As Naga leader Muivah visits his village after decades, what is the future of the insurgency?

The significance of 91-year-old Thuingaleng Muivah’s week-long visit to the Manipur village in which he was born has as much to do with the trajectory of the Naga national movement as it has to do with the stature of the man himself. The visit, starting Wednesday, was the first time in more than five decades that the Naga leader had returned to his birthplace of Somdal.

Who is Muivah. What is his story? And what does his visit reflect about the state of the Naga campaign for a homeland?

It was in 1997 that my husband and I met him and interviewed him over a month in Thailand. This was shortly after the ceasefire and beginning of the Indo-Naga talks. It was our belief, my husband and mine, that if we could tell the story of the Naga national movement, it would create an awareness of the Nagas and facilitate the talks. Unfortunately, we could not publish the interviews in a book until 2019.

The book presents the story of the Naga national movement as the participants see it. It was during that time I learnt of Muivah’s story.

Muivah was born in March 1933 in the small village of Somdal in the princely state of Manipur. He was born in a very poor family. As a boy, he would accompany his father to Imphal to work in the fields owned by members of the Meitei community, digging channels in the paddy fields. He got Rs 5 for his labour. He was thrilled because he could buy a shirt and underwear.

Muivah went to school in Ukhurl. He had to walk on a pathway carrying a bag of paddy to his hostel. He found the burden so heavy that tears would come to his eyes but he continued determined.

In Somdal, while working in the paddy fields, he met a young girl but he was so embarrassed that he covered himself with mud. But she must have seen through the mud and they became sweethearts and, much later, got married.

That boy growing up in the small village was troubled by one question: why were his people humiliated by everyone? He wanted the Nagas to become a people who stood up to anyone trying to humiliate them.

When he grew up and graduated from a college in Shillong, he joined the Naga National Council-led by Angami Zapu Phizo in 1964. He was elected as its general secretary in 1965. The Naga National Council recognised his abilities and his commitment. In 1966, he was told to lead the first batch of Nagas to China.

Muivah along with a group of Nagas, men and women from distant villages, walked through thick forests without the aid of maps or GPS. He was to spend ten years in China and he had access to Chairman Mao himself.

As more batches of Nagas trekked to China and got arms training, the government of India came down on them heavily. Finally in 1975, an agreement was signed between the Naga National Council and the government of India. It came to be known as the Shillong Agreement, after the place in which it was signed.

Muivah, who was in China, rejected the deal. He declared that the Nagas would continue to fight for an independent state. This led to fratricidal war between those who supported the Shillong Accord and those who did not.

In 1980, Muivah along with Isaac Chishi Swu formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. The word socialist reflected the influence of China but it did not reflect the ideology of most Naga nationalists. The Baptist Church to which many Nagas belonged also opposed socialism.

By 1988, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac Muivah had split into two factions. Since then there have been a growing number of factions of the Naga national Movement, both of the Naga National Council and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland.

The Nagas were no longer fighting the Indian state as much as they were fighting each other and the deadly clashes between Naga insurgent groups has led to growing alienation of the people from the movement.

Perhaps sensing this and also knowing that the only resolution to any political conflict is political negotiations, Muivah agreed to sit across the table with the Indian authorities to negotiate for a just agreement. In 1997, the Indo-Naga talks began in right earnest in Europe and Thailand. After 27 years in the jungles, Muivah emerged as the chief negotiator.

At the time the main demand of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac Muivah was the integration of all Naga-inhabited areas under one administration. This area included whole of Nagaland, parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. It also included the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur, where Muivah had been born.

The Indian intelligence agencies that were heavily involved in the peace process also had their own rivalries. The domestic intelligence agencies looked upon the talks as their turf since the insurgency was in India while the Research and Analysis Wing believed the process fell in its jurisdiction since the talks were being held outside India.

In January 2000, Muivah was arrested in Bangkok airport on his way to the talks and he found himself in a Thai jail. Soon after, his nephew , Grinder Muivah, who had been chosen by the government of India as the go-between, was arrested too.

The peace talks came to a halt.

It was at this crucial juncture that I played a role in the release of both Thuingaleng Muivah from the Thai jail and Grinder Muivah from a jail in Mizoram. It was extremely gracious of Thuingaleng Muivah to remember my contribution and thank me in his speech in Ukhrul this week.

However, to get back to his story. From now the story is inextricably linked to the Indo-Naga talks. After Muivah was released from the Thai jail some months later, the Indo-Naga talks resumed and the government of India agreed that the ceasefire would extend to the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur.

The Meitei community saw this as a threat to the unity and integrity of the Manipur state. They took to the streets and opposed any attempt to divide the Manipur state. The opposition took such a violent turn that the Meiteis even burnt down the state legislature in June 2001 in protest.

