Colonial Transformation and the Naga Construction of Collective Selfhood

The story of the emergence of Nagas as a people – the Naga nation in the words of the independentists – is one of the most remarkable 20th century stories of a radical transformation of political structures and world-views within a relatively short period of time. In the early part of the century most Nagas continued to live in mountain top villages with signs of fortification still intact and head-hunting -- an institutionalized form of inter-village warfare – was occasionally still taking place, even though it was criminalized by the colonial state. Neighboring villages spoke `dialects or languages totally incomprehensible to one another’, and in their communications involving war-making or alliance-building, they relied on sign language, which `reached a high state of development’ (Hutton, 1921: 291). As anthropologist Fürer-Haimendorf, who studied the Nagas in the 1930s, puts it, `a Naga village could not even ideally remain at peace as long as there prevailed the belief that the occasional capture of a human head was essential for maintaining the fertility of the crops and the well being of the community’ (cited in Eaton, 1997: 249n).

Reading colonial accounts against the grain, one can see how the resistance to colonial conquest produced some of the early alliances. One of the most violent military operations was against Khonoma and allied villages in 1879 and 1880 after a British officer and a large group of accompanying soldiers and policemen were killed. After the operations were over, it was discovered that `the punishment inflicted by our troops had been far more severe in its results than was at first supposed’. The dispossessed villagers lived as `houseless wanderers, dependent to a great extent on the charity of their neighbors, and living in temporary huts in the jungles’. The British policy was to get the `dispossessed clans’ to settle either in Manipur or on fresh land in the Naga Hills. But the Nagas could not be persuaded to settle anywhere else, nor were other Nagas willing to take up the `confiscated lands’ (Mackenzie, 2001: 139). The colonial interpretation of these difficulties was that those Nagas feared retribution, but a more plausible reading is that they were gestures of solidarity. In 1880 there was a `daring raid’ on a tea plantation. The men, who were from Khonoma, had `marched down the bed of the Barak through Manipuri territory,. . . requisitioned food from some of the Kacha Naga villages on the way’. These villages, wrote Mackenzie, `though in Manipuri territory are so profoundly dominated by the terror of the Angamis that no resistance was to be expected from them’ (Mackenzie, 2001: 138). Here again it is hard to miss the evidence of Naga solidarity and coordinated resistance.

The road to Naga nationhood, however, did not open up till the twentieth century. It perhaps began when during the First World War a Labor Corps of 4,000 Nagas, were sent to France, where they saw great `civilized nations’ fighting for `their ends and interests while Nagas were condemned as barbarous for their head hunting ways’ (Yunuo, 1974: 125; cited in Eaton, 1997: 256). Twenty Nagas came together to form the Naga Club and in 1929, they submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission that was considering political reforms in India to respond to rising Indian anti-colonial mobilization. The signatories claimed to `represent all those tribes to which we belong – Angamis, Katcha Nagas, Kukis, Semas, Lothas and Rangmas’ (Simon Memorandum, 1999: 166). The memorandum asked that the Nagas not be included in any reform scheme because they were not unified as a group, educational levels were poor, and because given their small numbers, in any electoral system based on numbers their interests were sure to be overwhelmed. The memorandum interpreted the pre-colonial past of the Nagas as that of an unvanquished people. `Before the British Government conquered our country in 1879-80’, said the memorandum, `we were living in a state of intermittent warfare with Assamese of the Assam valley to the North and West of our country and the Manipuris to the South. They never conquered us, nor were we ever subjected to their rule’ (Simon Memorandum, 1999: 165-166).

In April 1945, the Naga Hills District Tribal Council was established at the initiative of the British Deputy Commissioner. In February 1946 the council renamed itself the Naga National Council -- organized as a federation of several tribal councils – and brought out a small newspaper called the Naga Nation.

