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10/27/2008: "Give us a priority to establish ourselves in our homeland Angathong Rengma Morung"

Give us a priority to establish ourselves in our homeland Angathong Rengma Morung

Nagas should be well aware of the policies that is implementing by some arrogant businessmen/Suppliers established in our homeland are manipulating the Government agencies for their business and even went to the extend of paying our own Naga youth for their security, no doubt they are employed for their livelihood but in a destructive way to encountered with the local people, so when any argument broke up with the customers, those paid Naga youths were usually being sent for intervention which leads to a confrontation among our own brothers, which results to a bad relation among our own people. Where on the other hand they are driving away all our wealth to their native place, whereas we left empty. It is high time Nagas should rise from sleep to face the challenging world ahead.
Instead of being puppet in the hand of those non-locals allowing them to manipulate our Government, we should take up a challenge and fight with the Government to find an avenue for the local people. Despite of given priority to our Nagas the best avenues like Supplies and Contracts were being given away to non-Nagas, Where are left behind struggling for livelihood. The Government is not in a position to open employment avenues to the educated youth. Government Contracts are sold to the non-locals for self beneficial. I f priority were given to our own people Thousands of Naga youth could have employed in many private establishment and offices.
The Naga Minister Bureaucrats should take a challenge to reforms the present system so that the educated Naga Youths yelling for employment and livelihood can be solved for once and Nagaland become an original Naga dominion Land. The enthusiastic Naga Youths are ready to take up any venture for a better Nagaland. Our dreams and desire are if the well to do Nagas can come out with a constructive idea to help and find an avenue for the youth so as to live in Harmony and Progress.
KUKNALIM
Angathong Rengma
Concern Student Leader
Kandinu
‘NSCN/GPRN’ procures arms morungexpress

In this image released to the Media, assorted weapons are seen displayed in an undisclosed location. The “NSCN/GPRN” said that they have procured huge quantity of weapons and explosives from “a neighboring country” for “defensive purposes”.

Dimapur, October 26 (MExN): The “NSCN/GPRN” today said to have procured a huge quantity of sophisticated weapons and explosives “during a recent trip to a neighboring country”. A note from the outfit said the weapons are mostly of the ‘world-class A-series, the latest version of the M16’. A team of 110 cadres, led by “commander” of the “western division” “brig”. Niki Sumi took the “recent trip”, the note said.
The “NSCN/GPRN” asserted that the “purpose” of procuring these highly-sophisticated weapons “is chiefly to defend ourselves from the aggressors who are standing in the way of Naga unification”. Asserting that it will not rest till the Nagas “are united” the outfit claimed “these will not be used for destructive purposes but only for defensive purposes”.

