Naga Club is 99 years old.
The awareness of Nagas as a people and nation, consisting of many tribes inhabiting our own traditional and ancestral homelands in this undivided and unadministered part of the globe, was created by some of our pioneering leaders at Kohima in 1918, forming a common banner for all Nagas and known as the Naga Club. A seed sown for future generations.
After the First World War, when many of our people were exposed to the big wide modern world, some leaders who felt a need to make a beginning, conceived of an idea and started a process of movement through an organized common platform in a most democratic and peaceful manner. A bold initiative for all times to come.
It was this Naga Club that made a most significant development in the history of Nagas, i.e., the Memorandum to Simon Commission in 1929, long before India, Pakistan and Burma got independence from the British Empire.
Relics and souvenirs of Naga Club still stand and remain today in Kohima in the form of the building currently occupied by the NSF, and the original Club house or site now used by the Union Baptist Church as Ozone Café. It is learnt that the Club had a central plot of land in Dimapur, and the Club also functioned at Mokokchung till 1930, when it became defunct after that.
What should we do today for this common asset of ours? So occupied with current issues and endless idols that consume all our times and energies, can we afford to overlook and forget our very roots?
“Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver and the other gold…”, so sing our children.
Who will take interest to restore and renew our common antiques? Should the Naga Council of Dimapur or APO of Kohima or organisations like NSF, NPMHR, Naga Hoho etc. wake/rise up to initiate some first actions in the wider interest of all Naga tribes (wherever they are today)? What should we do on the eve of this momentous and monumental occasion? Was not Naga Club a phenomenon in the long journey of our Naga Movement?
‘Auld lang syne’, times long past! 100 years!
Dr. Dietho-o
‘South Corner’
AG Road, Kohima.
