Guest Column
Are we a cowardly generation of disunited corrupted parasitical hypocrites?
Khekiye K. Sema IAS (Retd)
April 2, 2023
After having retired from a turbulent rollercoaster bureaucratic experience in Government service…I have since tried to give my best to sincerely use whatever little experience that was garnered during my service years by sharing honest thoughts with our Naga people on various issues that I felt ought to matter most to us all…without fear or favour.
Candid: As always !!
I however dishearteningly land up surmising that our people still need to clean their ears to really hear… clean their eyes to truly see the ground reality… clean their brains of this highly toxic greed factor… and then finally begin to clearly realise that our only real common hope for a secure future lies in working as intelligent people…TOGETHER.
The mother of all gambling called the “Nagaland State Legislative Assembly Election” (2023) has been concluded. In Nagaland the fortune in the gambling scale of opportunity always favours those who have more resource called M-O-N-E-Y with or without any gray matter. In a healthy, functional democracy the factual performance of the party in power is evaluated by the electorates during the election by either voting them out or voting them back to power.
In the case of Nagaland however, m-o-n-e-y has drowned the possibility of any such pragmatic democratic exercise. For the past two decades there has been a consistent and continuous chorus of high decibel criticism of a non-performing Government right from the Centre, to the urban and down to the rural bases concerning the utter lack of services on elementary welfare subjects such as Health, Education, the horrendous road conditions etc…you name it!
Yet when it comes to elections…everything is forgotten and buried. The litmus test tells us without doubt that the present generation of Nagas are prepared to compromise and sacrifice “a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g” and “e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g” for the sake of M_O_N_E_Y. Period!
Therefore even the long suffering subject such as the Final Naga Political Settlement faded into backbench oblivion when the hypnotic aroma of money filtered into the social environment. By selling our votes, we the insatiable electorates, have deliberately set in motion a monstrous cycle of unstoppable corruptive tsunami that will surely plague the State for the next five years yet again.
The Government is now perhaps diabolically improvising to revive the machinery called ‘Opposition-less Government’ (yet again) with that high sounding patriotic slogan called the ‘final settlement of the Naga Political Issue’ (yet again), as a Facilitator (yet again) without facilitating anything (yet again). Abraham Lincoln had said: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
However, judging by the electoral results, the incumbent Chief Minister of Nagaland has been able to elaborately and resoundingly prove Mr. Lincoln wrong. He has been able to “fool all the Naga people all the time” thus far…
.......
not because he has any outstanding intellectual capabilities but simply because he has been in power for the past 20 years as Chief Minister squeezing Nagaland dry and minting M-O-N-E-Y to buy off the money-crazed electorates…....
and has now been given another 5 years to continue commandeering the same castrated bureaucratic machinery doing his ‘not very transparent’ biddings without question!
The bureaucrats are equally liable and answerable in all of this…and ought to bow their heads in shame for allowing such utter corrupted chaos to blatantly continue operating for ‘sssooo lloonngg’!!! They have wilfully and gutlessly caused Mr. Transparency and Mr. Accountability to disappear from their bureaucratic horizon.
The bureaucrats also know without doubt that Mr. Transparency and Mr. Accountability has been suffering from a terminal ailment called corruption and has been lying in the ICU all along. These two gentlemen (Transparency and Accountability) are more than likely to prolong their stay in the ICU during the coming five years as well.
It appears that the stage will eventually and deliberately be set up for the ‘politician-bureaucratic nexus’ to collectively plunder the exchequer of the State of Nagaland within the comfort zone of an opposition-less Government…yet again!
Amidst a bizarre spectacle such as this, (with all due respects) NBCC …our Apex Baptist Christian bastion…is probably patting itself on its back for its efforts on ‘free and fair’ election campaign and perhaps ‘prayerfully’ qualifying the so-called exercise of franchise by its fellow Christian electorates as being a successful and fruitful venture despite the insignificant impact. While the complex root causes of our social degeneration cannot be pinned to a single entity, the fact that we are all Christians does rudely expose our true hypocritical nature. Without doubt we do have devout sincere Christians within every tribal community, and some in the bureaucracy as well, but they regretfully happen to be the silent minority while the vast majority swim in a hopeless pool of Christian hypocrisy. For much too long our very own apex Tribal Christian Organisations have nurtured questionable Christian values. They are more comfortably attuned to the ways of money than to faith. They respect and indulgently favour moneyed individuals more than the God they profess to worship.
Rather than invite strong spiritual personalities…the likes of Lt. Rev. Billy Graham…to take the pulpit to win souls, our tribal religious missions, including the NBCC, clamour to have the street-wise Chief Minister, the Ministers, the Advisors and any other prominent Ali Babas up on the pulpit as chief guests in their religious functions such as the Hubas. This speaks volumes. The end result is that we have definitely been able to create a community of Christian ‘Clan’ by name without inculcating Christian ethics. Waking up only just five six months before the election to conduct a “free and fair election” campaign to a spiritually dead community that the mission workers themselves have fostered over the years…is as good as pouring water on a solid rock that doesn’t absorb anything.
