HUMAN ASPIRATIONS and STRUGGLES

It is a very great privilege and honour for me and my wife and five others from Nagaland to be in Bodoland as your guests. In trying to understand the meaning of this special occasion today, I have learned more about the costly struggle of the Bodos for their deeply-held aspirations which have shaped them as a people. I have found that to understand what the aspirations and the struggle mean to the Bodos is to understand the imperishable legacy Bodofa Upendra Nath Brahma of revered memory has left to his people. The legacy from his all too brief but fully lived life has galvanized them to build the future they envision for themselves by consolidating and restoring their collective personality and peoplehood based on the facts of their history.
As I believe this to be the meaning behind this occasion today, you will understand how touched I am, but also profoundly challenged, to come today to the heartland of the Bodos to accept this most prestigious Award established in memory of Bodofa Upendra Nath Brahma, the torchbearer and role model of his people he loved so passionately.
The Award represents extraordinary generosity of thought and vision on the part of the Upendra Nath Brahma Trust because although I can say I am committed to fight for what is right and best to be achieved in the situations with which I am involved, I am keenly conscious that nothing I have done or achieved deserves such an Award.
So I am humbly accepting what you have bestowed on me with deepest appreciation for your friendship, goodwill and vision that the Award symbolizes for me. I see it to be part of your thinking to reach out to your neighbours in trust and faith to search and strive together to achieve a common stability for our whole region that will enable all of us to grow fully as we should. Given our present lack of touch with one another, overburdened as we all are with our unsolved problems, some of them political compulsions coming from our positions of many years, to talk of creating a common stability out of our common chaos is likely to be regarded as impractical, idealistic musing. But is not the need a crisis which if we ignore will produce an impossible future for our children? We will have to respond to the need not because we know how or posses the qualities to do so, but because it has to be done, and God will guide us to do it.
Aspirations and dreams of peoples and the struggles to achieve them: These are two separate issues but each of them is incomplete without the other. Without aspirations and dreams there will be no struggles. Without struggles, aspirations are not achieved. These two issues can therefore be regarded as two half issues that combine to produce the phenomenon in life we call crisis. The Bodo crisis, the Naga crisis, and all the other crises in our region and beyond, as in Burma, where the ethnic nationalities, like us, are caught in the crisis of establishing and defending their identities are examples I have in mind.
I propose to take this rare opportunity you have given me to share some conclusions and convictions from the Naga situation.
1. I believe our aspirations and dreams are at the heart of our Creators plan for our growth and development. Our capacity to become aware of aspirations and dreams, and to be inspired and driven by them which make us grow, is what qualifies us as human beings. They are sacred, powerful gifts put in our souls which we cannot treat irresponsibly or casually because they are associated with our Creators meaning and purpose for human beings. It is right and necessary we respect our aspirations and struggle correctly to fulfill them and to be worthy of them. For the same reason we should respect the aspirations of others with equal seriousness and responsibility.
2. Because our aspirations are part of our Creators plan for our fullest growth, He requires us to struggle to achieve them obeying His principles and guidance, instead of following our own ways to please ourselves. This unchangeable doctrine of struggle is the central truth of life which we have no choice but to understand, accept and be guided by.
During my High School years I became aware of the Naga struggle emerging out of the agitated minds and deliberations of our Naga pioneer leaders who launched the Naga struggle. In due course I was tormented by the inescapable moral, ethical, philosophical questions and choices the struggle started to raise. They compelled me to try to understand the meaning and purpose of human aspirations and the struggle they always produce. I am sure this is your own experience also, as it is with all Nagas who understand our history.
When I went to study in Madras Christian College, Tambaram, in 1955, I was asking what part I was to play in the struggle of my people. I was deeply insecure. In my soul and conscience I was not convinced by the view that in politics moral and ethical questions are not important as politics is politics and ethical and spiritual questions must not be brought in to create confusion and weaken the cause. That if the goal is right, to adopt any method to achieve it is justified, no matter how evil or dirty the method may be. The end justifies the means. But I found I was too weak to do things the right way as my heart and conscience told me, even in the smallest situations I faced daily. I sensed I was facing the most important question in my life.
Soon after joining the College I met the idea of Moral Re-Armament, now called Initiatives of Change (IofC), with the aim of Remaking the world starting it in your own life through learning to obey the still small voice every day which speaks to every one who listens to it. I could not deny the voice was there even in me. The experiment I made of listening and putting a few wrongs in my life right, revealed the existence of the voice and it also started to change me bringing some clarity. The beginning was so small. But I knew I had been shown something I could not treat casually.
