The premise
“Celebrating the Living monument not the dead monument is collective wisdom and security historically, culturally and politically as intangible asset for the upcoming Naga generation.”
This is not a slogan. It is a doctrine of survival for the Nagas.
A “dead monument” is stone, bronze, and memory frozen. It can be admired, photographed, and forgotten.
A “living monument” is the Naga people, Naga languages, Naga customary law, and the covenant of nationhood in motion. It breathes. It teaches. It corrects. It defends.
To choose the living over the dead is to choose the future of Nagalim over nostalgia. It is collective wisdom. It is collective security. In the plight of the Nagas, where history has been contested and voices silenced, the living monument is the only monument that cannot be erased.
Historical foundation
Retrospectively, the Naga nation has endured not because of palaces or statues, but because we raised generations who knew who they were.
From the time of our forefathers in the hills, through 1950s resistance, to the political dialogues of today, empires tried to write our story without us. Stone and paper can be burned. Archives can be omitted.
But logically and factually: The British could not destroy a people who sang their genealogies at the morung. The state could not erase a nation whose elders still name the villages, the battles, and the sacrifices at the hearth.
That is the difference. One is architecture imposed from outside. The other is inheritance carried from within.
Precisely, a living monument among Nagas is the transmission of memory from Headmen/Chiefs/Gaonburhas to youths, from pastor to student, from village council to student union. When that transmission stops, the monument dies even if a statue remains in the town square.
Cultural dimension
Culturally, what makes the Naga nation is not just what we build, but what we become.
1. Naga Languages are living monuments. When a Naga child speaks Tenyidie, Ao, Lotha, Zeme, Konyak, or any mother tongue, an entire worldview and cosmology survives.
2. Customary Law, Village Council, and Hospitality are living monuments. For centuries they have regulated Naga society with justice, consensus, and mutual respect, without needing to copy foreign codes.
3. Oral History, War Dances, Folk Songs, and Prayer are living monuments. They carry the story of resistance, faith, and identity when textbooks are silent.
Intellectually, these are intangible assets of the Naga people. You cannot tax them. You cannot seize them. But we can lose them in one generation if we stop celebrating them in homes and schools.
Emotionally and empathetically, celebrating the living means honoring the grandmother who still tells the story of the village founding. It means honoring the teacher who refuses to let the dialect die in the classroom. It means honoring the youth volunteer who chooses to stand for the village instead of only chasing opportunities outside.
That is magnificently more powerful for the Naga cause than any statue.
Political, social security
Politically, a people with living monuments are harder to divide and harder to misrepresent.
A “dead monument” can be claimed, renamed, or politicized by any power. But a “living monument” — a Naga people who know their distinct history, their political right, and their responsibility to the nation — cannot be so easily manipulated.
Assertively: Naga security does not come only from statements or borders. It comes from cohesion.
When Naga society celebrates its living values — truth-telling, accountability, community service, and self-determination — it creates internal immunity against corruption, propaganda, and division.
Socially, this is prudence. A society that invests in its living human capital is investing in Naga teachers, nurses, farmers, church leaders, and CSO workers who will defend the nation not because they were ordered to, but because they belong to it.
That is wonderfully and powerfully the definition of Naga national strength in this digital era.
Biblical, moral framework
Biblically, God did not command Israel to build only monuments. He commanded them to “teach these words diligently to your children.”
Deuteronomy 6:7 — “Talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way.”
The Naga people, a deeply believing people, understand this law of continuity. What we do not celebrate in our churches, schools, and homes, we will lose. What we do not teach our children about Naga history and values, the next generation will not defend.
Introspectively we must ask: Are we raising Naga children who know the story of our people, or children who only know the selfie spot in front of a statue?
Are we forming Naga character, or only curating marble?
The critical imperative
Therefore, let this be stated brilliantly, inspiringly, and lawfully for Nagalim:
1. Celebrate Naga People First. Honor elders, pastors, teachers, veterans, village volunteers, mothers, and CSO leaders as the true living monuments. Give them voice, dignity, and place in decision making.
2. Invest in Transmission. Fund Naga language, Naga history, civic education, and moral formation in schools and seminaries. Make the Naga curriculum a covenant, not just a syllabus.
3. Practice the Values Publicly. Transparency, humility, and justice must be seen in Naga political organizations, CSOs, and Churches. A living monument cannot survive hypocrisy or nepotism.
4. Protect the Intangible. Laws and policies must protect Naga land, Naga custom, Naga community governance, and the political rights of the Naga people. Culture must be treated as national infrastructure, not decoration.
Aggressively and vehemently, we must reject the idea that Naga development means forgetting.
Seriously and impactingly, we must assert that the greatest defense for the Naga nation is a generation that knows its name, knows its story, and is proud to carry it forward.
Conclusion
Stupendously and beautifully, history offers the Nagas this choice:
We can build more dead monuments and take pictures.
Or we can build living monuments — Naga children who know, Naga adults who serve, Naga leaders who are accountable, and a Naga society that practices what it preaches.
One gathers dust. The other gathers strength.
The upcoming Naga generation will not inherit stone. They will inherit us.
Our words. Our decisions. Our courage. Our unity. Our commitment to truth.
That is the living monument.
That is collective Naga wisdom.
That is collective Naga security.
That is the only asset that cannot be stolen, and the only legacy worth leaving for Nagalim.
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Michael Meiphami Shaiza is Co-incharge of BJP Manipur State Political Programmes and Meetings and President of Ukhrul-based NGO Ecological Rehabilitators’ Association (ERA).
(Views expressed are writers’ own and do not, in whatsoever manner, reflect that of Ukhrul Now)
