Dimapur, December 1 (MExN): The NSCN (IM) on Tuesday hit out at Governor RN Ravi, accusing the former of “attempting to murder the future of the Nagas and the vital national interest of India.”
In a press release on Tuesday, the NSCN (IM) refuted the Governor’s “irresponsible statement” during the 58th Statehood Day celebration stating that Ravi’s statement “reminds the Naga people once again of how under the leadership of AZ Phizo, the war of resistance of the Nagas against the Indian colonialists were manipulated by the IB (Intelligence Bureau) officials who roped in some of the treacherous Naga individuals, mostly Indian government employees that formed a superfluous body called the Naga People’s Convention (NPC).”
It said the NPC had come “out of nowhere and signed the 16 Point Agreement where the Naga solution was hijacked” and a state under the Indian Constitution was accepted giving a foothold to the Indian government to claim that from thence Nagas were a part of India.
Terming it as “nothing less than a calculated plan of the Indian government and back stabbing the leadership of AZ Phizo and the Naga National Movement,” the NSCN (IM) said that through NPC, “the untold sufferings of the Nagas, loss of lives, properties and dignity have been reduced to nothingness.”
AZ Phizo and the Naga nationalists and the entire Naga people instantly condemned and rejected NPC and the 16 Point Agreement, it added.
Further, the statement issued by the NSCN (IM) MIP stated that Ravi’s statement “clearly exposed that another NPC is in the making.”
“His assertion that some of the civil societies under his payroll are the main stakeholders on the Indo-Naga Issue and therefore their decision must be supreme is farce. This is the same RN Ravi who was a signatory to the 2015 Framework Agreement signed between the Government of India and the NSCN representing the Naga people and also signed with the 7 NNPGs in 2017,” the statement read.
It said that while the Government of India and the Naga people are fully committed to resolve the issue through peaceful means which is at its concluding stage, it accused Ravi of “planning to hijack the more than seven decades of war and 23 years of peace talks in the same style of the NPC.”
“He is attempting to murder the future of the Nagas and the vital national interest of India. Nagas must wake up and should not allow us to be fooled twice with the same trick,” it claimed.
“We cannot agree more with RN Ravi when he said India as a nation should have a sovereign territory, one constitution and one national flag. Indeed in the same breath Nagaland/Nagalim too must have sovereign territory, one constitution and one national flag within which the two must share sovereign powers and coexist peacefully as two entities as agreed upon in the Framework Agreement where he himself is a signatory,” the statement read.
It further advised the Governor “not to bite off more than he can chew as far as the Indo Naga Issue is concerned,” while also questioning if “the interlocutor of the GoI to the Naga Peace talks speaks in the same bipolar language as this RN Ravi the governor of Nagaland state does.”
