By: Waikhom Damodar Singh *
The so called Indo-Naga Peace Talk which have since been going on in between the Government of India and the Naga revolutionaries was moot-ed out by Baptist church leaders of Nagaland who met in earnestness in a convention held at Wokha, HQ of the Lotha tribe area on 24 February 1964 with an object to bring an ‘end’ to the great war like ‘turmoil’ that had taken place with heavy loss of many innocent lives and bloodshed amongst the people of the erstwhile Naga Hills District which later on spread in the four Hill districts of Manipur, particularly in Ukhrul district.
The convention issued an appeal to the Government as well as to the underground revolutionary Nagas for restoration of peace, normalcy and order in the strife-torn State and had formed a four-men Peace Mission comprising Reverend Michael Scott, Jayaprakash Narayan, the supremo of the socialist party of India, Assam congress party chief Minister, Bimalaprassad Chaliha and Shankerrao Deo for interposing between the Government of India and the Naga Revolutionary Federal Government formed some 5 decades ago under the behest of late Naga revolutionary pioneer, A. Zaphu Phizo Angami.
The Naga revolution or insurgency erupted out with violent subversive activities from March 22, 1956 onwards when they declared their own “de facto sovereign Government” with their own Constitution adopted and signed by the Head of the State (Kedaghe), the president commander-in-chief of the Army, Kilonsers (Ministers), (members of Parliament - Tartar Hohos), Ahangs (governors) etc appointed.
The declaration of their own sovereign State and Government took place at Phensinyu village in the Rengma Naga area with hoisting of Naga National Flag, bearing red, green and white colours with three blue stars. The historic event of the Nagas took place with great traditional ceremony and feasting.
Insurgency is defined as politics with bloodshed. It is what had exactly happened to the Nagas of Nagaland who began their demand of a sovereign Independent State of their own outside the dominion of India in a non-violent manner in the very initial stage, but later on turned it into a movement with all the ferocities of bloodshed by taking up arms against the Government of Assam (under whom Nagaland then was a mere district) and the Government of India as the last resort for achieving their avowed goal.
The “cradle” of their movement for independence may perhaps be traced back to the old Naga club founded in Kohima and Mokokchung towns as far back as year 1918 which served initially only as a “forum” for carrying out “social activities for the Naga community, particularly the Naga Government officials living in the above mentioned two towns.
It was then in the year 1945 that the then Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills District, Charles Pawsey, ICS had established a Tribal Council known as the Naga Hills District Tribal Council in order to unite the Nagas of the District for the reconstruction works of the great devastation left by the Second World War in the district, particularly in Kohima town where one of the severest and bloodiest battle was fought between the columns of the Allied Forces of the 14th Army of General William Bill Slim under his 33 Corp commanded by Lt. General Montagu Stopford and of the Japanese of the 15th Army of General Renya Mutaguchi under his 31 division commanded by tough Lt. General Kotuko Sato, who at the end, lost the battle miserably and who was court-martialled afterwards for defiance of the orders of his superior commander.
The set-up of the Naga Hills District Council was, in fact, the forerunner of the so called Naga National Council which have been actually an organisation converted from the Naga club established earlier. It was this Naga political organisation that had finally been converted into the set-up of an armed revolutionary Government.
The primary objectives of the district council established by Pawsey were purely for the purpose of rendering some autonomy for the Naga Hills district as he was intensely interested in the welfare and development of the Nagas, who he greatly admired of their good and simple qualities, though there had already been a secret plan worked out by the British Government known as “coupland plan” (worked out initially by Reginald Coupland, a former Governor of the erstwhile greater Assam province) for carving out a separate area inhabited by the Naga tribes of India and adjoining areas of Buma which was to continue to remain as a -buffer state” under their rule even after India and Burma attained independence as they had no more illusion of denying it to the Indians and the Burmese, especially after the end of the Second World War due to heavy national and international political pressures.
