Shillong, Jan. 11: At a time when the region’s eyes are focused on New Delhi — where the two leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) visited Rajghat before kickstarting the peace talks — far away in a small house in Shillong, a 75-year-old woman recalled Mahatma Gandhi and the Naga struggle for self-determination like no one else.
Kong Bires Lyngdoh Nongrang, huddled by the fireside in her hilltop residence in Risa Colony, recalled how her husband, Theyiew Shakrie, general secretary of A.Z. Phizo’s Naga National Council who was often referred to as “Phizo’s lips and mind”, died praising the Mahatma.
Even in his death throes, he was struggling for self-determination for the Nagas according to the tenets of non-violence.
According to reports on Shakrie, “He had himself provided the embellishments for independence of the Nagas among the tribesmen but later he resisted any offensive means and wanted to settle for independence peacefully”.
However, Shakrie — dubbed a deserter by Phizo — was killed on January 1956 at the age of 35 at Chiechama village. There are contradictory reports about Shakrie’s death and even his family members are mum on it, but it has been recorded as arguably the most brutal death of a rebel. Some publications even termed it a “crucifixion”.
Shakrie was one of the early followers of Phizo. In fact, he has been written about as the “man who had brought Phizo personally into the first political body in the Naga Hills” and acted as “Phizo’s chronicler”.
He, however, fell out with Phizo on ideological grounds and was firmly against a counter-offensive.
His Khasi wife, whom he married while working in Shillong, does not want to recall those galling memories. “All I knew was that he believed that non-violence and not war is what we must have to be independent,” she said.
Even as she pleaded ignorance to what was happening in the current round of talks, she hoped that “peace, as was envisioned by my husband and his colleagues, returns”.
“I remember how impressed my husband was after meeting Mahatma Gandhi and how he changed after that,” she said.
He was part of the delegation that went to meet Mahatma Gandhi at the Bhangi Colony in New Delhi to tell him that the Nagas had resolved to declare their “independence” a day before India did, on August 14, 1947.
Shakrie’s second son, B. Pakriley (Malcolm) Shakrie, who lives with his widowed mother, said peace talks with the NSCN (I-M) was “very welcome, but it should be done involving everyone and every faction”.