse, child marriage, harmful customary practices, and the tendency to treat violence as a private family matter rather than a public issue. Speakers also called for anonymised public data to better expose the scale of underreporting.
These findings sharply complicate the narrative of statistical safety.
Women-based organisations including the Nagaland State Commission for Women has on several occasions emphasised the need for safe spaces, stronger reporting mechanisms, and more open conversations around gender-based violence. Public forums and awareness campaigns continue to stress that many cases of harassment, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and coercion never reach police records.
Ironically, such conversations often see limited participation from men, the very demographic whose engagement and sensitisation remain crucial.
More tellingly, resistance did not come from men alone. Many women, shaped by generations of social conditioning, also defended structures that excluded them. The issue, thus, is not merely underreporting. It is also culture, often shaped by entitlement and further reinforced by internalised patriarchy.
This contradiction is visible in everyday life as well. Nagaland often celebrates the visibility of women in markets, education, churches, and entrepreneurship. They are encouraged to be educated, articulate, and economically active, yet are often still expected to remain silent on multiple issues. These realities are not always official, formal, or overt, but are often subtle, cultural, and deeply embedded.
Accordingly, while Nagaland’s repeated ranking as India’s “safest” state for women may be worthy of acknowledgment, the uncomfortable realities beneath the statistics must also be confronted head-on if that distinction is to carry genuine meaning and validation.
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