Kautilya’s Arthashastra, India, and the Naga issue

Dr. Salikyu Sangtam *

One of the defining features of old civilizations, such as India or Chinese, is that they usually do not have to look to foreign cultures for knowledge or philosophy to deal with their own societal political, socio-economic, or military problems. The Chinese, for instance, have their own philosophical culture that provides them, even to this day, with means to deal with political or military challenges that necessarily arise.

Similarly, India looks to its own culture for directions in dealing with political or military issues. One of the best examples we find of this is New Delhi’s continuous use of the ancient Indian philosopher and strategist, Kautilya’s (also known as Chanakya) Arthashastra.

When confronted with an uphill challenges, Kautilya in Arthashastra emphasizes Sham (to charm the other party/side through political reconciliation), Daam (monetary/financial inducements and benefits), Danda (threat and use of force), and Bhed (create divisions and splitting the opponents) to handle political, economic, and strategic affairs of the great Mauryan Empire during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya. These counsels are what India continues to resort to because they have stood the test of times for thousands of years.

We find that New Delhi found in Kautilya Arthashastra directions on how to handle not just the Naga issues, but also to deal with numerous armed outfits throughout India’s Northeast (from Assam, Tripura and Mizoram to Nagaland and Manipur). And here we find all these four principles being employed.

Without going into a detailed elaboration, here are some brief sketches, from Naga issue, to illustrate this proposition—which has gained a lot of consensus among intellectuals and strategists in India. In dealing with the Naga issue, New Delhi has used danda by utilizing threats and violent force to contain the nationalist movement, after which they immediately employed sham by charming the Nagas with a political reconciliation by offering separate state (with substantial autonomy) within the Union of India (hence, the state of Nagaland).

This was accompanied by daam in a form of substantial financial assistance and development funds from the central government—which continues to this day. If these were not enough to calm the movement (which they did not), New Delhi employed bhed by splitting the Naga movement into numerous armed groups (the reality of which we see and experience today) and exploiting the existing tribal sentiments and causing divisions among various tribes. Hence, the entrenched tribalism among Nagas we experience as part of our daily lives.

It may seems that such tactics to be working out well for New Delhi since Nagas are at present divided and separated between the four states of the Northeast (Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh—not to mention a great number of Naga tribes are in Myanmar), entrenched zero-sum tribal competitions, and a highly fragmented nationalist armed groups. Such divisions and splitting have worked well for the Government of India (GoI), at least in the short run because these splitting took out the force and impetus from the nationalist movements (evident by the fratricidal feuds).

However, such tactics (splitting, division, and financial inducements) utilized by New Delhi to deal with the Naga issues has in fact seem to have become impediment for the GoI to arrive at a durable, lasting, and concluding solution.

What has happened is that, on the one hand, New Delhi has created numerous nationalist armed groups fighting over the same space (territory) for political legitimacy (competition to claim one group to be more legitimate than others and so forth).

This has led to what some call as “Competitive Radicalism,” where groups make impossible and unrealistic demands on the GoI simply to outgun and outsmart the rival nationalist armed groups. Thereby, delaying the process of arriving at an ultimate settlement or conclusion. What we see at present with the competing claims between Framework Agreement of NSCN-IM and Agreed Position of NNPGs is a case in point.

While, on the other hand, GoI exploiting the tribal divisions to weaken the Naga nationalist movement have also led to such a deep-rooted and unshakable tribalism among the Naga tribes that it also affect the peace process. Tribes are more patriotic about their tribe’s interests that it jeopardizes the whole process of reconciliation and factional splitting. Even under which tribe’s leadership should and will ultimate solution can be attained also becomes an issue.

As is evident, New Delhi’s strategies worked well only in short-term. The irony is that New Delhi seems to have created for itself a hindrance in reaching a final solution to the Naga issue. It is reasonable to assume that the GoI has no long term and viable answer on how to resolve the Naga issue. In other words, New Delhi is now dealing with the Nagas on an “as-you-go-on-basis.”

That is, “make-up-as-you-go,” because GoI has no idea how to handle with such complexities which itself has created. That is why, the GoI resorts once again on political talks/negotiations. Which is to say, the GoI’s utilizes negotiations and talks tactics only to buy time since they are searching for ways to deal with the Naga issue.

Indeed, if we look at the how things are progressing in terms of framework and agreed position, we see that GoI is puzzled and bewildered. May be, we as Nagas being hospitable and friendly, should be kind enough to New Delhi’s bewilderment by further complicating things for GoI?