Inspite of the simple objectives that the organisation so had in the beginning for improving the socio-economic conditions of the much backward tribes of the district, it became later on the ‘hub’ of political activities of a group of extremist Nagas whose attitudes became more seriously changed as soon as A. Zaphu Phizo, an Angami Tribe born in Khonoma village near Kohima in the year 1900 (the village was called Thibomei by the Meiteis earlier and was once under the territory of the erstwhile independent state of Manipur till it was taken over by the British from Maharaja Chandrakirti Singh under an appeasing policy and had established their military garrison for the convenience of spreading of their power in the north eastern region) joined the party after having lived in Burma from 1933 to 1944.
And it was only after he joined the organisation that its very original name of the Naga Hills District Council had been changed into the Naga National Council and that it became an organisation of a much more active political party highly infused with deep anti-Indian feelings and ideas of living as a separate entity of independent people or Nation - according to the opinions of many learned historians and expert writers like P.D. Staacy the Nagas had never been a unified Nation, rather it had been only a concept hypothesised by Phizo.
Thus leaning more towards the ‘extremism’ preferred and induced by the new leader, Phizo, the Nagas of the Naga Hills District issued ultimately a very bold declaration in June 1947 to the effect that the Naga Hills which was administratively only a District under the Province of Assam should cease to be a part of India when she attains independence.
In fact, the anti-Indian attitudes and feelings of the Nagas of the district cast on them due to the high-handed and much inferior treatment done to them by the plains people, particularly of Assam, had already been brewing up since much earlier time and it was on the occasion of the visit of the British Simmon Commission in 1929, which had come to India to study the ground for Constitutional reforms as strongly demanded by her people, that a party of Naga delegates had openly expressed their strong anti-Indian feelings to them with very fervent request to leave them (the Nagas) out from being considered and inclusion as a part of the Indian people.
While such were the extreme and hostile feelings that were then amongst the Nagas of the Naga Hills District ‘the hill tribes of Manipur, namely the Tangkhuls etc had remained as quite loyal, simple and peaceful subjects of the State under the ruling of the king.
During the period between 1947 and 1956, Phizo tried several times to convince the Governments both in Assam and Delhi, of the earnestness and seriousness of the claim of the Nagas of having of their own independent sovereign “de facto Government” to show genuineness of this, Phizo even conducted, though a unofficial process, a unilateral plebiscite” by collecting signatures and thumb impressions from house to house from May to August in 1951 and according to it he claimed that over 99 per cent of the people of the Naga Hills District voted for a separate and independent state of their own.
However, the then Prime Minister of India, (late) Jawaharlal Nehru vehemently disapproved the move of the few sections of the Naga radicals headed by Phizo with the declaration of the same in the Parliament by describing that such a demand of the Nagas of the Naga Hills District was something ‘unwise, impracticable and unacceptable from all points of views’.
Thus having no other alternative the Nagas under Phizo proclaimed their own “Federal independent sovereign Government” as a ‘de facto Sovereign Government’ on March 22, 1956 as already described at the outset and they began to resort to heavy armed violence on a planned scale by the heavily armed Nagas of the so-called Naga Army who later on came to be known as Naga Hostiles (NHGS).
In order to check the outburst of the armed revolution or uprising so taken place in an unassuming proportion the Indian Army was immediately pressed into action who appropriately and with very heavy hands dealt with the armed uprising and the very alarming and critical situation that had flared up was brought under control.
The stern action taken by the Indian Army forced many revolutionary Nagas to go underground. Phizo himself had escaped out through the jungles of the Mikir hills and Sylhet (erstwhile East Pakistan) and landed in London and lived under the care of Reverend Michael Scott as an English citizen till he died there later on due to prolonged illness.
