This writer sincerely feels that to understand history in the right perspective, we have to transport ourselves back to the past as if we ourselves have lived those times. In doing so, we get to analyse and wisen up to the finer details which we would have otherwise easily missed.
By the beginning decade of the 20th century, the Naga Hills district had already become an integral part of British India and the Naga people too had accepted the political and administrative norms of the British. The problem of the future political status of the Nagas arose only after the defeat of the Winston Churchill led Conservative Party in the British election of 1945 and Clement Attlee of the Labour Party became the Prime Minister. Even as Churchill was dead against granting independence to India and even labelling Gandhi as a seditious half naked fakir, the new PM, Clement Attlee, announced that India should be given independence before June, 1948, as it was an election promise of the Labour Party. That India was given it’s independence as early as August, 1947, is a testament to the fact that the new British government wanted to exit from every part of British India at the earliest possible time.
This urgency of the British government to exit from India prompted Naga leaders to transform the existing Naga Club into a socio-political organisation called the NNC under Imti Aliba’s presidentship in 1946 in order to safeguard the interest of the Nagas and demand for a localised autonomy in a free India. According to the agreement between the leaders of the India’s freedom movement and the British government, independent India was to inherit all the territories of British India except those which were earmarked for Pakistan. This meant that automatically the Naga Hills too became a part of independent India.
The primary aim of the NNC at that time in 1946 was to function as a political party and a pressure group to gain political advantage from the British rulers. This becomes evident from the fact that when the Cabinet Mission came to India in 1946 to prepare ground for granting independence to India, the NNC submitted a 4 (four) point memorandum which was as follows:
1) This Naga National Council stands for the solidarity of Naga tribes including those in the unadministered areas;
2) This Council strongly protest against the grouping of Assam with Bengal;
3) The Naga Hills should be constitutionally included in an autonomous Assam, in a free India, with local autonomy and due safeguards for the interests of the Nagas;
4) The Naga tribes should have a separate electorate.
The demand of the NNC for the inclusion of the Naga Hills in an autonomous Assam province in a free India clearly indicates that the Nagas did not want to seperate their hill district from India. Instead, the NNC wanted the British to constitutionally cement the inclusion of Naga Hills as a district of Assam in a free India. Again the demand of the NNC for a seperate electorate for the Nagas clearly indicates the desire for the formation of simply a seperate administrative body to safeguard the local autonomy and the social, cultural, economic and relegious interests of the Nagas. Also, the second point of the memorandum strongly enforces the desire of the NNC to ensure the status of the Naga Hills as a district of Assam. With the partition of India and the creation of East and West Pakistan to happen shortly, inorder to safeguard the north-eastern frontier of India there was the proposal to club Assam with Bengal. This was resented by the NNC which wanted the Naga Hills to remain as a part of exclusive Assam and not Bengal. It is thus obvious that the Nagas in 1946 never wished to form an independent sovereign nation but just wanted some autonomy in matters of local administration.
Had AZ Phizo not been on the scene then, the fate of the Nagas would have been sealed and delivered as a small insignificant hill district of Assam there and then in 1946 for, maybe, all time to come. Phizo totally rejected the 4 point memorandum as a move by certain uneducated people taken advantage of by external forces with forced motive in the name of neo-colonialism in the Naga Hills. It was understood that by external forces, Phizo meant the British. By that time the British had actually washed their hands to even small demands of the Nagas and instead were advising the Nagas to have an understanding with the people of Assam and live within the Indian union.
By the beginning of 1947, Phizo had started demanding for an independent status for the Naga Hills area and on 20 February, 1947, submitted a memorandum to the British government which expressed the misgiving that, “a constitution drawn up by the people who have no knowledge of the Naga Hills and the people will be quite unsuitable and unacceptable to the Naga people,” and that, “thrown to forty crores of Indians, the one million of Nagas with their unique system of life will be wiped out of existence.” He made an appeal to the British government to set up an interim government for the Naga people for a period of ten years at the end of which the Nagas should be free to choose the form of government they liked. Again, on 19 May, 1947, Phizo submitted another memorandum clarifying that the ten year interim government should be a government of the Naga people, by the Naga people, and for the Naga people with full powers over the legislative, executive and judicial matters, and that the Guardian Power might maintain such force in the Hills as was considered essential for its defence. Two days later, on 21 May, 1947, Phizo again issued a statement in which he said, “Nagas who were determined not to allow themselves to be involved in a divided and chaotic India, are prepared to declare their own independence and can only think of entering into a ten-year treaty with an independent Assam. Phizo was the right man at the right time for the Nagas, and certainly a man ahead of his time in his thinking. Right from the beginning he was much aware that if the Naga tribes were to survive as a composite people, Nagas had to dictate the times, and not let the times dictate the Naga people. If Nagas ever were at the crossroad, it was in 1946.
The British had timed it’s exit from India and preponed it to 15 August 1947 suddenly leaving the Nagas to the mercy of the times. India was about to be partitioned with the creation of East and West Pakistan, and in those dangerous times, the Indian leaders as well as the British government had no inclination whatsoever to tolerate any uprising from any quarter, least of all the Nagas from the remote hills of the Assam province. It was actually only prudent and logical on the part of the Nagas to fashion the NNC at that point of time as a political party to gain some political advantage from the British before they left India for good. Phizo, however, saw what no other Naga could foresee. Tamely accepting the sovereignty of India with the concession of a localised autonomy would have only cemented the status of the Naga Hills as a mere district of Assam and condemning the fiercely self-respecting Naga people as second class citizens of Assam.
Phizo did not allow time to dictate the Nagas. Instead he took it upon himself to dictate the times and steered the Nagas in the direction of which the Nagas today are empowered and enabled to live as one among equals. Our identity and unique history remains intact even as our way of life and living remains safeguarded. Phizo demanded the impossible so as to snatch the ungiveable by the government of India. The Naga Hills in itself was too small both in area and population or in any other parameters to qualify as a full-fledged state. Moreover, with hostile East Pakistan and unpredictable China in the backyard, the government of India had no intention whatever to grant statehood to Nagaland. Granting statehood to Nagaland would have also opened a pandora box. All in all, the Naga Hills never stood a chance of becoming a full fledged state of the Indian union. Phizo pushed Nehru into a corner and made the impossible possible. He did not ask for ‘eight’ but demanded and fought, tooth and nail, for ‘ten’ so that he could expect ‘nine’ – and ‘nine’ he got. Make no mistake, we owe our statehood to this great man.
Benito Z Swu
Thilixu village,
Chumoukedima.