The single most important development that made the imagining of Nagas as a collectivity possible was their conversion to Christianity -- `the most massive movement to Christianity in all of Asia, second only to that of the Philippines’, in the words of historian Richard Eaton (Eaton, 1997: 245). Today Christianity is an essential part of Naga identity. Except for the Zeliangrong Nagas, most Nagas are Christians. Eaton estimates the percentage of Christians to be 90% (though his study is limited to the state of Nagaland) and the NSCN-IM puts the figure at 95%. It was the American Baptist Mission that accounted for most of the proselytizing among Nagas; but the conversions of a number of Naga communities happened after the end of colonial rule and even after the Indian government expelled foreign missionaries from India. The profound destabilization of traditional Naga institutions during colonial rule, however, had set the stage for this profound cultural transformation. The village chiefs were the leaders of the community when Naga society was organized on a war footing. But when head-hunting was criminalized by colonial rulers and inter-village warfare ended, the traditional leaders lost their hold over younger warriors and it was these `would-be warriors’ who, according to Richard Eaton, responded most readily to Christian teachings (Eaton, 1997: 256).

Missionaries printed the Bible in selected Naga dialects such as Ao, Angami and Sema and in the process gave those dialects a written form using the Roman script. This meant a simplification of the Naga linguistic landscape – for while the chosen dialects became recognized as standard, many other dialects disappeared. As literacy and education became a key to social mobility, Nagas realized the advantage of learning those standard dialects (Eaton, 1997: 252). Hundreds of young men from different areas, who were trained in the secondary schools and missionary training schools run by missionaries were able to communicate with each other (Jacobs et al. 1990:156). To this generation, the idea of Nagas as a single community of fate became real.

The Naga conflict helped make Christianity a part of Naga identity. It is not accidental that nearly half the conversions among Nagas happened after India’s independence. The Christian identity which marks the Nagas apart from the mostly Hindu and Muslim population of the Indian heartland has been partly an act of cultural resistance that parallel the political and armed resistance.

An astonishing number of marginalized hill peoples in northeast India today want to be included in the Naga fold; partly because they find the five-decade-old Naga struggle for recognition inspiring. In a recent article on the languages of northeast India, anthropologist Robbins Burling had to take the trouble to separate the political project of Naga unity from the languages spoken by the people who call themselves Naga. `Today, the people known as “Nagas” certainly recognize some common “Naga” ethnicity’, Burling writes, `but this recognition may have come only after the British gave them the name “Naga”. Most of the indigenous people of Nagaland, together with some ethnic groups in the bordering areas of Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Myanmar are, by general consensus, now accepted as “Nagas,” but this term should not fool us into believing that they must have some linguistic unity’. Naga, Burling emphasized, `is not a linguistic label’ (Burling, 0000:0). Particularly striking to Burling was that some groups, `whose language a linguist would, without hesitation, classify as “Kuki”, has declared themselves to be “Nagas”’. Yet, adds Burling, `everyone agrees that Nagas and Kukis are sharply distinct ethnically. Indeed, they have been killing each other from time to time’ (Burling, 0000: 00).

When anthropologist Fürer-Haimendorf returned to the Konyak Nagas in the 1970s after three decades, he saw elections taking place in Naga villages and a new breed of ambitious Naga politicians looking beyond their villages for support. His observations graphically capture the transformation of the Naga world. `Only those who have experienced traditional Naga society’, Fürer-Haimendorf wrote, `can appreciate the magnitude of the transformation’. To an older generation of Nagas mankind was `divided between a small inner circle of co-villagers, clansmen, and allied villages, on whose support he could depend and to whom he owed assistance in emergencies’. The entire outside world, consisting not only of people belonging to other tribes, but even Konyaks living in other villages, were all potential enemies and legitimate targets of head-hunting. A category such as `allies from among communities outside the narrow circle of the in-group’, he recalled, `had no place in the Naga’s picture of the world’. The notion of `cooperation between formerly hostile village and even across tribal boundaries’ could not have been more alien to the world of the Nagas he knew (Fürer-Haimendorf, 1976: 251).

