The Naga saga is indeed a story more surprising than fiction and which has been told and retold so many times and yet, since it is open to the interpretation of the story teller, it becomes altogether a completely different story. However, the Naga story and the real truth behind it cannot be simply wished away. The truth, ultimately, has its own way of making itself known.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Naga Hills district had already become an integral part of British India. In 1929, the Naga Club, through a memorandum to the visiting Simon Commission, had wished for the Nagas to be left alone in case the British decided to leave them at the mercy of others. The issue then was not for independence but a demand for special status under British India\u2019s protection, and which was granted by the declaration of the Naga Hills district as an \u201cExcluded Area\u201d that continued to remain as a part of Assam province.
After the second world war, 1949, Atlee\u2019s Labour Party came to power in the British empire and decided to grant independence to India. This prompted the Naga leaders to urgently transform the Naga Club into a socio-political organisation called the NNC and started the movement for a special status of the Naga Hills district. Some British officials were concious of the Naga wishes expressed as long ago as 1929 of the Naga Club memorandum to the Simon Commission and as such, a former Governor of Assam, Sir Reginald Coupland, had suggested to convert the Naga Hills as a \u2018Crown Colony\u2019 or Trust Territory. This suggestion, however, was flatly shot down by the Labour Government in England which was in no mood to open another complicated issue at the time of their withdrawal from India.
The Naga demand of a new status for the Naga Hills by the formation of an interim government was also not entertained by the British government. The British told the Nagas to get their problems redressed by the Indian leaders who were soon to become the political masters of India. This further provoked Phizo and his associates to demand for political independence for the Nagas – completely free of Britain and India. Andrew Clow, the Governor of Assam at that time, invested all his efforts in trying to make the Naga leaders understand the futility of their demand for a seperate State. He told the Nagas in February, 1947, that a seperate country or even a separate province for the Nagas was not a practical proposition. If Nagas insisted on to get it, they would always remain poor and backward and would even lose the little services that they were enjoying at that time. He therefore advised the NNC leaders to have an understanding with the people of Assam and live within the Indian union. This advice of the British was completely rejected by Phizo. Earlier, Phizo had also totally rejected the 19 June, 1946, four-point memorandum of the NNC to the Cabinet Mission that had come to India to prepare ground for granting independence to India. Phizo rejected it because it had demanded for the inclusion of the Naga Hills in an autonomous Assam province in a free India.
After rejecting the 4 point memorandum, Phizo, went to work understanding the need and urgency to establish a seperate claim for the Naga Hills. Through the medium of the NNC, Phizo sent a memorandum to the British government appealing for setting up of an interim government of the Naga people for a period of ten years at the end of which the Naga people will be left to choose any form of government under which to live. As such a nine point agreement was reached in June, 1947, which came to be known as the Hydari Agreement.
The Phizo – Hydari Agreement collapsed over the difference in interpretation of the 9th clause of the agreement. The Governor\u2019s interpretation was that at the end of ten years, the Nagas would be given the choice for any change in the administrative pattern and to ensure greater measure of autonomy within the Constitution of India. This would have meant continuing as a part of Assam or Manipur or any other favorable arrangement, but there was never any question of the Nagas having the right to terminate the agreement and secede from India.
This was not acceptable to Phizo. The Constitution of India was yet to be framed and there was no guarantee that the GOI would keep it\u2019s word. Phizo was aware that 10 years was a long time, enough time for the GOI to corrupt the innocent gullible Nagas and even members of the interim government to accept anything the GOI offers. By insisting on the written documented assurance of the Indian government in agreeing to also include complete independence after the said period of ten years, Phizo fool-proofed the nine point agreement from any misadventure of the British GOI to short-circuit the Naga people\u2019s cherished goal of governing itself, free from outside hegemony.
Had Phizo accepted the Hydari Agreement, the 10 year gap as agreed in the Hydari Agreement would have cemented Government of India\u2019s authority over the Nagas. Forget about independence or even statehood, Nagas would have been reduced to becoming nothing more than a small hill district of Assam, seeking and waiting to renew the Hydari Agreement after the expiry of every ten years (much like the yearly renewal of ceasefire agreements between the NNPGs and GOI), which again, New Delhi would have terminated at a time of its choosing. The British would have been long gone by then, and the Nagas completely at the mercy of the Indian government.
