Wetshokhrolo Lasuh
It is indeed ironic that the Nagas cry for freedom of expression and speech, and yet try to silence those who make it their mission to see such desire become a reality. The Freedom To Information Act has been a national issue in India with the people campaigning for it, and eventually a law in 2002 (Published in the Gazette of India, January 07, 2003).
Individual states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and the like have enacted related laws. But in Nagaland the silencing of people who sacrifice their comforts to enlighten the masses with necessary, relevant and rights-revealing information still take place. Now, that is tragic. One wonders if such act is a manifestation of our ignorance or covert operation under the guise of misidentification. That is not to mean such acts do not happen anymore in other parts of the world. But if such acts happen elsewhere, it is not needed at all to imitate their follies or to condone them.
This writer is in another profession now. But there was a time when he worked with Xavier Rutsa as a fellow-journalist regardless of affiliattion. One would not call Xavier Rutsa a harmless person, free of any streak of evil, for then he must be a god or a spirit transcending humanity. Every individual, and thus this writer included, has a potential to be good and/or evil.
Having said this, Rutsa in the best of his ability has been very serious at his desire of being a good human being, and has been starving the potential evil in him like every human being must. For the good and evil in every human are always in a tussle for power, and it is upto the individual person concerned to support either of the two and discriminate the other. This Xavier Rutsa surely is one who in his own way has done his bit to empower the good in himself and the ground that you tread.
The injury that the body is afflicted with is painful. The injury of the body entails treatment. The treatment taken and to be taken further heals the physical wound. But hurt emotions are hard to heal. The breaking of the spirit, or the attempt at it, is often beyond healing. And there will always be a scar as a testament to human folly even when the wounds of the body, mind and spirit heal in the slow bitter passage of time. Remember: One hour of agony is like the length of one week, or even more, of joy.
Clipping the wings of freedom, what is right and the positive is pronouncement of punishment on oneself: Punishment that may be unseen or unknown now but that will be manifest in due course of time; or the punsihment that may never be made manifest before the naïve eyes because of its subtle form.
Life is no more sacred. Or so it seems. The image of God has been reduced to, and has reduced itself to, a worth a little more than that of a bullet, a cold metal; sometimes to a worth less than that of a bullet, when the swaying of a dagger or a club or some blunt instrument makes do. The shooting of Rutsa is an attempt to sending him and the press fraternity in Nagaland home like sending a dog away with its tail between its hind legs, scared after a good flogging. But dogs are intelligent creatures. And they do not necessarily be “Once beaten twice shy”. It instead could be “Once beaten second time biting”. And this tribe of scribes – the watchdogs of the society – is like a pack of hounds, like a pack of Alsatians, like a pack of Dobermans. Not just intelligent but highly.
So if the attempt at silencing Mr. Rutsa succeeds by any evil chance, which hopefully is unlikely, there would still be sniffer-watchdogs out there, trained to bring the culprit(s) down. One wonders if the crime perpetrator(s) considered that. The stake is high on the guilty. Should, therefore, all the watchdogs be silenced? That possibly can’t be! There would be too much blood, way too much blood on the head of the doer(s). But who knows? The mantle of Herod, the slayer of infants, may appear enchanting enough to the crime perpetrator(s) to try to silence all tribesmen of journalism.
Know this: The Fourth Estate has its own clout. Jeffrey Archer in Author’s Note in his novel The Fourth Estate, wrote:
In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the ‘Estates General’.
The First Estate consisted of three hundred nobles.
The Second Estate, three hundred clergy.
The Third Estate, six hundred commoners.
Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons said, ‘Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are the more important than them all.’
The novel is a fiction. But the account of Edmund Burke’s remarks is an established fact in modern British/world history. Historians know of this fact.
As of tradesmen akin to the Fourth Estate, “...the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg who, in 1906, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution.” The stake is too high on the whole society in fact in harming this lot of professionals. Then the Fourth Estate comprised only of those in the print media. Today, the Estate membership has extended to those in electronic media.
A journalist may be harassed by a soldier today and yet may save the general’s face tomorrow; a journalist may be walking barefoot with tattered clothes in the ghetto today but be seated with a nation’s head tomorrow; a journalist braves the scorching sun and the cruel torrents, the biting cold and the blinding dust in the wind, meets the dreaded Veerappan today and his victim tomorrow (talking in terms of essence, if not actually): For truth, for the right to know, for the right that his/her fellow-humans deserve to be informed.
Whoever threatens or kills a journalist deprives his/her own child/kith and kin of knowledge, of mental liberation, of progress. It is a shame when the rest of the world strives to progress and enlighten themselves at paces as quick as possible, the Nagas are ending up making attempts at taking themselves backward at a pace seemingly as quick as possible. With no malice toward anyone in heart the following statements are made:
America has lived to its heart’s content or it appears to be so when compared with the state of affairs in Nagaland. If the former becomes convicted and dedicated at its own self-destruction in any form at any point of time and if nobody can help it, let it go ahead! It has had its glorious days.
But to destroy this infant society called Nagaland, before it can even properly stand on its feet – let alone make glorious conquests in any field: ah, that’s a pity indeed! It is not too late though for the Nagas or any group of people living in Nagaland to empty the quivers of arrows with which they seem to have decided to take life out of that infant.
Godspeed to Xavier Rutsa and his fellow-scribes! God have mercy on the people of Nagaland!
