When news came from Delhi on August 18, 2026, that Niketu Iralu had passed away, condolences travelled rapidly across Naga communities and throughout the Northeast. Photographs, prayers, quotations and memories appeared across social media, from people who knew him closely and from many who knew him principally through his writings, peace work and public reputation. He had lived through some of the deepest fractures of modern Naga history and had become one of the region’s most respected voices for reconciliation.
The breadth of the response is understandable. Niketu Iralu’s influence crossed political, tribal, religious and geographical boundaries. Yet to understand why his passing has touched so many people, it is necessary to look beyond the conventional language of condolence. He was not only a peace worker or an award-winning elder. He was a man who asked difficult questions, listened more than he spoke, and refused to reduce peace to political agreement.
Niketu Iralu was born in 1935 in Khonoma, Nagaland, to Dr Sevilie Iralu and Vituno Iralu, the elder sister of A.Z. Phizo. He was one of thirteen children. His father was a pioneering Naga doctor, and the family experienced official suspicion because of its relationship with Phizo. Dr Sevilie Iralu, though not politically active, was imprisoned in Tezpur for a year. These circumstances placed Niketu close to the contradictions of Naga history from childhood.
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He completed his pre-university education in Shillong and later studied at Madras Christian College, where he encountered Moral Re-Armament in 1955. In 1957, he left college before completing his BA to work full-time with the movement. That decision set the course of a life that would take him across continents while keeping him deeply connected to the questions confronting his own people. Initiatives of Change records that he remained associated with Moral Re-Armament, later Initiatives of Change, from the mid-1950s and worked internationally for decades. He served as Director of Asia Plateau in Panchgani and worked with Initiatives of Change programmes in numerous countries. He was also involved in Naga reconciliation initiatives, chaired the Naga National Reconciliation Commission, and served on the Peace Committee of the Nagaland Baptist Church Council. A 2019 Nagaland state profile described him as a social worker and “searcher for healing, peace and proper development of society.”
Perhaps the most revealing description of the physical and moral space he and his wife Christine created was the name given to their home at Sechü Zubza: Kerünyü Ki, or “House of Listening.” Initiatives of Change described it as a place where people from different backgrounds came to reflect, seek hope, inspiration, encouragement, wisdom and strength, knowing that they would be heard and that their pain would be shared. That phrase, “House of Listening,” may be one of the best ways to understand Niketu Iralu.
His public work grew out of a conviction that changing the world required accepting changes within oneself. In reflecting on his encounter with Moral Re-Armament, he recalled reading Gandhi and being challenged by the idea that social transformation could not be separated from the transformation of human nature. He quoted Gandhi’s “still small voice” as the inner authority to which he felt compelled to listen.
That philosophy became visible throughout his public life. He did not reserve criticism for political opponents. He repeatedly argued that Nagas had to examine their own failures and that speaking truth to one’s own side was essential to healing divisions. Initiatives of Change captured one of his best-known formulations: “Change hate and you change history.” It also described his belief that confronting one’s own mistakes was essential to building bridges with the “other.” This was not simply an attractive philosophy. Niketu tried to practise it in ordinary human situations. In his 2004 essay, “Who Will Break the Chain of Hate?”, he described recognising that his own way of making a point had caused bitterness and choosing to seek forgiveness rather than defend himself. That instinct matters because it shows where his approach to reconciliation began: not with the other person’s confession, but with his own willingness to examine himself.
In 2003, the Naga Hoho and Nagaland Christian Forum appointed a seven-member Naga National Reconciliation Commission with Niketu as chairman. The commission soon encountered strong political resistance and, by July that year, all seven members had resigned after the Naga Hoho moved to keep the commission in abeyance. The episode showed how difficult reconciliation was in a political environment where even the attempt to bring opposing voices together could itself become controversial. Niketu did not treat the failure of the formal commission as the end of reconciliation work. His public profile records his continuing efforts to create dialogue and build understanding among divided Naga constituencies. He remained willing to enter rooms where trust was scarce and where speaking to one side could invite suspicion from another.
