When the Home Minister Amit Shah proposed to impose his ideology of beef ban in India, many communities stridently opposed the move, and it was shelved. Nagas eating dog meat is part of our cultural heritage, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. J.H. Hutton, the anthropologist and British Raj Administrator in the then Naga Hills of Assam in his seminal books extensively documented dog eating habits among the Nagas. The fact of the matter is most Nagas eat dog meat and so if our state has earned the sobriquet, “The land of dog meat eaters” so be it.

Today many self-styled organisations particularly the Maneka Gandhi-led People for Animals want to stamp their ideology upon the Naga people. The People for Animals, Nagaland Chapter, should realize that whether it’s beef or dog ban, such agenda are part of the greater ideological battle in India’s political and cultural landscape, and they should stop being pawns and puppets. Today, gullible Nagas leading People for Animals, Nagaland Chapter, desperately want to ban dog meat in the state not realizing the insidious agenda of their masters in Delhi – people who profess to be ‘clean/unpolluted’ and ‘veg’ with their stated goal of ‘purifying’ or ‘cleansing’ Naga tribals and other minorities of their ‘impurity’.

The RPP wants to remind the Naga people that this issue is not a small matter. It’s part of the larger “One nation, One Culture” agenda to “Sanskritize” all the minority peoples and cultures within Bharat.

Instead of approaching the courts, the Rising People’s Party dares the People for Animals, Nagaland Chapter, to lobby Maneka Gandhi in passing a legislation in the Indian Parliament.

While the RPP is focused on good governance, the bigger picture of “Identity Politics” is too dangerous to be ignored.