In 2010, the Meiteis prevented Muivah from visiting Somdal.

But more recently, after the ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities, the Meiteis have formed an alliance with the Nagas. So this time, they have have welcomed him.

But the Indo-Naga talks have failed. There is no immediate threat of the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur separating to form a Naga homeland. It is now the Kuki-Zo community that is a target of the latest violence who are demanding a separate state or Union territory.

The Indo-Naga talks may have failed but the failure cannot be blamed on Muivah and Isaac Swu. What is important is that the political and personal integrity of the Naga leaders have won them respect from the Indian authorities, even from the Indian intelligence agencies.

When Isaac Chishi Swu died in 2016, top Indian intelligence officers paid their respects to him by to personally laying wreaths on his coffin.

Thuingaleng Muivah has also won the respect of the people he considered his enemies. The Indian authorities facilitated his return to his village and to his people – arriving triumphantly in a helicopter to a rousing welcome greeted by thousands of people waving the Naga flag.

This is comment on the stature of Muivah and also of a display of the graciousness of the Indian state. That is the true significance of Muivah’s visit to Somdal, the little village where he grew up.

The fact that the talks took place at all is a milestone in Indian democracy. The talks had raised hopes that they would lead to peace in India’s North East region. But it was not to be so. The entire North East region is riven by insurgencies, many of these armed and trained by the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac Muivah. These insurgencies, including that of the NSCN, have no vision beyond their assertion of their identities rooted in a mythical homeland.

The National Socialist Council of Nagaland harps on the fact that Indian has recognised the unique history of the Naga people. While it is indeed an achievement to force the Indian side to recognise the Nagas as a people with their own unique history, this cannot be interpreted as recognising the Nagas having any rights to sovereignty. It does , however, recognise the Nagas to their identity, history and cultural traditions that are guaranteed under Article 371A of the the Indian Constitution.

The assertion of that identity could be seen with the Tangkhul Naga men as dressed as warriors of yore carrying spears and making victorious cries. It made for an impressive ceremonial welcome but these customs and traditions have little meaning in the daily life of the Nagas.

Moreover the traditions and customs, like in every other society, are rooted in patriarchal notions. We witnessed this when the Naga tribal bodies opposed the reservation of women in the legislative assembly.

Besides, with the emphasis on the idea of Nagalim for Christ, these customs and traditions are looked upon as vestiges of the pagan past. This is not a slogan found in the original Naga Constitution of Phizo’s Naga National Council. In fact, the Naga national movement has become more and more a movement to establish a theocratic state.

Nagaland and Naga areas have been called the Bible belt of India. It should be remembered that having a Christian majority state that upholds Christian values is quite different from Christian fundamentalism of the kind that backs US President Donald Trump. Incidentally, many Nagas who are settled in America are fervent supporters of Donald Trump and also of Israel and Zionism. After all, Zionism began with Christian fundamentalists. The influence of the American Baptist Church on shaping the Naga national movement is very deep.

As for the Framework Agreement signed in 2015, it was more symbolic than substantial. It has no vision for the future.

What is the future of the Naga insurgency?

Since the time the Nagas first took up arms in support of their demand for a sovereign state, there has been the rise of a Naga middle class that is deeply linked to the Indian state. They do not support the insurgency except to use it to further their own position in Indian society. The gap between the Naga rich and the Naga poor is growing rapidly. An entire generation of Naga youth are working in Indian cities and abroad.

This generation have seen more battles between various Naga factions than it has seen battle between Indian forces and Naga militants. The Naga national movement has split into many factions and each one is armed to the teeth but none has any vision for the future. The possession of arms by people without a vision is a dangerous thing.

India’s North East has always been a playground for intelligence agencies. Now, with the political situation in Bangladesh and Myanmar being extremely volatile, the split of the Naga national movement (many of them engineered by intelligence agencies) means that there is no one to represent the Nagas as a people, neither the armed groups nor the civil society organisations.

The Naga national movement’s biggest contribution has been that it gave the Nagas a sense of identity and its biggest failure is that that identity now is rooted in fundamentalist theology and narrow identity politics.

Muivah’s vision for the future was influenced by socialist ideals of respecting ordinary people. That can be seen in the video clips posted on social media in which he is laughing and joking with villagers. The ease with which he talks to people, never as someone who has power but as an equal. His deep love of his people and his wholehearted identification with the poor makes him stand out as a true revolutionary. The last one standing.

Nandita Haksar is a lawyer and author. Her most recent book, co-authored with Soe Myint, is Military Rule in Burma (1988-2024): Story of Mizzima Media: Born in Exile, Banned in Myanmar.