The subversive activities of the Naga Hostiles then spread in alarming proportion over the areas of the hill districts of Manipur, namely Mao, Ukhrul, Tamenglong, Chandel and later on of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh States. However, since the Naga people had underwent many unimaginable hardships and untold sufferings due to the armed uprising, a change in the attitudes of the Naga moderates led by Dr Imkongliba Ao, P Shilu Ao, Jasokie Angami etc soon took place, in that, they preferred to resolve the issue in peaceful manner by immediately giving up the violent activities and their original plan and hypothetical claim of “cessation from India”, and therefore an agreement was arrived at in the larger interest of the Naga people of the Naga Hills district.
The Government of India therefore very leniently granted, as a very special case, the Naga Hills district to the status of another full-fledged state (the 16th) of the Indian Union without giving any consideration of the points of non-viabilities for becoming it a state, particularly the financial aspects. The new State of Nagaland came into existence with effect from 1st December 1963 as was inaugurated by Dr Sarvapalli Radha-krishnan, the former President of India with Shri P Shilu Ao as the first Chief Minister of the State.
Thus, in due course of time the ‘flame of insurgency’ in Nagaland and the revolutionary spirit and feelings of the majority of her people died down to some extent but it continued to escalate and burn rather more vigorously and on a wider scale affecting a large areas of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh States, particularly after the emergence of a new group of Naga insurgents under the name of National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), who walked out from the NNC organisation pioneered by Phizo as they strongly dissented and firmly opposed the so-called Shillong Peace Accord signed in between the Government and the leaders of the pro-Phizo group of the NNC on November 11, 1976.
The Shillong peace accord had taken place under the initiative of the then combined Governor of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, Shri Lalan Prassad (LP Singh), a retired ICS officer and formerly Union Home Secretary to the Government of India.
The split revolutionary group under the name of National Socialist Council of Nagaland was formed in 1980 with Issak Swu, a Sumi or Sema Naga, as its Chairman, S.S. Khaplang, a Burmese Homi Naga Tribe and Thuingaleng Muivah, a Tangkhul tribe, born and brought up in Manipur’s Ukhrul district (Somdal village) as the vice-President and the General Secretary respectively as a result of decisions taken in a meeting of the Naga National Council faction held in a place in the border area of Burma sometime in 1975 who sternly rejected the Shillong Peace Accord and had defected from the parent NNC group challenging the further leadership of Phizo and his later-on diverted policy of somewhat succumbing to the submissive tactics adopted by the Government of India.
However dissenting feelings started brewing up soon amongst the top leaders of the factional party on the ground that Issac Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah were planning to start negotiations for a dialogue for peace with the Government of India within the framework of the Indian Constitution by ousting Khaplang who was surely to oppose the move - it was on this highly suspected ground that a large column of Khaplang’s men attacked Muivah’s group, killing nearly 150 of them in a ‘dawn raid’ launched in a place in the Nagaland-Burma border area - this incident led to a split of the party of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland into two organisations, one known as NSCN(K) group, and another as NSCN(IM) group.
Before the split it was believed that the desires of Issak Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah were only a rumour but the reality of their secret move had subsequently been proved correct as they had met later on the Prime Minister of India, namely, PV Narashimha Rao, first in Paris and later on in New York in 1995, HD Deve Gowda in Zurich in February 1997, Atal Behari Vajpayee in Tokyo in 2002, and they had since been carrying out the so called ‘Indo-Naga Peace Talk’ saying that the process so taken up by both sides aim to keep a permanent ‘Peace’ in Nagaland and its adjoining States of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
So far so good, well done! all will say most heartily to the NSCN (IM) group for their coming to good senses now, particularly to Muivah for his initiatives taken in this regard as the General Secretary of the organisation showing now all the good gestures though a pretty long time have been wasted during which heavy bloodshed and loss of many precious and innocent lives had occurred.
But what is not appreciated is about their very arrogant and adamant stand on a very much ‘communally coloured’ move for building up a domain for a people of very much heterogenous ‘conglomeration’ under the coverage of rather a very superficial, non-indigenous or non-original and unnatural ‘appellation’ of very recent origin called ‘Nagas’ (a Sobriquet - sobriqay - an assumed name originated from Assamese word ‘Noka-Manu’ meaning hill-man which came into application only from the time of British rule in India) by disintegrating the very natural and indigenous areas of the north east region of India and Burma.