If the Naga conversion to Christianity was the result of their incorporation into a larger political, economic and cultural universe, so was their journey on the road to nationhood. Paying close attention to Naga cosmologies and to the translation strategies of the Bible into Naga languages, Richard Eaton finds that the particular local gods that missionaries translated as the Christian god, along with the pace of change affecting particular Naga communities, made a difference in the scope and timing of the conversion to Christianity. As Nagas confronted a reality that could no longer be seen as being under the control of their local spirits, they were beginning to pay more attention to the high gods in their own cosmologies who `as sovereign of the entire universe, was seen as more clearly in charge’. It was in the context of a radically transformed world that the missionary translation strategies of making the indigenous high god stand for the Christian god that began to yield converts (Eaton, 1997: 270). If Nagas had to abandon their many local religions in favor of a world religion to morally negotiate the larger world into which they were incorporated, nationhood was the global idiom that seemed most appropriate to negotiate the rough political terrain that the Nagas have found themselves in all through the second half of the 20th century.

Confronting Constructionism: Nagas Debate their Past

Earlier in the article I have outlined the NSCN-IM view of the Naga past: that it had `always been a sovereign nation’ and is now divided into many political units – decisions over which Nagas have had little say. In the summer of 2000 a remarkable pamphlet appeared in Nagaland’s capital Kohima that explicitly took on this view of the Naga past. The pamphlet entitled Bedrock of Naga Society was published by the Nagaland state Congress party and, by all accounts, it was the brainchild of the state’s chief minister S.C. Jamir (NPCC, 2000). Indeed some Indian newspapers reproduced excerpts from the pamphlet naming Jamir as the author.

The pamphlet was a defense of the 16 points agreement between the Naga People’s Convention and the Government of India of 1960 that led to the formation of the state of Nagaland. This is new territory in Naga political debates. Bedrock took on the independentist argument that the formation of Nagaland compromised the sovereignty of Nagas. The idea that the Nagas have been a separate independent entity from time immemorial may be an `attractive proposition’ but `is it really true?’ the authors asked, 'were we really an independent nation?’ In words never heard before in Naga political discourse, the pamphlet gave this answer:

The stark and inescapable truth is that neither did we have a definite and unified political structure and nor did we exist as a nation. We were actually a group of heterogeneous, primitive and diverse tribes living in far-flung villages that had very little in common and negligible contact with each other. . . . Each village was practically an entity in itself. The main ‘contact’ between villages was through the savage practice of headhunting. Mutual suspicion and distrust was rife. Internecine warfare was the order of the day. There was no trust or interaction between different tribes. In these circumstances, the question of a unified ‘Naga nation’ did not arise (NPCC, 2000).

In this version of Naga history, the idea of Naga nationhood gained momentum in the 1950s. The plebiscite of 1951 when volunteers of the Naga National Council went to far-flung villages to collect thumb prints of every Naga to announce that 99.9% of the Nagas want independence `emotionally integrated the various Naga tribes’. The 16 points agreement was the result of an impasse. It had become evident that under no circumstances the Indian Government would have conceded the Naga demand for sovereignty and the Naga movement had reached a dead end. Some Nagas took stock of the situation, and resolved that `even if Independence was not possible, the land, identity and individuality of the Naga people should never be compromised’. The result was the agreement that led to the creation of Nagaland in 1963, which `gave the Nagas worth and significance in the eyes of the world’ (NPCC, 2000).

Bedrock is undoubtedly a political document with the signature of the Congress party and of chief minister Jamir, who is known to be firmly opposed to the NSCN-IM leader Muivah. Yet its broader significance should not be underestimated. The lines between independentist and integrationist factions in Naga politics have always been blurred; in that sense this intervention is part of a debate among Naga nationalists. It is rare in the history of the practice of nationalism for a constructionist position of a group’s identity to be presented with such candor.

The pamphlet, not surprisingly, led to an enormous controversy among Nagas. The NSCN-IM published a pamphlet labeling Jamir an `Indian stooge’ out to destroy Naga solidarity. It denounced the 16 Point agreement as a betrayal of the Naga people and expressed surprise that `a man calling himself a Naga can fall this low that he is willing to disown his own history’ (Karmakar, 2000). There has been a lively debate in Naga newspapers as well. Other political and civil society groups entered the fray. The Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights, for instance, has called the pamphlet a distortion of Naga history.