His peacebuilding also extended far beyond political negotiations. In the late 1980s, he became involved in Nagaland’s growing crisis of drug abuse. The Naga Mothers Association had begun discussions on rehabilitation, and Niketu helped bring the Kripa Foundation of Mumbai into the effort. Mount Gilead Home at Sechü Zubza was formally inaugurated on February 12, 1989. Niketu contacted Father Joe Pereira of Kripa Foundation, whose professional team then came to Kohima, and Niketu subsequently served as the first manager and counsellor of Mount Gilead Home. These episodes show something important about his understanding of peace. It was not confined to ceasefires or political agreements. It also involved addiction, families, wounded relationships, hatred, moral responsibility and the difficult work of helping people live differently.
Niketu was willing to speak about Naga weaknesses without reducing every problem to the actions of an enemy. That habit became increasingly visible in his public reflections on the condition of Naga society. It also appeared in my own conversations with him. He told me that the Naga crisis was “less about factions” and more about the “fragmentation of Naga society.” That distinction stayed with me because it shifted attention away from personalities and organisations and toward the deeper condition of a people divided emotionally and morally.
His concern was never confined to Nagaland. In his lecture on the common crisis confronting Manipur and Nagaland, he asked people to imagine the suffering of others as their own and said, “If we will learn to shed tears for one another we will shed less blood of one another.” The sentence is simple, but it explains much of his work. He wanted people to see suffering before they turned it into politics.
His family history also connected different parts of the Northeast. His elder sister, Rano Mese Shaiza, became the first Naga woman elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977. She was married to Tangkhul leader Lungshim Shaiza, linking Angami and Tangkhul worlds through family as well as public life. At her funeral in 2015, Niketu remembered her as a fighter who had remained committed to what she believed was right. Assamese intellectual Homen Borgohain offered another perspective on Niketu in a 2008 profile, describing him as an “exceptional man” who lived without seeking publicity and whose moral influence extended far beyond formal positions. Borgohain wrote that Niketu was extending “moral leadership to the Nagas.” That description feels important now. Niketu did not acquire authority by demanding it. He acquired it over time, through trust.
I never met Niketu Iralu in person. My relationship with him existed through telephone conversations, emails and WhatsApp messages. Yet I came to know him through the extraordinary generosity with which he gave me his time. I could send him a long article, an unfinished thought or a difficult question about the Naga political situation. He would read, consider it and respond. Sometimes he apologised for taking time because meetings and other responsibilities had delayed his reply. On one occasion he described himself as a “very slow doer/thinker.” I told him that I was willing to wait because his thoughts were worth waiting for. I meant it.
What I valued was not simply his encouragement. He challenged me. When I spoke with him about developing a collective Naga voice, he understood the urgency but cautioned that such work might resemble “soul surgery.” He wanted the work to be serious enough to confront the wound without making the wound deeper. He also admitted uncertainty. He once told me that his convictions and commitment were clear, but that he was still far from clear about how to implement them. I found that remarkable. He did not confuse age with certainty. He continued to search.
There were also the smaller acts that never appear in biographies. When I was trying to reach Rev. Dr. Wati Aier, Niketu helped connect us and forwarded my writings. Even when he was occupied with serious responsibilities in his own community, he would still respond. There was the accidental WhatsApp message about a Protected Area Permit that had been intended for somebody else, followed by his amused explanation of another “frequent error.” There were the familiar sign-offs, “With appreciation and best wishes” and “Prayers and best wishes.” There was also a morning when he shared with me a prayer by Michael Leunig that his wife Christine had given him. It reflected on changing ourselves and changing our world, accepting both the pain and joy of change and undertaking a journey whose destination we cannot fully see. He shared it because it connected with the conversation we were having.
