Lessons for Manipur and Nagaland from Africa

L B Singh *

During the British Colonial Rule, the boundary of the countries and the States were drawn for the administrative convenience of the Empire without any concern for the ancient history of the indigenous tribes. The border between Burma (Myanmar) and the North- East India was drawn after the treaty of Yandaboo in 1826.

The boundaries of Manipur were demarcated in 1837, except for the Southern side, which was done in 1894. However, the boundaries of Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh were established by the Government of India (GoO) after independence.

One of the main grievances of the Naga is that many of their tribes live in Myanmar, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam due to the artificial boundaries created by the British Colonial Rule and the Government of India. In 1947, when the British left India, the Naga National Council (NNC) demanded the Sovereign Naga State and armed struggles started in 1956.

In 1958, the 16 Points Agreement was drafted after the 2nd Naga Peoples Convention (NPC). Most of the demands in the 16 Points Agreement had been fulfilled by the GoI except for the integration of the Naga inhabited contiguous areas as it would create problems in the neighbouring states and Burma (Myanmar).

It was due to the extraordinary efforts of Pandit Nehru and people like S C Jamir, then representative of the Naga Hills in the parliament, that Nagaland, with a population of about four lakhs, got statehood in 1963. The unique special status provided by Article 371 even placed certain subjects in Nagaland beyond the jurisdictions of the Indian Parliament as desired by Nagas.

However, the armed insurgency continued, and thousands (lakhs according to Naga) of Nagas and security personnel had lost their lives. Even the Shillong Accord 1975 failed to bring peace to the region. The number of casualties came down after the Indo-Naga Ceasefire Agreement in July 1997. However, the insurgents continued to collect taxes, extortion, intimidation, harassment of the people, etc. The people cannot live peacefully with dignity in the remote area of the region.

The Kukis have also come up with the demand of Zalengam or Zogam based on the similar grievance of separation of their tribes by the artificial boundaries created by the British and the GoI. They want to bring all the Kuki/Zomi tribes in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar under a single administrative unit.

The GoI and the Government of Manipur also signed the Suspension of Operation (SOO) with 19 Kuki militant groups in 2008. However, the Kuki militant groups in the SOO camps continue extortion and other illegal activities.

Mr Martin Kimani, the representative of Kenya to the United Nations, stated that almost all the countries in Africa suffered from the separation of their ethnic tribes by the artificial boundaries drawn by the Colonial Empires in London, Paris and Lisbon. The Naga and Kuki are not the only two ethnic groups divided by the artificial boundaries created during the Colonial Period. There are many more ethnic groups in the other countries, but they have the wisdom to live peacefully.

Mr Martin Kimani spoke at the United Nations in New York against the breach of Ukraine’s territorial integrity by Russia. He highlighted how the African countries peacefully managed the separation of their brethren ethnic groups by the artificial boundaries. He was indirectly giving a lesson to Russia on how to resolve their problems with Ukraine.

The speech at the United Nations has many relevant points for the people of Manipur and Nagaland. The concept adopted in Africa may be the only peaceful means to settle the extremely complicated prolonged problems of the Naga and the Kuki movements. The people of Africa have the wisdom to understand that any attempt to unite their ethnic brothers in various countries by forcible means would result in a never-ending bloody war.

With the experience of many decades of armed insurgencies, taxation, extortion, intimidation, etc., the older generation may not be able to accept any new ideas. They would never realise the suffering and the miseries of the ordinary people due to their activities as some organisations parroted their views under the shadow of guns (a term borrowed from RN Ravi).

However, it is hopeful that the new educated generation is open to new concepts and will become bold enough to initiate new measures for the peace and prosperity of the region. The speech by Mr Martin Kimani at the United Nations is placed below in the succeeding paragraphs for the benefit of the new generation, and I have tried to reproduce it verbatim from his address available on YouTube.

Today across the border of every single African country, live our countryman with whom we share a deep historical, cultural and linguistic bond. Our independence, had we chosen to pursue states based on ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.

Instead, we agreed that we would settle for the border we had inherited, but we would still pursue continental, political, economic, and legal integrations rather than form nations that look ever backwards into the history with the dangerous nostalgia. We choose to look forward to the greatness that none of our nations and people had ever known.

We choose to follow the rules of the Organisation of the African Unity and the UN charters not because our border satisfied us but because we wanted something greater forged in peace. We believe that all states from the Empires that have collapsed or retreated have many people in them, yearning for integration with the people of the neighbouring states. This is no more understandable.

After all, who does not want to join their brethren and make common purpose with them? However, Kenya rejects such a yearning from being pursued by force. We must complete our recovery from the embers of the dead Empires in a way that does not plunge back into a new form of domination and oppression.

We rejected irredentism and expansionism on any basis, including racial, ethnic, religious and cultural practices. We rejected it again today.