What is not said in the pamphlet is also quite significant. Independentist and integrationist Nagas share the goal of bringing together Nagas under one entity. In recent years many Nagas have begun using the term Nagalim to describe the Naga homeland to distinguish it from the state of Nagaland. `Lim’ is a word in the Ao dialect that refers to land. While the term Nagalim had been used by Naga student leaders for a while, in 1999 the NSCN-IM began formally calling itself the National Socialist Council of Nagalim -- instead of Nagaland (Angami et al., 2002). The new term distinguishes between the state of Nagaland and what is seen as the territory of the Nagas without the expansive connotation of the term Greater Nagaland used by the Indian media.
While the integration of the Naga areas of Burma with the areas in India has not been high on the Naga political agenda, bringing the Nagas of India together has been an issue that unites most Nagas. Even the Nagaland Assembly has passed a number of resolutions expressing support for that cause and the 16 points agreement includes a clause articulating this position. Bedrock did not abandon that commitment. However, the position that the state of Nagaland `gave the Nagas worth and significance in the eyes of the world’ can also be seen as an attempt to downplay the Nagalim theme. Indeed in many public statements Jamir and his supporters have described the NSCN-IM leadership as `outsiders’, and have asserted that solving the Naga political problem should be up to the `Nagas of Nagaland’. Such statements clearly are targeted at Muivah.

In response to the ferment caused by the pamphlet, the Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) in a statement clarified that `at no point of time the party had said the Naga political problem was resolved with the signing of the 1960 pact’. The pamphlet, it said, was not designed to `sabotage’ the peace-talks between the Indian Government and the NSCN-IM (Assam Tribune, 2000). Despite the ambiguities and silences of the pamphlet, as a critique of the view that Nagas have always been a sovereign nation and its embrace of what amounts to a constructionist position on Naga identity, Bedrock marks an important turning point that can change the framework in which the Naga problem has historically been framed.

The Manipur Factor and the Peace Process

The issue of the Nagas of Manipur poses the most formidable obstacle to the peace process today. To understand the depth of the Manipuri anger, apart from the complex pre-colonial relations between the lowland state of Manipur and the Nagas outlined above, one has to consider Manipur’s sense of growing alienation from India. The circumstances of Manipur’s merger with India in October 1949, when it was stripped of the autonomy it had enjoyed, has haunted the post-colonial politics of Manipur. Like the much better known case of Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur during the British colonial period was ruled as a princely state. Four days before India’s independence on 15 August 1947, the king of Manipur had signed the instrument of accession entrusting defense, communication and foreign affairs to the government of India. Manipur then adopted a new state Constitution under which elections to a state Assembly took place and Manipur had a democratically elected state government. Independent India’s new leaders made public commitments to preserving Manipur’s autonomy. But in September of 1949, the Manipuri king, held incommunicado -- with no access to his democratically elected Council of Ministers and Manipuri public opinion – and under the pressure of considerable misinformation, false promises and intimidation, was made to sign a merger agreement. Consequently, Manipur lost its autonomy, the elected ministry was dissolved and an Indian official was appointed to run the state. The merger was never ratified by a popular vote.

A number of militant Manipuri independentist groups regard the merger as illegal and unconstitutional and many in the Manipuri intelligentsia express bitterness about the way it was brought about. Manipur, with its long and unbroken history as an independent kingdom was to be incorporated into India not as an equal member state of the Indian Union, but as a `Part C state’, subsequently `upgraded’ into a Union Territory. The politics of recognition has been a persistent theme in Manipur’s troubled politics. Illustrative of the recognition theme are the protest movements demanding the status of a full-fledged state for Manipur under India’s federal framework, which it acquired only in 1972 – and, quite significantly, from the Manipuri point of view, nine years after Nagaland -- and those seeking the recognition of Meiteilon or Manipuri as one of India’s official languages – a status granted only in 1992. The possibility that their state might now be radically split behind their backs in secret negotiations between the Government of India and Naga rebel leaders is a source of enormous anxiety in Manipur. That Manipur geographically is a small valley surrounded by hills that make up the bulk of its territory – and that is where most Nagas live -- adds to this sense of anxiety

