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12/29/2009: "Interview with the secretary of NISC for the Correspondent Indian paper by M K Tayal"
1 - What is the NSCN stand on the issue of Greater Nagaland?
FW Let me first set the record straight that the Naga International Support Center, NISC, does not speak for the NSCN. NISC is a Human Rights Organization and specializes in supporting the rights of the Naga Peoples, especially the Right to Self Determination. This is important because NISC is for internationalization of the long time conflict between India and Nagaland/Nagalim.
The name Nagalim has been chosen over Nagaland to avoid confusion between Nagaland State, a small part of the Naga lands and an, against the will of the majority of Nagas carved out of Then Assam, India, in the hope and expectation of satisfying the Nagas. This went against better knowledge because the Nagas stood up to fight for their rights when occupied. This brings me to your first question:
According to the Nagas, not just to the NSCN, there is no Greater or for that matter Smaller Nagaland. Greater Nagaland was invented by outsiders for the Nagas do not want any land of other peoples or India but the land that has been divided over the years. This really means then reunification or the divided areas restored to their historic proportions, areas which were subsequently colonized and divided by Britain, the administered and un-administered areas, and further divided between two countries, India and Burma, before, in India, divided again in the states Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Phradesh and Nagaland State. The Nagas simply want to live together under their own administration and as Free people.
2. What is the government of India’s stand on the issue?
FW - Since there is no official policy, not public anyway, it is hard to determine what India’s stand on the prolonged issue is. Of course judging their stand by way of their behavior there are a few strong indications:
1 – India wants to protect its borders especially after the defeat by the Chinese over Tibet.
2 – India is afraid of disintegration and
3 – India’s Bhraman Hindus do not like to ‘lose’ from people who are seen as lower than the lowest and so the non casts or Dalits.
It is strange though that India, professing itself as the ‘greatest democracy in the world’, can get away with invasion and occupation of a people without being held accountable for what it does to its own people; see for an historical overview on what India did and how Nagas reacted my book Out of Isolation, the quest for Nagalim.
3. Do you see any change in the GoI’s position – vis a vis – accepting your demands?
FW First let me clarify this. NISC has no demands and the Nagas do not have any demands. NISC support the choices the Nagas make provided they are peaceful Since the Nagas do not attack India but defend their stand and so their right to determine their own future, NISC supports that. On the whole the stand of the Government of India remains stagnant. Possibly this is so because the Government of India would take it as defeat when a solution which entails a form of sovereignty for the Nagas. Though the ‘new’ relationship most likely would be beneficial to both India and Nagalim the arrogance of having to come ‘down’ to the level of ‘savages’, headhunters as the British termed them, is not what members of the Indian Government can envisage. However, before the Indian was born, 1947, it was the non violent Gandhi, who stated that the Nagas ‘have every right to be free’. Only when the first Prime Minister, J; Nehru a few years later decided to unleash a war on the Nagas the tables were turned and the Indians could not get out of it without losing face. And, face they lost because the same Nehru stated that ‘heaven may fall and the rivers may turn to blood, but I will never let the Nagas go free’. Also in 1947 the Nagas signed the Nine Point Agreement which stipulated, among other matters, that the Nagas agreed to be in the Indian Union for ten years after which by way of a referendum they could decide to stay within the Union from then on or to form a separate state of their own. Has the Indian stand changed? Yes and no. Though India began the old game of divide and rule, thus separating Nagas from each other, through money and positions, and eventually culminating into the ill fated Shillong Accord, it could not get the Nagas down on their knees to beg for mercy. Only many years later, during the second cease fire and in a reaction on the proposal for a solution from the NSCN, did the Indian Government acknowledge ‘the unique history and situation of the Nagas’. This meant that India recognized that the Nagas never had had anything to do with mainland India when under the British and that the only thing that bound the two was that both were colonized by the same colonizer.
And now, after the ceasefire was signed in 1997 and so after 12 years of negotiating the contemporary Indian Government comes up with the same thing again: We will talk but within the constitution of India.
Because agreeing to talk within the constitution would mean recognizing that Nagalim is part and parcel of India meant that the Government of India has not changed its stand which it firmly put forward since J. Nehru.
4. Is the arms struggle continuing in Nagaland, supporting your demands?
FW There is ceasefire so the armed struggle continues. The Nagas are besieged by an estimated number of soldiers of different plumage, regular Army, Assam Rifles, IRB, police, to name a few, amounting to 200.000. Perhaps it is an idea to figure out the staggering cost of this futile war: 55 years, 200.000 men, how many arms?, how many means of transport, salaries, food and more, and publish that. This alone could wake up the public who can then ask for some sort of accountability for this war. Also, the Nagas who did not know corruption before British or Indians invaded do not demand anything but to withdraw from their land so they can take care of their own affairs by themselves.
