History has a law that never fails: Any people who surrender their collective destiny to a few men, to a closed group, or to a mindset of the jungle, will not survive. They will not progress. They will destroy themselves. And their adversary will be laughing behind their backs.
In this postmodern world, where information is power, where networks defeat hierarchies, where legitimacy comes from participation and not from imposition, running any society by jungle theory — the idea that might is right, that force is logic, that fear is governance — is not leadership. It is disaster. It is ineffective. It is self-suicide. It is cultism disguised as struggle.
For the Naga people today, in general, and for the Nagas of Manipur in particular, this is the critical self-examination we must make.
God builds people, not cults
Scripture is unequivocal. God never entrusted His people to a cult of personality. When Moses grew weary, God appointed seventy elders to share the burden [Numbers 11:16-17]. When Israel demanded a king like other nations, God warned them that centralization of power would devour them [1 Samuel 8].
The Apostle Paul taught: “The body is not one member, but many” [1 Corinthians 12:14]. A church, a society, a nation that is only a head without a body is not a body at all. It is a monster.Morally, to run a society by a few leaders with a jungle mindset is to deny the God-given dignity of every person. It replaces counsel with command, discussion with dictation, and consent with coercion. Biblically, this is not stewardship. It is idolatry of power. And idolatry always ends in exile.
The postmodern reality: Why jungle theory fails
1. Postmodernism Has Exposed the Few
In the past, a few could control narrative, territory, and truth. Today, every villager has a smartphone. Every youth has a voice. Every mistake is recorded. In this world, legitimacy cannot be manufactured by slogans. It must be earned through transparency, accountability, and service.
A leadership that still operates on secrecy, intimidation, and unquestioned loyalty belongs to another century. It cannot protect collective security because security today requires intelligence from the ground, cooperation from the people, and trust across communities — not obedience through fear.
2. Jungle Theory is the Opposite of Governance
Jungle theory believes: Whoever has the gun has the right. Whoever shouts loudest wins. Whoever imposes taxation through intimidation controls the people.
But governance in the 21st century is not about controlling people through taxation and intimidation. It is about building institutions. It is about documenting land, verifying citizenship, educating youth, connecting villages, and securing law. A group that lives by jungle theory can disrupt, but it can never build. It can extract, but it can never develop.
Factually and logically, no society in history has achieved collective security through cultism. Cults collapse when the leader falls. Nations survive because institutions remain.
3. Collective Suicide by Design
When a society is run by a few:
– Decision-making collapses: One mistake by one man becomes a catastrophe for all.
– Talent is expelled: The intelligent, the eloquent, the wise are silenced or driven away because they ask questions.
– History is frozen: Instead of moving forward, the people are forced to live in the past glories of their leaders.
This is self-suicide. It is political insanity. And it is exactly what the adversary wants: a Naga people so internally divided, so intellectually impoverished, so dependent on a few, that they can never present a united, modern, and legitimate political front.And while we fight among ourselves for posts, contracts, and donations, the adversary is laughing behind. While we burn our own house, they are drawing our map.
The Naga context: The plight of the Nagas of Manipur
Retrospectively, the Naga movement has been magnificent in sacrifice and inspiration. But introspectively, we must confess where we have failed.
For the Nagas of Manipur, the danger of jungle-theory leadership is existential.
When few leaders decide without village consent, Naga ancestral land is left unprotected from illegal settlement, unverified villages multiply in the hills, and Naga highways remain unsecured.
When group interest overrides collective interest, Naga unity is sacrificed for cabinet posts and status quo. Naga solution is clubbed into a lump sum, while ground realities — NRC, Census, delimitation, land records — are ignored.
When fear replaces dialogue, young Nagas disengage. They see politics not as service but as cultism. They migrate. They fall silent. And a silent people cannot defend its future.This is why postmodern leadership for the Naga must be radically different.
The alternative: Strategic, participatory, and accountable leadership
If jungle theory is death, what is life?
1. Institutional Leadership, Not Personal Leadership
Build strong village authorities, strong Churches, strong CSOs, strong District Councils. Let law, not men, rule. Leaders come and go. Institutions protect the people long after.
2. Intellectual Leadership, Not Intimidation
In this era, food for intellectual thought is not a luxury. It is security. We need Naga think tanks, legal cells, historical documentation teams, diplomatic teams who can argue Naga rights in Delhi, in Geneva, and in the courts with eloquence, logic, and evidence — not with slogans.
3. Participatory Security, Not Cult Security
Collective security means every village watches its land, every youth knows his history, every tribe has a voice. It is not the security of one group protecting its turf. It is the security of a whole people protecting its future.4. Moral Leadership, Not Transactional Leadership
Leadership must be measured not by how many contracts it controls, but by how many villages it has protected, how many youths it has educated, how many lands it has legally secured.
The hour of reckoning
This, then, is the final appeal to conscience, to courage, and to history itself.
To the Naga people in general, and to the Nagas of Manipur in particular: The age of jungle theory is over. It did not work. It will not work. It cannot work.
Let it be recorded for generations yet unborn that there came a moment when we stood at the crossroads of extinction and eternity, of cultism and covenant, of chaos and calling — and we chose wisely.
For too long, we have allowed a few to decide for the many. We have allowed silence to replace counsel, and fear to replace faith. We have allowed our adversary to watch us dismantle our own future with our own hands, while he laughed behind the hills.
That time must end today. Not tomorrow. Not after eighty years of another talk. Today.
What shall we become?
Shall we be remembered as a people who traded a nation for posts, who traded land for contracts, who traded unity for applause? Or shall we be remembered as the generation that rose from the ashes of division, that rejected the cult of the few, and built the covenant of the many?
Let us be powerfully united, not under a cult, but under a covenant sealed by blood and history.
Let us be assertively democratic, not aggressively authoritarian, for democracy is the voice of God through the people.
Let us be magnificently organized, brilliantly prepared, and divinely inspired — not miserably divided, intellectually barren, and morally bankrupt.
May God Almighty, who delivered Israel from Pharaoh and the Nagas from darkness, grant us in this decisive hour the wisdom of Solomon to govern with many counselors [Proverbs 11:14], the courage of David to slay the giants of corruption and division, and the humility of Moses to share power before the people perish.
If we do not change, history will not forgive us, heaven will not excuse us, and the adversary will continue to laugh at our funeral.
But if we do change — if we move from jungle to justice, from cult to collective, from few to all, from transaction to transformation — then no power on earth, no conspiracy in hell, can stop the rise of the Naga nation.
The bell tolls. The hour is late. The land is waiting.
For if not us, who shall save our people?
And if not now, when shall we rise?
For the Naga Nation. For Collective Security. For History That Will Last Forever. Jesus Saves!!! Amen!
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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)
