VK Shashikumar
CNN-IBN | October 3
Camp Hebron (Nagaland): Nine years of talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim or NSCN (Isaac-Muivah) have yielded nothing, but now the rebel group has made an offer that has revived hopes for peace.
The NSCN (I-M) faction has submitted a proposal to the Centre and asked it to democratise its federal set up. This proposal to solve the Nagaland problem was revealed to a CNN-IBN Special Investigation team at the NSCN (I-M)’s Camp Hebron.
The NSCN (I-M) peace offer states that India and Nagaland will be inseparable but under a special federal arrangement. The rebels are clear that the Naga Army will manage state law and order, while Foreign Affairs, Currency, Banking and Defence will remain with India.
“India and Nagaland remain inseparable entities. Two nations bound together with that special agreement but with respective identities,” said NSCN (I-M) leader and self-styled General V S Atem.
“Even in foreign affairs-ok, primarily you run the affairs but then whenever there is an issue affecting the Nagas, there the Nagas must represent themselves,” Atem added.
“We don’t hesitate to tell Indian leaders. Yes. We have confidence in the Indian currency,” he said.
Brigadier Phunthing, the Chairman of Ceasefire Cell NSCN (I-M), emphasised that the Nagas want their separate army.
“Our leadership has made it very specifically clear that there will be a Naga army, because the people of Nagaland are the right people to defend their land,” Phunthing said.
However, the Khaplang faction of the NSCN, the NSCN (K), opposes the peace talks. In the last four years, clashes between the two factions have claimed 200 lives.
“We have had no kind of struggle with them. Why this thing has happened is because the Government of India’s way of looking at the Naga issue, trying to use them, thinking that by using them they would utilise us or weaken us,” Phunthineg said.
So while the Nagas talk of a federal government, the question is - is the Government of India prepared to examine the idea of federalism in an imaginative and contemporary manner? If not, then the hidden wars in Nagaland may never end.
(With Rajesh Bhardwaj and Rohit Khanna in Nagaland)
