Kaka D. Iralu
Medziphema
The Indo Naga issue is not just a small internal Indian home affair which can be easily solved by having piece meal settlements with the various Naga National outfits. The issue is in fact, a far bigger issue that can have serious repercussions all across the north east borders of India, Burma and even Indian states like Kashmir, Punjab and southern India. On the part of the Nagas, if a solution is imposed on them without first showing the details and also without addressing the real geo-political facts, the so called solution can explode on India’s face itself. An imposed solution can also lead to an even greater conflict in the whole South Asian region.
The Indo Naga-Burma issue, in fact, has even international implications regarding peaceful co-existence between nations and international world peace. This is because the Indo-Naga-Burmese issue is not over some small boundary disputes between Nagaland, India and Burma involving only a few kilometres of land. Far from it, the issue is how over 100,000 sq km of Naga lands can simply disappear into India and Burma after 1947. It also is a question of whether a Mongolian nation called the Nagas can suddenly become Indians and Burmese after 1947.
As for the fact that the Nagas had really been living in their ancestral lands for thousands of years prior to 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the historian and first Prime Minister of India had stated the facts very clearly when in 1946, he had stated the following words:
“The tribal areas are defined as being those long frontiers of India which are neither part of India nor Burma, nor of Indian states nor of any foreign powers.”
The Indo-Naga-Burmese issue is therefore, an issue of how these long frontiers of India which are neither Indian nor Burmese territories, can just simply disappear into India and Burma after 1947. Here, the political and legal question is whether, in the emergence of modern nation states in the mid 20th century, bigger nations can just swallow up smaller nations and make their own geographical areas bigger with the active assistance of departing colonial powers? The corollary issue is also one of whether such a drastic reshuffling and rewriting of historical facts can be done with the tacit consent of a world body like the UN. Surely, if such a travesty of international law and justice can be tolerated by the UN, then the hope of regional, as well as international peace must disappear from the very face of the planet earth.
The issue in its true essence have universal anthropological, historical, political and legal implications. This protracted seventy year conflict has left a lot of blood spilled all over the Naga territories in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh on the Indian side and also the Naga territories in the western sector of Burma.
Because of all these facts, the conflict can only be resolved at an international level or at least at a four nation level of India, Burma, Britain and the Federal Government of Nagaland. A wrong handling of the issue by India alone can, instead of solving the problem, multiply the conflict tenfold. This is because smaller nations like the Manipur kingdom and many other Princely states in India were, against their will, forcefully merged into the Indian union of 1947. As for the Burmese side; Kachins, Karens, Shans, Was etc also never agreed to be a part of the Burma nation state that was created by the British and the Anti Fascist People’s League of Burma. India must remember that the creation of the grand Indian, Pakistan and Burmese nation states with the collaboration of the departing British colonizers had left a trail of bloodshed in India, Pakistan (Bangladesh) and Burma for the past seven decades.
(For more details, refer to “South Asian History did not begin with the Indian Independence Act of 1947” at the author’s website-nagas.sytes.net/~kaka/)
