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Thursday, Feb 17, 2005

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Naga talks: the task ahead

By M.S. Prabhakara

Both the Government of India and the NSCN should move beyond the sterile formulas based on the territorial imperative.

ON THE face of it, the prospects for any satisfactory conclusion to the ongoing talks in New Delhi between the Centre and the leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), which the latter unfailingly characterise as `Indo-Naga Political Talks,' are dim.

Speaking at the fourth Naga People's Consultative Conference in Dimapur (the venue was named Hebron), the NSCN (I-M) general secretary, Thuingaleng Muivah, appeared quite prepared for the talks to break down if, as he put it, New Delhi continued to be intransigent on the NSCN's core demands: Naga sovereignty and the integration of the Naga areas presently outside Nagaland into one territorial unit. "Bhangile Bhangibo" (if the talks break down, so be it), he said, underlining in his use of the Assamese idiom both the similarities and contradictions between the Naga and the Assamese nationalistic assertions.

But this all-or-nothing approach need not be the last word. Both the Centre and the NSCN leaders, even while approaching the problem from different perspectives, need to find a solution; though the task they have set for themselves appears impossible, like squaring the circle.

The present dialogue, strictly speaking, is yet to begin; the seemingly endless preliminaries are continuing. Returning to New Delhi on January 30 after a six-week sojourn in Nagaland for "consultations with Naga people and Naga civil society," their first publicly known visit in several decades, the NSCN leaders held three round of talks (February 3, 4, 10) as well as a brief meeting with the Prime Minister on February 9.

The NSCN chairman, Isak Chishi Swu, did not attend the first round of talks and has indeed not taken part in any of the subsequent meetings, barring the brief meeting with the Prime Minister on February 9, which he attended more probably for reasons of `protocol' than anything else. There are also reports that he is returning briefly to Amsterdam, apparently to renew his residence permit, though one should also bear in mind that the Naga International Support Centre, a structure that has systematically mobilised international support for the NSCN, is also based in Amsterdam.

The session the following day between the Group of Ministers and a delegation of the NSCN was supposed to mark the beginning of "substantive talks." However nothing like that seems to have happened, with the NSCN leaders reiterating their desire to have the Prime Minister lead the Central delegation. Thus the brief meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during which he is reported to have reiterated the Government's seriousness in finding a peaceful solution that should be both "honourable" and should "respect the dignity of the Naga people" — the two components of any formula that may be forthcoming.

Given the history of the prolonged negotiations with the leaders of Naga nationalist assertion that were marked by several culminations, leading to understandings, agreements and accords such as the pre-Independence Nine-Point Understanding of June 1947, the 16-Point Agreement of July 1960, and the Shillong Accord of November 1975, the pace of the current talks is to be expected. Much of the preliminary ground should have been cleared during the several rounds of `talks about talks' in various foreign locations between the NSCN leaders and several facilitators, interlocutors and other Government functionaries.

The stakes are high. Hence, the seemingly endless preliminaries, the excruciating attention to details, the checking and rechecking of every word, every nuance.

What are these stakes? The words, "territorial integrity" and "within the framework of the Indian Constitution" are, for the Government of India, the bottom line — the two imperatives on which there can be no any compromise. In a curious way, these are also the imperatives of the NSCN, as is evident from the Declaration it adopted at the end of the two-day Naga Consultative Conference held last month (January 20-21) in Dimapur, and the core of the mandate that the NSCN leaders have brought to New Delhi, though the issue of Naga sovereignty is not explicitly spelt out:

"The Naga peoples and organizations covering across the length and breadth of the Naga Homeland after two days of intensive, sincere and honest interaction with the Collective Leadership of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland declare:

"1. The fullest support for an honourable solution to the Indo-Naga political issue on the basis of the uniqueness of Naga History and situation; 2. That the unification of the Naga areas is legitimate and therefore non-negotiable; 3. That the political solution should be found through peaceful means; and 4. That both [the] Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland uphold utmost honesty and sincerity towards finding a political solution."

The closest that the declaration comes to asserting Naga sovereignty and Naga nationhood is the reference to the "uniqueness of Naga history and situation." This is a far cry from the standard reiteration of the "inalienable rights of the Naga people for self-determination." But then, this is also consistent with the NSCN' s view that the Naga people have never "demanded independence." Rather, what is at issue, "the uniqueness of Naga history and situation," is that the Naga people declared their independence a day before India became formally free; and so the only thing that remains to be sorted out in these political talks is the restoration of that independence, concomitantly with the withdrawal of the `Indian occupation forces' from the Naga territory.

In other words, without ever resiling from its determination to restore Naga sovereignty, the NSCN leaders have for the present chosen not to make that an issue and instead taken the incremental approach to resolve what may be describes as the `Naga National Question' that by definition also includes the Naga territorial imperative. Thus the mandate: "The unification of the Naga areas is legitimate and therefore non-negotiable." It is significant that the issue of Naga sovereignty, at present, has not merited such unqualified assertion, indeed, not even a direct mention, as that of territoriality.

The impediments in the way of making any concessions on the issue of "Naga areas integration" are well known. Both the Understanding of July 1947 (Clause 6) and the Agreement of July 1960 (Clause 13) refer to the issue of Naga areas integration. But these commitments (in the latter case, merely noted for record as the views of the Naga delegation) were made when the area under discussion was Naga Hills-Tuensang Area (NHTA), then a district of the State of Assam; and the envisaged transfers, if implemented, would have meant little more than the redrawing of the boundaries of the districts of a State.

The emergence of Manipur (January 1972) and Arunachal Pradesh (February 1987) as separate States has made the issue even more complicated, especially since the Manipuri nationalistic assertion, with a recorded history of triumphs, defeats and national humiliations dating back to several centuries, is something that one can tamper with only at one's peril. This is especially so since the Manipuri nationalistic assertion continues to manifest itself, in its extreme forms, as a desire to regain its lost independence and sovereignty or, at the very least, a renegotiation of the terms of the merger of the Kingdom of Manipur into the Indian Union under what it sees as dubious circumstances.

And yet, indeed perhaps because of these very factors, those engaged in the talks simply cannot afford for them to flounder, for the heavy political and ideological investments of the last decade or so to go down the drain. "A decade ago, we considered India our enemy; now we do not think so." "We understand the problems of the Government of India. The Government of India too should understand our problems ... " Such statements by NSCN leaders go beyond what they say.

So how does one then tackle the issue of the territorial imperative? Could a beginning be made by clearly identifying the Naga-inhabited areas and, by a suitable amendment to the Constitution, and the consent of the people involved on all sides, bring them under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule presently not applicable either to Manipur or Arunachal Pradesh, and enable the formation of autonomous district councils or regional councils? The emerging structures could then negotiate their linkages with the present state of Nagaland, or the putative Nagalim (which has the same meaning as Nagaland) enabling both the consolidation of the Naga identity and protecting the very same identity of the Naga people presently outside the State of Nagaland, who, over the centuries have absorbed other, even if cognate, characteristics, share a different cultural universe. As a correspondent in Manipur once argued with this writer, what has an Anal Naga in Tengnoupal district in Manipur (who anyway did not even view himself or herself as a Naga a generation ago) in common with a Konyak in Tirap in Arunachal Pradesh, except the constructed Naga identity, even allowing that this construction is based on shared myths, legends and memories of suffering and pain?

Above all, both the Government of India and the NSCN have to move beyond the sterile formulas based on the territorial imperative. Else, the talks will once again be little more than going round in circles.

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