[ Dr P Ngully ]
On behalf of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, I stand before you all with a heavy heart filled with pain and sorrow. We share the same grief that overwhelms a father and a mother over the loss of their sons, sons and daughters over the loss of their fathers, brothers and sisters over the loss of their brothers, and above all, the loss of husbands by their wives and the loss of a fiancæcopy; by a maiden. Surely, of anguish there is none greater than of two hearts that will never meet again.
This is our Naga story ever since our forebears chose to be true to what they believe most deeply to be the right, natural and honourable course for their people and declared Naga nationhood in the same spirit of Bal Gangadhar Tilak who proclaimed, “Swaraj is my birthright.”
Upholding the truth of our history, many of our elders and leaders have died defending our right as a people. They gave their lives, so that we may live with dignity and honour as human beings. The price they paid for doing so constitutes the heart of what the government of India and the media call ‘Naga insurgency’. For us, the Nagas, it is our struggle for freedom, human rights, dignity, honour, identity and so forth.
The Oting massacre on 4 December, 2021 and the brutal killing in Mon on 5 December, 2021 has once again brought forth the denial of legitimacy and of facts of our Naga struggle, and today, in our brokenness, we find strength in our togetherness to defend the honour and dignity of the truth of our history. We stand with a firm conviction that right is might, for, as children of nature, we were taught the natural order of rights in the universe, that the mighty elephant has the same environmental and ecological rights as the tiny ant. Any disturbance in such an equation would surely cause a calamity till the restoration of the natural order in consonance with their rights. Such universal natural laws do reveal that any nation, however powerfully armed with sophisticated weapons, nuclear or otherwise, with the best trained soldiers is nothing in the face of micro-organisms like the coronavirus and Omicron of recent times.
I thank the Naga Students’ Federation for this rally in awakening our consciousness, for we cannot go on living in delusion, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty. The sooner we accept the reality that right is might, rather than might is right, the safer for humanity. In no uncertain terms can we dishonour or demean a soldier’s death in our land or elsewhere for their courage and sacrifice, even for the one from the Para Commando who lost his life at Oting. We grieve with the family in the universal principle of humanity, fully aware of what the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act can do as a double-edged sword. Hereupon, we plead to all the family members, the kith and kin of those who have laid down their lives ever since the AFSPA was implemented in 1958. May you rise with a daring courage for the repeal of such a draconian law for the sake of justice for all. Only then will the souls of those who have laid down their lives rest in peace.
We have now reached the time to realize that humanity must exist together or become extinct, because, as has been proven time and again, the Nagas will never give up the truth of our history as they defined who we are as a people. Our Naga people and our leaders must courageously and honestly accept and understand the human elements of fear, greed and desire for power, which in ancient times was addressed by the feast of merit but today it has viciously fragmented our struggle.
As innocent blood has been shed in Oting and Mon, and for those of us who are here today along with the rest of humanity in the world, it is most pertinent at this juncture that we all must climb down from our mountain of pride to lift the broken souls in the valleys. Only then can we let their souls rest in peace and thereby we will be able to reach our rightful place through the healing of our spirits.
We look upon the great nation, India with its ancient civilizations to stand by the mantra from the Hindu scripture Mundaka Upanishad, ‘Satyameva jayate’ (Truth alone triumphs).
Kuknalim! (Dr P Ngully is a member of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation. The foregoing is a message shared by him during a people’s rally organized by the Naga Students’ Federation on 17 December, 2021 in Kohima)