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Front Page >> Features  > Story

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Muivah And The Meiteis
By Waikhom Damodar Singh
By now it has been well heard about the much eagerly awaited news of the ‘Peace-talks’ just held at New Delhi between the Government of India and the so called National Socialist Council of Nagaland or Nagalim (NSCN) of the Isak- Muivah faction.

It was in the year 1945 that the Deputy Commissioner of the then Naga Hills District of Assam Province, Charles Pawsey, ICS had established a local organization known as the Naga Hills District Tribal Council at the district head quarter, Kohima with the sole-aim of rendering some autonomy for providing better welfare and development services to the backward natives, the hill tribes of the district who were known earlier only by their respective indigenous tribal names (for, the generally applied appellation ‘Naga’ came into existence at a very late period as derived from the word ‘Noka’ used by the Assamese people to mean the hill tribes of their surrounding and adjacent hills).

Another aim of the Deputy Commissioner in establishing such an organization was also to unite all the sections of the tribes living in the district for effecting rapid reconstructions of the ravages and devastation left by the fierce battles of the Second World War fought during 1944 between the Allied Forces of the 14th Army under General Slim and the invading Japanese Forces of the Imperial 15th Army under General Mutaguchi, especially at the Kohima town.

The organization so established had its origin in the old Naga clubs founded in Kohima and Mokokchung as far as years 1918 which served initially as the ‘forum’ purely for carrying out social activities for the tribal communities of the district. Inspite of the simple objectives so designed, the organization later on became the ‘hub’ of political activities of a group of extremist people whose attitudes particularly became changed as soon as A. Zaphu Phizo, an Angami tribe born in Khonoma village near Kohima in the year 1900 (the village was called Thibomei by the Meiteis earlier and was once under the territory of the erstwhile independent State of Manipur), joined them after having lived in Burma and the name of the organization had since been changed into Naga National Council.

Leaning more towards the ‘extremism’ preferred by the new leader Phizo, the Nagas of the Naga Hills District issued a bold declaration in June, 1947 to the effect that the Naga Hills which was administratively a district under the then greater Assam Province should cease to be a part of India when she attains independence. The anti-Indian attitudes and feelings of the Nagas had already been openly expressed as long as 1929 on the occasion of the visit of the Simon Commission, which had come to India to study the ground for Constitutional reforms as strongly demanded by her people to whom the British had decided to grant it.

On that occasion the Nagas had said that they should be excluded from the scope of the reforms and that they be kept under the direct British administration so that they may be saved from being submerged or swallowed by the overwhelmingly majority people of the plains, they openly and very emotionally said that ‘you are the only people who have ever conquered us and when you go we should be as we were and we should not be left to the mercy of the Indian babus’. During the period between 1947 and 1956, Phizo tried several times to convince the Government both in Assam and Delhi, of the earnestness of the Naga claim – to show genuineness of this, Phizo even conducted a ‘plebiscite’ by collecting signatures and thumb impression from house to house from May to August in 1951, and according to it he claimed that over 99% of the people of the Naga Hills District voted for a separate and independent State of their own.

However, the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru vehemently disapproved the move of the few sections of the Nagas headed by Phizo. He declared his disapproval in the Lok Sabha by describing that such a demand of the Nagas of the Naga Hills District is ‘unwise, impracticable and unacceptable.’

Thus having no other alternative the Nagas proclaimed their Federal Independent Sovereign Government as a ‘de facto Government’ on March 22, 1956 with their own Constitution adopted by hoisting the Naga National flag, bearing red, green and white colors with great traditional ceremony and feasting at Phensinyu village in the Rengma tribes area, soon followed by wide spread violence on a planned scale resorted by the heavily armed Nagas of the so called Naga army who later on came to be known as Naga Hostiles.

In order to check the outburst of the armed revolution in an unassuming proportion the Indian army was immediately called in who appropriately dealt with the armed up-rising and the situation was brought under control. The stern action taken by the Indian army forced many revolutionary Nagas to go underground. Phizo himself escaped through Mikir Hills and Shylet (erstwhile East Pakistan) and landed in London and lived under the care of one Reverent Michael Scott as an English citizen till he died there. Rev. Michael Scott is said to have taken an active part in instigating the Nagas in demanding a separate independent State of their own. The subversive activities spread to Naga districts of Manipur, namely, Mao, Ukhrul, Tamenglong, Chandel and later on of Assam and Arunachal.

However, a change in the attitude of the Naga moderates led by Dr. Imkongliba Ao, P. Shilu Ao, Jasokie Angami etc. took place, in that, they preferred to resolve the issue in peaceful manner by immediately giving up the violent activities and their original plan and claim succession from India, and therefore an agreement was arrived at in the larger interest of the Naga people of the Naga hills district who underwent many unimaginable hardships and untold sufferings brought by the insurgency.

The Government of India therefore granted the Naga Hills district to the status of another full-fledged State (the 16th) of the Union which came into existence w.e.f 1st December, 1963 as was inaugurated by SVP Radhakrishnan, the former President of India with P Shilu Ao as the first Chief Minister of the State.

Thus, in due course of time the flame of insurgency in Naga-land and the revolutionary spirit and feelings of the majority of her people died down to some extent but it continued to burn rather more vigorously and on a wider scale affecting large areas of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal particularly after the emergence of a new group of Naga insurgents under the name of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, who dissented and opposed the Shillong Peace-Accord signed between the Government and the leaders of the Phizo group of the Naga National Council on November 11, 1975 as was initiated by the then Governor of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, Lalan Prasad Singh, ICS who was earlier the Union Home Secretary.

