Beyond tribe to nation building: A call to forge alternate history for the Nagas

Naga Republic News

In a bold attempt to get people thinking into some of the concerns facing the Nagas in the 21st century, noted thinker, theologian and peace activist Rev Dr Wati Aier has called for present day Nagas to look beyond the ‘tribe’ and instead focus on nation building and at the same time build what he called ‘an alternate history for the Nagas’.

He was speaking during the annual Chalie Kevichusa Memorial Lecture on November 24 under the theme ‘Beyond Tribal Seduction: A Personal Reflection’.

Rev Dr Wati Aier at the annual Chalie Kevichusa Memorial Lecture on November 24

‘Nagas who remain aware of the sacredness of Naga history must vigilantly safeguard against the desperate rationalization of any bedrock’

 

“What is this alternate history? It is the history of common belonging, and a history constructively woven into an identity called ‘Naga’ that is spread across lands beyond the present state of Nagaland”, he said.

While giving this call to the idea of a common belonging, he also dwelt at length on the “sectarian mentalities” and exclusivism among the Nagas arising out of tribalism.

The speaker, who is also Convenor of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), reminded about the “Naga nations” as opposed to “tribe” or “tribes” given by outsiders and the need to “invest in relationships of cooperation” and “common belonging”.

According to Rev Dr Wati Aier, the term “tribe” gained currency with the advent of the colonial enterprise. He also said that “colonial interpretations, often biased and naively arrogant” assigned to a particular nation “tribal identity” with the imputed connotation of primitiveness and backwardness.

“Anthropology being one of the premier colonial sciences, the currency of the tribe is floated through cultural and social instruments to this day”, he remarked while pointing out that the Naga people’s “challenge, accordingly, is to look beyond the singular use of the term tribe and the ensnarement that follows it”.

“Nagas should acquire a history…simply put, our challenge is to sustain the Naga ecology of belonging”, he said while warning against tribalism, which according to him “lurks as a notorious seducer of community”.

“Today, tribalism is a tool of self-exclusion and communal division and can too easily be used to incite one against the other”, he said while pointing out that the “tribe” has become a double-edged means by which “social iconoclasts seduce the public for numerous reasons and ends, often at the expense of the public’s chance to act generously for the common belonging”.

According to the author, “most often, social iconoclasts convince people that it makes no sense to sacrifice for the common belonging”.

“As such, this seduction repeats itself by situating the tribe in the past, ultimately reducing the nation (tribe) to a mere political entity in the midst of an overarching Naga belonging – the larger entity”.

While “social iconoclasts” as described by Rev Dr Wati Aier appear to be a modern day phenomenon in the present Naga context, on the contrary “notable Naga pioneers of the early twentieth century” were ahead of their time and their generation, he states.

“With their innate imagination, these pioneers knew of the seduction of the tribe, of imperial policy of situating the tribes in the past, and of the danger of romancing the tribe by others in the guise of anthropological epistemology”, he notes.

In this regard, Rev Dr Wati Aier praised the likes of A.Z. Phizo and others who he said had “traversed the length and breadth of the Naga-lands, as opposed to the Indian State of “Nagaland, meeting every Naga nation and constructing the pan-Naga identity and movement”.

The way forward according to Rev Dr Wati Aier is to be “imaginative by creating new possibilities of untapped potential within us and build around the primordial idea of belonging”. He also says that “we must not look backward by trying to resurrect the past”.

‘A successful paradigm can be forged when Naga institutions move beyond sectarian mentalities and invest in relationships of cooperation’

“Within this backward-looking view of history, the Naga narrative has been seductively immobilized, often to the point of tragedy. Believing in our creative energy, we must accordingly forge an alternate history, one that rises above the prevalent defeatist frames of our cultural ethos”.

Crucially, according to Rev Dr Wati Aier, the question Nagas should be asking is how they can go about resolving the “malignant internal conflicts”. “No matter how daunting this task, part of the solution lies in overcoming these conflicts with a sense of urgent acceptance”, he says.

And to this he adds that “we can only begin to construct the alternate historical imagination once we fully commit to the reality of our situation”.

Read the full text of the lecture ‘Beyond Tribal Seduction: A Personal Reflection’