So long they are sticking to their very much hypothetical and un-pragmatic demands of ‘disintegration of the indigenous areas’ and ‘sovereignty of their own’ to which the Government of India will never say - OK go head - their peace talk will ever remain as a thing very meaningless and a thing of dreaming for building ‘a castle in the air’.
It is in this context, one would like to say without any bias that the ‘Indo-Naga Peace Talk’ is not at all going in the right direction of bringing the desired fruitful solution of keeping a lasting ‘peace’ in the north east region, particularly in consideration of the very undesirable developments latestly come up to the surface, in that the Khaplang group have recently vented out their most venomous and hostile feelings by audaciously announcing that the ‘Tangkhuls are not Nagas and therefore they are to immediately quit Nagaland State’ followed by the very fearful and recent lawlessness incident occurred at Tangkhul colony of Wungram at Dimapur.
And also of the stern warnings issued very boldly by the Kuki students of Manipur saying that out of the some 7 lakhs tribal population inhabiting in all the hills of Manipur some 4 lakhs are their people and therefore they are the majority of the tribal population in the hills of Manipur and hence there cannot be any decision taken for any ethnic disintegration and re-drawing of the areas of Manipur as vehemently demanded by the NSCN(IM) group without their due consent and views obtained and making the issue more knotty by the similar warnings issued by Michael Keitana, president of the so called Eastern Naga Students Association based in Nagaland objecting the inclusion of the areas inhabited by the eastern Nagas in the redrawing of the map of a greater Nagaland.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Waikhom Damodar Singh wrote this for The Sangai Express. This article was webcasted on September 26, 2007 .
http://e-pao.net/epSubPageExtractor.asp?src=news_section.opinions.Opinion_on_Manipur_Integrity_Issue.Is_Indo-Naga_peace_talk_going_in_right_direction
The so called Indo-Naga Peace Talk which have since been going on in between the Government of India and the Naga revolutionaries was moot-ed out by Baptist church leaders of Nagaland who met in earnestness in a convention held at Wokha, HQ of the Lotha tribe area on 24 February 1964 with an object to bring an ‘end’ to the great war like ‘turmoil’ that had taken place with heavy loss of many innocent lives and bloodshed amongst the people of the erstwhile Naga Hills District which later on spread in the four Hill districts of Manipur, particularly in Ukhrul district.
The convention issued an appeal to the Government as well as to the underground revolutionary Nagas for restoration of peace, normalcy and order in the strife-torn State and had formed a four-men Peace Mission comprising Reverend Michael Scott, Jayaprakash Narayan, the supremo of the socialist party of India, Assam congress party chief Minister, Bimalaprassad Chaliha and Shankerrao Deo for interposing between the Government of India and the Naga Revolutionary Federal Government formed some 5 decades ago under the behest of late Naga revolutionary pioneer, A. Zaphu Phizo Angami.
The Naga revolution or insurgency erupted out with violent subversive activities from March 22, 1956 onwards when they declared their own “de facto sovereign Government” with their own Constitution adopted and signed by the Head of the State (Kedaghe), the president commander-in-chief of the Army, Kilonsers (Ministers), (members of Parliament - Tartar Hohos), Ahangs (governors) etc appointed.
The declaration of their own sovereign State and Government took place at Phensinyu village in the Rengma Naga area with hoisting of Naga National Flag, bearing red, green and white colours with three blue stars. The historic event of the Nagas took place with great traditional ceremony and feasting.
Insurgency is defined as politics with bloodshed. It is what had exactly happened to the Nagas of Nagaland who began their demand of a sovereign Independent State of their own outside the dominion of India in a non-violent manner in the very initial stage, but later on turned it into a movement with all the ferocities of bloodshed by taking up arms against the Government of Assam (under whom Nagaland then was a mere district) and the Government of India as the last resort for achieving their avowed goal.
