By Al Ngullie | EMN
My childhood had its village moments. The sincerest advice in my community were instructions about honouring parents, showing compassion to the poor, and avoiding Ao women like the plague.
The environment of community conversations amid which we grew up came dressed in noble intentions but coloured by a touch of rustic chauvinism. There was one indisputable truth about social appropriation back then. It was this absolute denouement: People from other tribes excepting mine—the Lotha Naga—are the nadir.
Mind your tribe
Such forewarnings were often disguised as cultural wisdom, claiming ‘experience’ as the first justification. The opinions were vivid because they came reinforced by horror stories, actual or fabricated, about other tribes.
In fact, the list of instructions was persuasive: Never marry Ao women, for they are “orang-nzan” (Lotha for money-loving) and do not respect men; choose the husband-loving Chakhesang or Sumi; befriend Sumi men but stay away from the Konyak; trade with the Angami, but never do business with those penny-pinching Ao. So on and so forth.
Such beliefs reigned supreme in our bamboo kitchens before we grew up to eventually meet education. The NST bus took us to a place of new ideas. We began mingling with other cultures outside the bamboo paling.
Why, college introduced us to the noble truths of reading; helped us forge acquaintances with a progressive worldview, and with political ideologies; rights and intellectual movements; and cultural interaction and humanism. (Perhaps a more sincere study of the Bible, too, helped?).
And it was there we met too, people from other tribes and communities.
Two pairs of shock
Right there was cultural shock, the type that jarred our old beliefs, if you will: We befriended Ao people who told us that their community generally thought the Lotha were an infuriatingly crafty, sneaky tribe; Ao women thought Lotha men do not respect women and, therefore, would not marry us; the Chakhesang felt we’re annoying misers; the Konyak found us to be a kind-hearted people but the Angami distrusted us like a disease; Sumi people thought we can’t sell a loaf of bread even for 5 rupees; and so on and on and on.
Once we alighted from the NST bus, we discovered that every tribe had a delicate list of instructions about other tribes; each carried on its forehead an unassailable tag of dos and don’ts: This tribe is like this or that; keep a distance of at least five paddy fields between you and persons from this or that tribe.
We discovered that people from other tribes were like us; they suffered from the same prejudices as we were. We were confused.
Village worldviews
Globalization—the point of reference for contemporary clarity—must demand our gratitude by right. My generation was one that found itself at the cusp of the old and the new—the gradual demise of telephones and the arrival of the internet; the retreat of writing and the arrival of typing.
Today, the Naga plethora, yes, in general, exudes a hint of accommodation. It is an outlook tampered by progressive cultural economics, and an observant (if sometimes judgmental) media. Frowning upon outlandish opinions about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ offers an individual the impression of noble upbringing. In a world of racism and colour economics, seeing only the white is indeed noble.
But such an outlook may be exclusive to a small section of the urbane lot. Tribal prejudices among the Naga are generally subtle, and tagged ‘tribalism’—the gentler, subtler term for racism within a single, ethnic community.
As a journalist, I never believed in euphemism. It can’t be ‘tribalism’—which at its essence means reinforcement of resilience-ideologies and loyalty-doctrines within the subgroup context of ethnic feudal political institutions. Rather, it is racism—which is a pejorative to a person’s identity as a person based on his tribe. It functions exactly the way racism in black and white would, just that the definition represents only a single organised community.
Racism is the highest form of discrimination; the ugliest pejorative to humanity because it reinforces a lie that a race (tribe but not ‘tribalism’ by taxonomy, if you will) is superior or inferior. It engages actual attempts to subvert something based on the visceral identity of the individual as a person.
Literature and the arts, and extensive cultural interaction can redeem a person from prejudice and reinforce the goals of education.
What the Naga needs today is not degrees, but education. Education is a right; but a cultured mind is a privilege. The best weapon against racism, or tribalism if you will, is this realisation: If every person is special, all of us, then, are the same.
