IRA MATH­UR

“I in­sist­ed on as­sert­ing my In­di­an iden­ti­ty.” Nan­di­ta Hak­sar. The Colours of Na­tion­al­ism: A Mem­oir of Dreams, Hopes and Be­tray­als (Speak­ing Tiger Books, 2024).

Nan­di­ta Hak­sar is an In­di­an hu­man rights lawyer, teacher, cam­paign­er and writer. For more than four decades, she has rep­re­sent­ed vic­tims of army atroc­i­ties in North­east In­dia, Kash­miris framed in ter­ror­ism cas­es, mi­grant work­ers and refugees seek­ing asy­lum.

Hak­sar’s writ­ing is shaped by In­dia’s fed­er­al struc­ture, a re­pub­lic of 28 states and eight union ter­ri­to­ries with deep dif­fer­ences in lan­guage, cul­ture and his­to­ry. The con­sti­tu­tion recog­nis­es 22 of­fi­cial lan­guages along­side hun­dreds of re­gion­al and trib­al lan­guages. Since In­de­pen­dence in 1947, sev­er­al re­gions were in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the In­di­an Union through ne­go­ti­a­tion, co­er­cion or mil­i­tary ac­tion.

In Kash­mir and parts of the North­east, armed in­sur­gen­cies and counter-in­sur­gency op­er­a­tions have de­fined po­lit­i­cal life for decades. The Armed Forces (Spe­cial Pow­ers) Act, en­act­ed in 1958, grants wide pow­ers to the armed forces in ar­eas des­ig­nat­ed as “dis­turbed” and con­tin­ues to be ap­plied in parts of the North­east. It shaped se­cu­ri­ty prac­tice in Jam­mu and Kash­mir from 1990.

Hak­sar has en­gaged with these is­sues as both lawyer and writer. Her books in­clude The Many Faces of Kash­miri Na­tion­al­ism (Speak­ing Tiger, 2015), Kuk­nal­im—Na­ga Armed Re­sis­tance (Speak­ing Tiger, 2019), Shoot­ing the Sun (Speak­ing Tiger, 2023) and The Colours of Na­tion­al­ism (Speak­ing Tiger Books, 2024). Much of her writ­ing draws on long en­gage­ment with move­ments and com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by con­flict and state pow­er.

Hak­sar has said that she writes non-fic­tion “usu­al­ly about peo­ple whose cas­es I have tak­en up in court or been in­volved in a cam­paign”. Writ­ing, she says, helps her “make sense of the chaot­ic world in which we live” and con­nects her with “peo­ple, places and move­ments”.

De­bates over na­tion­al­ism, dis­sent and state au­thor­i­ty re­main un­re­solved in In­dia. Protests over cit­i­zen­ship laws, changes to Jam­mu and Kash­mir’s con­sti­tu­tion­al sta­tus and con­tin­u­ing un­rest in Ma­nipur have kept these ques­tions in pub­lic view.

Ex­cerpt: The Colours of Na­tion­al­ism: A Mem­oir of Dreams, Hopes and Be­tray­als by Nan­di­ta Hak­sar. Pub­lished by Speak­ing Tiger Books.

“My Wed­ding

To Se­bas­t­ian’s cred­it, he nev­er even asked whether I would agree to a church wed­ding, even though the Catholic Church per­mits in­ter­faith mar­riages, un­like the Bap­tists. The cou­ple had to promise to bring their chil­dren up as Catholics, of course. I did not even know he was re­quired to present me to the bish­op and get for­mal per­mis­sion to mar­ry a pa­gan. We just took it for grant­ed that we would have a civ­il mar­riage. The reg­is­trar of mar­riages came to Se­bas­t­ian’s un­cle’s home in Im­phal and reg­is­tered our mar­riage. No one in his fam­i­ly had ever had a civ­il mar­riage. Af­ter we put our sig­na­tures down, we had a sim­ple tea par­ty.

Sud­den­ly, we heard the roar of a mo­tor­cy­cle out­side. Shel­ley Chara parked his bike and rushed to me and said, ‘Please write a pe­ti­tion for me. I need it quick­ly. We need to give it to the Gov­er­nor.’ I do not re­mem­ber what the pe­ti­tion was about ex­cept that it had some­thing to do with the Na­ga-Ku­ki clash­es.

