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Convener of Forum for Naga Reconciliation Rev Dr Wati Aier speaking at a seminar in Dimapur on Friday.[/caption]
DIMAPUR, SEPTEMBER 23 : “There is not a single Naga family who does not have a story to tell. This is not a matter of joke.” This striking sentiment, expressed by the convener of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) Rev Dr Wati Aier, represented the overarching theme of a seminar ‘Heritage discourse and the politics of identity: In Nagaland and Beyond’ here on Friday.
The seminar was organised by the department of History, Tetso College in collaboration with Heritage Publishing House.
According to Dr Aier, the arrangement for every Naga family as a storehouse of stories was one of the defining aspects of their identity as a people.
“The Naga people inhabit a unique history. This historicity is our social and political destiny. It is something that is intrinsic, something that is with us and is inevitable,” he said in his delivering the keynote address to the seminar.
“Kaka (Iralu), the prolific writer, he once told me that he was born in the jungle (the villagers were fleeing from military operation by the Indian army). I was brought up in Kohima in a government quarter since my father was a government servant.
“We had to dig trenches inside our house to sleep at night. My mother was scared that my younger brother will cry and draw the attention of the Indian security forces at night,” Aier told the audience, composed mostly of college students.
With the kind of back-story that the Naga people have, he said, our “quest for identity can never be dismissed.” Connecting the quest for ‘construction’ of Naga identity with the emergence of Naga nationalism, Dr Aier said that Phizo’s idea of “pan-Naga constructionivism” was that of bringing the ethnic Nagas together. “Its approach was very anthological.”
According to Aier, the word ‘identity’ has become an important feature in today’s politics “all of a sudden”. This, in turn, has produced a condition in which “element of new nationalism are being imagined today.”
Thus, in the contemporary context, Naga nationalism must also sort out the difference between nationalistic idealism and national construction. Pursuit of nationalistic idealism would lead to jingoism whereas national construction would seek to identify and question “realistic challenges”, he said.
“Naga constructionivism is good because it is not at the expense of others". Identity implies boundary. But this identity must be permeable. This is where creative dialogue must come in,” Aier shared.
Later in the academic session, Dr Kedilezo Kikhi, an associate professor of Sociology at Tezpur University in Assam presented a paper on ‘(Re)Imagining Imagining Naga Homeland and Identities: It’s Relevance in the Present Neoliberal Context.’
This was followed by another presentation by David Hanneng, a research scholar from Visva-Bharti University Santiniketan, West Bengal on the topic: History, Heritage and Identity: A study of the Kukis of Nagaland.