The Meiteis – an ethnic term that distinguishes the Manipur’s lowlanders from the hill peoples -- are proud of the long history of their state in the Imphal Valley. Meiteis, who live mostly in the Imphal Valley, number about 1.4 million, and they constitute 57% of the state’s population. Among the hill peoples are those that are considered Naga by pan-Naga organizations, e.g., the Tangkhuls (113 thousands), Mao (80 thousands), the Kabui (62 thousands) and, fourteen smaller groups. In addition, there are 13 communities that are by some classification placed in the Kuki-Chin-Zomi group. Together Manipur’s tribal population of 714 thousands amount to about 30% of the state’s population of 2.4 million people, though the hills comprise about 90% of the state’s territory.

It has been said by a Manipuri scholar that the `essence’ of the long history of Manipur is the interactions between the Meitei and the surrounding hill peoples and that the culture of the Meiteis is little more than the product of these `interactions, struggle for supremacy and subsequent fusion into a common ethno-linguistic entity’ (Singh, 1990: 238). It is perhaps a sign of the gulf between the old and the new ways in which identities are negotiated that a recent article could claim that, `the name Manipur is only applicable to the Hindu dweller of the plains areas’ (Shimray, 2001: 3675).

Meiteis today feel embattled and embittered by the identity discourse of the Nagas that threatens a radical diminution of the state’s territory. Meitei narratives of Manipur stress the state’s historical pluralism. A publication brought out to publicize the Manipuri point of view during the controversy over the ceasefire puts it this way: `It is an undeniable fact that there are many similarities in customs, habits and manners between the Meiteis and the hill people’. The term 'Naga’, it points out, quite accurately about a period that is now past, `had never been applied to the hill people of Manipur’, but it was a term used by the Tai-Ahom kings of Assam and the British to refer only to the people who inhabit the territory that is today called Nagaland. It points out that two Tangkhul Naga politicians, Yangmasho Shaiza and Rishang Keishang have been chief ministers of Manipur. And Meiteilon or Manipuri, it claims, is `the language of all Manipuris’ since it is both the language of the Meiteis and the lingua franca of the hill peoples (AMCTA, 2001: 35-47). Such claims, of course, are challenged by the Naga and by other hill peoples (See Shimray, 2001: 3676).

Meiteis resent that Nagas are supposedly trying to `destroy’ their state. Since Nagas acquired `a state of its own within a short span of time’, even when `historical states like Manipur’ did not, their aspirations have now `run wild’ even `threatening the territorial integrity of other historical and advanced states like Manipur and Assam’ (AMCTA, 2001: 23). Meiteis are critical of Manipuri Nagas who identify with NSCN-IM: `it is most unfortunate’ that sections of some tribes who `claim’ to be Nagas and `whose roots are deeply embodied in Manipur and whose parents shed blood for Manipur are now working in tandem with an outfit (i.e. the NSCN-IM) whose ambition is to destroy Manipur’ (AMCTA, 2001: 27).

Manipur’s anxiety about the Naga claims on its territory long precedes the current controversy. In 1994 when the Nagaland Assembly called for the unification of all Naga areas, the Manipur Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution to uphold the territorial integrity of Manipur. Interestingly enough, the chief minister of Manipur at that time was a Tangkhul Naga, Rishang Keising. Ethnic Naga politicians of Manipur have had to negotiate a difficult line between the claims on their loyalty as Manipuris and as Nagas, given the popularity of the pan-Naga cause.