The new dissented revolutionary group under the name of National Socialist Council of Nagaland was formed early in 1980 with Isak Chisi Swu as chairman, SS Khaplang, a Burmese Homi tribe and Thuingaleng Muivah, a Tangkhul tribe from Manipur as vice-president and general secretary respectively as a result of the decision taken in a meeting of the Naga National Council (NNC) rebels held in a place in the border area of Burma sometime in 1978 who sternly rejected the leadership and policy of Zaphu Phizo saying that the Shillong Accord signed by some members of the NNC was nothing but it was some sort of a surrender and ‘sell-out’ of their firm stand for a full-fledged sovereign independent Naga country.

However dissentive feelings started brewing up soon amongst the top leaders of the party on the ground that Isak Swu and Muivah were planning to start negotiations for a dialogue with the Government of India within the framework of the Indian Constitution by ousting Khaplang who was surely to oppose the move – it was on this highly suspected ground that Khaplang’s men attacked Muivah’s group, killing nearly 150 of them in a dawn raid - this led to a split between the Khaplang faction and Isak-Muivah faction into two organization known as NSCN (IM) and NSCN (K). Before the split it was believed that the desires of Swu and Muivah for going to table for a dialogue with the Government of India was only a rumor but the reality of their secret move had been now proved correct as they had subsequently met the Prime Ministers of India, namely, PV Narashimha Rao, first in Paris and later in New York in 1995, HD Deve Gowda in Zurich in February 1997, Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Tokyo in 2002, and lastly Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Deputy Prime Minister and Union Home Minister, George Fernandes, the Defense Minister etc. at New Delhi in the name of bringing ever lasting peace in Nagaland and its adjoining areas.

So far so good, well done. One would heartily say, particularly to Th. Muivah for his coming to good senses and initiative that he had taken in this regard as a general secretary of the organization. But what is not at all appreciated on the part of Muivah is his lingering malicious attitudes towards his brethren people, the Meiteis of Manipur. After his meeting with the Union Home Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, he very sarcastically and umbrageous-sly said that ‘he is a Tangkhul born in Ukhrul area which is a land not under the Meiteis’. Quite true that the land of Ukhrul is not under the Meiteis, but what Muivah should not forget is that, from time immemorial, it has been an indispensable part of the State of Manipur which is a land belonging to all the sections of the indigenous people, the Meiteis (including Pangals), the Tangkhuls, the Kabuis, the Maos, the Marams, the Marings, the Funans, the Chothes, the Koms, the Chirus, the Moyol Mosangs, the Aimols, the Anals, the Kukis, the Hmars, the Mizos etc. who sprang out from the same primitive Mongoloid stock and had settled and had been living most harmoniously and peacefully as the inseparable members of a big family since so many years (for nearly 2000 years or so) in this most ancient and unique land.

It is really very sad to find that Muivah seems quite ignorant of the fact that the Tangkhuls have a very close blood relationship with the Meiteis since the time of the Poireis, the forefathers of the Meiteis and Tangkhul, the prominent man of the Wung tribe after the name of whom the name Tangkhul came covering all the Leihou, Khuman, Nung group of people of the great Chakkhya (Sakya) origin (emperor Ashoka’s clan) settled in the north eastern portions of the heavenly land of Manipur. Pakhangba’s mother, Yabiroka belonged to Leihou clan and gave birth to several children who were left in their maternal grandfather’s house with their mother who later on became the Tangkhuls. It is to show such a close and indispensable blood relationship of the Meiteis with the Tangkhuls that on the occasion of the Meiteis’ marriages ‘the Tangkhul Leirum phi’ – cloths is always included as a compulsory item of gift, though quite small, of the parents to their daughter-brides.

Muivah is really a great genius, in that, he has so successfully dismantled and disintegrated the pivotal organization of the Naga Revolutionary group founded by late A. Zaphu Phizo, namely, the Naga National Council and later on the splinter group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland which he again had demolished into two factions as mentioned above. Not satisfied at all with these political destruction done he is now fully determined and is on the path to cause the burning of his home State, Manipur by bringing a great and unprecedented ‘turmoil’ of communal disharmony amongst its people, the people of the plains and very few sections of the people of the hills who opt to be the ‘pseudo Nagas’ and who would like to join Muivah in his futile dream of forming a greater Nagalim by disintegrating the age-old territories of Manipur for the up-keep of which so much blood had been shed by her heroic forefathers both of the hills and plains – can these facts enshrined in golden letters in the history books written by the outsiders, at least, without prejudices be denied by Muivah and his company?

Well, be it so the wild dreams of Muivah. The next pertinent question that may be asked sincerely will be on the ‘intention of the Government of India’ i.e. is the Government of India really intended to ‘accede’ to the impracticable and wild wishes and demand of Muivah?

In this regard recall may be made of the firm decisions already taken by the former Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru which was conveyed to the Naga delegation from the erstwhile Naga Hills District who met him in 1960. Though he was under very strong pressure he disapproved their demand by saying that though under Article 3 of the Indian Constitution the areas of two or three States may be altered i.e. either increased or diminished the Central Government is actually not in the position to favor any State or States in this matter unless the concerned State ‘mutually agree’ to do so. Moreover, the sole basis of the reorganization of the territories of the States that may take place as permissible under Article 3 of the Constitution has to be purely on the basis of ‘administrative convenience and not merely and whimsically’ on communal or religious basis. Will the Government of India disregard all these facts now only to please and appease Muivah and also to indulge in acts tantamount to un-constitutional if not anti-national?

It is therefore high time that a decision is taken soon in the Parliament and to incorporate it in the provisions of the Indian Constitution in Article 371 to ensure that under no circumstances the Government is taking any undue and hasty step or decision to disintegrate the age-old territories of Manipur – this is the only way to remove all the doubts and fears of all. 

*** The writer is a former Inspector General of Police.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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