How to bury a son slain by an Army bullet? How to lay in earth every memory you made with him? And cover him with unfeeling soil, dark stained with his mother’s unending flow of tears? How do 13 mothers bury 14 sons? And how does a bride bury her husband of nine days?
These are monumental questions that the universe has no answers for. After the killings of 14 civilians, all young men, by the Indian Army on 4 December last year, we have gone into a period of unspoken national mourning for our boys. It has been a quiet, reflective time for all of us and every heart prays this will never happen again.
For the people of Oting in Nagaland’s Mon district and for the larger Naga family, 2021 closed with heartbreak that defies healing. The rest of the world has moved into the new year with hope and expectations, but we cannot move on from Oting. Time has stopped for all who are Naga.
No words exist that can comfort a mother’s, a bride’s, a father’s or a sibling’s mangled heart. The youngest victim was 17 years old. He escaped the first hail of bullets and managed to run and take shelter in a shed nearby. He still had his phone with him. Trembling, he called his family and shakily told them, “The driver of the pickup truck is dead. The Army shot at us and many of the others are dead. I am so scared.” Those were his last words.
A few minutes later as his family members desperately called him back, there was no response. The soldiers had returned and shot him dead. The villagers, looking for bodies, found his at the shed.
This story made me weep for days. But tears make very poor ink.
I want to bring to mind the dignity with which the Konyak tribe has met this blow. The young men who were killed all came from the Konyak tribe in the village of Oting. Do not politicise the killings, the Konyak Union had pleaded.
There is such great wisdom in that. Politicising the killings would provide a reason as to why the young men were killed. Politicising the killings would rationalise murder and sweep it under the carpet where so many other such murders lie waiting for a judgment that never comes. This was not collateral damage. This was premeditated murder and should be judged as such.
A few days after the killings, when an Indian Air Force helicopter crashed, killing 13 people including the Chief of Defence Staff, the Konyak Union was the first group to offer their condolences. That is dignity and rising above the voices that were shouting “karma”. It showed those voices a better way to conduct oneself.
This is Anghship in action. An object lesson in how royalty meets its griefs head on, while continuing to exercise the wisdom to distinguish between personal bitterness and sympathy for one’s “enemies” when they are afflicted with the same affliction. The pure nobility of that action should stop the observer in his tracks.
The Konyak, after all, are the Angh tribe, the kingly line that had figured out gun-making well before any contact with the Western world. It was the reason why colonial administrators, threatened by the brilliance of their native brains, introduced opium to them.
The men of Oting did not lack the courage to find the bodies of the young men killed by the Army. We would say in our context, “They did a man’s job by their slain brothers,” by recovering the bodies (which an Army truck was apparently taking away denying knowledge of the incident. A soldier was killed in the confrontation). They had the guts to justifiably say that they no longer wanted the Army living on their lands.
The rest of the Naga world is watching, listening to and feeling for Oting. In the words of a first-time visitor to Nagaland, “I will never forget how so much violence and grief was met with dignity and prayer. ‘Fight violence with love, fight darkness with light’ said the young Nagas. I will remember this evening lifelong: I think only a very highly evolved civilisation can achieve such dignity and grace in the face of such grave provocation. Anywhere else in the country, it would have been explosive ammunition for political gains, sloganeering and political manipulation.”
Yirmiyan Arthur, writing for the Associated Press, recorded the words of one of the mothers, “Humans are not harvested from the ground. They aren’t grown wild. They come from our wombs. We care for them for nine months with physical pain, we keep them safe from mosquito bites, we give them food meant for ourselves, we send them to school with hope for their future. And then to have them killed has brought us much grief. We will visit their graves on Christmas morning and speak with them. We will ask their spirits to visit us.”
There is a deep silence that quietens every other sound when Oting is mentioned. Words fail. A Naga-American observes, “Sometimes silence calms more than words.” A silence that is the fittest companion to pain.
It is not the silence of despair. It is the silence that bows to pain and acknowledges the sacredness of life, and the finality of death. The silence that waits upon divine justice for we have lost all hope in the justice of men.
The writer, a Naga novelist and publisher, is based in Norway. The views expressed are personal
Cruel twist
In 1958, the Central government established the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in the Naga Hills, allowing soldiers to shoot to death any civilian, who in the soldier’s opinion, was “acting suspiciously”.
Many might remember a young woman, Irom Sharmila from Manipur who fasted for 16 years to force the Government of India to remove the Act after the rape and killing of another young woman. AF(SP)A was reviewed but never revoked and Sharmila ended her fast in 2016. Several Army killings of innocent civilians using AF(SP)A as an excuse continue, and investigations into the matter are prevented by the government.
On 30 December 2021, in a cruel twist, the Centre extended imposition of the AF(SP)A in Nagaland for another six months