Cry for highway protection force OUR CORRESPONDENT The Telegraph


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Imphal, Oct. 26: Manipur transporters and citizens’ groups today urged the Centre to set up a highway protection force along the Imphal-Guwahati road on National Highway 39 and the Imphal-Silchar road on National Highway 53.
The demand came on the third day of suspension of bus services to and from Manipur, after militants set fire to a Guwahati-bound bus in Karbi Anglong district.
The bus had set out from Imphal and was bound for Guwahati via Nagaland.
The Kuki Liberation Army/Kuki Liberation Organisation torched the bus on Thursday. Two passengers, Robart Gomnei from Tamenglong district and his mother-in-law Ginthailiu Gangmei from Bishnupur district, were burnt alive and others suffered burn injuries.
The bodies were taken to the respective villages for last rites today.
Robart, a soldier, was taking his mother-in-law to his place of posting, Siliguri, where his wife was to deliver a baby. Both victims belonged to the Zeliangrong community.
The outfit said action it set fire to the bus because the All Manipur Inter-state Bus Association failed to pay annual tax.
Representatives of citizens’ groups, transporters and leaders of the Zeliangrong and Kuki communities gathered here today to condemn the arson.
The KLA/KLO is one of the 19 tribal militant groups that signed the Suspension of Agreement ground rules in August. The joint monitoring group, headed by principal secretary (home) D. S. Pooniah, was silent over the incident.
Today’s meeting, attended by leaders of various communities condemned the “inaction” of the Okram Ibobi Singh government.
Irrigation and flood control minister N. Biren Singh said action would be taken against the groups that violated the ground rules.
Manipur director-general of police Yumnam Joykumar Singh said he would request Assam and Nagaland to ensure the safety of vehicles. He would also request the Assam government to punish the culprits.
The Threatened Indigenous Peoples’ Society, a rights group, sent a memorandum to the Union transport ministry to set up the highway protection force.
The bus association will submit a memorandum to the state government tomorrow, urging it to take up the case with the Nagaland and Assam governments.
Poujeng Kamei, the president of the Zeliangrong Youth Front, demanded that according to Zeliangrong law, the Kuki outfit should pay a fine to the families of the two victims.
The Story of Mayangkokla of the Nagas Brainerd Prince, Oxford
Mayangkokla’s screams continue to echo in my ears, even as I pause to reflect upon her biographical account in Kaka Iralu’s ‘Blood and Tears’ [Iralu, Kaka. D., Nagaland and India: The Blood and the Tears (Kohima: Published by Kaka D. Iralu, 2000)]. His book is based on testimonial evidence to argue for the cruelties and inhuman acts of the Indian army in the land of the Nagas. Mayangkokla’s story forms the major section of the chapter on Ungma village and describes the cruelties and inhumanities of the Indian army there. Kaka sits with Mayangkokla in her house in 1997 and listens as she tells her story with her frail old hand in his. She recounts the tales of horror of her teen years and describes that fateful week. The testimonial narrates that she was a village beauty, a young girl of 18, who was dragged, beaten senselessly and then gang-raped both publicly as well as in private confinement for over a week. Her screams of protest and mock-laughter of the army men fill every line of this account.
My mind searches for tools to understand the few pages of blood and tears that I had just read. I want to be critical of all that I read, I tell myself. Kaka, I say, is passionate about his book, and could an overflow of that passion distort the reality that he describes? It really could not have been so bad! I further wonder, could the choice of words in his graphic account be intentional to suit a particular kind of audience that he is writing to, or even being politically-correct? Or finally, could the memory of the incident have changed from year to year, from each telling to another to accommodate the tenor of the larger narrative that it so seeks to represent? However, all academic tools crumble as I see Mayangkokla, aged and fragile, recounting her story, a testimony of what happened to her and who can defy or deny her story? It is her story, like all our life-stories and who am I or we to contest it?
Also, her story is not told in isolation, it is not an anomaly or a variant, a blip in the rather beautiful picture of life. The events that she experienced in her life unfortunately were not unique to her. Hers is one chapter of a larger compendium that contains stories of similar experiences. She compels us to listen to her and so we must. This gruesome act is one among thousands, Kaka argues, that has taken place in Nagaland over the past 50 years. The Indian army, armed with special powers, has been sent at the behest of the Indian government, and representing the gods of democracy and nation-state to curtail these ‘underground insurgents’ or ‘freedom fighters’ (depending on who is narrating). Many members of the army that had gone to protect the sovereignty of India misused their uncontrolled powers to kill, rape and destroy countless lives.
A few decades earlier, something similar was happening in the Indian sub-continent. Then it was the Indian insurgents or freedom fighters (depending on who is narrating again) fighting against the colonial British Crown that was ruling India. The Colonial powers had ruled over India for over 200 hundred years in some form or other. The Indian freedom fighters fought and overcame the colonial powers that had imposed their rule on India. India said that she did not want to be part of the colonial empire and asserted her right to rule herself. That story is well-documented and we remember it with pride. This demon of colonialism was dethroned and ousted and India got her freedom. The world lauded India’s independence and it being constituted as a republic. Each year we reminisce and celebrate our independence and the victory of freedom over imperial rule. We hold high the virtues of freedom and self-rule.
Ironically, soon thereafter, a fight between the Indian State and the Nagas ensued pretty much on the same ideologies that had caused India to fight the British. However, this time it was the Nagas who were fighting Indian aggression. The Nagas said that they were never part of the Indian state and hence did not want to be ruled and be colonized by India. But this time, India fought her, forgetting the very values of freedom and right to one’s self-governance that had propelled her own journey in her fight against the British Raj, and she dealt ruthlessly with the Nagas. There was no willingness to listen to the story of the Nagas who had made it clear that they did not belong to the Indian state and asserted that India was imposing her rule on a land and people who considered themselves to be an ‘other’ with no common history. History was repeating itself; India was doing exactly what the British Raj had done: she was imposing her rule over a people who did not want to come under her governance. India sent her army in and the atrocities began: mindless killings, uncounted rapes, burning of houses and villages, it was indeed hell and have been for the past 50 years. The Nagas who organized themselves into an army in turn fought the army and the war has continued. It is rightfully called the world’s longest lasting war. The story of Mayangkokla makes us think about war, conflict, violence and their cruelties. It is here that you and I step into this story. This is not a story that is happening across many seas or in another continent. It is happening, right in our backyard, within the frontiers of our own country. How do we respond to this story? Can tears of pain be replaced by tears of joy? Can life’s story be written as The Beautiful and the Triumph instead of Iralu’s The Blood and the Tears?
I definitely have no solution to the world’s oldest lasting war or even how to go about a solution. But I do think that those who believe in peace and justice and hate violence must raise their voice or do something. I dream of a world where the armed forces will be unemployed, where there will be no need to fight or fire a gun, with no need to exert violence. Where there will be no more anguished cries of Mayangkoklas but sweet laughter, cries of children filling the air.
When the children cry
Let them know we tried
When the children fight
Let them know it ain't right
When the children pray
Let them know the way
Cause when the children sing
Then the new world begins

