The Naga Political Struggle
- Part 2 -

Dr Lokendra Arambam *

State of Nagaland, India with districts and their HQ :: Pix - Wikipedia/Wikigringo

The narratives of any independence struggle are always full of such events, which become more and more stressed when the enemy is of such power and their qualities of suppression of dissidents are heavy. These powers of subjugation and domination play different tricks and maneuvers to play with the primordial passions and prejudices of ethnic communities who are as yet not able to surpass the strains of traditional values, beliefs and faiths which are vulnerable to modern manipulations.

This however adds to the burden of woes soldiers of the freedom struggle carry as a heavy national duty. The pursuit of healing of the deeply entrenched psyche is one such heavy load the ethnic communities carry in our lives when we dream and fight for the promised land.

As a neighbor Manipur provides a very critical sub-text in the Naga Independence struggle. Because Manipur as a historically established entity, the issue of ethnic relations had become mired with issues of the modern state's inability to design a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic polity and community which is demanded by the very nature of its geography and polity nursed since its ancient history and their emergence into the globalized world of today.

Nowadays its history is contested, opposed and denied by the very idea of Naga independence struggle. As per the Naga National Council's manifesto and the constitution of the Federal Government of Nagaland, the sovereignty and independence of the Naga Nation demands a territorial association of Naga integration of all Naga inhabited areas under one administrative roof.

The political demands of the NSCN (IM) who had inherited the legacy of Phizo, incorporates this concept as a vital factor to the Naga political solution. This had created a crisis in the recent past when eighteen lives were martyred in the agitation against the Bangkok agreement of 2004.

Since then, it has become a serious issue not addressed as a subject of conflict between two incompatible points of view, of what Assam's intellectual Sanjib Baruah described as 'the emerging inclusivity of Naga identity with geography coming into clash with the territorially embodied identities of states like Manipur and Assam'.

Perhaps what has been felt in the precious aims of this prestigious Research Centre about the human aspect of love, relationship, reconciliation and harmony are still ideals which as yet are to be realized in concrete terms in the huge romance and struggle of communities for recognition and identity, which drive the engine of self determination movements.

The gestures of a brotherly community at a critical period of perceived common destiny, reaching out towards fraternal groups to work together for a proposed common objective would have been limited in its application by the overwhelming passions aroused by stories of pain, hurt and perception of otherness of others associated with the tensions of these struggles.

A Pan-Mongoloid movement could have had little impact or acceptance at such a critical moment of the times, whereas the Pan-Naga consciousness and its structures within Naga society were more immediate as the deeper challenge for the Naga brothers themselves, to which neighbouring polities and peoples couldn't possibly have a meaningful presence.

The idea of a Pan-Naga consciousness, if I venture to note, however as an unavoidable factor in the development of Naga nationhood as experienced in Manipur is another bind where history as a discipline of understanding is tested to its sternest credentials. The nation had the right to be imagined in current political movements, and at the same time the relationship of events with time and circumstances, the motives of the players and leaders of movements at these times including their actions could also be 'appropriated' to suit the current urge towards this ideal of nationhood.

But the very fact of ethnicity in nationhood has its flaws of history and its uneven, even contradictory unfoldment. The refusal to accept and recognize Rani Gaidinlieu by an important section of Naga society is perhaps a painful reminder to its contradictions. For as students of Naga self determination we may be prone to incorporate other ethnic identity movements at its anti-colonial resistances in other areas and periods of colonial history as a part of our rising common consciousness.

But the movement of Jadonang and Gaidinlieu and their people was of another vintage, which perhaps, by the facts of the movements themselves became a sour note in the overall Naga Independence struggle. For Jadonang dreamt of a Makam Gwangdi, a kingdom of the Makam people and Gaidinlieu suffered the longest stint at colonial jails as a woman for the cause.

Yet she was appropriated by the Indian nation state, as valuable part of the all India anti-British struggle for independence. She, however, following her Achan's ideals fought passionately, silently, to bring the Roungmei, Zemei, Liangmei together with other nearer cognate tribes in a more immediate aim to fulfill her peoples religion and culture, which became anathema to the modern and Christian ideals of Naga nationhood.

Meijinglung Kamson, a deep personal friend of the Rani once told of how Zapu Phizo accepted her struggle and proposed to her to join the larger Naga Independence movement against India. She was reported to have replied to Zapu, that 'while he was dreaming about the moon, he should not forget his feet on the ground!'

I am sure our Angami brothers could now laugh about it and still accept her as one of them, in spite of the six years of serious contention from 1960 to 1966. The Zeliangroung, for which Gaidinlieu fought and died for, could be acknowledged as distinct and autonomous people, within the flexible umbrella of the Pan Naga consciousness.

No doubt the spread of an idea from centres of struggle to other contiguous areas contain intriguing moments, where same or similar traits of culture or language pervade amongst people. The spirit of awareness of identity had an interesting dynamic typical of ethnic communities.

It is true that the colonial masters, with their education of the hill peoples through patronage had helped imbibe a spirit of dignity and awareness of the collective self against outsiders and ethno-national formation that began in the Naga districts of Assam had spread its influences in neighbouring hill village spaces in Manipur.

On the other side, awareness of the self in certain others were also caused by the actions of the colonial masters who had attempted to impose a sense of the real to the autochthones, which were not their own. The movement of the Zeliangroung was therefore a new energy which started from the hills of Tamenglong in Manipur and spread in a reverse manner to that of the spread of the Naga consciousness emerging from Kohima.

It spread to contiguous areas of North Cachar Hills and the Peren districts of present Nagaland. The movement took a form, which perhaps predates the present political position of the NSCN (IM), which General Muivah expanded in the current scenario, with fresher dimensions and fresher content and newer methodologies in practice.


(This is the text of Dr Lokendra Arambam's speech at the inauguration of the Naga Archives & Research Centre, Dimapur, Nagaland on November 7, 2015)

To be continued..