Charles Chasie
Kohima
It is with great sadness that one has heard of the final departure of the great Ahom friend of the Naga people, Homen Borgohain, on Wednesday, May 13. Last month he contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised towards end of April. His condition improved, he turned negative, and was discharged from hospital on May 8. Sadly, it appeared that the virus had done the damage to his system and he had become too weak and finally succumbed on Wednesday morning.
The popular Assamese language newspaper Amar Asom described his death as the end of an era while the Assam Tribune editorialised his passing with the heading “A Colossus departs”. The editorial said, “At 89, the celebrated intellectual strode the State’s social life like a colossus for five decades, nurturing it with his liberal and progressive humanism”.
Early in life Homen Borgohain had given up a comfortable government job to pursue the values he wanted to live by. He was a “radical humanist who dared to swim against the tide and defend his values and ideals against heavy odds” as the Tribune described him. And till the very end, he continued to edit a newspaper and host a TV talk show while living as simple an existence as possible in a one bedroom apartment in a housing colony in Guwahati. He had been offered many lucrative blandishments which he discarded as mere nothings. He was one of the tallest and most influential literary figures in the State and carried many honorary degrees including a Doctor of Literature but he never used any of the titles. He consciously chose and lived his life according to his terms. He was a very disciplined man and punctual to a fault. He often remarked that the clock controlled his life! Many people in Assam described him as the “Conscience of Assam”!
In 2001, following the extension of the NSCN-IM and Government of India Ceasefire to all the Naga inhabited areas, agitations broke out in neighbouring States and the situation in Manipur in particular became untenable. Most Nagas, living in the Valley areas also left for the hills. And slowly it appeared as if the Nagas were on the point of becoming enveloped by unfriendly neighbours. The Naga tribes from all across the Naga inhabited areas, including representatives from Myanmar, met in Kohima twice in July and August of that year, to consider the explosive situation as it was developing. Several decisions were taken. One of them was to send a Naga delegation to Assam on a Goodwill Visit, led by the then Naga Hoho. The question was who on Assam side could host the Naga delegation as the desire was for a people to people connection.
It was here that Homen Borgohain, who was then also the president of the Assam Sahitya Sabha, came forward to welcome the Naga delegation with open arms. The Naga Goodwill delegation of eight, led by the first president of the Naga Hoho, the late Mr M. Vero, was hosted by the Sabha at the Brahmaputra Hotel amid very tight security as the situation was very volatile at the time. But starting the next day, various political parties and groups in Assam, including the ULFA, started welcoming the Naga Goodwill delegation. Homen Borgohain also made sure that the then Chief Minister of Assam, the late Tarun Gogoi, stayed back in Guwahati to officially receive the Naga delegation. Slowly, the tense situation became more relaxed and gradually the agitations against the Nagas lost steam. At a time when the Naga people desperately needed friends, Homen Borgohain came forward and made a huge difference.
The Tribune editorial mentioned above had also written that “He (Borgohain) often drew from his varied and unique experiences to tell tales that shown with the poignancy of humanism, truthfulness and candour – sometimes delving deeper into the innermost recesses of the human mind”. Homen Borgohain fully understood the difficult situation that the Nagas faced at that time as well as the overall Naga context because of their political position, and empathised with them. He once remarked that the Nagas are having to suffer a painful dual identity issue because of their political stand.
In a book co-authored with his younger son, Professor Pradipta Borgohain, titled “Scrolls of Strife: The Endless History of the Nagas” published by Rupa Publications India, they wrote that “Two outstanding factors have been dominating the thinking of the Nagas for over six decades now: their ardent desire for claiming sovereign possession over their land... and the huge racial difference between them and the “Indians”; which have made them more intensely attached to their homeland”.
In another part of the book they wrote, “The Nagas are an extraordinary people with a vibrant culture and a very deep attachment to their origin and ways of life... the story of the Nagas bristles with a host of interesting situations that demand careful scrutiny and interpretations and also call for meaningful prognoses for the future of the region as a whole”.
They published the book because as Pradipta said, “what we wanted to do was to humanize the Naga Story, to make the experiences of the Nagas come alive, so that people could relate to them.”
In Homen Borgohain’s own words, “My ties with the Naga people go back a long way. I proudly count many close friends among the Nagas and my interaction with them constitutes one of the more cherished chapters of my life. It was also an honor for me to be associated with the Naga Hoho... the attempt to understand the perspective of the Nagas has been made with the utmost sincerity (in the book). While some interpretation is unavoidable, we have really tried to see the world through the eyes of the Nagas and have refrained from imposing our preconceptions as far as possible”.
Despite his often stern exterior, which he probably consciously cultivated, Homen Borgohain was really a very sensitive human being with a big heart. He chose life and lived it on his own terms. And, like the poet wrote in “Invictus”, he chose to be the master of his fate and the captain of his soul although Covid tried to provide a cruel twist in the end.
Farewell, noble soul, be at peace. We shall, God willing, meet again.