– From the song
“When the Children Cry” by White Lion
“The Missionary Position” and the Nagas Rev. L. Kari Longchar
With Christian missionaries, the suspicion dates back even further. In the 1950s, New Delhi identified the Rev. Michael Scott as the prime instigator of the Naga rebellion. We took the line that Christian missionaries had played a pernicious role in the North East, using Christianity to achieve a wedge between the tribes of that region and the Indian mainstream".
Vir Sanghvi said this in "The Missionary Position", in The Hindustan Times, on the recent orgy of violence against Christians by Bajrang Dal and others in Orissa and Karnataka. Eastern Mirror reprinted it on October 13. (Given the seriousness of the issue another heading should have been used.)
The first part of Sanghvi's article is appreciated. But the paragraph above is the product of assumptions rooted in prejudice. It is unfair to Christian missionaries, the Nagas and Scott. It repeats what Delhi thinks Nagas are, ignoring the facts of their history which they consider to be important. The damage is shown in the fact that even enlightened persons like Sanghvi assume it is true and use it to support their narrative. It is asking Sanghvi too much to visit Nagaland. But has he ever talked to some Nagas to understand the facts?
How did Rev. Michael Scott come to Nagaland?
Scott was famous in the '50s for his fight against the white Apartheid regime in South Africa. He was a fellow campaigner on the issue with Pundit Nehru and V.K. Krishna Menon. Menon was the Non-Aligned world's most vitriolic attacker of western imperialism when the Cold War was at its coldest. In 1959, Scott made a powerful speech at an UN-sponsored meeting in New York calling for an end to apartheid. A Naga teaching at a medical school in Chicago, read the speech in The New York Times. He wrote Scott and congratulated him and asked him to help the Nagas also.
A.Z. Phizo, President of Naga National Council, had reached Zurich, Switzerland. Scott arranged for him to come to London and introduced him to his close associates. Scott's name soon became well-known among Nagas. When the moves for a Ceasefire between Nagas and the Government of India started, B.P. Chaliha, Jaya Prakash Narayan, Shankar Rao and Rev. M. Scott were proposed to be members of the Nagaland Peace Mission that the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) was about to form. Rao could not come due to ill-health. The other three accepted the invitation.
Scott arrived in Calcutta and reportedly phoned Nehru and told him he was on his way to meet the Nagas. The position of the respected fighter for justice in South Africa was that he was committed to the same principles every where in the world. Nehru obviously thought it prudent not to stop him. Scott went to Shillong in March 1964 and joined Chaliha and Narayan to start the work of the Peace Mission. On September 6th the first Ceasefire in Nagaland was declared. In May 1966, Scott was arrested and his documents confiscated. He was ordered to leave immediately. Pandit Nehru was no longer alive by then, and his daughter must have decided not to have an activist like Scott on the scene when she was about to pursue a new policy to deal with the Nagas.
The points to be made are –
1. Scott could not have so easily entered Nagaland at that very sensitive time but for his close political association with Nehru and Menon over the years.
2. Scott's coming had no connection whatsoever with the Christian missionary work for the Gospel already going on in Nagaland. He was not a preacher of the Christian Gospel but a high-profile white political activist whom Nehru and Menon were happy to work with to oppose the racist regime in South Africa.
3. Scott did not instigate the Nagas. The Naga struggle started to consolidate decades before the British left. Scott came to Nagaland in 1964. What will the blacks and coloured of South Africa think if they were told people like Scott, Nehru and Menon had instigated them to fight for their beliefs?
4. To Nagas the stand they took was not a rebellion. If when your neighbour ignores your fence and you tell him your fence must be respected you are not a rebel. You are boldly stating the truth as a responsible, honourable neighbour should. Also Nagas are not anti-India, or secessionists. When they reiterated their position on 14 August, 1947, reaffirming what they had stated in writing in 1929, they were not breaking an undertaking they had given earlier. They were not trying to secede from a union they had accepted. Nagas are still only at the earliest stage of their journey as a people. They have shown serious weaknesses which they must admit and rectify without blaming others. But their position is that they have become a people with a history India must not ignore.
