Nagaland is on the verge of being fractured: Alemtemshi Jamir

Mokokchung, 2 April (MTNews): Alemtemshi Jamir IAS, Rtd. Chief Secretary stated that Nagaland is on the verge of being fractured. Speaking at the Mokokchung District College Students’ Confluence on Saturday, Jamir asserted that the “idea of Nagaland – or the reality of a land we so proudly call Nagaland, the land that our fathers fought for and paid for with their blood, is now on the verge of being fractured.”

“We are talking in terms of the ENPO, the CNTC, the Tenyimia and the Southern Nagaland and so on. We won’t have a state to call our home. We have nowhere else to go,” Jamir said, adding that the tribes are too small to survive alone.

“We the Aos are barely 1,94,622 (2011 Census). We also have very small tribes of 40 to 50 thousand people. All together, we are merely a handful of about 20 lakh people in the face of 8 Billion (8 thousand Million) people of the world,” he observed.

“If we further divide amongst ourselves, where will our existence be? Not being viable we will be divided into Union Territories of ENPO and Central-South Nagaland. It will later be further fractured into CNTC and South Nagaland and may end up as districts of Assam. Without a State ultimately Article 371 (A) will go and that will be the end of the Nagas,” Jamir said.

“It is time that every Naga realize the seriousness of the issue before us. In fact, instead of division, we should think in terms of uniting with the other similar tribes around us both in India and Myanmar and build ourselves as a people to be recognized by the world,” he told the participants of the confluence at Fazl Ali College.

“We will need to be more accommodating, more tolerant, more giving– More loving. We need to be more proactive,” Jamir encouraged.

“Our fathers went as Teachers, Pastors to eastern Nagaland. Many died there but many survived and their children and progeny have assimilated into their society and that is how the idea of Nagaland was born. How much are our present day generation willing to live like our forefathers? Here lies the solution to the idea of Nagaland,” he said.