DNA Edit: Nagaland Decides

There is no riddance to history’s burdens in India, no matter how much one may be keen to embrace the future. In the 71st year of India’s Independence, one would expect that the ghosts of the past would have been exorcised and challenges of a new age would beckon India and its constituents to newer heights. For Nagaland, this isn’t true. As the mountainous state goes to poll today, the problems that continue to besiege it are the ones that have hounded it in the past. The knotty issue of Naga sovereignty is yet to be resolved, and had Naga insurgent leaders been allowed to have their way, the state Assembly elections would have been postponed or perhaps scrapped.

But first, the history: It was the Britishers who in 1826 annexed Assam and by 1881 Naga Hills had become a part of British-ruled India. In 1929, the Simon Commission was promptly ticked off by the Naga Club, a local resistance force, when it told the former “to leave us alone to determine for ourselves as in ancient times”. The Naga National Council (NNC), formed in 1946 and led by Angami Zapu Phizo, declared Nagaland to be an independent nation on August 14, 1947. By 1952, Naga insurgency had gained ground and Phizo was running an underground Naga Federal Government (NFG) and a Naga Federal Army (NFA). From the very beginning, the Indian government matched the tone of the insurgents. It met fire with fire and simultaneously engaged them in peace talks as well.

However, by 1967, it was evident that the talks weren’t amounting to much and a massive crackdown was initiated which only pushed the insurgents deeper into the forests. In 1980, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) was born, animated by the pursuit of a Greater Nagalim, comprising territories of Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and a sizable portion of Myanmar. By 1997, the government of India managed to sign a ceasefire agreement with the NSCN-Isak Muiavah, largely considered to be the mother of all insurgent groups in the region.

Despite the ceasefire agreement, the ground reality did not change much and insurgent outfits still ruled the roost by extracting illegal ‘taxes’ from the locals. By 2015, the call to settle the long-winded Naga sovereignty issue was becoming prominent, and PM Modi responded by signing a framework agreement with NSCN-IM. The Centre also stipulated peace talks as a precondition to holding the upcoming assembly elections.  Post-2015, a number of tribal organizations have been demanding the postponement of Assembly elections till peace talks were completed.

Reportedly, they also forced state political parties to sign an undertaking that they shall not contest if a solution to the Naga political problem wasn’t arrived at before the elections. ‘Solution before election’ was the motto raised by them. To that end, it now appears that even the top Naga insurgent leader, Thuingaleng Muivah, had met politicians at his New Delhi house urging them to lend support to calls for boycotting the Assembly polls. His attempts at stitching together a boycott crashed and burnt as leaders of political parties conceded that they cannot afford to refrain from filing nominations as there was no guarantee that others will not follow suit.