5. The last American missionary, Robert Delano, was ordered to leave Naga Hills at very short notice. He left in 1955. The American missionaries in Nagaland started their first schools and taught them to read and write, and translated the New Testament into some of the dialects. To accuse them of instigating the Nagas was and is totally untrue and irresponsible. One of the missionaries told the Nagas they were too backward to be able to run their own government and urged them to be realistic. He was being frank, but Nagas told him it was not his job to advise them on the subject.
Nagas feel the assumption by others that their struggle for which so many gave their lives or lost everything they had was instigated by some people from outside an insult to their intelligence, or disregard of their understanding of their history as if it is irrelevant. The purpose of this article is to state the facts, and how Nagas see their situation from the beginning to the present. The settlement we are waiting for will be more lasting if the facts are given the importance they deserve.
The Christian missionaries came before Naga Hills District was created by the British in the 19th century. The first American missionary knelt down to pray when some Nagas he encountered outside a village started to throw spears at him. His prayer was heard and he was unhurt. He collected the spears and returned them to the astonished warriors. The rest is history.
Did the Hindu priests and Muslim maulvis in the plains of Assam ever think of climbing up the roadless hills and mountains to meet the Nagas? The answer to this simple question will answer some of the other questions in the present debates.
Does the American Presidential election have any impact on Nagas? morungexpress
Some of those who voted yes had this to say:
• Unfortunately yes. There is no denying that the American Presidential election does impact the whole world. Just look at George W Bush. The Americans could not find a better person and the whole world has to suffer just because the Americans made an error of judgement. Lets hope this time better sense will prevail and they will elect a president who will have a more positive affect on the world.
• Of course. Definitely. In spite of the fact that the American policy is criticized the world over, their foreign policies have a very long hand and it will effect Nagas no matter who wins this election.
• Yes, long term impact
• Is Nagaland a Christian state? The government of India would listen if a US president cautions India regarding atrocities to Christians and to ensure secularism. Yes, India would listen to a US president than Rio, P.A. Sangma and Sangliana put together.
• It’s a funny question, but I just can’t ignore it. It’s funny because most Americans don’t even know that Nagas exist and even if they did, they probably don’t care anyway. I am sure most Nagas would say just the same. But this is where the irony is. Even if Americans don’t know if Nagas exist and even if they don’t care about us, the hard fact is that their policies affect us. Even if America (not Americans) fart, it shakes the world. So as much as they are loathed by majority of the world, they do have a powerful influence on the world. So even if Americans have not heard about the Nagas, the Nagas have heard about America and that itself is enough for their presidential elections to make an impact.
• Yes, people are getting influenced by Obama’s call for change and have compared it even to our society, saying that we Nagas too need change.
• I think it does. No one would like to admit it since the whole world has more or less hates their guts; but America does have a huge influence on the world. Nagas may not even be on the radar screen of the American president, but their policies are far reaching and it would be foolish for Nagas to think that the American policy does not affect them.
• In this globalised world where communication has become one of the most powerful tools, Nagas cannot avoid BBC, CNN and the other Indian channels, which are bombarded by news on the US elections. The Nagas are definitely aware of what is happening in the US, even if it is not vice versa, so yes, Nagas are impacted by the US presidential elections. I bet you most of the Nagas will be Republicans.
• The decisions on policies that America makes fortunately or unfortunately effect the whole world (eg. the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and yes, not forgetting the War on ‘Terror’), and therefore whoever the Americans choose will most definitely impact even the Nagas in this ‘back of beyond’ part of the world.