I told Shel­ley I had just got mar­ried and that he was sup­posed to have arranged for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er! He said he was sor­ry, but please would I write the pe­ti­tion? It was ur­gent.

So, a few min­utes af­ter my wed­ding, I sat at the din­ing ta­ble and wrote a pe­ti­tion by hand on a pa­per. It was 1993. We did not have lap­tops, and even type­writ­ers were dif­fi­cult to get. Shel­ley rushed off. I did not know that it was the last time I would see him alive; in two years, he would be dead.

The next day, we all went up to Ukhrul. Here, we re­ceived a bless­ing by a Catholic priest, Joe Ngamkhuchung. Se­bas­t­ian did not want a priest from Ker­ala. They had a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing ar­ro­gant. Na­tion­al­ism played a role again here. Se­bas­t­ian asked Joe to bless us, for it was from him that he had learnt his cat­e­chism. I was ap­pre­hen­sive that I would not take to the priest, and I did not want a bless­ing in which I would be re­quired to say any­thing that went against my be­liefs, es­pe­cial­ly any­thing against dig­ni­ty of women.

Al­so, I told the priest why I found it im­pos­si­ble to call him ‘Fa­ther’. But I loved Joe when I met him. Fa­ther Joe Ngamkhuchung was a Moy­on Na­ga. He be­longed to the 1967 batch of Sale­sian Col­lege at Son­a­da (near Dar­jeel­ing), where Se­bas­t­ian too had stud­ied. Joe was loved deeply by the peo­ple every­where he was post­ed.

Soon af­ter our wed­ding, Joe left the priest­hood and got mar­ried. He ded­i­cat­ed his life to work­ing with drug ad­dicts, es­pe­cial­ly those who were HIV pos­i­tive. He told us once what a woman had said to him: ‘Son, if you can dry the tears of a drug us­ing boy’s moth­er, you have earned your heav­en.’

Be­fore the cer­e­mo­ny, Joe and I sat to­geth­er and de­cid­ed on what kind of bless­ing he should give us. Se­bas­t­ian had al­ways told me that ac­cord­ing to the Bible, the two most im­por­tant com­mand­ments were to love the Lord your God and love thy neigh­bour, the lat­ter be­ing the most im­por­tant of all. I could not say I loved a God since I was an athe­ist, or at best ag­nos­tic about the ex­is­tence of God. But I did be­lieve that our hu­man rights work was based on the prin­ci­ple of lov­ing thy neigh­bour, an ac­knowl­edge­ment of our com­mon hu­man­i­ty. I felt that we could claim hon­est­ly that our mar­riage en­dorsed the prin­ci­ple in every pos­si­ble way—in our work, in our strug­gles and in our ideals.

I al­so told Joe to bless our dif­fer­ences. It should be made clear that we came from two en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent back­grounds, one a Na­ga and the oth­er an In­di­an, one a Catholic and the oth­er a non-be­liev­er; two in­di­vid­u­als who, de­spite their dif­fer­ences, had re­spect for each oth­er’s na­tion­al­i­ty, cul­ture and be­liefs. Fa­ther Joe Ngamkhachung did not dis­ap­point. And for all those sit­ting in the au­di­ence, it was a to­tal­ly new ex­pe­ri­ence when the priest said he blessed our dif­fer­ences. For them, it was a unique cer­e­mo­ny.

Joe’s pres­ence on that April morn­ing gave the oc­ca­sion solem­ni­ty. But not every­one was pleased with the cer­e­mo­ny.

We were told that the lo­cal town com­man­der of the NSCN, who was present that day, did not ap­prove of this kind of bless­ing. Ac­cord­ing to him, once I mar­ried a Tangkhul Na­ga, I had be­come Tangkhul. Ap­par­ent­ly, this sto­ry went right up to Th Muiv­ah, who was at the time in Bangkok. The peace talks had not yet be­gun when I met Muiv­ah in 1998. I asked him whether this was true. He said it was and gen­tly asked me why I had in­sist­ed on as­sert­ing my In­di­an iden­ti­ty. I told him I was an In­di­an and would re­main so.

And as a fem­i­nist, I did not think the woman should give up her iden­ti­ty. He lis­tened care­ful­ly, some­what amused.”

End of Ex­cerpt

Nan­di­ta Hak­sar con­tin­ues to write on na­tion­al­ism, hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal move­ments in In­dia.

Ira Math­ur is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion.