Way back in 1918, when a group of educated young men of the Naga Hills met in Kohima and set up the Naga Club, little did they visualise that it had sown the seeds of a movement that would turn violent and continue for over six decades in search of a ?sovereign? Naga state.
Eleven years later, when the Simon Commission visited Kohima, the Naga Club submitted a memorandum pleading for excluding the Naga Hills from the proposed Reforms Scheme. ?We pray that we should not be thrust to the mercy of the people who could never subjugate us, but to leave us alone to determine for ourselves as in ancient times,? it said.
The Naga National Council (NNC), a successor to the Naga Club, declared that it stood for unification and freedom of all Naga tribes. In June 1947, it told the then Assam governor Sir Akbar Hydari that ?in all fairness, justice and equality, Naga lands should be restored to the Nagas.? Even as a Naga delegation that met Gandhi in July 1947 was told that he (Gandhi) saw India as a garden of different beautiful flowers and that he wished the Nagas to be part of it, all that was left for the NNC was to declare independence on August 14.
Efforts to win over the Nagas have been made since Nehru?s time, beginning with the annexing of the Tuensang tract of the erstwhile North East Frontier Agency (NEFA)?now Arunachal Pradesh?with the Naga Hills district, and then upgrading it to a separate state.
Accords and agreements have led nowhere, with the Shillong Accord of 1975 remaining the most significant because it also gave birth to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland?NSCN ?often referred to as the ?mother of all insurgencies?. Though the NSCN suffered a split in 1988, it continues to be perhaps the most dreaded and powerful underground group in the subcontinent.
While New Delhi kept making attempts to bring the NSCN to the table for several decades, it was only on June 15, 1995 that then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao first met Muivah and Swu in Paris. Several rounds of parleys led to a ceasefire in August 1997. Three subsequent Prime Ministers, HD Deve Gowda (in February 1997), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (in September 1998) and Manmohan Singh (in December 2004) met them. When the NSCN(IM) signed a ceasefire in August 1997, at least 50 rounds of talks had been held between the two sides at various levels. The ongoing negotiations between the NSCN-IM and the Centre have generated varied reactions. Inside Nagaland, the common man is happy that the law and order situation has improved, but he is still paying ; ?tax? to the underground governments of the two NSCN factions. The NSCN(K) faction, also part of the ceasefire since 2001, refuses to accept the IM faction as the sole representative of the Naga people.
The NSCN?s demand for a ?Greater Nagalim? threatens to include large portions of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh along with some portion of Myanmar. The proposed Nagalim spreads over approximately 1,20,000 sq km in contrast to the present state of Nagaland that has 16,527 sq km.
The NSCN(IM)?s map of Nagalim claims the districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills, and parts of Golaghat, Sibasagar, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, and Jorhat in Assam. It also includes Dibang Valley, Lohit, Tirap and Changlang districts of Arunachal Pradesh and four of the seven districts of Manipur?Tamenlong, Senapati, Ukhrul and Chandel. While Manipur went up in flames over this when the NSCN ceasefire was extended beyond Nagaland state in June 2001, both Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have also time and again asserted that they would not part with ?even an inch? of their territory.
Even as New Delhi has made it clear that it would not talk sovereignty and Greater Nagalim, the NSCN(IM) is continuing to hold talks with the government. Both sides have put forward proposals and counter-proposals, which have not been made public.