WHAT LIES BENEATH THE NAGA JOKES

To come up with the assumption that Naga people have a unique way of socialising will be nothing but debatable. We cannot presume that our only way of socialising is by devouring non-vegetarian food, alcohol consumption and cracking jokes.  At the same time, we cannot rule out the fact that humour plays an important role in socialising. Over the years, the variety of mainstream jokes has grown more than double, adding to such is the dumb blonde joke, ethnic jokes, Sanda-Panda joke, the non-veg jokes which need parental guidance and of course, the sexist jokes which are more like remarks. In Nagaland, we have tribes’ dictation jokes, political leader jokes, sexist jokes, non-veg jokes and other stale jokes.

Don’t just laugh at the humour, read the underlining satire too: If we compare the Naga jokes of the 1980s to that of now, do we notice the way our society has undergone a change in accepting what a joke should or should not be? Do vulgarity and condemnations bring more laughter than the jokes which make us think? It will be interesting if we observe not only the humour but also the high satirical content that Naga jokes carry. Which is an interesting phenomenon as humour and satire have been treated as two different entities. Humour ignites laughter and grants amusement, on the other hand, satire is considered as a genre of literature in which abuses, vices or shortcomings are ridiculed, usually through sarcasm. Satirical themes usually range from religion to politics to collective human behaviour, which makes people think and which often get applauds from people who appreciates its value. Anyway, we cannot ignore that Naga jokes consciously or subconsciously reflects the reality of our present society, but we get engaged more in the humour than in deciphering the satirical undertone.

Your jokes, your responsibility: We are told to mind our actions, our words, so what about our jokes? Are we supposed to take responsibly for the jokes we break? Sometimes, in the name of cracking a joke, we forget there is a difference between rudeness and being sensitive. Jokes are used as a weapon to level the score resulting in bitter grudge among persons and communities. Of course, ill-spirited jokes have always put someone in losing ends. I have often heard stories of how mindless banters and slanders provoked someone to file the case against the person who cracked the joke pot upon him. Moreover, with the growth of social networks, often we can see how a petty joke takes 180-degree turn after ‘x’ makes a comment on it, resulting in ‘y’ blocking ‘x’ from the contact list. Sometimes mending out jokes on someone grows so grotesque resulting in ‘cyber bullying’, but is our society even aware of that?

Be careful of your jokes:  Why such consideration should be taken into account? Likely, jokes do not remain within a community; it spreads over to other community as well, what started as a stupid joke (loaded with generalization, with no factual clarity) within a community of people when it reaches the third and the fourth community online then there is high probability of treating it as an existing reality, as reality is socially constructed. If with a bias attitude towards certain tribes, someone constructs jokes and those jokes become the guiding book to know the mentality and conduct of those tribes, then what a fallacy can it be! So to avoid being that person who brought the flawed belief, one should be careful of his/her jokes.

The difficulty lies in the fact that a person cannot be mindful of his/her jokes all the time. As a minor solution one can begin the joke by signalling the statutory warning, “This is a pure Naga joke, don’t seek for clarification, it does not intend to offend any individual or tribe, laugh if you find it funny.” But, seriously who is going to heed this solution…only the stand-up comedian. 

(As appeared in Morung Express)