It’s about time that NBCC and all the other Tribal Religious Missions do an honest introspection by humbly acknowledging their failures and instead consider charting out a more realistic result oriented evaluation of their service to the Christian society. Less time should be spent on M-O-N-E-Y hunting gambits and even lesser time on a subject such as NLTP. It’s not my place to remind our highly qualified Theologians to take a second look at St. Mark 12:13-17…“Render unto Caesar”? For better or for worse they should learn to let the Government clean its own backyard. Why should the Mission Field Workers deploy Caesar’s coercive short cut to camouflage the failure in the performance of their fundamental ‘soul saving’ duty? They seem to need reminding that the Good Lord gave mankind the freedom of choice to do ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. They should therefore gracefully accept this challenge, put their best foot forward, guide and help each one to do the right thing by faith instead of trying to overrule and question the wisdom of God.
They ought to also realise that a ‘true born again Christian’ does not require NLTP crutch to walk the straight and the narrow. If convicted by faith, such a Christian would faithfully refrain from indulging in alcoholic habits even if tempted. Therefore, the Mission Field functionaries’ needs to change gear by focusing more on doing their fundamental duty in generating faithful born again Christians within the communities rather than seek human short cut inducement by law. They need to perceive the cruel reality that the “enforcers are themselves the users” and as such trying to enforce NLTP through hollow threats is not a workable option. The comical aspect is that no matter what the threat by the Church, the politicians are also clearly aware of the influence of money on their electorates…that also include many of the Pastors and the Deacons as a purchasable commodity…and yet they unceasingly continue calling for ‘consultation meetings’ on the same subject…then tuck their tails between their legs and apprehensively withdraw from taking necessary action thereafter.
It’s about time that we wake up to the ground reality and repeal NLTP once for all…keeping this fact in mind that the State of Nagaland is the ‘wettest dry state’ in the country and this elementarily defines us as the ultimate Christian hypocrites of all times in the eyes of the world.
By the turn of a century from now… do we want that the uncontaminated history of the present generation…the so-called Naga Christians…be unambiguously recalled by our very own great-grand-children as a sad regrettable chapter of dishonourable cowardly generation of disunited, corrupted, parasitical hypocrites? An honest introspection ought to answer this question.
For the past 76 years Nagas have only lived ‘half-lives’ denying not only ourselves but also our budding younger generation to bloom to their fullest abundant potentials. Instead of honourably and firmly prioritising our undivided resolve for our final common future; our common identity; our common dignity; our common good; our common progress
…we have a very confused disunited generation of egoistic leaders, both in the overground and the underground setups, who prefer to totally focus their primary attention on corruptive self-aggrandisement at the cost of completely squandering the present well deserved opportunity to leave behind a united footprint of legitimacy in the sands of time that could perpetuate an honourable Identity,
Dignity and the Right to our existence on Planet Earth for all eternity.
After having crossed a very gruelling election bridge, none of the MLAs would be prepared to step aside for a change of guard in the post solution scenario before recuperating their crores of election expenditure. Therefore, it will be awfully difficult to believe or expect that the present Government will do anything viable to resolve the Indo-Naga political deadlock. Compounding the problem from the other side of the fence, Mr. Th. Muivah continues to stubbornly play the game of ‘flag’ and ‘yezabo’ for his delusional ‘Sovereign Naga Nation’ knowing very well that the GoI has resolutely refused to consider such a demand and that the final solution is being cobbled out within the Indian Constitution.
Nagas surely understand the simple logical truth that no legitimate Sovereign Country seeks permission from any other Country for their flag or constitution. It comes as a part and parcel of a natural sovereign protocol. The fact that “Flag” and “Yezabo” is being demanded for the “Naga Nation” ought to therefore explain the actual sovereign status of this ‘Naga Nation’.
With this backdrop in mind even a halfwit ought to recognize the mindset of Mr. Th. Muivah who would rather prefer to die in harness enjoying all his unchallenged extravagant powers and comforts rather than pen the final solution that would leave him stranded without a commensurate authority and landing ground in the post solution era.
It is equally a sad commentary of a cowardly disunited stake holding populace who squabble amongst themselves but fearfully and silently allow the faith of the entire Nagas race to be dictated by one, just one, human being called Mr. Th. Muivah…the General Secretary of NSCN (IM). How spineless can we get as stakeholders?!
At the end of the day we can only lament that our wild head hunting ancestral “Animist” were a far better Nagas in so very many ways as compared to who we are today as “Christians”. Our ancestors held their identity, dignity, honesty and above all, their honour and self-respect at a premium. It was generally their natural way of life. As for us, we have become a generation without a moral compass, a generation without a political will, a generation without courage to stand up for what we believe to be the right thing, a generation who have sold their soul to money without our ancestral values or Christian ethics! In short, a self inflicted misfortune of a lost race?!
Khekiye K. Sema IAS (Retd)
3rd Mile Thilixu Village;
Dimapur
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