Some of those who voted no had this to say:
• I will say No. Because even though the American elections do affect the world, the Nagas are far too removed from world politics. So, I dont think the presidential election will have any impact on Nagas.
• What? When have Nagas become Americans! Who cares who rules America? Do we Nagas listen to anyone?
• The Indian president cannot do anything for us, then who in America do for us?
• If we Nagas who are too smart to settle down in some villages, get hold of a piece of land in America (forcefully, then what?).Then only will America have any impact on Nagas.
• American presidential election is no match for our type of electioning in Nagaland. Instead of being any impact to us, they will be shocked to find out how much we Nagas cost for our votes leaders. Even America doesn't have that much money for elections.
• Nothing is going to have any impact on nagas. If America makes Nagaland one of their states, then they will realise how wrong their judgment was. Americans will be affected by "ISM" everywhere..
• No way man! America doesn't even know that we Nagas too live in this planet. What if the president of USA was concerned about us, He would surely try to solve our civil war like he did in Iraq, East Timor, Serbia, etc. He is not even aware Nagas are from the same planet. We all admit USA is the father of this world. Nobody dares her.
• When our people were not even jolted by our own election, what in the world would American polls do to us?
• America doesn’t care what's happening in Nagaland

Some of those who voted others had this to say:
• Does it matter? Yes American politics has impact all over the world. But does it matter who wins. Whether it is Obama or McCain I see there will be no difference, because when it comes to American Foreign policy, the Democrats and the Republicans are the same. So, even though the elections will impact the Nagas, it will make no change who wins.
• If Mr. Obama comes to Nagaland to buy votes, we nagas will be asking too much for a vote that even he won’t be able to dish out 500 crores to buy our votes. Aren't we so rich? 500 crores or no votes.
• To some extent, YES!!. If the New American govt raises the economic bar, surely India is going to benefit. Sure does we Nagas in a way, if we remain a good ally to our mainland. They will feed us more. Aren't we dependent on Indian money? Aren't we just fighting for the sake of Indian money? Why then, we don't want to remain under the Indian constitution? If we are using their currency, we are no different from Indians.
• Maybe to certain extend only. Those who seek change may feel the impact but otherwise for our Nagas nothing seems to impact us. We need to learn to bring change in our land.
• Certainly the elections has created a lot of curiosity among Nagas and am sure the population is divided between McCain and Obama, but I don’t know how much the presidential elections will impact the Nagas. Sure, the elections will definitely affect India, but Nagaland, I don’t know to what degree.