‘Complex Naga nationhood-politics due to selfish tribal instincts’

Staff Reporter
Dimapur, Sep. 16 (EMN): Defeating the instincts of what he called “tribal narcissism”—without allowing it to ‘damage ourselves because tribal impulses are such an important part of us’ — will determine whether Nagas as a people and nation would ‘collapse or go forward,’ according to pacifist Niketu Iralu.
Iralu was delivering the 10th Morung lecture, an initiative of The Morung Express, at the Elim Hall at the DABA on Saturday. The topic assigned to him was ‘Embracing Tribal Identity: Overcoming isms.’
“We are meeting at a time to discuss our crisis, our problem when there are huge, huge things that are disturbing mankind. The most advanced nations in the world, the most advanced societies are at loss how to respond to the questions that are erupting in their nations and on their continents,” the activist said.
It was in said context that the Naga people have also been left to confront and respond to challenges, he said. “We can say we are today examining ourselves and our struggle produced by our longing to become and people and a nation. The struggle is our response to the challenges that change taking place in the world brought to us in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“Our history, like all histories, is the record of our response to challenges of change. The society we have produced together is a measure of the quality of our response,” Iralu said.
The Naga motivation to be a people and a nation, he said, was struggle that comes from ‘our intuitive awareness of the threat and fear we perceive for our survival and security.’
“We are so many tribes, each fiercely proud of ourselves to the point of unbearable vanity. Yet the fire that we are a people and a nation has burnt with equal intensity in all Nagas. The Naga struggle for India to recognise their sovereignty as understood by our pioneers was absolutely authentic, honourable and also right, I believe.
“But have we achieved anything after all the heavy price paid for the struggle by all Nagas? I believe the answer is yes. We have become a people and our nationality is a fact that can no longer be disputed by anyone.” According to him the significance of this seemingly “small achievement” is put to context when considered from the fact that “to become a nation is the most difficult, slow, complicated process of human growth and development.”
“And what we have achieved (thus far) has strengthened us in our inward and hidden part. A precious psychospiritual asset we must not underestimate for the onward journey of our caravan. But no Naga will dispute the reality, the mistakes, and errors we have committed harming, wounding one another grievously due to our common human frailties of short-sightedness and failures. The struggle has produced a destructive, lawless society that has gone out of control.”
Seeking another context to drive home his point, Iralu cited the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and his chilling depiction of Ireland’s tumultuous attempt to be a free nation. In the poem “Remorse For Intemperate Speech”, Yeats had pronounced: Out of Ireland have we come / Great hatred, little room / Maimed us at the start / I carry from my mother’s womb / A fanatic heart.
“An assortment of loosely related tribes and villages living next to each other in the same geographical habitat not compelled by history to become a people or nation yet, but becoming one in a little confined place we have maimed one another at the start of our journey. The thing to do now is to understand what has happened and is happening, and why? Then truthfully claim ownership of the specific places where we have done the maiming and weakening of our people and society.
“Then if we can do that, compassionate understanding of others will come down from heaven. And we will start to inspire and help one another, to do the right things to build new relationships among our tribes. Our weaknesses and failures must, thus, become our common strength.”
Iralu said that putting the Naga struggle, and thus Naga identity, into a context not yet pursued collectively. According to him, societies and nations ‘grow or collapse depending on whether the members learn to grow in their selflessness and responsibility or refuse to grow in the right direction.’
“I believe all our tribes have come to a plateau where we are meeting one another today because the hopes, desires and fears of our respective tribes have preserved us and kept us tribally. We may call this compelling urge or drive in each tribe: tribal narcissism.
“On this plateau where we are, we find have to inspire one another to develop another. As we have not needed to do this selfless caring for others before, we are doing it very badly at this early stage in our journey. What we must not do is to condemn our faltering attempts at reaching out to others,” he warned.
The impulse of tribalism, he said, among the Nagas was real and natural. But the trick was to accept and acknowledge that the ‘tribe-centred’ blueprint has ‘taken us’ to the present juncture. “But thus far only, no further. Goodbye.”
Thus, he appeared to have suggested that the answer was in balancing acceptance and renunciation of the same idea. “And from now on we start to learn to rise to a higher level of being a people and a nation but accepting the new ideas, attitudes and ambition that we are going to need for our journey ahead.
“By condemning something that is so natural to us, don’t let us damage ourselves because they are such an important part of us. But learn to develop what we should develop to go forward, I think that is how I see,” he said. He identified “tribalism” and the peoples’ response to it as the ‘central idea’ that would come to define Naga future.
“When God made the Nagas into so many tribes, did he make an unintended mistake because he was preoccupied with some larger projects of creation like the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, the Europeans and so on? And was it another mistake when he put the desire to be a people and a nation into the hearts and minds and feverish imagination of all Nagas?
“The desire to be a people and a nation is something so strong in us. But when we live together we seem to be the opposite,” he observed.