Nagaland Legislative Assembly: A fudging hyena hole

You must be aware by now that the Nagaland Legislative Assembly sat for approximately 15 minutes. Only.

Yes, 15 minutes.

When I think of the people sitting in the assembly, only God knows the depth of violence that wrestles to break free from the confines of my veins.

How many times do we have to claw at the walls for a catharsis to release this rage that we feel at the core of our souls?

How many more minutes do we have to add to our decades of suffering because of this group of yesterday's dinner masquerading as guardians of the people of Nagaland?

"Leaders"? Yes, those lying, spineless, cowering, lily-bellied, moneyed, pagan, bloated, steaming pile of drooling antiquities sitting smugly in the hallowed temple of people's welfare.

What with everything wrong with Nagaland and her people today—

• The corruption, the corrupt departments, the corrupt public services, the corrupt and incompetent public offices and imbecile administrations;

• The imbecile community leadership led by the spineless, lying, glory-hunting Naga Hoho and their spineless lily-bellied children such as the vision-less NSF, the biased NMA and the NPMHR and their horde;

• The institutional morass and functional decay in almost ever piece of law, justice and public administration; the endless extortion masquerading as "tax"; the threats and lies; the blood of innocents still waiting upon justice to come; the spineless Nagaland judiciary and their bloated guardians;

• The mafia vegetable sellers and fuel dealers; criminals cartels masquerading as meat dealers, tertiary businesses and auto rickshaws; the deficient public services industry;

• The thousands of unpaid qualified teachers and the thousands of paid bogus teachers;

• The corrupt government officials—especially those in the education departments—still walking free;

• The endless length of shameful roads across Nagaland; the deficient power and water infrastructure, and the deplorable public amenities;

• The murky fund roll of the Nagaland government and the way it has been handling public funds

and etcetera etcetera etcetera etcetera—

But these "leaders" found time to emerge from their holes for only 15 minutes to raise their hands to a salary hike and crawl back in?

I confess: As a human, the only words this very minute that are tearing at me, screaming to explode from my belly, are not polite, dulcet and politically correct statements—only vulgar names, obscene words and filthy language screaming at me for at least one opportunity.

I mean it.

You and I know that sometimes F-words are the only words that can calm your soul. F-words are the only words that can sometimes perfectly tell a million stories with one word. One F-word can sometimes describe a hundred grievance.

Obscenity and vulgarity claws at me. Especially for that Hindutva-worshipping, pagan and foreign, incompetent sitting in the chief minister's chair lording over my people and my land.

15 minutes?

In a diseased dystopia like Nagaland, has it ever struck your mind what a 15-minute government assembly session even means?

15 minutes is a terminology that means they don't give a flying fudge about you or your pain. Never forget that.

Was there not even one leader out of the 60 in the assembly who felt the pain of the people?

May God's grace always cover us from contemplating upon violence and war as the only means left to explaining our misery.

May we always raise our hands to courage, truth and justice, and to peace.

May He look upon us with favor for at least fighting back the growing monster within us — for still believing in goodwill, noble leadership, wisdom and peace and Christian values.

(Al Ngullie)

Nagaland's HSLC & HSSLC Honors: Colonial Visages and Reformist Appropriation

(I squirrel away every loud thought on public domains. This one was posted in a group on Facebook. I felt to archive it here).

The prestige accorded to HSLC and HSSLC results has outlived its purpose. It cries for retirement. I believe that the tradition–my mind sees it to be a form of academic vanity–are antiquated, needless, and extraneous.

Our reverence for high school achievements is a remnant of parochial colonial traditions when achievements were defined according to expertise levels of that time. See, 90+ years ago in Nagaland / among the Naga, class-x was the first standard of the highest educational qualification a Naga could ever attain.

My context is this: The most attainable ‘highest’ standard of academic qualification for the ancient Naga to land a job was class-v. Just ask an elder member from your family. Hence, by appropriation, class-x was deemed higher. Hence, by Interpretation, more prestigious.

But this is 2016. Yes, this is 2016.

• The world has already placed a man on the moon.
• Quantum physics and space technology are being challenged as “narrow” sciences by revisionists.
• Blogging–even before we the Naga have even fully understood it, is slowly fading from the web market. The 12-valve torque for F1 cars is being replaced.
• A remote keyboard for mobile phones is being designed.
• Pablo Picasso has already come and gone.
• Japan has transformed herself into a world power in mere 49 years.

This, indeed, is 2016.

Are we not aware that the average Naga during said era could manage only till middle school, that too at 35-40 years of age? That was the standard of the times. Likewise, it reflects the expertise and levels of intellectual temper during said eras. One need not be reminded that the concept of technical education, for instance, was as nonexistent as much as ideas of doctorates were alien concepts back then among the Naga.

Indeed, it is true that the Angami, the Ao, the Lotha and the Sumi Naga (please read in alphabetical order!) had pioneers who secured graduate degrees and even doctorates to become the first among the myriad Naga communities. But academic movements at the level of research scholarship emerged primarily during the ‘70s and the ‘80s only.

See, exceptions don’t make traditions. Rules are what create traditions. Hence, the perception about class-x being the highest attainment has over the past half a century become superfluous–colonist finery that offers nothing more than self-aggrandizement.

A bonus to that vanity parade is the free publicity that attention-hungry organizations and schools can devour. It’s wonderful to get our faces printed in our newspapers thanks to our achieving children. Show me 10 HSLC/HSSLC toppers over the past 20 years who found glory at class-x to become social assets. And I’ll show you 50 toppers who are today nothing more than neighborhood drunks and “educated unemployed.”

Toppers, however, deserve the honor. They raced with thousands and outran them. Naturally, society must honor them as exceptions.

However, having said that, I have no doubt that that the governments and education stakeholders are biased, even if benevolent in context. If you would honor high school and higher secondary school achievers, wouldn’t honoring toppers from the Bachelor’s and Master’s academics be even more natural?

Aren’t degrees superior achievements–academically at least? Let us honor school achievers only because there are higher levels of intellectual slants such as degrees. Let us single out the BA/B.Sc, MA/M.Sc, and research toppers. Let us laud them with the same passion and the publicity and willingness that we employ when honoring school achievers.

We the Naga are skilled in embarrassing ourselves with our often parochial and impressionable posturing. We glorify the inane but neglect the exceptional. How much more failings would we have for life and the world!

The superficial ceremonies of our small minds appear to have been given birth by prejudice and frail vanities.

Now, why do you wonder that we are called a developing, third-world society?

(Al Ngullie)