Mr. Robert A Silverstein, in his article, “The World and Time in Reverse: The March Back to the Primitive” has, once again, accused the Naga Tribal Organisations of bypassing the Judicial Process and crippling the State Government. Being a lawyer himself, I feel he just cannot accept the fact that people or organisations would bypass what seems to be a perfectly adequate Judicial System in favour of mass protests on the streets.
Bob sees our present scenario in the context of the civilised, orderly and largely law abiding modern day U.S.A. What he must realise is that the Nagas are in the stage of the early Colonial Americas; with the Nagas as the early American settlers and the State Government in the role of the British Crown. The American cry was, “No taxation without representation” ours is, “The elected are accountable to the electors”. The words are different, but the battle against those who would seek to exploit us is the same. The Colonial Americans also had recourse to Justice in the British Courts; the Supreme Court of which was famous for jailing Henry, the Prince of Wales, and the son of King Henry IV three hundred years before The Americas were even discovered. So, why didn’t they? I believe it was because the Colonials took the path they believed was the most effective in realising their goals. Similarly, our Tribal Organisations have taken the path that is the most effective towards the realisation of our goals.
He has now quoted Thucydides in support of his contention that the Nagas are now regressing to our primitive state instead of progressing. If he were to use the passage he quoted, “...party members had no inhibitions about any venture. Their associations did not exist to promote welfare in accordance with established laws but to subvert the law for selfish advantage...At the root of all this was the desire for power based on personal greed and ambition, and the consequent fanaticism of those competing for control” and ask any ordinary citizen of Nagaland, Nagas and Non-Nagas alike, who it described, the answer to the first part would be all political parties of Nagaland and that to the second would be all politicians of Nagaland.
France went through The French Revolution, The Reign of Terror and The Napoleonic Kings to destroy the concept of, “The Divine Right of Kings”; we Nagas won’t mind going through a few months of discomfort to destroy the concept our Government Officials, both elected and appointed, harbour, that they have a, “God-Given Right to Exploit and Suppress Nagaland and the many Peoples of Nagaland”.
Concerning Article 371a and The Fundamental Rights; I will leave the subject to be debated by the lawyers in the various courts of law. But I would love to be present in court when the lawyer for the J.A.C.W.R. tries to explain how the fundamental right of Naga Women to stand for elected office has been subverted by Naga Men and how this subversion of their right can be corrected with 33% Reservation. How I would laugh at him/her even at the risk of incurring the wrath and contempt of the court.
I counter Bob’s quote of Thucydides,’ Men assum[ing] the right to reverse the usual values in the application of words and actions”, with his own countryman, Henry David Thoreau’s quote, “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and obey them until we succeed, or shall we transgress them at once?”
On the A.Y.O’s statement that the government is acting “like Hitler Nazi Germany.” I don’t know where they got the idea, but a few days/weeks back, I posted, on Facebook, a photo of Hitler in full dress uniform giving the Nazi party salute and mentioned that the N.P.F. Party cadres should start saluting each other in a similar fashion; along with which I also posted a picture of our “Respected Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un asking members of The Naga Blog who they thought he was; and that if they thought it was Kim Jong Un, they were wrong and it was what every Naga Politician thought he was. So, it’s only natural that Nazi Germany and Kims come to mind when an analogy of state sponsored suppression is needed.
What The Jewish People suffered under Hitler is unimaginable. But I always wondered if the good German people had risen up, en masse, after “Kristallnacht”, when the goons of Hitler’s S.A. went around Germany, breaking the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and Synagogues; whether Hitler’s “Final Solution for The Jews” could have proceeded as smoothly as it did.We saw how the government watercannoned and Teargassed innocent Teachers demanding their Rightful Salaries; we saw how Peaceful Protestors, Protestors fighting for, not our fundamental rights, but our God given right to eat were treated the same. These were, on our small stage, and on our small scale, our “Kristallnacht”. Before things got to the stage of the Government’s Final Solution for The Nagas, we decided to rise, en masse, and find our own solution.
Whatever ill chosen words the J.C.C. or the A.Y.O. may have used, is it any worse than the N.P.F. party’s threat to some government officials that they were being watched for their alleged role in the agitations? The N.P.F. Party seems to imagine that its some kind of combination of the Nazi Gestapo, the Russian K.G.B./F.S.B. and the Commissars of Stalin. And talking of threats, I would love to meet the lawyer/person who drafted the N.M.A.2001 and have a nice long chat with him on the reasons and motives behind the property taxes.
It is because of the Naga peoples’ unpreparedness to face the modern world and modern concepts that we need the protection of Article 371a. For Bob, you are asking us, the Nagas, to adapt to the thinking and behaviour that you yourself took centuries to develop; whereas we have had only a few decades of exposure to the modern world. All that you see around you in the Towns of Nagaland are just a Facade of Modernity, a veneer over a primitive people still trying to come to terms with modernity. We are not a modern people regressing back to our primitive instincts; rather, we are a primitive people trying to find our way and our Place in the modern world.
