Naga Day

By Easterine Kire | EMN

This is our story: In 1929 The Naga Club Submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission The first written record That stated ‘Nagas are one’ They made it clear They did not belong To any other but the Naga race Not to the Indian Not to the Burman But to themselves as decreed by their maker. This is our story We were free before the British came And we set aside The years of village wars The hunts for heads The joys of battlesport And pitted our dormant oneness Against a common enemy This is our story.

We repeated that in the Fifties We defended our borders With no other weapon than unity And Indian tanks rolled in this time And armies tried to oppress Our hills, our fields, our spirits Yet so long as we wielded our unity The invasions were held off.

But when we fell Our defeat was self-made We warred against ourselves We should have known better But people seldom learn from history We abandoned solidarity and community And embraced tribe, the individual, the self-centric We exchanged integrity for deception Substituted brotherhood for its opposite And filled our streets with brother-blood This is our song A sad song of defeat, melancholy dirge May others learn from it. Yes, this was our song.

But the Naga story is not over yet. We have another song to sing We still have a destiny to step into A legacy to inherit When our created identity is restored. At this crossroad Of our shared walk as a people Do we look back or Do we look to the future? Perhaps we should do both For the answer lies in both directions. The strength of the Naga past Was in our oneness - unselfish, Noble, sacrificing, unswerving - from The common Naga good. This was our strength This can be our strength again As we come together Recognising each other As part of the bigger Naga family Embracing each other With the love that politics had wiped out. This is our strength now We know the Son, He sets us free From our inability to forgive To set aside past hurts, and to love again

This is our strength now He sets us free from ourselves He makes unity possible, even Naga unity He makes our story possible When we step beyond ourselves And become one in Him To start our story anew through Him.

(Easterine Kire is an internationally renowned poet and author. Her writings are based on the lived realities of the Naga people.)