Mr. Jagdamba Mall. With reference to your article “Sociocultural and Spiritual Traditions of North -East Bharat,” I was away in the jungles hunting monkeys and missed your article on 25th Oct. Hence the one day delay in replying you. To begin with, we Nagas, far from being Janjatis connected to the rest of India through your so called Hindutva placenta, are not monkey worshipers but relish in eating their meat. We are also neither western evolution theory believers who for even a moment have ever considered that monkeys are our ancestors and that in eating them we have become cannibals. For us, the monkey is just another animal among many other animal species that co-inhabit this planet earth along with us. For us, animals are just animals created like vegetables by God for our human consumption.
Now if some other fellow human beings want to consider these animals as gods in their religion and want to worship them, we have no argument with them. But if such religious fanatics will try to incorporate even our religion and culture into their religious belly and say that our nation and culture has its origin through the Hindutva placenta of Bharat Mataji’s womb, then we will protest with all the available anthropological historical and cultural facts available in both ancient and modern archives.
Mr. Jagdamba, will you like it or find it acceptable, if I were to assert that Hinduism’s plethora of gods and goddesses all have their origin in the dog eating, beef eating, and even elephant eating womb of a Naga mother? Do not insult my animistic or Christian beliefs and its equally ancient history and culture, by implying that our democracy as opposed to your caste system; or our belief in one God as opposed to your millions of gods are ultimately one and the same thing. In fact, nothing can ever be more different than the two opposite beliefs and cultures.
For once, stop trying to claim everything in the universe as having its origins in the great belly of Hindutva because there are also other millions of religious and intellectual scholars in the world besides your Hindu Pandits. As far as I understand it “Shankara” philosophy is a speculative philosophy which, after brilliantly analyzing metaphysics, in the end concludes that ultimate reality is “an illusion.” Not this or not that - “neti, neti.”I at least will not allow a philosophy that believes even the material physical universe to be an illusion, define to me what ultimate reality is all about.
Lastly, don’t ever accuse the Christian Church or any of your other “imagined” enemies of Bharatvarsh as guilty of practicing Saam, Daam, Dand and Bhed against the people of North East India. These are all Hindu words used by Hindu rulers to divide and rule India in ancient South Asian history. In the case of Nagaland, the Indian Government used this ancient Hindu ruler’s political and military strategy to invade Nagaland in the early fifties. In our case, first “Dand”- punishment through brutal military suppression was used by burning all our villages in the 1950’s. Next, “Daam” –allurement through the 16 Point agreement and statehood was used. When both these strategies and policies failed, it is now using “Bhed”-division or divide and rule policy, to divide the Nagas and continue to rule them.
Kaka D. Iralu
