Aheli Moitra
On March 8, 2012, an entourage of school girls marched, on slight drum roll, through the streets of Pfutsero town. They were walking for International Women’s Day, little more than 100 years after it was conceptualized by their American foremothers at a time when women in New York City were paid lower than men, worked longer hours and had no voting rights. The girls were celebrating everything the struggle of those women has brought to them.
Few days prior to this year’s celebration, the GBs and chairmen of 11 wards of Pfutsero town, all men, “rejected” the 33% reservation for women in the upcoming Nagaland municipal and town council election, following a kiss-and-reject pact with Ao Senden, Naga Hoho, Zeliang Baudi, Kohima Village Council (KVC), ENPO and what-not Naga apex bodies. According to their argument, all Nagas are “rejecting” the reservation without consciousness of the irony that none of these bodies include women. Even then, the reservation question is not, as Rosemary Dzuvichü has repeatedly pointed out, of representation to these or other traditional bodies, but into municipal and town councils. Barring a few men, those holding power positions have either misunderstood the whole debate or are trying desperately to keep the number of players in politics limited to themselves. For an outsider looking into the debate, the blind spot is huge.
A recent meeting of the usual suspects pins reason for their non acceptance of political representation for women at “detriment of the sanctity of traditional land holding systems and customary laws”. And then cries over Article 371 (a). In an earlier letter to the CM, the KVC reiterated the same points and brought sati and untouchability, utterly Hindu forms of discrimination, into the argument. As though, say, the Ugandan society doesn’t discriminate against its woman in some form. As, if you’re not fried on a pyre for no construct of yours, no other form of discrimination is bad enough to be challenged. Besides, the Indian court is not a Hindu court, and a constitutional right supersedes Article 371 (a).
In terms of marginalization, the debate is lost in jabber on women maintaining traditional roles of birth, nurture, death. But the horrifics of the male Naga argument get worse. One quarterly TaLented Angami wonders why women are calling for reservation when they lack the strength to resist rape. Fossilization is so deep, archaeologists will uncover dinosaurs easier.
Following the Gauhati High Court order and the massive protest against its implementation, women have largely been silent over the past few days except a press conference called by the Joint Action Committee for Women’s Reservation (JACWR) on Friday. Male mongering over revocation of reservation amounts to contempt of court, and the women know. If extended, it is punishable with imprisonment, in this case of the Chief Secretary of Nagaland. An appeal to the court will stand nowhere. If politically addressed, it will have to call for the revocation of the government first, whose democratically devoid argument has been to extend even 50% reservation to “nominated women”. Following the same principle that has created a democratic hell in this part of the world, it is preferable for Shürhozelie to get the dotters of ministers and bureaucrats into positions of power than follow a more democratic, albeit challenging, equalizing norm of positive discrimination. The JACWR’s policy to nominate women (from interested candidates) to the wards could be challenged on the same ground but this being the first election women will face, it could allow for the confidence required. The process should be scrutinized by the media.
For all the tall claims of “equality”, support and “non discrimination” against Naga women within the Naga society, not much support has been drawn by the NMA as it exposed the irregularities in management of NRHM funds. Instead of asking the NMA for assistance in correcting corrupt cogs, the Department of Health and Family Welfare presented a show cause notice, threatening legal action. Naga groups, the apparent upholders of everything Naga, slept through it. But it’s not just NMA that finds no support while demanding accountability, there is no such culture at all. Two questions here: Is taking, and then skimming off, large amounts of schemes (mind you, it’s a trend in other departments too) from the centre, which isn’t even the Naga centre, not against Naga “culture and tradition”? When land rights are abused by the state government by evading compensation to the clan or community on land acquisition, why does its legitimacy not stand “rejected”? Many minor variables, mostly through the state government’s initiatives, have led to the actual dilution of Naga culture. Or a chief system attitude has been employed where the state’s word is not questioned at all—then why just harp on the issue of women’s rights? With a long standing movement for political self determination, the Nagas should know best, and be able to distinguish, what dilutes “culture and tradition” and what strengthens it.
There is always ample talk about Naga women finding representation in the state women’s commission, sidelining completely its “rubber stamp” nature, as pointed out by Naga women, which doesn’t allow it to make any real decisions vis-à-vis issues related to women. Or the fact that issues of violence against women are rapidly turned into, say, issues of ‘illegal immigration’, as seen in the recent scatter brain discourse after the Dimapur rape incident earlier this year. Using the yardstick of “culture and tradition”, with ill-equipped customary laws trivializing rape cases, has to led to a nonsense shortsighted xenophobic response to a crime even international law finds challenging to handle. Perhaps the appointment of women dobashis and gaon buris will help upgrade customary laws to reconcile today’s crimes with the Naga idea of justice (and sensitivity to human rights).
For this to happen, the Nagas could, of course, wait for the peace process to yield results and remain frozen in time. By that argument, though, they should go back 100(0) years and then ask time to freeze just so that everything can be preserved as it is. It calls for the denial of historical evolution, the sacrifices made by generations of Naga women and men. It undermines the beauty of communal customary laws (in a world of individual capitalist laws), translating them into monoliths that only men can defend, closing them to the prospect of growth based on those communal principles. Naga women and men do not see the society differently from each other—one’s sociological nurture is in tune with the other’s—but the way they are brought up, to play particular societal or political roles, differs. The timing of this debate, in that sense, is neither new nor misplaced. Contrary to all the hysteria, gender sensitivity in customary laws, and political participation bringing this empowerment, will only bridge divides not broaden them.
Aheli Moitra is an independent researcher. She travels to document conflict in personal and collective spaces. (Contact: aheli.moitra@gmail.com)