The “cradle” of their movement for independence may perhaps be traced back to the old Naga club founded in Kohima and Mokokchung towns as far back as year 1918 which served initially only as a “forum” for carrying out “social activities for the Naga community, particularly the Naga Government officials living in the above mentioned two towns.
It was then in the year 1945 that the then Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills District, Charles Pawsey, ICS had established a Tribal Council known as the Naga Hills District Tribal Council in order to unite the Nagas of the District for the reconstruction works of the great devastation left by the Second World War in the district, particularly in Kohima town where one of the severest and bloodiest battle was fought between the columns of the Allied Forces of the 14th Army of General William Bill Slim under his 33 Corp commanded by Lt. General Montagu Stopford and of the Japanese of the 15th Army of General Renya Mutaguchi under his 31 division commanded by tough Lt. General Kotuko Sato, who at the end, lost the battle miserably and who was court-martialled afterwards for defiance of the orders of his superior commander.
The set-up of the Naga Hills District Council was, in fact, the forerunner of the so called Naga National Council which have been actually an organisation converted from the Naga club established earlier. It was this Naga political organisation that had finally been converted into the set-up of an armed revolutionary Government.
The primary objectives of the district council established by Pawsey were purely for the purpose of rendering some autonomy for the Naga Hills district as he was intensely interested in the welfare and development of the Nagas, who he greatly admired of their good and simple qualities, though there had already been a secret plan worked out by the British Government known as “coupland plan” (worked out initially by Reginald Coupland, a former Governor of the erstwhile greater Assam province) for carving out a separate area inhabited by the Naga tribes of India and adjoining areas of Buma which was to continue to remain as a -buffer state” under their rule even after India and Burma attained independence as they had no more illusion of denying it to the Indians and the Burmese, especially after the end of the Second World War due to heavy national and international political pressures.
Inspite of the simple objectives that the organisation so had in the beginning for improving the socio-economic conditions of the much backward tribes of the district, it became later on the ‘hub’ of political activities of a group of extremist Nagas whose attitudes became more seriously changed as soon as A. Zaphu Phizo, an Angami Tribe born in Khonoma village near Kohima in the year 1900 (the village was called Thibomei by the Meiteis earlier and was once under the territory of the erstwhile independent state of Manipur till it was taken over by the British from Maharaja Chandrakirti Singh under an appeasing policy and had established their military garrison for the convenience of spreading of their power in the north eastern region) joined the party after having lived in Burma from 1933 to 1944.
And it was only after he joined the organisation that its very original name of the Naga Hills District Council had been changed into the Naga National Council and that it became an organisation of a much more active political party highly infused with deep anti-Indian feelings and ideas of living as a separate entity of independent people or Nation - according to the opinions of many learned historians and expert writers like P.D. Staacy the Nagas had never been a unified Nation, rather it had been only a concept hypothesised by Phizo.
Thus leaning more towards the ‘extremism’ preferred and induced by the new leader, Phizo, the Nagas of the Naga Hills District issued ultimately a very bold declaration in June 1947 to the effect that the Naga Hills which was administratively only a District under the Province of Assam should cease to be a part of India when she attains independence.
In fact, the anti-Indian attitudes and feelings of the Nagas of the district cast on them due to the high-handed and much inferior treatment done to them by the plains people, particularly of Assam, had already been brewing up since much earlier time and it was on the occasion of the visit of the British Simmon Commission in 1929, which had come to India to study the ground for Constitutional reforms as strongly demanded by her people, that a party of Naga delegates had openly expressed their strong anti-Indian feelings to them with very fervent request to leave them (the Nagas) out from being considered and inclusion as a part of the Indian people.
While such were the extreme and hostile feelings that were then amongst the Nagas of the Naga Hills District ‘the hill tribes of Manipur, namely the Tangkhuls etc had remained as quite loyal, simple and peaceful subjects of the State under the ruling of the king.