He did not always answer a political question with another political argument. Sometimes he offered a thought, a book or a prayer and allowed the other person to work through it. That attentiveness was part of his way of relating to people, and perhaps it was another expression of the same principle embodied in Kerünyü Ki, the House of Listening.
In 2025, one of Niketu’s philosophical reflections moved me deeply enough that I wrote “The Sacred Whisper: A Compass of Conscience,” which I described as an homage to his “Quiet Light.” I wanted to share his reflections with the wider Naga community. He initially became concerned about whether the timing was right and asked me to hold the article. I respected his wishes and contacted the editors. After further conversation, he eventually allowed me to proceed and placed his trust in my judgement.
Then came words I will never forget: “I trust your perception.”
I am grateful that I wrote that tribute while he was alive. I am grateful that he knew what his words meant to me. And I am grateful that he had the opportunity to read what I had written before his death. I do not mention this as a personal achievement. It is the opposite. It reminds me how unusual it is to tell someone what they have meant to us while they can still hear it.
Niketu’s contribution was recognised repeatedly while he was alive. His documented honours included the Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Award in 2005, the Upendra Nath Brahma Soldier of Humanity Award in 2011, the Rotary Peace Award in 2018, the Nagaland State Award for Distinguished Senior Citizens in 2019, the Dr Bhupen Hazarika Integration Award in 2023, and the Initiatives of Change Lifetime Achiever Award in 2025. The awards matter because they show that his work was recognised during his lifetime. But they do not explain the affection that followed him. For that, one has to look at the relationships he built and the attention he gave.
Niketu was still doing the work of questioning when he approached the end of his life. On February 27, 2026, while addressing the 43rd general conference of the Angami Gazetted Officers’ Krotho, he warned that Nagas were facing an “immense crisis” and needed to prepare collectively for challenges whose local and regional manifestations were connected to wider continental and global crises. He urged society to move beyond conventional discussion and develop new thinking, plans and collective action. That warning gives his passing a particular poignancy. Only months before his death, he was still asking the Naga people to examine the scale and complexity of the crisis and prepare themselves to respond. He was not simply looking backward at the history he had lived through. He was still looking ahead.
Across Naga social media, people are rightly mourning Niketu Iralu. But perhaps his death should also make us examine the way we honour our elders. We become eloquent at funerals because death removes the awkwardness of speaking honestly. While people are alive, we hesitate, postpone, disagree and assume there will be another opportunity. Then, when the opportunity is gone, we discover the words we wished we had spoken.
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Niketu’s life gives us a different lesson. His work was built around listening while people were still alive, changing while change was still possible, and repairing relationships before they became memories. His legacy should therefore not be reduced to awards, titles or a collection of quotations. Nor should we turn him into an untouchable monument. He was a deeply human man who spent decades asking Nagas to examine themselves, confront their own failures, resist hatred and recover the courage to listen. His greatest contribution may have been the insistence that reconciliation is not weakness, and that moral courage sometimes means telling one’s own side what it does not want to hear.
As we mourn Niketu Iralu, we should do more than repeat that he was a peace activist, thinker, elder or bridge-builder. We should ask what his life requires of us. Can we listen before judging? Can we admit that our own side is capable of wrongdoing? Can we pursue political aspirations without losing conscience? And perhaps there is one question that comes too late for Niketu: whom among our living elders have we still not thanked?
We should not need another funeral to discover the courage to speak gratitude.
Niketu Iralu spent his life reminding us that changing the world begins with changing ourselves. His physical journey has ended, but that work has not. We never met in person, but I was fortunate to know him through conversations that I will never be able to continue. I will remember his “Dear Markson,” his patience with my long messages, his questions and cautions, his “Prayers and best wishes,” and the trust he placed in me.
Most of all, I will remember the quiet light.
Not as something to place behind glass and admire from a distance, but as something that must be carried forward.
Rest in peace, Uncle Niketu.
