Yesterday once more

For peace process to move forward, Nagas must accept Nagalim is not feasible, and India must come up with a good autonomy package.

Not surprisingly, the latest round of talks between India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isaac-Muivah) have ended without a breakthrough. The sticking points remain the same — the Naga demand for unification of Naga-inhabited areas in a new state, Nagalim, and special federal arrangements between this entity and India. The Indian side, represented by Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes and interlocutor K. Padmanabhaiah, was amenable to a special status, and not more. With this, the New Delhi-NSCN (I-M) talks are once again stuck in replay mode, with the 50 or so peace talks since the ceasefire of 1997 having ended in stalemate.

HT Image

Clearly, an end to the Naga conflict — one of South Asia’s longest running, which has claimed 25,000 lives — requires imagination and flexibility on both sides. There are two aspects to the Naga demands. One relates to political autonomy and is relatively easy to fulfil. NSCN (I-M), to its credit, has gradually reduced the scope of its demands from independence from India to autonomy within the Indian Union. The Indian government needs to come up with outside-of-the-box solutions that will meet Naga demands without violating the Constitution. The Jammu & Kashmir model could be a good starting point. More complicated, and perhaps impossible to fulfil, is the demand for unification of all so-called Naga areas that are now a part of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur under a single Nagalim. The Nagas have never been a unified and sovereign group. There is little agreement even among the Nagas over who is or is not a Naga, and which areas are Naga ones. Naga nationalism is a work in progress, feeding off anti-India sentiment.