On December 4 and 5, a botched Army operation in Mon district of Nagaland led to the tragic death of 14 civilians. A remote district, it is home to the Konyaks, the Naga tribe that has invited the “greatest anthropological interest,” according to Easterine Kire, whose book Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland listens to Naga voices from different walks of life, ages and outlooks to show “how they are trying to walk the Naga road.” Under British rule, the Konyaks had half their territory partitioned by the colonial government and given away to Myanmar. Kire says the Konyak villages that became part of Myanmar still have contact with the Konyak villages on the Indian side and follow the traditions. The geographical area of Nagaland is shared by 16 tribes (Angami, Ao, Chang, Chakhesang (made up of the Chokri and Kuzhami), Dimasa Kachari, Khianmniungan, Konyak, Kuki, Lotha, Phom, Pochury, Rengma, Sangtam, Sumi, Yimchunger and Zeliang). All their villages are set up on highly democratic principles, with only one exception. The Konyak Nagas are the only tribe who had a monarchical system with the ahng or king as the head of the village community. “Ancient Konyaks believed that the sun, moon, stones, rivers, jungles and trees possessed spirits and they worshipped these objects. Kahwang, the sky god, was the supreme god and his worship was the core of the old religion.”
In Naga Identities , edited by Michael Oppitz and others, Abraham Lotha writes about the practice of headhunting, prevalent till Christianity arrived there: “Headhunting was widely practised by all the Naga tribes and every Naga who had killed an enemy lost no opportunity to show off his exploits. Most anthropological works on the Nagas have explained the Naga practice of headhunting as the result of a desire to increase fertility and prosperity for the individual, village and tribe.”
Tracing the long history of the Naga political and armed struggle, Charles Chasie and Sanjoy Hazarika write in their book, The State Strikes Back: India and the Naga Insurgency that the memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929 by the Naga Club, set up by Nagas after returning from France post World War I where they had fought on behalf of the British and which formulated “political consciousness” among the tribes, “is regarded by most historians as the first Naga declaration for independence.” In their petition they made it clear that if Nagas could not be under British administration, they should be entitled to self-determination.
In the preface to Zapuvisie Lhousa’s Strange Country: My Experience in Naga Nationalism , social activist Niketu Iralu writes that “Nagas declared their right to reclaim the status they had before the British came, and went on to state they were to be ‘left alone’ to decide their own future on Britain’s departure from her Empire in South Asia.” When an armed revolt against the Indian state began in the Naga Hills in the 1950s, the Indian Government enacted a special parliamentary legislation, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), to give security forces even more powers and protect them from criminal prosecution for any violation of the law since these were regarded as extraordinary responses. Chasie and Hazarika study the use of AFSPA, still in place in Nagaland, and its impact on both society and the State. After years of insurgency, a peace framework was signed in 2015 with the primary militant group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), but it has run into hurdles over demands for a new constitution and a flag. The NSCN (Khaplang) faction, which operates in both India (in Nagaland districts bordering Myanmar including Mon) and Myanmar, stayed away from the peace negotiations.
Sudeep Chakravarti chronicles the “pressures and counter-pressures of peacemaking” in his upcoming book, The Eastern Gate .
