Our attitude should justify our cultural values – Soyimyanger Aier

Every year we celebrate our beautiful cultural festivals and it culminates in the grand hornbill festival at the end of the year. Our ancestors indeed left us a beautiful legacy, not only of pomp but also of something very special called “Sobaliba”.

When travelling outside of our land I have come across many people from different parts of the world who after the usual introduction would become curious to know more about our people and our land as we are very less known to the world. I am usually left with little joy to be honest because, sadly, we have got not much to offer to the world in terms of science, economy, infrastructure, technology, sports, human progress, etc. This is when our culture comes to save the day because we can dazzle anyone with a lengthy essay of our unique colorful culture and a generous lecture on “sobaliba” can make anyone appreciate our people. Believe me I was able to make an Englishman take down notes on our sobaliba and he was super impressed and took a lot of lesson from it.

Our culture is colorful to the eyes but is it vibrant and true in spirit? Are we truly able to emanate the essence of our beautiful culture and portray the values of “sobaliba” through our deeds? Is our behaviour, our attitude and our conscience in sync with the values of our culture? We must be proud that our culture is very much associated with humbleness, integrity, truthfulness and courage and our sobaliba teaches us to be truthful, respectful, humble, hardworking and also to preserve our good values by passing it to our younger generation.

Unfortunately, today, I am really not sure to say that I am proud of what we have become. The picture we paint today doesn’t justify the good values of our culture. I will not get down to the individual level but let me share a sad picture that we paint as a tribal community. We have sunk so low in our conscience that today we can’t call a spade a spade. The very institutions that preserves our culture has been shattered by selfish and materialistic ambitions. Our culture gave us wide arms to embrace the goodness of the world and of God but our ego, greed and nepotism has narrowed down the dignity of almost every member of our community to that of mere beggars. We float in groups tossing randomly by one or the other political ideology not sure of dangerous waterfalls downstream.

Our vision and goals, as a community, is limited by narrow ambitions and small basic needs.

For example:

1) We are happy and satisfied with a 10 cm cosmetic coating of the road when we should be demanding 10-inch thickness of asphalt concrete of genuine quality.

2) Glorifying civil services when every profession and job should be given equal dignity and respect.

3) Being satisfied with a little donation or a scheme or a fund from the politician instead of gauging the government in terms of quality education, proper healthcare, sufficient employment opportunities, ease of doing business, etc.

We, as a community, are timid and easily convincible if there is money and nepotism involved. This has made our scope so narrow that we cannot think beyond 5 years, which is the time an election is held. In short, the ambition of our community has been narrowed down only to politics. Our vision and goals as a community should be to create an environment to give our members a good quality of life and to push our members to think beyond bureaucracy and politics and expand our scope to contribute something valuable to humanity and our physical environment.

Our conscience compass is really not working anymore. Our dependency on government for almost everything and the greed for money plaguing our mentality, we have lost the cultural value of truthfulness, hardworking and good conscience. We have lost the quality of being honest and brave. This ugly trait can be seen in our devotion to our politicians. Starting from the institutions that guards our culture to our Churches to our students’ unions and to almost every member of our community, all falls like nine pins to the charm of a politician. We see even the most educated scholar of the community become a mere sycophant of a politician, churches give special attention to a politician, students unions’ conferences have become mere training ground for future politicians and a sashaying ramp for politicians and the most respectful institutions (yimden/hoho) who are supposed to uphold and guard our culture and its values have become mere puppets of politicians. The once mighty grand yimden yimsüsür, who stood tall to uphold truth, courage and integrity can no longer point his finger at the corrupt politician who has unholy alliances with corrupt institutions. The young innocent student/youth leader lacks the understanding and the courage to keep herself/himself and her/his union away from the influence of politics and politicians and the once holy church cannot refuse the unholy donation of dirty money from a politician. None of our pivotal institutions can stand up against the unholy might of the politician. We all make up these institutions and when we lose our cultural values in our individual capacity, we lose the strength of these pivotal institutions too which actually could have been used in great length to bring changes.

The unique culture we preserve today will be of no value if we do not understand the huge reservoir of good values in the essence of our culture. If we can tap the good values of our culture and put it into practice, we can prevail against all ailments that are plaguing our society today. These good values of truthfulness in the midst of political propagandas, courage to call a spade a spade, honesty in the midst of corruption, humbleness in the midst of materialism, hardworking in the midst of dependency on easy salaried living and strong principles and integrity in the midst of elements that are seeking to destroy our identity, all these that radiates from our culture should be the foundation of our community. If we do not see and understand the values of our culture and traditions beyond the pomp of festivities, then it will merely be a carcass for the politicians to feast.

~ Soyimyanger Aier