I went away over 50 years ago to work with Moral Re-Armament in India and elsewhere because I saw that I would simply add more problems to the Naga crisis unless I learned to deal with the control of selfishness, greed, hate, lust and fears in my nature and character. Now I have returned with my family to Nagaland to continue the same work of tackling these passions weakening our people, our struggle and our society, always based on the experience of change in my own life which I need to renew everyday.
I venture to discuss a reality which has reduced all Nagas to the same helplessness. All of us have contributed our shares to produce the reality. It is this - Why has the Naga political struggle for our deeply held aspirations which I believe to be right started to destroy itself and the people for whom it was started? Exactly the same thing can be said of the State Government of Nagaland, the illegitimate child of the Naga struggle. The child is loudly maligned and condemned. But the seemingly endless wealth it brings from its non-Naga parent has made it a much harassed provider of all Nagas today, whether they condone or condemn it. Why is this State also destroying itself and the people for whom it too was brought to birth in great haste? These two questions are posed without any criticism of anyone in my mind because the common destructiveness mentioned is a baffling existential crisis before which all Nagas stand equally helpless with no one able to deny he or she is blameless. The explanation seems to lie in the truth that God allows all aspirations and the struggles to achieve them. Indeed they are His plan for our growth. But he strictly requires us to struggle His way so that what is achieved is just and fair for all. Gandhiji called this Ramrajya. Christians call this the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
It throws light on the unchangeable doctrine of God for mankind that the just, creative, fair, workable society we need for our proper growth on earth, can be created only His way, not our human ways. The h igh ideals, and not long after, the dark dead end of man-made schemes. Peter Howard the English writer thus described what inevitably happens if our human ways usurp Gods ways in human affairs. Think of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, to name a few of the latest examples of men who took over their nations as revolutionaries with high ideals for the down-trodden millions. The slogans raised hopes for the masses and flattered the vanity of the messiahs. But their man-made schemes to perpetuate their own dynasties made them forget their peoples huge needs and their people are now hounding them out.
A people launching their struggle for their aspirations can be compared to a ship setting out on a voyage across the oceans. The unchangeable rule the Captain of the ship has to follow is that he has to be guided by the Pole Star above the North Pole, in finding the right way to his destination. There is no record of any sailor ever in all of history reaching the Pole Star. But the unreachable Pole Star is the only reliable and safe guide for all sailors to take their ships to their destinations. Many will say this insistence on doing things guided by God can come only from simple-minded, naïve people who have no experience of the harsh world of politics, business and other human ventures. This impatient reaction from people who are in a hurry to solve political, economic and social problems is understandable because the dilemmas blocking their paths are formidable. But there is an indestructible truth of life and history in the example of the captain of a ship being always guided by the distant Pole Star in order to take the passengers and cargo entrusted to him safely to its destination on this planet.
I believe the Naga struggle was and is right and necessary for our fullest growth. Societies, like individuals, grow only through struggles. And I revere and am grateful for all our genuine leaders and fighters who have lived and fought so sacrificially for the aspirations they held dear for themselves and for our people.
And I know to suggest that the political and economic issues and problems of society can be solved easily by adhering to moral principles and values is simplistic and even irresponsible. But if we care for the proper, healthy, creative growth of our society it is irresponsible and unrealistic to ignore or treat lightly eternal truths and principles that govern life on earth.
Whether we are political leaders, bureaucrats, militants, contractors, businessmen, men and women in different professions, student leaders, social workers, priests, imams, or pastors, let us ponder and realize what we are doing to ourselves, to our families, our society and the world if we are selfish, thoughtless and irresponsible. We dare not forget that countless others in society far removed from the positions of power and wealth are paying an unbearable price if we are irresponsible and are run by enjoyment of instant success regardless of the consequences of the methods we adopt to get what we want.
In desperate crisis situations like ours in Nagaland, Bodoland and elsewhere, the most intelligent and effective strategy to adopt is to raise networks of individuals who will accept that What is wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it. What is right is right even if no one is doing it and calmly and with a sense of real adventure decide to do what is right. This is the meaning of what is said in the Gita, Do your duty and leave the results in His hands. At first such men and women are likely to be a very few only. But we need not doubt that they will be opening a new door to the future if they learn to stay true to what they know is their duty or their calling. Statesmen and stateswomen, the need of the day, rise from such men and women who have learned to love the common good more than selfish ambitions.
