The Story of Mayangkokla of the Nagas

Mayangkokla’s screams continue to echo in my ears, even as I pause to reflect upon her biographical account in Kaka Iralu’s ‘Blood and Tears’ [Iralu, Kaka. D., Nagaland and India: The Blood and the Tears (Kohima: Published by Kaka D. Iralu, 2000)]. His book is based on testimonial evidence to argue for the cruelties and inhuman acts of the Indian army in the land of the Nagas. Mayangkokla’s story forms the major section of his chapter on the Ungma village and describes the cruelties and inhumanities of the Indian army in that village. Kaka sits with Mayangkokla in her house in 1997 and listens as she tells him her story with her frail old hand in his. She recounts the tales of horror of her teen years and describes that fateful week. The testimonial narrates that she was a village beauty, a young girl of 18, who was dragged, beaten senselessly and then gang-raped both publicly as well as in private confinement for over a week. Her screams of protest and mock-laughter of the army men fill every line of this account.

My mind searches for tools to understand these pages of blood and tears that I had just read. I want to be critical of all that I read, I tell myself. Kaka, I say, is passionate about his book, and could an overflow of that passion distort the reality that he describes? It really could not have been so bad! I further wondered, could his choice of words in his graphic account be intentional to suit a particular kind of audience that he is writing to, or even being politically-correct? Or finally, could the memory of the incident have changed from year to year, from each telling to another to accommodate the tenor of the larger narrative that it so seeks to represent? However, all academic tools crumble as I see Mayangkokla, aged and fragile, recounting her story, a testimony of what happened to her and who can defy or deny her story? It is her story, like all our life-stories and who are we to contest it?

Also, her story is not told in isolation, it is not an anomaly or a variant, a blip in the rather beautiful picture of Indo-Naga relations. The events that she experienced in her life unfortunately were not unique to her. Hers is one chapter of a larger compendium that contains stories of similar experiences. She compels us to listen to her and so we must. This gruesome act is one among thousands, Kaka argues, that has taken place in Nagaland over the past 50 years. The Indian army, armed with special powers, has been sent at the behest of the Indian government, and representing the gods of democracy and nation-state they are there to curtail the ‘underground insurgents’ or ‘freedom fighters’ (depending on who is narrating) who threaten them. It is common knowledge that many in the army who had gone to protect the sovereignty of India misused their uncontrolled powers to kill, rape and destroy countless lives.

A few decades earlier, something similar was happening in the Indian sub-continent. Then, it was the Indian insurgents or freedom fighters (depending on who is narrating again) fighting against the colonial British Crown that was ruling India. The Colonial powers had ruled over India for over two hundred years in some form or other. India said that she did not want to be part of the colonial empire and asserted her right to rule herself. That story is well-documented and all Indians remember it with pride. The demon of colonialism was dethroned, ousted and India got her freedom. The world lauded India’s independence and it being constituted as a republic. Each year this victory of freedom over imperial rule and political independence is celebrated. India holds high the virtues of freedom and self-rule.

Ironically, soon thereafter, a fight between the Indian State and the Nagas ensued pretty much on the same ideologies that had caused India to fight the British. However, this time it was the Nagas who were fighting Indian aggression. The Nagas claimed that they were never part of the Indian state and therefore did not want to be ruled and colonized by India. But this time, India fought her, and disallowed her right for freedom, forgetting the very values of freedom and right to one’s self-governance that had propelled her own journey in her fight against the British Raj. India dealt ruthlessly with the Nagas, infamously, more ruthlessly than the British treatment of India. She sent her army in with special powers. There was no willingness to listen to the story of the Nagas who had made it clear that they did not belong to the Indian state. The Nagas claimed that India was imposing her rule on a land and people who considered themselves to be an ‘other’ with no common history. History was repeating itself; India was doing exactly what the British Raj had done: she was imposing her rule over a people who did not want to come under her governance. India sent her army in and the atrocities began: mindless killings, uncountable rapes, burning of houses and villages, it was indeed hell and have been for the past 50 years. The Nagas who organized themselves into an underground army in turn fought the Indian army and the war has continued. It is rightfully called the world’s longest lasting war. The story of Mayangkokla makes us think about war, conflict, violence and their cruelties. It is here that you and I step into this story. How do we respond to this story? Can tears of pain be replaced by shouts of joy? Can we envision a better ending to this horror story? Would it be possible to be re-written as The Beautiful and the Triumph instead of Iralu’s The Blood and the Tears?

I definitely do not possess any solutions to the world’s oldest lasting war or even how to go about a solution. Maybe the issues are complicated. But I do think that those who believe in peace and justice and hate violence could do something. Is it too utopian to dream of a world where the armed forces will be unemployed, where there will be no need to fight or fire a gun, and no need to exert violence? Where there will be no more anguished cries of Mayangkoklas but sweet laughter, cries of children filling the air.

When the children cry

Let them know we tried

When the children fight

Let them know it ain't right

When the children pray

Let them know the way

Cause when the children sing

Then the new world begins

– From the song “When the Children Cry” by White Lion