Manipuri street protests against the cease-fire began as soon as the present ceasefire came to effect on 1 August 1997. On 4 August 1997, thousands of people participated in a protest rally in Imphal and the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed a resolution protesting the extension of the ceasefire. The mood that animated the spectacular protest in Manipur after the June 2001 announcement of the ceasefire having `no territorial limits’ is best captured in the words of a Manipuri activist. `The people of Manipur naturally felt that their apprehension was now coming true’, wrote Khumajam Ratan, presumably referring to the fear of a potential break-up of Manipur. `Feeling deeply betrayed, they rose in protest against the central government’s decision. When the news of the signing of the 14 June agreement in Bangkok reached Manipur there was a general disbelief. Gloom was writ large on the people’s faces. The initial general disbelief and gloom soon turned to an unprecedented demonstration of strong, powerful protests’ (Ratan, 2001: 1)

The protest included general strikes, social boycott of the political parties, burnings of the Indian national flag and of effigies of Indian political leaders. There were police firings, deaths and injuries and significant destruction of public property including symbolically important ones such as the State Legislative Assembly building. Many Manipuri Nagas left the tense Imphal Valley for the hills. The protests died down only after India’s Home Minister announced on 27 July 2001 that the three words `without territorial limits’ would be dropped from the agreement signed with the NSCN-IM regarding the scope of the cease-fire. There is a demand now for an amendment of the Indian Constitution to guarantee the inviolability of Manipur’s borders. Like Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, merged with India as a distinct entity, says a Manipuri publication. Since it had a `definite historical international boundary at the time of the merger’ India should not destroy those boundaries. `No alien force or internal contradictions can break the territorial integrity of Manipur’ (AMCTA, 2001: 38, 48).

Conclusion: Towards an Alternative Institutional Imagination

To those who had expected the long-running Naga conflict to end as a result of the current peace process, the impasse created by the Manipuri protest is disappointing However, the protest also served to bring to light the history of the region’s `strange multiplicity’ and the tensions between the spatial discourse that had historically enabled the hill peoples and lowland states of the region to coexist and the spatial discourse of exclusive territorially rooted collectivities that frame today’s politics of recognition among Nagas, Meiteis and other communities.

By stressing the need to confront constructionism, I do not wish to de-emphasize the power of these identities. To say that `communities are social constructions: imagined, invented, put together’, as Michael Walzer puts it, does not make them `less real or less authentic than some other’ (Walzer, 1995: 324). Nor do I wish to suggest that confronting constructionism is something that only the Nagas would have to do; it applies to the Manipuris and the Government of India as well. Some senior Indian security experts, for instance, believe that Naga unity is only a `secessionist fiction’. As one of these experts puts it in a recent essay there are nearly 40 major tribes sub-tribes among the people categorized as Nagas, each of which speaks a different language. . . and many of whom have unrelenting histories of internecine conflict’ (Gill, 2001). In its inability to see Naga nationhood as a work in progress, this mind-set is remarkably reminiscent of colonial writings that sought to deny the status of nationhood to colonized peoples on account of their supposedly perpetual state of conflict and disunity.

Indian official attitude towards the Naga conflict, unfortunately, has been dominated by a security mindset. There is a belief that weaknesses on the Naga side -- military defeat, an aging leadership and pressure from the grassroots -- have pushed the rebels to the negotiating table, and that time is on the government’s side to seek a resolution in its own terms. Apart from a lack of appreciation of how Nagas have come to see themselves as a collectivity – partly because of their long history of confrontation with the Indian state -- there is little appreciation in the security discourse, of the Indian government’s responsibility in the Naga nightmare or, at least, of the need to acknowledge the Naga sense of being wronged. Hindu nationalist myths and ill-informed ideas making Christian missionaries responsible for the Naga conflict may further stand in the way of creating an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation on the Indian side.