We need to learn to become men and women who care more for the health of the tree than for the fruits of the tree. If the tree is not nurtured to grow properly there will be no fruits! Certainly in Nagaland, people in the Naga struggle, the State Government and the rest of us, have shown we have been more interested in the fruits we want to enjoy instantly, and ignored the health of the tree, or the ethics, morality and sustainability of the process to achieve the goal. No wonder the Naga tree is seriously sick.
It is easy to make such a diagnosis about our crisis. But what needs to be done for solutions that will work is extremely difficult. And those who are carrying the struggles for our people, despite some of the horrible wrongs they are doing in the process, and those running the State Government, despite the sticky fingers of too many of them, are doing a thankless but vital task to keep our society going for all of us. The question is how long can our ship stay afloat if we will not go beyond painting our own cabins to caring for the ship in danger of sinking?
The easiest thing to do is to say nothing can be done. Everybody is doing what is wrong and convenient for their own gains. What I can do is too small and insignificant. Who am I anyway? And go away and add more to the problem. The fact is something can be done if what is right and best for all is more important to us than what we want for our own gain, success and glory.
It comes down to this: Simply decide to be the change you want to see in the world, as Gandhiji said, by starting to change your life first, keep it up and help others also to find the same experience of change. This is to walk the road less travelled.
Permit me to say something from my humble experience of trying to walk on this road. For me it was to make a start in attempting to obey what I believed my heart and conscience told me. It was an experiment. I wrote a letter to my father telling him the truth about myself including the money I was spending wrongly which he was sending at great sacrifice to keep me in College and asking him to forgive me. His response appreciating my simple honesty with him, telling me where he too regretted the way he had treated our mother at times and saying he had decided to be different, moved me more than I could express. He wrote from Tezpur jail where he was a political prisoner for a year. When he returned home he showed he meant what he had said. I had no idea my honesty with him would result in my father finding where he too needed to change! I realized I was experiencing something I should not underestimate at all.
Being the change is something that has to be real continuously. Those nearest to us help us most in this if we let them! I never forget the help my wife gave me once by telling me honestly what she had been feeling for a long time. One day she tried to say she felt I was wrong on a certain matter because it had hurt her. My quick angry explanation brushing aside what she had tried to say was too much for her. She cried and said she was fed up with the dishonesty and bad temper of a good man who has been trying for so long to be good. She said I did not think you would be like this. I am tired. How right Robert Burns was when he said we do not see ourselves as others see us!
A friend I hold in high regard came to a youth conference of MRA, as it was then. He heard stories of changes brought to difficult situations by people who put things right in their own lives as a result of learning to listen to the inner voice guiding them and obeying it. He decided to do the same thing as he deeply wanted to help his people. When he got back home he returned all the books he had kept over the years from the State Central Library. He hired a taxi and took the 64 books to the library manager and apologized for the way he had been part of the corruption he blamed in others. He asked to pay the fine owed the library. The manager said he had met no one like him and thanked him saying he was not imposing any fine. Today this gentleman is a judge in the State capital where he is known and trusted for his integrity.
A Naga Christian youth leader took an active p art in a fund-raising campaign for a Church project. From the amount he raised he kept Rs. 2000/- for himself explaining to himself that he deserved it for the effort he had made. He was ashamed of the fraud he had committed and returned the amount to the Church as a contribution from him and his wife. The guilt that followed was worse. He and his wife told their colleagues what they had returned was not a contribution. It was the amount they had kept back from the fund raising campaign.
These small steps of honesty, restitution and apologies must not of course be overestimated as the problems of the world are so much bigger. But it is equally important we do not underestimate them because such practical steps of obedience cut through our pride and selfishness, enabling us to understand by experience the price to be paid in the eternal battle between good and evil, right and wrong.
I have taken the liberty of sharing on this occasion what I see and believe for my people, as that is all I can do in response to the issues you are facing today as you try to build on the legacy passed on by the Bodofa to his people. Reflecting on that legacy I am reminded of an African proverb which says, He who wakes me up in the middle of the night to go on a long journey, I shall thank him only after I have gone a long way. Seeing the seriousness of purpose and united commitment with which ABSU is caring for the Bodos, one feels you are thanking him for the demanding journey on the road he led you out to travel on.
Now may I propose that all of us remain silent for 2 minutes to hear if the still small voice that speaks in all of us is telling us anything to make a fresh start?