Ayung Sayai
Sixty one years of struggle for self determination and still struggling with immense hope and sanguine. When Nagas decided not to be a part of the Indian union, the latter threatened to crush the formers movement in terms of days not week. Today I'm proud to being a Naga and witness our struggle going past three decades in our own eyes. While India employed every tactics and measures to intimidate, demoralize, divide and loosen our principle, the fact of the matter is that nationalism remains unaffected and it's growing day by day. The dream of our grand father and great grand father to live a life of their wish without the interference and disturbance from the outside world continues to thrive and flourish till today in the heart of every Nagas. This is an asset worth owning more than the Seven Wonders of the World put together. However, like any other revolutionary movement, we are also wounded from the forces of both internal and external agencies which are yet to overcome.
The journey to peace has made us realize the cost of peace. The natures of such cost are self inflicting and self damaging which took time to heal. We have witnessed factional killings, fratricide and inter-community rivalries or target over a non- issue. Factional rivalries often end up into tribalism which complicates the whole situation whereby the innocent civilians become the soft target where the factional groups vent out their grievances. Civilians have become a tax cum a punching bag. We boast to the whole world that we don't kill innocent Indian civilians but could we say the same about our self? Where is the pride in this? Aren't we too scared to mingle and interact freely among ourselves and let our children, brother and sisters move and play at their choice of time and place, fearing being attacked or killed by other faction or community without any accountability? Are we able to sleep peacefully under such situation? Nobody is safe! The irony is that all this happen in our own land and country. In this environment of fear, envy and suspicion, we and our children's will never develop mentally, socially and economically. The children will inherit the present environment to its posterity. While the children of the other nations grow and develop into a healthy nation builder, ours will grow only to be doomed and condemned. This is the biggest cost that we are paying in the march to Freedom. It is avoidable therefore it must be avoided and restraint under any circumstances. Let us keep in mind that we are one in being a Naga and one in Christ. Our greatness lies in standing together in the face of our adversaries. Our greatness also lies in searching for the truth against much false propagandas. As long as the societies exist, it is expected that people infested with vested interest, in the name of nationalism, unity and other catchy terminology will crop up. We must stay focused to our goal and vigilant enough to detect the false prophets. The civil societies must show the way by not hobnobbing with every Dick, Tom and Harry that comes their way. The youth with so many intellectuals in our land and outside our land need to do a lot more of self introspection. The nation is bleeding and is in distress and you are not supposed to sit idle and watch. We must grow up into a revolutionary intellectual and dream less about becoming an Indian bureaucrat (babus). It is a sin to be politically liberal when thousands of our people has martyred and thousands of our brothers and sisters still holding up in the jungle waiting for their turn. The cowardice of the liberal intellectuals is definitely a danger in this revolutionary period.
We also have the tendency to criticize and distance ourselves from the cause just because we happen to dislike some personalities in the organization. This is not the character of an intellectuals and it does not contribute anything good to the movement. We tend to forget that our leaders are also a human being like every one of us. Their are instances were our national leaders have shown enough strength to shoulder moral responsibility for the mistakes committed by their subordinates. Do we hear any of our politician and civil leaders doing the same? Let us be truthful to ourselves before judging others. Mindlessly bad mouthing and mud- slinging to our national leaders and government who are zealously working to liberate us from the mighty India can be simply interpreted as Indian agencies in the working. We must learn to be patient in this political endeavor and cannot affort another mistake that can happen at the exigencies of people's unrest and demand. A drastic change in our approach and attitude is the need of the hour.
Today our land are scattered in the four states of India creating a lot of tension with other communities. It is the main duty of our politicians to neutralize this tension and convince them the realities and the unshakable dreams of the Nagas to live together. It is imperative on their part to prioritize the purpose of being elected as a representative. Construction and maintaining roads, supplying water and electricity are important but that can't be our only priorities. Integration of the four Naga inhabited states under one administrative umbrella is very crucial and it is the first steps to determine the seriousness of New Delhi in bringing about the ultimate solution. A joint working committee, comprising of elected Naga parliamentarians from the four states cutting across the party affiliation should be set up to realize this. While our national collective leadership are doing their best to canvass support from the world bodies, multi-national organizations and countries side by side having a peace dialogue with the government of India, the citizens of this great nation must also partake active involvement in this just cause through networking in the social and cultural forum. The Indian media and masses are still ignorant about our cause, largely due to the lukewarm attitude given by the Government of India in our issue. The onus lies with our politician, university students and our largely educated workforce spread across different states of India in various corporate houses and companies. The Indian masses are uninformed and innocent and have less to do with our plight. We must foster friendship with them by sensitizing our just cause and put them in our favor. The young Indian workers in the corporate office and students in the universities will become tomorrow's policy makers. So it is to our advantage to catch them young for our better tomorrow.
The challenge before us is to shrug off tribalism and prejudices, to accept the irrefutable past and move forward collectively in one voice, one mission and one leadership. We shall not allow our narrow political consideration jeopardizes the whole concept of "Naga nation".
KUKNALIM and Merry Christmas to one .
