The Naga society must spot the ideology (ies) enabling new ‘forms of rights violation’
Witoubou Newmai
As things continue to swing further Right, the people at the helm of affairs seem to intensify the employment of “method” through policies. The intensity of the Right-swing is so glaring that the authority can no longer masquerade, but become truly ‘Hard Right’ without pretence, thereby creating a climate of fear.
The view expressed by writer/journalist Ziya Us Salam on the latest edition of Frontline magazine is a trenchant description of how the rational mind finds the situation becoming very difficult today.
According to Ziya Us Salam, “The term ‘urban naxal’ was once used during peasant protests against the state. Today, it is used almost as a slur on those who ask uncomfortable questions of the state. The same fate meets those authors and poets who refuse to sing hosannas to state power. It is easy to dub them anti-national, too, in an age when everybody is expected to eat only what a certain group of people permits.”
Noted historian-activist, Professor Romila Thapar, in the same vein, noted: “It is now possible for those in authorities---the administration and police and those controlling political power---to arbitrarily accuse the people they choose to of being urban naxals…they then assume that the people so described can be arrested and thrown into prison, with no proven evidence and on charges that are hardly credible, as in the case of the activists recently arrested”.
Senior journalist Pradip Phanjoubam has pointed out that “history is proof that it has always been the intent of authoritarian states to prohibit dissent and in the process monopolise the definition of truth.” Phanjoubam then asked, “Should we also then be content with resigning to the complacent thought that fate will ultimately take care of the problems of our present?”
The Naga society needs to ask this question more often. Our society has also been affected adversely and completely by the “method.”
The recent comment of a noted human rights activist in a programme in Senapati speaks volumes. Commemorating the 70th International Human Rights Day at the Tahamzam (Senapati) on December 10, Dr. Gina Shangkham, former Secretary General, Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), said that “new forms of rights violation are now being witnessed with development aggression, land alienation and economic policies that further marginalizes, excludes and disenfranchises those already in the fringes”.
When will the Naga society identify the “method” distinctly and respond it accordingly?
It has extremely become important today for our society to identify ‘that’ osmosis of the ideology (ies), policies of certain sections of people and the subsequent general administrative measures enabling such processes. An alert and conscious society suffers less and this needs constant reminder.