The year was 1951. Through 1951, Phizo and his associates toured the Naga Hills obtaining thumbprints and signatures to a document affirming support for an independent Naga State. It was a comprehensive plebiscite where 99.99% had voted in favour of Naga independence. In the last week of 1951, Phizo met Nehru at Tezpur, Assam, where the PM had come campaigning for his party in the first general election. When Phizo said that the Nagas wanted independence, Nehru called it an \u2018absurd\u2019 demand which attempted \u2018to reverse the wheels of history.\u2019 The NNC\u2019s response was to boycott the general election. After the elected Congress government was in place, Phizo again met Nehru in Delhi in February, 1952. Nehru once more told Phizo and his delegation that while independence was never possible, the Nagas would be granted greater autonomy within the state of Assam. But Phizo remained adamant and told a press conference, \u201cwe will continue our struggle for independence, and one day shall meet (Nehru) again for a friendly settlement (as representative of seperate nation).\u201d
On 30 March, 1953, Nehru along with his daughter, Indira Gandhi, visited Kohima in the company of the Burmese PM, U Nu. A Naga delegation requested to meet Nehru to present a memorandum but were denied an audience. This rebuff was not taken kindly by the Nagas. When the PM and his Burmese guest turned up to address a public meeting they saw their audience walking out bareing their bottom as they went. This one incident hurt Nehru the most and hardened him against the Nagas. From then onwards, things took a turn decidedly for the worse. A division of the Indian Army immediately reinforced the thirty five batallions of the Assam Rifles already in action. By 1956, the Indian Army took over the responsibility of maintaining law and order in the Naga Hills with the infusion of two more divisions of the Indian Army. The war was truly on and this was a war completely out of the vision of the outside world. No outsiders were allowed into the Naga Hills, and journalists the least of all.
In the 1950s, the international image of Nehru as a world statesman was at an all time high. He was not just the PM but also held the post of the Foreign minister of India. He was the main founding member of the Non-aligned movement and was the architect of the Panchsheel Agreement. Nehru was an internationalist in his outlook who represented the best traits of an Indian which were tolerance, sagacity, and love for peace. In his ideas he always cherished to have a world free of wars, of growth and development to better the lot of masses or humanity. Aso, having won her independence through the policy of non-violence, India had emerged as the undisputed leader of the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa, and the benchmark in the fight against colonialism and imperialism. Phizo sought to seek shelter in this glorious achievement and reputation of free India and it\u2019s charismatic leader, Jawaharlal Nehru. He exiled himself to London and internationalized the Naga struggle on a massive scale by charging the Indian Army of committing genocide against the Christian Naga people. With the image and prestige of India and especially of Prime Minister Nehru at stake, the government of India had no other option but to agree to the proposal of the NPC for a political settlement leading to the creation of the full fledged state of Nagaland with special safeguarding provisions.
Now, the question arises. Where and when did the Nagas miss the bus? The Nagas actually missed the bus on October 7, 1967, in New Delhi. During the 6th and the last round of talks between the Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN) and the Government of India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked, \u201cMr Sukhai, take everything but not sovereignty.\u201d Prime Minister Sukhai\u2019s response to the offer was, \u201cI shall not take everything but sovereignty.\u201d
The road to Naga sovereignty can only be paved by first integrating all the contiguous Naga inhabited areas under one administration. Had PM Sukhai honoured PM Gandhi\u2019s offer and opted for the consolidation and integration of all the contiguous Naga areas along with a seperate Naga constitution (yezabo) and flag while remaining within the Indian union [as demanded by the NSCN(IM) today] the story of Nagaland would have been so very different today. Instead, by being stubbornly adamant on sovereignty, Nagas missed the bus of paving the road to sovereignty.
Benito Z Swu, Thilixu village, Chumoukedima<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Naga saga is indeed a story more surprising than fiction and which has been told and retold so many times and yet, since it is open to the interpretation of the story teller, it becomes altogether a completely different story. However, the Naga story and the real truth behind it cannot be simply wished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}