Khekiye K. Sema
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or much too long, the Nagas have been made to bear the cross of “rampant uncontrolled taxation” of the NPGs and the “unsparing commission regime” of the State Government. The abject fear for the guns pointed at the people by the NPGs on the one hand and the deafening silence of many of the motivated self indulgent NGOs the Churches and intellectuals on the other, completes the decadent canvas of our society. It is this passive silence of the masses that has emboldened the powers that be to openly carry out their illegal money harvesting occupations, casting all caution to the wind. What Edmund Burk said ages ago that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” rings so true today. The time of complaining within the four walls of our kitchen must come to an end. This pretentious shadow of living in the so-called civilised society without the rule of Law must be resisted by all conscience bearing Nagas and say “enough is enough”! Our coming generation must be given their fair share of opportunity to grow in a healthy honest environment.Having returned from a gruelling trip from Pfutsuro, Phek, Meluri, Kiphire and Zunheboto with the ACAUT team bearing the message of “One Government, one tax”, it is a heart warming reward to see the exemplified reawakening of the citizens of Phek as an immediate reaction of the masses to tyranny in its aftermath. People of Phek, you have kept your promise! You have affirmed the message of ACAUT by your action loud and clear! Way to go PCCI, PTYS and ACAUT, Phek! Way to go citizens of Phek! You have made the Nagas proud this day! May this little spark, a manifestation of your collective courage, get the fire going and reverberate in each and every town and village across all the Naga inhabited areas! May the NPGs learn the ultimate lesson that their guns will have no effect in the face of a united people standing up together against injustice, extortion and threats. They must instead seriously revisit and reconsider the reconciliation agenda of FNR for one united house of the Naga National Movement. Their unity will surely rejuvenate the Nationalistic spirit that still lives in the hearts of every Naga. Let greed and ego amongst the NGPs not stifle this sentiment.
ACAUT has thus far been listening to and clarifying a lot of confused but honest questions being raised by genuinely concerned citizens concerning its slogan “One Government, one tax”. Many have said that they have heard and read sketchy information about ACAUT but have no comprehensive idea as to what ACAUT really is and what it wants to achieve. Questions like: Is it an Non Govt. Organization?…One tax for which Government?…If FNR is working for the unification of the NPGs, should ACAUT not join FNR and work together hand in hand instead of running a parallel campaign?… Our District/ our area is paying one tax to only one faction, so is this not what ACAUT is campaigning about?
Even the NPGs have not spared ACAUT with their own brand of questioning…Which Faction is ACAUT campaigning in favour of, for the payment of this one tax?…Does ACAUT know the history of the Naga struggle for independence to acknowledge and support the politically correct group who have not surrendered and has been keeping the Naga flag flying high?…Why is ACAUT getting involved in Naga political issue that does not concern them?…Why is ACAUT campaigning against the NPGs with this ‘one tax’ slogan and strengthening the hands of GoI by diluting and weakening the status of the NPGs?… Does ACAUT have a hidden motivated agenda of acting as the agent of India to undermine the peace talk? A question such as this has been superimposed with a conclusive threat that if the present peace talk fails, ACAUT will be held directly responsible! { Curtsy… NSCN(IM)}. There are questions galore and should we list them all, there would be less space for answers, so let’s leave it at this.
To begin with, Against Corruption And Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) is NOT an NGO, NOT affiliated to any Political Party and CERTAINLY NOT a motivated group with a ‘hidden agenda’ as an Indian Agent. It is simply and uprightly a Movement of the people of Nagaland crying out for survival and justice…that includes every citizen of Nagaland…that includes you and that includes me at the receiving end of a tyrannical oppression in the hands of both the NPGs and the corruptive system of the State Government…nothing more, nothing less…period. It is absolutely transparent without any hidden agenda and stands true to the national cause.
