Dimapur, July 3 (MExN): An organization, Assam, Arunachal & Manipur Protection Forum, today issued a copy of a letter addressed to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, containing a perspective not many have expressed openly in the media. The statement said the Naga people of heritage were not even a kingdom, leave alone a “unified nation;” Nagas did not have any independent political existence at all immediately before or after the British rule; they were in fact a primitive society steeped in feudal warfare and village-based communities and without contact with the outside world or without education, according to a statement from an organization calling itself the Assam, Arunachal & Manipur Protection Forum.
The organization addressed a letter to the PM stating why the Naga undergrounds demands for “greater” Nagaland or “unified nation” has no clause to stand on. The letter explained: “There was no existence of a definite political structure that governs a clearly demarcated area of land which is inhabited by a people who accept this arrangement and have close contact with each other. It also demands that the political structure would either be monarchy, a democracy, an autocracy, an oligarchy, a dictatorship or any other structure that is universally accepted by political scientist as an independent, self governing and well- defined political entity or a nation.
Other areas in the northeast like Assam, Manipur, Tripura and Kacharis had their territories and their kingdoms. But Nagas did not have definite and unified political structure nor did they exist as a nation. They were actually a group of heterogeneous, primitive and diverse tribes living in far-flung villages that had very little in common and negligible contact with each other. Education did not exist and awareness about the world outside was totally absent. Each village was practically an entity in itself. A village does not make a nation. The head-hunting was prevalent, mutual suspicion and distrust was rife. People led an insular and isolated life. Internecine warfare was the order of the day. There was no trust or interaction between different tribes. In these circumstances, the question of a unified “Naga Nation” did not arise. No one can dispute this historical truth.”
On the claim of the NSCN (IM), the church and other underground groups that Nagas were an “independents nation” till the British conquered them, the organization queried: “Did they have a boundary for Naga nation? As late as 1940 when British rule was almost over, a large part of today’s Nagaland did not even exist on their maps. Even Tuensang & Mon was under North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). It was given to Nagaland on Ist December 1963 when the 16th State of Nagaland was carved out because of 16 point agreement with Naga People’s Convention (NPC) in 1960.”
The letter also reminded that today’s Naga youths feel that the Nagas can do without “sovereignty” if it means pulling the society back by hundreds if not thousand of years in terms of social evolution. “They want to march forward along with the rest of the world. They are practical and realistic and know that dreams alone cannot provide bread and butter to the people. They are fed up of violence and killings and view India as a home for better opportunities. It would be extremely uncharitable and petty to denigrate such section of the society,” the letter reminded the PM. The forum advised the Government of India to seriously consider these issues before jumping to hasty and wrong conclusions.
The letter also mentioned of the Naga political dialogues overshadowing the rampant extortion networks run by NSCN (IM) in Dimapur, Kohima, Mokokchung and elsewhere; its blatant use of violent coercion to ensure population support and its explicit hand in the small arms network running from Thailand to India via Myanmar and from Cox-Bazaar in Bangladesh.
