Unification of Land in Naga Context

October 28, 2017 667 Views No Comment

According to Resolution 1514, subjection of people to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes denial of fundamental human rights and is in violation with the United Nations Charter’s principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. The praxis of self-determination implies the recognition that the legitimacy of any political status and political arrangement must depend on the will of the people.[4]

The concept of self-determination embodies two scope of rights; namely the right of the ‘self’ which does the determining and the ‘right’ which the ‘self’ determines.[5] The self in self-determination raises the issue of identity[6] and the right to self-definition is invariably linked to how one constructs and exercises the right to self-determination. David Gordon reminds us that “In the final analysis it is for men [humans] to decide which identity they prefer, unless of course they are constrained by superior power to do otherwise.”[7] In the case of unrepresented peoples like that Nagas, States have forcefully taken upon themselves the power to define the self, connecting it with the process of State-building. The organization of power not only defines the parameters of the political community, telling us who is included and who is left out, but also differentiates the bounded political community internally.[8] In doing so, States have effectively negated the right to self-definition within the scope of the right to self-determination. The power organized by force to assert its prerogative over a “peoples” within a given territory makes this territorial identity become “overarching and dominant” with modern States,[9] thereby limiting the self to colonial boundaries and colonial ideas.

The praxis of self-determination is an essential necessity for embodying the self-conscious expressions and will of individuals forged into a collective response to life and the world they confront.[10] In spite of the fact that self-determination is recognized as an inherent right, the United Nations and its member-States have restricted its applicability and meaning in their effort to maintain a status quo of the present international order. The existing dominant language[11] around the idiom “self-determination” removes humans from the center of humanity, creating imbalance in how humans relate to each other and to the various facets of life.

United Nations and State Territorial Integrity[12]:

It is now a historical reality that colonial policies reduced loosely organized societies and communities to hierarchical structures of relations that took the form of post-Westphalian State.[13] The Westphalian State is widely regarded as the genesis of modern system of sovereign States which has come to govern the destiny of humankind.[14] Anaya adds that the foremost defining characteristics of Westphalian thought are exclusivity of territorial domain, a top down hierarchy, and centralized authority which assumes that the State embodies the model of all human associations and aspirations. This definition both excludes and contradicts indigenous and unrepresented peoples’ political structures which are primarily decentralized, having shared or overlapping spheres of territorial control.[15]

The post-Westphalia State[16] invariably finds itself at the center of an imposing culture, which seeks not self-determination but dominance at the cost of all other cultures. Given that the State is founded on a violent and domineering culture, we realize that the institutionalized structure constructs its own alternatives, simply to negate the existence of all alternative institutions. We may perhaps agree with Thiong’o, who observes “that the structures of domination, subordination and resistance are emerging common global experiences where vocabulary of concepts of domination and revolt has become part of a shared intellectual tradition.”[17]

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