‘Nagas are easier with Dictators than with Democracy!’

October 29, 2017 145 Views No Comment

A well-known person in Nagaland honestly stated: “It appears Nagas are easier with Dictators than with Democracy”; for a moment my heart beat stopped, this is how people see us in our vainglorious castle of cards.

If the Office Bearers to the countless hydra headed fund-collecting-machines thinly camouflaged as UNIONs in Dimapur and NGOs in Nagaland are to be elected without following democratic norms, then we have perhaps no right to complain about the tortuously defective Elections to our Legislative Assembly or to the Parliament.

I know at least one Office Bearer of a much-decorated NGO that was elected just by mentioning the name over the Telephone by one of their senior friends in the Organization. Quite often NGO functionaries are appointed by their close colleagues in the Organization and are passed off as representative of the People or the Society or the Region without the operation of popular vote or the principle of the Secret Ballot. Democracy fertilized without popular vote or the principle of secret ballot is mongoloid Democracy.

This does not mean Flowers in the coming Sunday Service will be ugly if the aesthetic and enthusiastic girls in the ‘Flower Committee’ were not elected by first having a Chief Election Commission, nomination Papers scrutinized by the Deputy Commissioner well ahead of specified period and use numbered ballot paper in sealed ballot boxes etc, but if an NGO representing a society of man or a Government, is elected without the principle of the ‘secret ballot’ and popular vote, Nagaland would better do with Genghis Khan or LK Advani as the Emperor of the Nagas.

Election cannot be discarded if we want Democracy in our land. Like other people, Slogans are very popular with trendy Nagas and perhaps the most endearing slogan in Nagaland today is: “we want Solution, not Election”. To a small chicken like this Writer: the Sky will fall if Nagas do away with Election in Nagaland. It is not understood how Democracy can function without Election; it is not understood how highly educated modern Human Right conscious Naga elites and highly learned NGO can propound such a principle.

Whether Solution or no Solution, Nagas must continue to have Election in the Indian State of Nagaland and in our National Governments; of course the Election must be Free and Fair without inducement or coercion or outside interference: the State must not interfere with the so-called Underground Election and the Undergrounds should have no business to meddle in the State Elections. It will be political sin if the one interferes with the other Election.

The Lion in the African Bush will not attack a strong Buffalo with an impressive, ugly horn; the Hyenas will not attack a compact herd of Wildebeest, they will single out a weakling from the herd first like a small Calf or an injured or a diseased individual. The law of the Jungle is: ‘Might is Right’, the law of Democracy is: ‘Right is Might’: to kick the fallen and to give wide respectful birth to the brute is the first and only Commandment of the jungle.

It is easy to slap the weak lying on the ground and to give wide respectful birth to a brute blocking the public road; anyone doing these opposes democracy. Democracy is sometimes called western Democracy because it is the West that nurtured and developed it from the Ten Commandments first written in stone tablets from a Saudi Arabian mountain in the Middle East; Democracy holds an Orphan or a beggar has as much civil Rights as an Emperor, in fact in the eye of the Law in Democracy every citizen has equal Right.

Nagas must uphold Democracy particularly because we have many lingual communities with a propensity for violent force; violence can grow more easily in a multilingual society like us than in a monolithic society. We must be ever vigilant to prevent
autocratic or dictatorial tendencies in our society.

Nagaland must continue to have Election, solution or no solution, without Coercion, Inducement or Interference.

By Thepulhouvi Solo
This article appeared in local dailies of Nagaland and is being republished.