Ngaranmi Shimray
New Delhi
There are always two ways, or more, to solve a problem. History is full of examples of people who, faced with similar circumstances, chose different routes and arrived at very different destinations.
The facts stated in “Bedrock of Naga Society” are interesting, but they represent only one way of pursuing a political objective. Whose objective was it? It was the objective of the moderates. The hardliners in the NNC had a different aspiration: to claim sovereignty. That was a harder, more difficult, and more tenacious route. One reading of the booklet gives the impression that its authors were rather certain that the route they eventually took, achieving statehood within India, was the only realistic way forward, and that they congratulated themselves on its success. Was it really so?
Take the Mongols. The Mongols lived a free life for centuries in the steppes. They were largely nomadic and organised themselves through different tribes. Genghis Khan changed all that. He went to war, made alliances, united the different Mongol tribes, and created an empire. He encouraged commerce, developed trade routes, adopted administrative systems, and introduced the institutions necessary to govern a vast territory. After his death, the Mongol Empire survived for generations before eventually disappearing.
The point is not to compare the Mongols with the Nagas. The point is that nation building has a starting point. A people do not have to possess all the institutions, resources, and territorial arrangements of a modern state on the first day. Institutions can be developed after the political framework has been agreed upon.
The Naga Club was one such starting point. The NNC was another. At different stages, when Naga consciousness first surfaced and was expressed in different ways, India was also listening to the Naga position and exploring other possible arrangements. There was even a period when a relationship along the lines of the Bhutan model appears to have been considered in discussions concerning the Nagas, although that possibility did not materialise. There was also an acceptance of the idea of bringing all Nagas under one unified administrative unit, and this was recognised as early as 1947 in the Nine Point Agreement (Hydari Ali Accord) on June 1947. The Nine Point Agreement recorded under clause 6 “to bring under one unified administrative unit as far as possible all Nagas". Had the political circumstances evolved differently, and had the moderate elements not emerged to offer an alternative to the harder position of the NNC, who knows what form the eventual arrangement might have taken?
This brings us to the second question: what constitutes Naga territory?
The geographical extent of a future Naga political arrangement could not have been determined merely by drawing a line around the territory that eventually became Nagaland. The Naga inhabited areas extended beyond the administrative boundary of Assam, which subsequently became the Naga Hills Tuensang Area (NHTA). Different Naga tribes lived across different political jurisdictions, including India and Burma. If a protectorate-type arrangement, similar to the one that existed in Bhutan, had been seriously pursued, the question of an expanded Naga territory could also become part of a political solution. Territory, administration, resources, and institutions could have been negotiated and developed with the government of India once a broad political framework had been reached. Who knows what might have emerged had that route been pursued?
The same applies to the argument about resources. It is easy, in hindsight, to ask: where would the money have come from? But every political arrangement has to begin somewhere. Resources, administrative machinery, and institutions are developed once an arrangement is put on the rails. Their absence at the beginning does not necessarily prove that a particular political arrangement was impossible. The prospects of oil exploration in the Wokha area present new possibilities for revenue. Saudi Arabia was largely an expanse of sandy desert, but the search for water led to the discovery of oil, making it one of the richest countries in the world. Ukraine is believed to possess significant deposits of rare earth minerals, which Russia is seeking to control. Who knows what else lies beneath the lands of the Nagas and has yet to be discovered?
The third point is perhaps the most important.
When the Naga People’s Convention (NPC) emerged and eventually offered a softer and more acceptable settlement in the form of statehood, it may have appeared to be a practical and achievable way out of a difficult situation. But the difficulty was that a substantial section of the Naga population, within the NHTA and beyond, had already been attracted to a very different dream, which is the idea of living as a free people, as they and their forefathers had lived for generations. And this was reflected in the memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929. That idea acquired a political life of its own, and it still resonates today with a majority of the rural population. This is perhaps one reason why the Naga political movement, despite its divisions, setbacks, agreements, and prolonged periods of conflict, has never completely disappeared. For nearly seven decades, the aspiration has continued in different forms. Even today, the political question and the search for a settlement remain matters of public interest among the Nagas.
This is also where the lesson of Bedrock of Naga Society becomes interesting. The booklet presents statehood as the practical foundation of Naga political life. But another reading of history is possible. Statehood may have been one stage in the journey, rather than necessarily the final answer to the political aspirations that germinated the idea of Naga nationhood. The journey may not yet be over.
The history of the Naga political movement cannot therefore be understood only from the standpoint of what eventually happened. We must also ask what other possibilities existed at the time, what choices were available, and why some possibilities were abandoned while others were pursued. That is particularly relevant today as Dr. S.C. Jamir has consistently argued, then and even today, for practical and achievable solutions. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking the easier, shorter, and smoother route. But political convenience and political settlement are not always the same thing. A political settlement becomes durable only when it accommodates the aspirations that produced the political movement in the first place. The difficulty arises when a solution that is convenient for one political constituency is presented in the Bedrock of Naga Society as though it settles the aspirations of everybody else.
That was the problem with the territorial question surrounding the 16 Point Agreement. The agreement created a political arrangement for the NHTA that became Nagaland, but the existence of Naga-inhabited areas outside that territory did not disappear merely because a new state had been created. The idea of bringing all Nagas under one unified administrative unit was recognised as early as 1947 in the Nine Point Agreement. Point 13 of the 16 Point Agreement makes that clear, as it left the question of consolidation for the future. NPC was formed in 1957, the 16-point proposal formulated in 1959, signed in 1960, and a state created in 1963 indicates that there was enough time for the NPC to involve the Nagas of Manipur. But only lip service was paid as no mass mobilisation efforts were made by NPC with the Nagas of Manipur. It was just a few months before the creation of the state in 1963 that RC Chiten Jamir visited Manipur. Analysis of the sequence of events and its time frame seems to indicate that no serious attempt was made for consolidation as that idea was eclipsed by the pursuit of a State for the NHTA.
Would it be wrong to ask whether the pressure now being applied by Dr. Jamir through the RSS to settle the Naga issue within 2026 is becoming another form of political convenience, similar to the route taken by the NPC in 1960? Could it amount to short-term relief at the cost of abandoning the long-term aspiration of Naga nationhood?
History therefore gives us a simple lesson. There is rarely only one way forward. The choices made by earlier generations were choices made in particular circumstances. They should be understood in that context, but they should not become a permanent limitation on the choices available to later generations.
The issue today should therefore not simply be treated as a fait accompli, that the creation of a Naga State has settled the problem of domination for the Nagas living in the NHTA and that they are happy. Do remember that the 16 Point Agreement of the moderates did not solve the problem of domination of those Nagas living outside the NHTA, the same kind of domination from which they escaped in 1963. The dream of Naga unification and of a Naga nation cannot simply be wished away and forgotten.
The question that remains to be answered is how to convince the Naga people who still dream of freedom to banish that thought as unachievable, because they cherish the idea and it still resonates with many Nagas? That is a much more difficult question. But it is also a more honest one.
