Moa Jamir
Under ‘normal’ circumstances, the recent killing of a businesswoman and a youth in Dimapur within the span of two months, would have elicited vehement and strong condemnations from every other organisations or civil societies that exist in our realms.
Unfortunately, adding salt to the wounded and bereaving heart of the deceased’s families affected by the two tragic incidents, leading frontal organisations in Nagaland in general and Dimapur in particular, apart from one or two, have maintained conspicuous and stoic silence over the killings.
This general lack of empathy or indifference is rather baffling, to say the least. Any observant reader of the print media in Nagaland would notice that the usual modus operandi after commission of such crime/s or act is the colonization of newspaper space with press condemnation by different organisation and bodies. Sea of humanity and heartfelt condolences for the victim/s and bereaved families would follow next supplemented with an ‘appeal or demand’ to the law enforcing agency to probe the case at the earliest and award ‘befitting and exemplary punishment’ to the perpetrator/s, serving as a deterrent for occurrence of the act in future. Often, it is also implied that the crime or act committed was ‘alien’ to the ethos of the Naga society.
Ponder for a moment and imagine, for an instance here, what would have been the alternative reaction of the society if both the recent unfortunate victims belonged to a dominant Naga tribe? In this case, one can safely assert that the wave of humanity and denouncement would have drowned the newspaper pages or social media spaces.
Consequently, do our reactions to any such incident depend significantly on the ‘identity’ of the victims as well as the perpetrator/s? Unfortunately, Yes. Over the years, our actions and reactions to any incident occurring in our midst portrays such conclusion.
We tend to condemn a ‘crime’ most vehemently when it is committed by a perceived ‘non-native’ or ‘outsider’ while our empathy towards a ‘non native’ victim is inversely proportional. Be it crime of sexual assault, robbery, or at times loss of lives, the reaction are recurrently alike. Whether tribe or non tribe based organisations, today Nagaland has come to follow a pattern of condemnation and seeking justice most aggressively only when a crime has been committed against one of our own, by those outside the tribal umbrella.
Is commission of such act by a native a lesser crime? Or for that matter, is the value of a non-native lesser than the native? Without realizing the sheer hypocrisy of our own actions, we judge and condemn not on the gravity of crime or act per se but based on the identities of those involved.
Most ominously, our reaction to any other issue generally follows similar patterns. Our approaches to justice should not be constrained by our tribal, community or political affiliation but must be a collective mechanism. Our responses to the challenges should be founded on shared humanity and the dispensation and seeking of justice must not selective, but equally founded on the gravity of the issue. If our humanity and solidarity does not go beyond these narrow concepts, we as a society will be subsumed into further strife.
For any selective comment, drop a line to moajamir@live.com