During the period between 1947 and 1956, Phizo tried several times to convince the Governments both in Assam and Delhi, of the earnestness and seriousness of the claim of the Nagas of having of their own independent sovereign “de facto Government” to show genuineness of this, Phizo even conducted, though a unofficial process, a unilateral plebiscite” by collecting signatures and thumb impressions from house to house from May to August in 1951 and according to it he claimed that over 99 per cent of the people of the Naga Hills District voted for a separate and independent state of their own.
However, the then Prime Minister of India, (late) Jawaharlal Nehru vehemently disapproved the move of the few sections of the Naga radicals headed by Phizo with the declaration of the same in the Parliament by describing that such a demand of the Nagas of the Naga Hills District was something ‘unwise, impracticable and unacceptable from all points of views’.
Thus having no other alternative the Nagas under Phizo proclaimed their own “Federal independent sovereign Government” as a ‘de facto Sovereign Government’ on March 22, 1956 as already described at the outset and they began to resort to heavy armed violence on a planned scale by the heavily armed Nagas of the so-called Naga Army who later on came to be known as Naga Hostiles (NHGS).
In order to check the outburst of the armed revolution or uprising so taken place in an unassuming proportion the Indian Army was immediately pressed into action who appropriately and with very heavy hands dealt with the armed uprising and the very alarming and critical situation that had flared up was brought under control.
The stern action taken by the Indian Army forced many revolutionary Nagas to go underground. Phizo himself had escaped out through the jungles of the Mikir hills and Sylhet (erstwhile East Pakistan) and landed in London and lived under the care of Reverend Michael Scott as an English citizen till he died there later on due to prolonged illness.
The subversive activities of the Naga Hostiles then spread in alarming proportion over the areas of the hill districts of Manipur, namely Mao, Ukhrul, Tamenglong, Chandel and later on of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh States. However, since the Naga people had underwent many unimaginable hardships and untold sufferings due to the armed uprising, a change in the attitudes of the Naga moderates led by Dr Imkongliba Ao, P Shilu Ao, Jasokie Angami etc soon took place, in that, they preferred to resolve the issue in peaceful manner by immediately giving up the violent activities and their original plan and hypothetical claim of “cessation from India”, and therefore an agreement was arrived at in the larger interest of the Naga people of the Naga Hills district.
The Government of India therefore very leniently granted, as a very special case, the Naga Hills district to the status of another full-fledged state (the 16th) of the Indian Union without giving any consideration of the points of non-viabilities for becoming it a state, particularly the financial aspects. The new State of Nagaland came into existence with effect from 1st December 1963 as was inaugurated by Dr Sarvapalli Radha-krishnan, the former President of India with Shri P Shilu Ao as the first Chief Minister of the State.
Thus, in due course of time the ‘flame of insurgency’ in Nagaland and the revolutionary spirit and feelings of the majority of her people died down to some extent but it continued to escalate and burn rather more vigorously and on a wider scale affecting a large areas of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh States, particularly after the emergence of a new group of Naga insurgents under the name of National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), who walked out from the NNC organisation pioneered by Phizo as they strongly dissented and firmly opposed the so-called Shillong Peace Accord signed in between the Government and the leaders of the pro-Phizo group of the NNC on November 11, 1976.
The Shillong peace accord had taken place under the initiative of the then combined Governor of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, Shri Lalan Prassad (LP Singh), a retired ICS officer and formerly Union Home Secretary to the Government of India.
The split revolutionary group under the name of National Socialist Council of Nagaland was formed in 1980 with Issak Swu, a Sumi or Sema Naga, as its Chairman, S.S. Khaplang, a Burmese Homi Naga Tribe and Thuingaleng Muivah, a Tangkhul tribe, born and brought up in Manipur’s Ukhrul district (Somdal village) as the vice-President and the General Secretary respectively as a result of decisions taken in a meeting of the Naga National Council faction held in a place in the border area of Burma sometime in 1975 who sternly rejected the Shillong Peace Accord and had defected from the parent NNC group challenging the further leadership of Phizo and his later-on diverted policy of somewhat succumbing to the submissive tactics adopted by the Government of India.
