By Michael Meiphami Shaiza
History bears witness that the noblest sentiment of a people can become their most dangerous snare when it is counterfeited. True patriotism is a sacred stewardship of land, blood, faith, and future. Pseudo patriotism is its shadow, a performance of love for the nation that secretly serves the self.
For the Naga peoples, a people whose story is written in sacrifice, faith, and an unyielding assertion of identity, this distinction is not academic. It is existential. When nationalism is made a market commodity for political mileage, it does not build the Nation; it bleeds it.
Defining the Two Spirits
True Naga patriotism is humble, sacrificial, and rooted. It weeps for the widow of the village, it labors for the orphan, it tells the truth even when the truth is costly. It is the spirit that says, “My nation is not mine to exploit, but mine to serve.”
Pseudo patriotism, by contrast, is loud, performative, and extractive. It shouts slogans in public but negotiates selfish gain in private. Hyper-nationalism is its militant extension, it demands absolute conformity, equates dissent with treason, and measures loyalty not by character but by compliance.
The meter shown in the image is apt. When the needle of patriotism crosses 100 and becomes an instrument for self-elevation, it ceases to be patriotism and becomes idolatry of power.
The Erosion of the Naga Democratic and Traditional Ethos
The traditional Naga polity was deeply democratic. The village republic, the elders’ council, the clan deliberation, all institutionalized dissent and consensus.
Pseudo nationalism centralizes this. It replaces the morung with the high command, the public discourse with the diktat. It suppresses questioning by branding the questioner as anti-national, overground or underground, when in fact the question is the highest form of love for the nation.
When power is centralized in the name of the Nation, checks and balances wither. Accountability is called betrayal. And the people, for whom the nation was supposed to exist, become subjects of those who claim to own the nation.
The Weaponization of Division
The greatest wound pseudo patriotism inflicts on the Naga Nation is fragmentation. The Naga struggle was founded on the vision of a collective peoplehood beyond clan and village.
Pseudo nationalists, however, thrive on division. They mobilize tribal sentiment against tribe, village against village, and faction against faction, using the holy name of the Nation to settle personal scores and capture resources. They define who is more Naga and who is less, who is pure and who is impure, based on language, region, or political allegiance.
This supremacist logic is alien to the Naga spirit. It transforms a Nation into a hierarchy, and a family into a courtroom. The blood that should flow like one river in the Tangkhul, Ao, Angami, Sema, Mao, Maram and all Naga lands, begins to clot.
Manipulation of History, Faith, and Memory
A pseudo patriot fears true history. Therefore he rewrites it.
He glorifies militarism while erasing the tears of mothers. He recites the dates of battles but hides the covenants broken, the extortions committed against his own people, the taxes that impoverished the poor. He uses Scripture out of context, for the Bible is clear: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” – Proverbs 14:34. And again, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” – Proverbs 29:2.
True Naga nationalism was born in prayer and fasting. Pseudo nationalism uses prayer as a photo opportunity and faith as a political flag.
The Economics of False Nationalism and Social Decay
When nationalism becomes a business model, the community pays the price.
Taxation without accountability, coercion in the name of contribution, contracts and jobs given not on merit but on loyalty to a faction, all in the name of the national cause. This destroys enterprise, drives the youth away, and makes the village economy dependent on fear rather than work.
Socially, it reinforces injustice. It silences women, sidelines elders who speak wisdom, and criminalizes the young who dare to imagine a different future. It tells the Naga youth that patriotism is to shout louder, not to live cleaner, work harder, and love deeper.
Patriotism Versus Hyper-Nationalism
Patriotism loves the people enough to correct them.
Hyper-nationalism loves power enough to corrupt the people.
Patriotism builds schools, clinics, and roads.
Hyper-nationalism builds checkpoints, lists, and propaganda.
Patriotism says, “We have failed, let us repent and rebuild.”
Hyper-nationalism says, “We have never failed, it is the enemy who is at fault.”
For the Naga Nation to live, it needs the first.
The Path to Redemption
- Return to Truth and Critical Thinking: Our schools, churches, and village councils must teach history in its fullness, not as mythology. A generation that can think critically cannot be manipulated easily.
- Restore Inclusive Narrative: The Naga Nation is not a property of any faction, overground or underground nor does it belong to any regional political party. It belongs to the past martyrs, the present villagers, and the unborn children. No single group or regional political party can claim its copyright.
- Embrace Media and Moral Literacy: Learn to distinguish between a man who loves the Nation and a man who loves the microphone. The former works in silence; the latter cannot survive without noise.
- Re-center on Biblical and Customary Justice: Micah 6:8 remains our plumb line – “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” Any nationalism that is unjust, merciless, and arrogant is not Naga, and it is not Christian.
A Solemn Appeal
Naga Nation will not die from the bullets of its enemies. It will die, if it dies, from the lies of its self-proclaimed saviors.
The time has come for Naga peoples across all tribes and regions to unmask pseudo patriotism for what it is: a harmful, self-serving, and deeply anti-people ideology that has long masqueraded as devotion.
Let us not measure our patriotism meter at 100 by shouting. Let us measure it by how we protect the weakest among us, how we steward our land, how we tell the truth when it costs us, and how we prepare a future where our children will not have to shed blood to prove they are Naga.
That is true patriotism. That is the Nationalism that will save us.
***Michael Meiphami Shaiza is the 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)
