Shameful politics practiced with double standards will not merely paralyze the Naga people in Manipur along our national highways; it will systematically amputate us as a people in ways yet to unfold — unleashing a saga of horrors yet untold. The selling of one’s own self and one’s own children is not new in human history. It is the oldest betrayal known to mankind.
Holy Scripture records this most terrible warning with frightening and unmistakable clarity:
Leviticus 26:29: “You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” The Lord warns that if His people disobey His covenant, severe famine and judgment will be so dreadful that they will be forced to devour their own offspring.
Deuteronomy 28:53-57: Moses solemnly warns that when enemies lay siege to their gates because of their infidelity, the siege will be so relentless and harsh that even the most gentle and tender-hearted parents will secretly consume their own children out of desperate hunger.
This is not mere ancient history confined to Israel. It is the immutable spiritual and political law that governs every people who mortgage their future for temporary survival. It represents the final, most depraved stage of compromised politics — when leaders, in order to preserve their own chair, barter away their own people.
May the Living God in His mercy protect the Naga people, especially in Manipur, from such a dreadful fate.
Paralysis of double standard
Retrospectively and factually, the duplicity embedded in Naga politics in Manipur has become glaringly evident and utterly shameful.
We speak eloquently of national highways, but where is our national resolve? Highways traverse our ancestral Naga territory, yet Naga rights and aspirations never traverse the corridors of power in Imphal or Delhi. The Central Government sanctions crores for hill roads, but those roads remain deathtraps of mud, slush, and shattered stone. Who truly benefits from this charade? Certainly not the villager. Not the farmer. Not the ailing patient.
This is paralysis by design. When leadership speaks with forked tongues — one language in the village square and another in the Chief Minister’s chamber; one promise during elections and another after assuming office — the people are rendered politically immobile. They can neither advance nor retreat. They remain suspended in a state of perpetual limbo while adversaries redraw maps over their ancestral domain.
We must state this vehemently and unequivocally: A politics that cannot safeguard even a road can never safeguard a nation.
Amputation of a people
History bears witness that the most tragic chapter of a subjugated people is not written when the enemy slays them, but when they are compelled by their own leaders to sell themselves and their progeny.
Biblically, when Israel compromised its covenant and flirted with surrounding powers, it descended to such moral bankruptcy that it consumed its own future merely to survive the present. This is precisely the trajectory of compromised politics.
When Naga politics in Manipur degenerates into a desperate struggle to preserve a ministerial post, to secure a contract, or to maintain proximity to power, we are no longer merely compromising. We are systematically amputating ourselves.
– We amputate our land when we remain mute spectators while unverified villages mushroom across our ancestral hills.
– We amputate our voice when we are instructed by the Chief Minister’s Office to remain silent, and we obediently comply.
– We amputate our future when we barter away critical issues such as NRC, Census, Delimitation, and Land Records for a transient and illusory chair.
If the culmination of Naga political aspiration in Manipur is that our elected MLAs and party leadership cannot even secure an audience with the Hon’ble Prime Minister or the Hon’ble Home Minister to present our core needs and existential issues, then we must ask: What is the very purpose and substance of our politics and leadership?
The Chief Minister’s office cannot and should not be the final destination of Naga politics. Yet, sadly, that is the grim reality today. If the zenith of Naga political achievement is merely to obtain an appointment with the Chief Minister of Manipur, only to be admonished to remain silent — utterly silent — then we have already capitulated.
Where, then, is our fabled Naga ethos? Where is our indomitable courage? Where is that Naga patriotism that once commanded the respect of the world?
Silencing the Naga
Who has the authority to command our silence? This is the most critical, serious, and urgent question of our time.
It is widely reported that Naga MLAs have been explicitly told by the Hon’ble Chief Minister not to raise core Naga issues, but to remain silent — so silent.
We ask, intellectually, constitutionally, and lawfully: Under which provision of the Constitution of India can elected representatives of a distinct people be commanded to remain silent about their people’s existential needs? Is this a vibrant democracy or a feudal durbar? Is this a coalition government or a colonial subjugation?
A Naga MLA who cannot articulate the anguish of his people regarding land, roads, and security on the floor of the Assembly and before the national leadership in Delhi is not a leader. He is a hostage. And a people represented by hostages will inevitably become a people sold into political servitude.