However dissenting feelings started brewing up soon amongst the top leaders of the factional party on the ground that Issac Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah were planning to start negotiations for a dialogue for peace with the Government of India within the framework of the Indian Constitution by ousting Khaplang who was surely to oppose the move - it was on this highly suspected ground that a large column of Khaplang’s men attacked Muivah’s group, killing nearly 150 of them in a ‘dawn raid’ launched in a place in the Nagaland-Burma border area - this incident led to a split of the party of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland into two organisations, one known as NSCN(K) group, and another as NSCN(IM) group.
Before the split it was believed that the desires of Issak Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah were only a rumour but the reality of their secret move had subsequently been proved correct as they had met later on the Prime Minister of India, namely, PV Narashimha Rao, first in Paris and later on in New York in 1995, HD Deve Gowda in Zurich in February 1997, Atal Behari Vajpayee in Tokyo in 2002, and they had since been carrying out the so called ‘Indo-Naga Peace Talk’ saying that the process so taken up by both sides aim to keep a permanent ‘Peace’ in Nagaland and its adjoining States of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
So far so good, well done! all will say most heartily to the NSCN (IM) group for their coming to good senses now, particularly to Muivah for his initiatives taken in this regard as the General Secretary of the organisation showing now all the good gestures though a pretty long time have been wasted during which heavy bloodshed and loss of many precious and innocent lives had occurred.
But what is not appreciated is about their very arrogant and adamant stand on a very much ‘communally coloured’ move for building up a domain for a people of very much heterogenous ‘conglomeration’ under the coverage of rather a very superficial, non-indigenous or non-original and unnatural ‘appellation’ of very recent origin called ‘Nagas’ (a Sobriquet - sobriqay - an assumed name originated from Assamese word ‘Noka-Manu’ meaning hill-man which came into application only from the time of British rule in India) by disintegrating the very natural and indigenous areas of the north east region of India and Burma.
So long they are sticking to their very much hypothetical and un-pragmatic demands of ‘disintegration of the indigenous areas’ and ‘sovereignty of their own’ to which the Government of India will never say - OK go head - their peace talk will ever remain as a thing very meaningless and a thing of dreaming for building ‘a castle in the air’.
It is in this context, one would like to say without any bias that the ‘Indo-Naga Peace Talk’ is not at all going in the right direction of bringing the desired fruitful solution of keeping a lasting ‘peace’ in the north east region, particularly in consideration of the very undesirable developments latestly come up to the surface, in that the Khaplang group have recently vented out their most venomous and hostile feelings by audaciously announcing that the ‘Tangkhuls are not Nagas and therefore they are to immediately quit Nagaland State’ followed by the very fearful and recent lawlessness incident occurred at Tangkhul colony of Wungram at Dimapur.
And also of the stern warnings issued very boldly by the Kuki students of Manipur saying that out of the some 7 lakhs tribal population inhabiting in all the hills of Manipur some 4 lakhs are their people and therefore they are the majority of the tribal population in the hills of Manipur and hence there cannot be any decision taken for any ethnic disintegration and re-drawing of the areas of Manipur as vehemently demanded by the NSCN(IM) group without their due consent and views obtained and making the issue more knotty by the similar warnings issued by Michael Keitana, president of the so called Eastern Naga Students Association based in Nagaland objecting the inclusion of the areas inhabited by the eastern Nagas in the redrawing of the map of a greater Nagaland.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Waikhom Damodar Singh wrote this for The Sangai Express. This article was webcasted on September 26, 2007 .
http://e-pao.net/epSubPageExtractor.asp?src=news_section.opinions.Opinion_on_Manipur_Integrity_Issue.Is_Indo-Naga_peace_talk_going_in_right_direction
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