On crime against women in Nagaland, and the shift we can no longer delay
Theheli Thonger
For too long, every case of violence against a woman in Nagaland has been followed by the same tired sentence: What was she doing there?
Why was she doing so late at night?
Or the assumption that
Maybe she induced the men?
Maybe she didn't wear the right clothes?
As if location is guilt.
As if a road, a time, a piece of cloth is the cause of the crime.
It was never her fault.
Not when she walked home from college in Kohima.
Not when she took a shortcut in Dimapur.
Not when she laughed too loud, stayed too late, or trusted too easily.
Not when she chose to trust the people closest.
Not when she felt safe in her home.
The fault begins and ends with the man who chose to harm. And with the environment that taught him to believe he could.
Personally, I feel all of us men are guilty. Not just the one who commits the act, but every man who laughs at the joke that demeans a woman, who stays silent when a friend crosses a line, who calls it “eve-teasing” to make it sound smaller and who treats a touch as if it's a casual thing. Responsibility is not only for the hand that strikes. It is for the culture that teaches the hand it can do what it wants.
Society must change its thinking on blaming women.
We have spent generations perfecting the wrong lesson. We tell daughters to maintain themselves, to restrain themselves, to trade freedom for safety. Cover up. Speak softly. Come home early. Memorize the map of danger and live inside its borders.
That is wrong. It should instead be vice-versa.
The ones who must be maintained are the ones who threaten.
The ones who must be restrained are the minds who believe they can do whatever they want and escape.
Freedom is not the problem to be managed. Violence and wrong thinking is what should be restrained.
Stop asking women to edit their lives.
Start demanding the wrong people edit their conduct.
Nagaland’s tribes speak of community as kin, of villages as shared hearths. If that is true, then we have a responsibility to uphold our women, not confine them. To uphold means to create streets where a girl in Mokokchung can walk without calculating risk. It means classrooms in Tuensang where boys are taught consent before they are taught combat. It means fathers in Zunheboto telling sons, to treat each women with respect.
The shame does not belong to the survivor. It belongs to the perpetrator, and to the silence that protected him.
So let the question change.
Not “Why was she out?”
But “Why did he think he had the right?”
Not “How do we keep our daughters safe?”
But “How do we raise sons who never become the threat?”
The hills of Nagaland have stood long enough. They have watched us blame the wrong person for centuries.
It is time the wind carried a different answer:
She was free.
He was wrong.
And we are all responsible for making sure it never happens again.
