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10/10/2005: "Who is violent – Nagas or the System?"


Who is violent – Nagas or the System?

Athili Saprüna EMN

Much has been written, discussed and understood about violence in Naga society.
Many more outpourings on the subject are to come in small discussion groups and in the columns of newspapers in Nagaland.
Are Nagas violent in nature? Are the ‘brave’ and ‘proud’ Nagas prone to resort to violence at the slightest provocation?
Have anthropologists and historians; army generals and commentators; sociologists and certain Church workers conclusively proved that the once ‘head hunting’ tribesmen, inhabiting the Patkai ranges at the strategic tri-junction of Burma, India and China, have aggression in their blood and psyche?
That, the chief protagonists of these situations are the factions involved: NSCN (K), NSCN (IM). That, their spree of collecting money (some also refer as ‘tax’) in what most people call ‘extortion’ by brandishing Kalashnikovs and US and Chinese made revolvers, is what it is.
Will doomsday predictions come to pass upon a people who are on the verge of emerging victorious. Victorious after overcoming a protracted politico-military confrontation with a giant called India.
Is that awaited victory going to lead Nagas nowhere because “they would always fight among themselves.” Some say it is an eminent civil war.
This piece will not dwell on the neo-India protagonist lobby apparently finding ways to lure young men (and women) into the defence forces of their long time aggressor.
It will take some pages and more time to debate whether many young people’s ultimate goal in life has ended up serving a force, which not long ago, mowed down generations of Nagas.

Do we question?
Shall we or shall we not then raise, more questions. Or have we to skip the questioning part altogether and go along with the bandwagon of delving within the opportunities that are thrown into our midst in pre-determined parameters.
Have Governments and planners concluded that recruitment into ‘careers’ that is to do with a ‘gun’ is to occupy a major chunk of the employment generation programmes down the ages.
Are we led to believe that Nagas in general cannot enter into an agreement with a non-Naga? That, the hand flies first before an exchange of words take place over an issue of assumed provocation?
Is it because, it is commonplace to witness a brown skinned mainlander from somewhere in India gets a bashing from 12 year old Naga youth.
Ever been witness to a jean-clad Naga girl pointing furiously at a rickshaw driver?
It is pertinent to put these commonplace occurrences in perspective.
These occur in a certain created space and circumstances that push a society to indulge and condone even such unruly behaviour among ordinary citizens.
If corruption among public servants, even in high places, takes place, it does because we have a system that pushes our people into it.
If Nagas are spendthrift with money, it is because it is so designed. Consumerism and the capitalist mentality have taken much too deep roots and society cannot engage in a meaningful debate over such an issue as privatisation of one of the largest hospitals in the region. Not one soul has raised a voice on the 30% increase in the taxi fares between Kohima and Dimapur starting October 1.
Never mind if we never raised our concern as a people to what United States does anywhere in the world. Or we wish them well on July 4 every year and thank them continually for sending her missionaries in late 19th century here.
What will be the Naga position on world affairs when such a day comes for us to take sides?
When the Americans are training alongside counter insurgency experts in nearby Mizoram, it is okay. Will we be able to resist attempts to negotiate a potentially unfair deal over our huge oil reserves with US known to fight wars over the mineral resource.
Some of these issues should not concern Nagas immediately.
What this effort would effectively deal upon is the question of violence.
This understanding of violence would go far beyond direct violence in which one or more people inflict violence on other people.
In addition to direct violence, Johan Galtung, considered the father of Peace Studies, emphasises another form of violence, namely structural violence, which is not carried out by individuals but is hidden to a greater or lesser extent in structures. An example of this might be the injustices of the worldwide system for the trade in goods, which creates more and more starving people every year.

Structural violence:
It is the most basic and fundamental form of violence. Structural violence is widely defined as the systematic ways in which a given regime prevents individuals and a peoples from achieving their full potential. It is expressive of the conditions of society, the structures of social order, and the institutional arrangements of power that reproduce mass violations of personhood 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Such violence is accomplished in part through “policies” of informal and formal denial of civil, criminal, and basic rights for all people. Institutionalised militarisation, racism, sexism, denial of individual liberty, propaganda are examples of this.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the BSNL with its most unreliable services and the poorly managed water situation in Nagaland are forms of denying basic human needs.
It slows down a people and the Government effectively controls the pace and quality of life.
It is another matter if the phones are tapped. It is another matter if the tourists will have drums of water at their disposal while locals line up to fetch a tin of water.
The blame game has continued. Is it the State Government, the bureaucrats and politicians? Or is it the Nagas themselves who have been corrupt, self-centered and driven by ‘ism’ since they migrated to this sacred lands from the ancient times? Or is it the foreign socio-economic, educational, cultural and political assimilation over an unwilling people?
Which of these then is primary? Can we also include militarisation of our lands and our societies?

An encyclopaedia article provides another explanation to the much-discussed term of “structural violence”: “Violence is built into the social system and expresses itself in the unequal distribution of power and, as a result, unequal opportunities (i.e. inequality in the distribution of income, education opportunities etc.). As far as Galtung is concerned, structural violence is synonymous with “social injustice”. There is an alignment between Galtung’s analysis and criticism of capitalism in developing countries. This criticism legitimates the struggle against socially unjust systems (Guerrilla etc.), even when these systems largely forgo the use of oppressive measures.”

Johan makes fundamental distinction between personal and structural violence and sees it from two angles. Peace is understood as the absence of violence.
He says, “A more expansive concept of violence leads to a more expansive understanding of peace: peace defined as the absence of personal violence and the absence of structural violence. These two forms of peace are referred to as negative peace and positive peace.”
Galtung, who started the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo during his interventions in many a conflict across the world stressed upon the need to address these hidden forms of violence. It is more than just the absence of overt violent conflict (negative peace). Peace is not the absence of war.
Ceasefire is not Peace as yet then. Peace is not the absence of factional duels too.

Challenge:
The greatest spiritual crisis we face today is violence in all of its dimensions. Addressing personal, interpersonal, and systemic violence and injustice requires deep personal, interpersonal, and systemic transformation. This transformation can be facilitated by communities and a (un)willing counter-insurgency force, grounded in a vision and practice of active, creative, powerful and principled non-violence.
Challenge is then posed to conflicting parties – India and Nagas, to pursue a policy of transforming the unjust equations imposed upon one by the mightier in a spirit of trust and mutuality.
Not by staging encounters and skirmishes here and there in a bid to yet try and discredit another party. Not by holding an occasional Ghatak in front of impressionable minds.
Only then, can one understand the question: “Why do people kill people, who kill people, to prove that killing people is wrong.”


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