Navigating The Naga Insurgency -
The Road map of a perpetual threat to India’s Internal Security!
Nagaland, one of the stupendous seven North-east sisters, encapsulated by dense forests, dissected by deep gorges and it is also one of the biological hotspots in the world. Sandwiched between Myanmar and the Indian states Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, Nagaland hosts a majority of indigenous tribes called the Nagas who are believed to be of Mongolian origin; whom were migrated and settled over the foot of the Himalayas.
DEMAND FOR SOVEREIGNTY
Nagaland was a part of Assam during the British Colonization.
The exotic tea estates and it’s strategic trading posts towards asian countries lured the British but their expeditions were failed everytime, as the Nagas are known to being valorous and had had exemplary warfare skills. Since then, the colonials practiced a policy of non-interference with the tribes.
Source: GS Score
Battle of Khonoma
There had been incessant inter-ethnic conflicts during the early 19th century and in 1878, with the aim of suppressing the inter-tribal regression, the British shifted it’s administrative centre to a new city Kohima under the leadership of Captain Butler.
The following year, G.H.Damant, a British Political Agent expedited Khonoma with his military troops but got assassinated by the Nagas. In an attempt to retaliate, the British invaded Khonoma and vanquished the tribal hostility in the region.
The 1929 Naga Memorandum
The Naga Club submitted a Memorandum to the Simon Commission requesting for a self-government system; since it was a tribal economy with non-structured and self-contained fiscal instability, they feared that they couldn’t afford to survive amongst the majority council of states; thus claiming for and exemption under tax laws.
In response, the British House of Commons excluded the Naga Hills from their first constitution, The Government of India Act, 1935.
The Naga National Council
In 1946, The Naga Club was reformed as The Naga National Council demanding an annexation with Assam of independent India, post colonization. They also urged for a local autonomy with separate electorates for Naga tribes.
Jawaharlal Nehru credited the demands and promised for Naga’s local autonomy after independence and their tribal rights would be safeguarded without dissemination.
Nagaland’s Hornbill Festival Source : ET
Civil Disobedience Movement against the Indian Government
Since Indian independence , the phizo-led Naga National Council had been insisting for a separate statehood for Naga Hills; the unrest and agitation for the same led to a low key civil disobedience movement by non-payment of taxes and sometimes more violent by assaulting civil servants and destructing the civic infrastructure.
Following the disruption, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was enacted in the region in 1958. The Tuensang region was annexed with the Naga Hills forming the Naga Hills Tuensang Area NHTA became an union territory of India with more degree of autonomy.
Accordingly, the 13th Constitutional Amendment act 1962, was enacted with promulgating Article 371A to provide the Statehood for Nagaland; thereupon becoming the 16th State of India on 1 December 1963.
Three-Man Peace Commission
Displeased with the political structure, the outrage was escalated protesting for political and regional expansion.
The Naga Movement itself was bifurcated with the increase in opinion differences in which the Naga People’s Convention led by Dr Imkongliba Ao, favoured Indian statehood as a practical alternative to complete independence whereas the insurgents were apprehensive and continued engaging in continual ceasefire against the Indian Armed Forces.
However, there witnessed an amelioration, with the appointment of a three-man Peace Commission, of the Reverend Michael Scott, B. P. Chaliha (the then Chief Minister of Assam), and J. P. Narayan, which was able to negotiate a ceasefire to certain extent, that began in May 1964.
Despite repetitive attempts of peace talks, the peace mission failed to hammer out a mutual agreement to curtail the insurrection in the Naga-inhabited region.
The Shillong Accord 1975
While a certain section of Nagas were resisting against the Indian Government, a few believed the maximum autonomy can be achieved through the political plane.
Yet again, The Naga Peace Council convinced the rebels resulting in The Shillong Agreement, signed between the Union Government of India and the Federal Government of Nagaland supposedly the Naga Rebels to give up on their armed rebellion and the demand for the secession of Nagaland from India.
NSCN and it’s Ultimatum - ‘Greater Nagalim’
By 1980s, the former London based phizo-led Christian Naga Movement repudiated as The National Socialist Council Of Nagaland, a separatist organization which is languishing for a sovereign Naga State comprising of all the Naga-inhabited areas of North-east India and North-west Myanmar claiming it as Greater Nagalim and to be administrated under one autonomous Nagalim government.
The NSCN(K), headed by S.S.Kaplang, a major insurgent group was declared as an unlawful organization by the Indian Government. A liberation of Nagaland from India is what they’re being sought gravely.
The central government’s recent declaration about Nagaland would be a ‘disturbed area’ for the next half year emphasizes the dire need for drawing curtain to more than a century-drawn North-east insurgency.
The sporadic aggressions in the hills throughout the multi-decades, by the local militants is vehemently backed by our strategic neighbour China. It would require for the Indian government, a social, political and economic counter-tactics to curb it’s subversive threat and materialize a collated peace talk that ensures a positive diplomacy in it’s entrancing land-locked state!