This is precisely why Scripture issues such a severe warning. The process is sequential and inexorable: First you sell your voice. Then you sell your land. Finally, you sell your children — your future itself.
Nagaland, Manipur political realities
At least Nagaland enjoys statehood, with its own Assembly, its own government, and a Chief Minister who can speak without permission.
Nagas in Manipur possess no such constitutional shield. We are caught in the vortex of Meitei majoritarian politics on one side and the assertive, constitutionally articulated demand for a Kuki homeland and Union Territory on the other. Between these two powerful and organized political currents, a Naga politics that is compromised, timid, and for sale will be inevitably crushed. Such politics will lead the Naga nowhere.
Therefore, we ask with profound hope mingled with deep anguish:
Can Hon’ble Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio of Nagaland raise the plight and issues of Nagas in Manipur on the floor of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly? If not he, then who else will?
The Nagas of Manipur urgently need his statesmanship. The New Naga Generation requires a pan-Naga voice that cannot be muzzled by Imphal. When Naga MLAs in Manipur are compelled to be silent, the Naga voice in Nagaland must resound even louder. This is not interference in another state’s affairs. This is kinship. This is collective responsibility. This is national solidarity.
New blood must rise
Compromised politics, sustained by an antiquated mindset and obsolete methods — fear, sycophancy, contract, and chair — will only further victimize the Naga people unless a new mindset, a new approach, and new blood of leadership are welcomed, nurtured, and courageously supported.
What does this new mindset entail?
1. From Silent Politics to Assertive Politics: The new leadership must possess the courage to seek audience with the Prime Minister and Home Minister directly, to place Naga core issues — land protection, NRC, Census, delimitation, and an honourable political solution — firmly on the national record. Silence is not strategy. Silence is surrender.
2. From Meitei-led Politics to Naga-led Politics: Nagas in Manipur must not blindly follow corrupted leaders and engage in destructive, cheap, self-selling politics under a Meitei-dominated dispensation that leads nowhere. We can and must coexist harmoniously, but we must not be politically assimilated or annihilated. Coexistence with dignity demands the moral courage to say NO when our existence is at stake.
3. From Compromise to Covenant: Old politics whispers, “Adjust for now, survive for today.” New politics proclaims, “We shall not mortgage our children’s future for your present convenience.” Old politics asks, “What will I personally gain?” New politics asks, “What will my people collectively lose?”
4. From Cheap Selling to Costly Standing: Selling one’s birthright is easy and profitable. Standing for truth is costly and lonely. But history venerates only those who stood. No one remembers those who sold.
Final appeal
This is a final appeal to conscience, to courage, and to the Living God.
To the Naga public in Manipur: Do not blindly follow corrupted leaders and their destructive, cheap-selling politics. Interrogate them. Test their integrity. Hold them accountable. If they cannot speak for you before Imphal and Delhi, they cannot and will not stand for you at all.
To our Naga MLAs: Your sacred oath was not sworn to the Chief Minister’s Office. Your oath was sworn to the people who elected you and to the Constitution of India. If you are instructed to be silent about your people’s agony, then that silence itself is an act of profound betrayal. Speak! Even if you lose your coveted chair, you will redeem and save your people.
To Hon’ble Chief Minister Rio: Nagaland remains the only Naga state in this world. The vulnerable Nagas of Manipur look up to you as an elder brother and as a beacon of hope. Raise their voice. Let the Nagaland Legislative Assembly become their sanctuary when the Manipur Assembly is forced into silence.
For if we persist in this shameful politics of double standards, if we continue to paralyze ourselves on our own highways and amputate ourselves in our own politics, the horrible sagas yet to unfold will be precisely what Leviticus and Deuteronomy foretold — a people who, driven by a desperate hunger for power and pelf, ends up devouring its own children, its own future.
May God, who preserved Israel even in its disobedience, in His infinite mercy protect the Naga people, especially in Manipur, from such an abominable fate.
May He anoint us with new blood, a new mindset, and indomitable courage — before it is eternally too late.
For if not us, who shall save the Nagas in Manipur?
And if not now, when shall we ever rise?
For the Naga People. For Truth That Cannot Be Silenced. For a Future That Must Not Be Sold.
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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)
