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Question
Of Acceptability
When the Naga National Council under the leadership of the late AZ Phizo took up the gun against the Indian Government demanding sovereignty of the Naga people and when Thuingaleng Muivah and Isak Chisi Swu led a band of ‘Naga Nationalists’ to the jungles and founded the NSCN in 1980 to continue the bush war against India after rejecting the Shillong Accord of 1975, no one, least of all the architects of the Naga underground movement, would have ever thought that the biggest hurdle to working out a solution to their vexed problems would come from within the big Naga family.
The most devastating seeds of discord were sown when the NSCN broke into two faction, one led by Khaplang and the other by Isak and Muivah in 1988 and since then the history of the Naga people has been dominated by bitter infighting and dare we add, most of the bloodshed since then, has had more to do with the infighting than with any confrontation with the armed forces of the Indian Government.
Today, even after the peace process between the NSCN (IM) and the Government of India has completed five years, infighting and factional feud just refuse to go away, and at the risk of repeating a point, we may say, this very issue may just prove to be the thorniest of all. Given the situation, it is not surprising that the attention of almost all the Naga civil societies have been drawn towards reconciliation between the different opposing armed groups.
Other than the bitter stand off between the Khaplang faction and the IM group, there is also the NNC factor led by Adinho Phizo, daughter of the father of the Naga underground movement, AZ Phizo. And when we talk about the politics of the different Naga underground outfits, can we afford to ignore the towering presence of Nagaland Chief Minister SC Jamir? The Naga issue and by extension the peace endeavor then has to be studied from all perspectives covering tribal loyalty, the politics in the State of Nagaland and of course the acceptability of either Muivah or Khaplang or Adinho to all the Naga people.
We refer to the bitter infighting within the Naga society because during the last few days, the two factions of the NSCN and the Chief Minister of Nagaland, SC Jamir have been hot news and have been hitting the front page of the regional papers published in the North East region with even some of the dailies published from the metropolitan cities following suit.
If July 2002 was about the joint communiqué signed between the NSCN (IM) leadership and the Center’s emissary K Padmanabhaiah, August has been the month of bitter wrangling and mud slinging between the NSCN (IM) and Nagaland Chief Minister SC Jamir on the one hand and the confrontation between the IM group and the Khaplang faction, as testified by the heightened tension at Nagaland's Zunheboto district where the two rival groups are readying themselves for a showdown in a battle to control the territory.
Added to this is the serious charge hurled by the IM group that the Center in collusion with Jamir had finalized the modalities for the Naga peace talks. Of course, K Padmanabhaiah was quick to dismiss the allegations as preposterous and unfounded but one could not ignore the fact that the charges were leveled not by any middle rung functionary of the NSCN (IM) but by Thuingaleng Muivah.
All these instances go to prove that the biggest hurdle to finding a solution to the vexed Naga problem is not going to come from any outside force but from within the Naga society and this is the point that all concerned should acknowledge. Intrinsic in the battle for supremacy amongst the rival groups is the jostle to don the sole mantle of representing the Naga people and their interest. It is a question of acceptability. We are not in a position to say whether such posturing is good for the welfare of the Naga people or not, but what we can say for sure is that the internal differences will prove hazardous to the peace effort.
(Courtesy: The
Sangai Express)
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