The Nagas began their political journey in fear of foreign taxation as amplified by our first generation elders to the Simon Commission in 1929. Late Mr. A.Z. Phizo galvanized this subject into the hearts of every Naga which culminated into the Plebiscite of 1951 on which the legitimacy of the Naga National Movement was founded as free people. This solid house on a solid foundry was hit by the deadly Shillong Accord tsunami in 1975 and the once united house of the Nagas called NNC/FGN disintegrated beyond honourable recognition. Wisdom seemed to have deserted the Naga leaders at this critical juncture of our history. Late Mr. Phizo played his silent fiddle as Nagaland burned…by failing to condemn the Shillong Accord. Instead of first making a sincere effort to opt for a legitimately available legal course of action by impeaching the NNC President for his phenomenal National failure and condemning the Accord through a decree of an existing Naga National Parliament as the supreme body, (way above the signatories who signed the Accord under duress), which could have kept the Naga House intact and the National Flag flying high, Mr. Isak, Mr. Muivah and Mr. Khaplang unfortunately opted to form a Chinese indoctrinated socialistic parallel organization called the NSCN. It is obvious to all that this laid the foundry for further compounding the Naga problem. A dispassionate, unbiased analysis would render this step taken as another blunder adding to the unfortunate plight of our Naga history because there was a positive choice to right the wrong but was not taken. Population explosion then followed with this NSCN further giving birth to more NSCN siblings, with each of them mercilessly trampling upon the lives of the common man day in day out with their tax demands at gun point, under the guise of searching for sovereignty in our own backyard,… with the exception of NSCN(IM) engaging the GoI for a solution. The Nagas are paying a high unbearable price for this careless indiscretion today. No faction is completely free of mistake(s)…each have leopard spot(s)…therefore reconciliation should be a possibility if each of the factions acknowledge this fact and place the greater good of the Nagas in the fore in the name of ‘Nagaland for Christ’. FNR has been making sincere effort to bring all the NPGs together to form a united house through Christian spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. However, one gets the distinct impression that MONEY is the most serious distracting roadblock apart from the equally detrimental ego factor. Each NPGs have their independent tax collecting authority they would not to want to compromise by uniting. So the high lofty national and historical principles are invoked as a basis of reconciliation and would rather wait for Zungki river to flow upstream before agreeing to reconcile on a common platform of give and take. The principle of “taking” and “not giving” is a negative attitude of sitting on a reconciliation table and FNR will be hard pressed to achieve the desired end result under these circumstances. FNR’s Christianly approach to the subject of reconciliation is the best option by far but ACAUT realises that as long as the NPGs enjoy a fluent independent income through taxation, they would be less inclined to unite. Therefore while the objective is the same…to unite the NPGs… ACAUT has adopted the financial route which FNR cannot technically address. No organization can survive without revenue…neither can the masses be expected to continue to bear the burdened of their uncontrolled irrational self-indulgent taxation forever. Therefore, ACAUT is not campaigning in favour of any one group but has been accentuating the need for a “One House” strategy of all the NPGs. Some Districts had expressed their ‘one tax’ support for ‘one faction only’ as an equation to ACAUT’s “one Govt, one tax” slogan. This is a gross misconception that does not serve the end result that ACAUT is angling for. As long as each faction continue to get their revenue from one district or the other, each is assured sustenance and therefore would not feel the compulsion for unity. Look at the scenario carefully: even if one district supports only one faction, other districts are also supporting another ‘one faction only’ which is as good as encouraging factionalism. This being the ground reality, ACAUT is campaigning for stoppage of all revenue resources for all the factions until they unite. Once they do, Nagas would be prepared to pay ‘one tax’ to this united house of ‘one NNM’ with complete moral support as a bonus. Both the roads of FNR and ACAUT therefore, lead to the same house of unity amongst the NPGs.
ACAUT has been appealing to all our NPG leaders to understand that without the support of the masses, the fragmented NNM will further disintegrate to a vanishing point. The following historical truth is crystal clear to every Tom, Dick, Harry, Khumutsa and Akhakhu …The Naga political journey that began in fear of ‘foreign taxation’ has now reverted to a fear of ‘domestic taxation’ from our own kind instead. The fear for guns in the hands of our aggressors has reverted to the fear of guns in the hands of our own brothers who ruthlessly squeeze out ‘national tax’ from the common man to quench their ‘national thirst’ in some dingy ‘national bars’, for their ‘national self-perpetuation’ and their ‘personal national comfort zones’. Sovereignty is no longer in their sight. There was a time when the National workers were doing a yeomen’s service for the community by taking the errant gamblers and drunkards to task. In Zunheboto, a group of young men caught gambling were made to literally eat the cards they were playing with, at gun point…it included the spectators. One of the ‘card eaters’ was supposed to have commented afterwards that the ‘joker’ tasted the bitterest of all the cards in the pack he ate. The wheel of fortune has spun a full circle and the pendulum of social indiscretion amongst the civil society in the past, now swing above the heads of battalion after battalions within each factional cadres absolutely qualified to eat all the jokers in each and every pack of cards in Nagaland. It is a known fact that the adulteration and bootlegging operations are being patronised by some of the NPGs even as they sanctimoniously make prohibition noise once in a while for public consumption. Nevertheless this has not deterred anyone, and the habitual drinkers sit side by side with the cadres that proclaim prohibition and continue to drink the patronised adulterated liquor. At this point in time the public are thoroughly fed up with the hypocrisies they see in our NPGS day in day out, unlike the days gone by.
ACAUT is only focused on unburdening the common man from the clutches of ‘out of control taxation’. It can only happen if the NPGS unite. Asking them to harness the strength of unity is not an act of Anti- Nationalism. ACAUT is not responsible for all the divisions within the NPGs and it is up to them to clean up the mess they have deliberately created. There is no political motivation within ACAUT other than the motivation to create a fair breathing space for the masses. The clarion call is for all the NPGs to unite and streamline the tax collection norm that has crippled every family alive in Nagaland and garner the support of the masses as they did before. Nagas can then address the issue of self-determination together from a position of strength and cause a final solution to this vexed problem. It seems like a tall unachievable, impossible dream…but you do know that the public felt the same when Abraham Lincoln set out to liberate the black slaves in America. You do know that the majority felt the same when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. set out on a march for civil rights for the American blacks. Above of all, you do know that the most unbelievable miracle was the culmination of Martin Luther King’s dream in Obama becoming the first Black American President. Faith can move a mountain, so join the ACAUT movement with your heart and soul and make the impossible happen. May God help us all to do the right thing to achieve this impossible dream.
The writer is IAS (Rtd)
Forest Colony, Kohima
