Eight years of ceasefire in Nagaland is good news but the same cannot be said of the eight year-long negotiations. The prolonged talks between New Delhi and the Nagas indicate a big hitch. I got confirmation of this when I visited 61, Lodhi Estate in New Delhi where Naga leader Thuingaleng Muivah resided. A few rounds of talks were held abroad before the venue was changed to India some time ago. The hitch, as I found, was on the territory of the Nagas. What amazed me was the cursory manner in which the Central government or for that matter, successive governments and the Nagas had gone about the whole thing, year after year, without confronting the problem that was germane to the discussion.The first and foremost demand of the Nagas is the integration of ‘‘their people’’ who live outside of Nagaland. What it means is that parts of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh inhabited by the Nagas should be cut off from the states and merged in Nagaland. ‘‘We do not want our people to live under the Assamese, Manipuris or others’’, says Muivah. ‘‘Our areas were forcibly occupied. We want them back to protect and pursue our own culture, our own way of living and our own traditions. How can the Nagas be ruled by foreigners?’’ There may be something to it. But you cannot hark back to what used to be more than 100 years ago.I must confess to my inability to convince Muivah that the alteration in the boundaries of any state is fraught with tensions. No political party or leader has the courage to raise the issue, much less convince a state to part with its territory. If a state were to be touched without its consent, there would be a huge furore. Muivah told me that on the advice of New Delhi, they had approached Assam, Manipur and Arunachal but found these states to be hostile to the very idea. This was not surprising. Some boundary disputes, dating from the days of the states’ reorganisation in 1955, are still working against ethnic groups because no state wants to give up its claim on the territory that was once its own. Outsiders are not welcome. Many years ago when New Delhi wanted to disperse the illegal migrants in Assam, no state, except Madhya Pradesh, agreed to absorb them.The Nagas’ proposal for integration also brings to the fore a larger question: how insecure do ethnic groups feel in places where they are in a minority? People of different climes are spread out across the country. Yet, we have seen Tamils punished in Karnataka over the water dispute. Kannadigas in Tamil Nadu and Bengalis in Assam have faced occasional bouts of anger by locals due to parochial feelings. This is despite the fact that the constitution recognises only one citizenship, a common citizenship for the Indian people, with equal rights and opportunities throughout the Union.I gave Muivah the example of my own state, Punjab. It was divided and redivided. Some parts of Punjab constituted Himachal Pradesh and some Haryana. The Punjabis, I argued, could not say that they must be grouped together in their state on the ground that they did not want to be ruled by the Himachalis or the Haryanvis. Wherever people live, is their state. If examples of discrimination are increasing by the day, there are courts and other institutions for their correction. True, ethnic groups still bear the brunt. But the remedy does not lie in the demand for a homeland but in ensuring that the institutions work to protect the rights of minorities, wherever they are and in whatever number. After a two-hour discussion, Muivah still wanted the Nagas to be regrouped in Nagaland.Muivah, however, raised the old point that the Nagas were not Indians and that they had never been part of British or post-British India. This might be true. But the Hydari Agreement of June 27 1947, which the Nagas accepted, said that they would be free to choose for themselves the precise pattern of administration within the Constitution of India. They went back on the undertaking when the Constituent Assembly Committee incorporated the conditions of the agreement in the Sixth Schedule for safeguarding the Naga demands. There might be resentments. But what should people in India make of the Nagas participating in the assembly and parliament elections and nearly 60 per cent of them turning out to vote? The government at Kohima is that of the Nagas and has come through the process of polls. True, the defiance of underground Nagas has been a disconcerting part of the same story. Ambushes and killings sadden people. Draconian laws and the induction of armed forces in the Northeast have only aggravated the situation. But the general impression in the country is that there was a set of Nagas who wanted to break away from India. The common man did not know the history of the Nagas, nor their contention that they were never subservient to any outsider.It is true that the Nagas wanted independence and therefore took up arms. But A.Z. Phizo, the Naga leader who died in London in 1990, came to the conclusion that they must find a solution within India. His comrade, Khodao-Yanthan, conveyed this to me while I was India’s High Commissioner in London in 1990. Muviah did not contradict me when I told him this. In fact, he said that the Nagas would like to accept India’s currency, a role in defence and dual citizenship. These are welcome sentiments. But first things first: it is important for the Nagas to realise that it is not possible for New Delhi to expand Nagaland at the expense of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.