By contrast, Naga civic and intellectual life today shows remarkable signs of vitality, openness and flexibility. Perhaps because Nagas are free of the burden of a frozen hegemonic national narrative -- thanks to the lack of a long literary history -- Naga narratives are willing to live with remarkable ambiguity and uncertainty about their past. In that sense Bedrock of Naga Society was not an aberration. `The Nagas are not even sure of their numbers or the physical land areas they occupy’, writes a contemporary Naga intellectual known for his non-partisan appeal, ‘but whatever scraps of history have been handed down through the generations, they hold on with a tenacity that would escape the casual observer and surprise the serious researcher’. The absence of a common language or shared values, poor education, poor economic conditions or `the containment and control policies’ of the Government in order to manage the Naga rebellion, says Chassie, `have proved futile in tearing the Nagas apart’ (Chassie, 1999: 21).

It is clear by now that secret bi-lateral meetings between the Government of India and the rebel leaders cannot produce a solution to the Naga conflict. Manipur surely has as serious a stake as any in the Naga conflict. If it is not a part of the way the Naga conflict is conventionally mapped, it is a function of how most observers have got accustomed to India’s centralized style of governing and deciding the fate of this frontier region. Yet stripping the political arenas of the region of substantive powers has been the major cause of the unrelenting political turmoil in the region. The Manipuri outburst is a product of decision-making at far-away places by bureaucrats with no knowledge or interest in the region’s history.

At the same time it cannot be argued that the Naga talks can be suddenly expanded to include Manipur as a stakeholder. Before anything like that can happen, all parties would have to come to terms with the limits of the territorial discourse in northeast India that the collision between the Naga and Manipuri projects of recognition underscores. There needs to be an alternative institutional imagination and a source of fresh ideas may be an entirely different political discourse than that of making and breaking states (See Baruah, 1997). The government of India in the past has resisted pressures to accept the international discourse of the rights of indigenous peoples. While there is a lot to be said for a distinction between the predicament of indigenous peoples in settler societies and in India, debates within this global discourse can also bring to the table new ideas for addressing the Naga conflict. The principle of the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples under international law, for instance, has led to concepts like separate polities within shared territories, which have been tried in societies, where relations between settlers and indigenous peoples are based on treaties between a government and particular indigenous nations.

Even if these parties had vastly asymmetric power relations when these treaties were signed, and for a long time such treaties did not protect these peoples against assimilative policies and practices, in recent years they have provided the basis for challenging the foundational myths of the national communities created by settler communities. But most significantly, slowly but steadily they are modifying the architecture of federalism in countries like Australia, Canada and the United States. The `native’ peoples have been able to claim a place in the federal table alongside states. In the Indian mainland, the linguistic reorganization of states has created states or, what can be called nation provinces where particular nationalities constitute majorities capable of defining the public identity of those states. In many cases these nation-provinces are seen as legitimate partly because they pay symbolic homage to the history of India’s pre-colonial political formations. Given that experience, it is remarkable that there has been such a dismissive attitude towards the pre-colonial history of Manipur and its hold on the Manipuri political imagination. Whatever institutional structures are designed to resolve the Naga conflict will have to coexist alongside Manipur and not at the expense of Manipur.

Fortunately, in recent months, ideas about alternative institutional arrangements have become a part of Indian discussions of the Naga conflict. Indian journalist and policy thinker B.G. Verghese has suggested a non-territorial approach that would `strengthen the Naga way of life’ and would not affect the integrity of other states. He recommends the formation of a Naga Regional Council that would give Nagas outside Nagaland a say in Naga cultural matters (Cited in Hazarika, 2002). Noted anthropologist B K Roy Burman has suggested an institution modeled on the Saami Council where the Saami people living in Sweden, Finland, and Norway are represented (Times of India, 2001). To be sure, both Roy Burman’s and Verghese’s concepts are rather preliminary at this stage and they seem to address exclusively cultural issues. Given the history of the past five decades, it would be too much to expect the Naga conflict to suddenly end on a whimper of some vague promise of cultural autonomy. A proposal that might have the power to capture the Naga imagination at the moment might take the Burmese government into confidence and bring the Nagas of Burma into the picture as well. This can be the first step towards a comprehensive dialogue that includes Nagas as well as the other stakeholders to consider an arrangement that crosses both transnational and inter-state borders which recognizes Naga