5. Is there any training you provide to your supporters to continue armed struggle against the GoI?
FW Our supporters are the general public in Europe as well as politician and the media. We don’t provide training, perhaps only the kind of training required to speak in public or to be seen in public for instance in radio and television programs and how to meet the press or talk to politicians; this because of differences in cultures.
6. Do you have any training facilities in Myanmar, near Lake of No Return? Is the GoI aware of the camps?
FW The question is a little strange because it means that the Nagas when having camps outside their areas are aggressive. The fact is that the Nagas do not desire an inch of land that belongs to other people. They just want their own and they want to rule themselves. The NSCN has several training facilities. I visited one in Nagaland State close to the Assam border near Haflong. A report on that visit is also in Out of Isolation, the NSCN has training camps in Myanmar and they are mostly in the Sagaing district. The Nagas defend their land and so a base, a camp, a training facility is necessary; likewise they are present in Myanmarese Nagaland too. Of course the NSCN trains other aspiring peoples who are in the same predicament as the Naga Peoples. It is well known that the NSCN has trained and is or has been in touch with for instance the NDFB of the Boros, the Khasi Peoples as well as the ULFA and the NLFT and Tripuri. They provide training but do not have their own camps there.
7. Is India’s border with Myanmar closed which restricts the movements of your cadre to and from Myanmar?
FW The border between Myanmar and India is closed for outsiders, not for traders. In fact the Government of India would like to implement the Look East Policy so that it can extend, over land, trade relations with South East Asia and at the same time keeps the influence of China in Myanmar in check. Naga soldiers have no problems crossing the border; only when the Indian and Myanmarese forces team up to hit on them they have trouble moving around freely.
8. Do you think that the GoI’s response to your demands lacks political will?
FW Like among many other Peoples and Nations there are hawks and there are doves, or there are those who are aggressive and those who want to secure peace. This is certainly true for India too. I already mentioned Mahatma Gandhi and there have been others who are and have been supportive of human rights in their own country. The trouble is that in India ‘the hawks’ are in majority and so time and again Indian Governments go back on their words and thus betray the Nagas. There are ample examples and so again I like to refer to the book Out of Isolation.
9. National Socialist Council of Nagaland leader Mr Thuingaleng Muivah was in Delhi for the talks with the government. Is there any development after the talks?
FW With the expectation of expediting the process to come to an honorable solution to the conflict of nearly sixty years, the longest running in the world, Th. Muivah and Isak Chisi Swu have been in Delhi twice but did not reap the fruit from their efforts yet. Not very long after their last visit Th. Muivah and his team of ministers from Nagalim met with the Prime Minister’s of India team in Switzerland where they were told the offer that was going to be made had been a misunderstanding and so it was back to square one again. Or, perhaps better said India had gone back on its word again. There is always ‘talk’ in the media to expedite the talks for peace, but the Government of India does not come up with a proposal as to how they see a solution, honorable to both nations concerned, to take effect.
10. How is the present situation in Nagaland?
FW Uncertainty, confusion, resulting in youth and others fleeing from every day realities, is the order of the day. Corruption, power play, drug abuse, prostitution, alcoholism are in play too. Most importantly is that generations of Nagas have not experienced piece, but at best a kind of sustained ceasefire which, frankly speaking, is much better than being under siege in a way that no rights are honored and one could be killed on the spot, or whole villages burnt. So, the situation for many is not very good but the majority of the people are hopeful for a solution. However due to fratricidal killings and other successes of divide and rule policies, trust in who stands for the nation has been eroding. Still, now that a reconciliation program among the faction is beginning to be successful, some trust and confidence is being re-won. Also the hope for a solution was greatly augmented when the Government of India announced it would come up with a comprehensive proposal so that the peace process would be indeed expedited. The trouble here though is that the Government of India just like it has done with the NDFB of the Boro peoples put a condition on that proposal before it even published it officially. That condition was that the proposal was bound to held ‘within the constitution’. This restriction or condition is a breech in the agreement of the peace talks which are agreed to be unconditional, in a third country and at the highest level. The question now is: Is it agreeable that a negotiating party unilaterally changes the terms of the peace talks? Would that behavior, so you will that stand, not lead to distrust on the basis of discarding a term of the peace talks “unconditional”?
There is a lot more to be said about this conflict induced by the Government of India then and prolonged by successive Indian Governments. I would like that Government of India to be clearer on the matter and so to publish the real casualties on either side; the slain soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces are not known and the number of Nagas killed: about 300.000 from Naga estimates where the press usually states 25.000. In any case these are vast numbers which no one is accountable for.
What NISC states on the aggressor, the Government of India, is that it began the conflict and has the capacity to end it if only indeed it had the will to do so.
On behalf of NISC
Frans Welman
