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The Peace Process in Nagaland
An Accord that never was: a critique of the 1975 Shillong Accord
The 1975 Shillong Accord signed between
representatives of the Naga underground and those of the government of
India (which is what the Governor is) was the beginning of a series of
accords that Delhi signed with separatist rebel groups, agitating
student organizations and “moderate” political groups (such as the
Longewal faction of the Akali Dal) in the second quarter of the
Republic. The first quarter of the Republic was marked by fierce
military responses to any separatist challenge -- but in keeping with
Kautilyan tradition of state-craft that largely determines the way the
Indian nation-state functions, Delhi also came up with a whole mix of
political initiatives, largely tactical but some obviously guided by
long-term perceptions of strategic interests.
The political initiatives mainly aimed at
getting the agitator or the insurgent to the table, to win him over by
an offer of wide ranging concessions (but all within he constitutional
parameters of the country) of autonomy and statehood, and if the rebel
leadership proved too intransigent to appeasement, then, to split the
movement and its leadership in an attempt to forge an understanding with
the so-called moderates. The craft centered round the creation of
political space in which the “moderates” could manoeuvre and get a share
of power, that would, in the long run, undermine the rebellion and its
reason for being.
For those who are inclined to project the
Naga rebellion as the first ethnic challenge to the Indian nation-state,
it would be useful to know that the tribes people in Tripura, under the
leadership of the undivided Communist Party of India, were the first
ethnic group in India’s northeast to resort to armed struggle,
immediately after India’s partition. The rebellion was crushed and with
the Communist party’s change of line from armed struggle to
parliamentary path in the early fifties, and the absorption of the
tribal movement within its fold, the movement returned to the political
mainstream.
I would argue that the Shillong Accord has
no reason to be seen as a political settlement which is what it was
projected as. While the Naga rebel leaders agreed to cease hostilities,
surrender weapons and accept the Indian Constitution, the Indian
government merely reiterated its desire to “discuss other issues for a
final settlement”. And nearly twenty-five years after the Accord, those
issues have yet not been properly discussed -- even during the ongoing
talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). In the
last three years that the Delhi government has been negotiating with the
NSCN, substantive political issues have not yet come up for discussion.
One could say that the absence of a strong government at the Centre with
the mandate to take crucial decisions may have caused the delays. But
one could argue that the Centre has run out of ideas -- it does not have
a clear vision of bringing a solution to the Naga problem and is thus
buying time. The general outlook in the Indian Home Ministry is to get
rebel groups to the table, then undermine their credibility, wear them
down and finally get them to accept a deal that gives them very little
in real terms. In a way, history has come full circle. The NSCN
leaders who denounced the Shillong as a sell-out now find themselves in
the same predicament -- having decided to negotiate with India, the NSCN
leaders are beginning to discover “it is perhaps easier fighting the
Indians than fighting them on the table.” (Thuingaleng Muivah)
How could the leaders of South Asia’s
first and until recently strongest rebellion settle for so less, when
they signed the Shillong Accord? In short, the Naga rebels did not
negotiate the accord when their movement was at its peak. There was a
time in the late sixties when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, upset with
the growing Chinese and Pakistani support to the Naga rebel movement and
worried about its growing military strength was prepared to concede any
“legitimate political demand” short of giving up Indian sovereignty over
Nagaland. Some rebel leaders and Indian officials close to Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi say that she was at one stage on the verge of
“accepting a Bhutan-style arrangement with the Nagas” (Muivah). But the
moment she found the Naga National Council (NNC) heading for a split
along tribal lines (Sema vs. Angami), she shelved the proposal. As the
NNC split and the Sema leaders formed a separate parallel government
(the Revolutionary Government of Nagaland -- RGN), Mrs. Gandhi and her
advisers first sidelined the NNC and boosted the RGN, aggravating the
divide within Naga society and its once-powerful underground.
With the crushing of Pakistan and the
liberation of its eastern wing, Delhi had deprived the northeast Indian
rebels of its main regrouping zone. Mrs. Gandhi unleashed a powerful
military offensive to further weaken the Naga rebel movement and the
local administration continued to secure large scale surrenders.
A brief review of circumstances leading to
the Shillong Accord would justify my contention a) the political failure
of the Naga underground in making the most of its military success at
the right time; b) the emergence of the Nagaland state and the space it
created for political groups that sought a middle road between the
Indian political establishment and the Underground.
As India waited for its freedom from the
British, the Nagas too said that they must have theirs. Their argument
was that they had been independent before the British cane and conquered
and were entitled to be such once the British left. But the leaders of
independent India viewed any area deciding to opt out of India as a
threat to the infant post-colonial nation-state. So in the confusion
that prevailed in the last days before independence, a nine-point
agreement was worked out by Assam's governor in 1947 by Assam’s
governor.
The agreement provided the first framework
of administration in the Naga hills, but it said in no uncertain terms
in its preamble: “The right of the Nagas to develop themselves according
to their freely expressed wishes is recognised.” In fact, the ambiguity
in this nine-point agreement was believed to be responsible for the
future discord between India and the Naga National Council. In its last
paragraph, the agreement said: “The Governor of Assam as the Agent of
the Government of the Indian Union will have special responsibility for
a period of ten years to ensure the due observance of the agreement. At
the end of this period, the Naga National Council will be asked whether
they require the above agreement to be extended for a further period or
a new agreement will be arrived at.” The NNC interpreted this as the
right to withdraw from the Indian Union if they so desired, while the
Indian government saw it as an option change the administrative
structure and nothing more than that.
So in 1955, with the consolidation of the
Indian grip in the Naga hills and rejection of any attempt by the NNC to
open a dialogue to “discuss the future of the Nagas”, the NNC took the
path of armed insurrection. Once it started, it spread quite rapidly
and within an year the Naga army’s rank had swelled from 500-1500
soldiers. The Burmese Nagas too joined in. The Indian
pacification-campaign took a tribe by tribe approach and later once
Nagaland became a state in 1963, the Indian government reverted to a
district-by-district approach. The administration won over the leaders
of a particular tribe, used them to open negotiations in a particular
area and then bring about their surrender by accepting essentially local
level demands.
In 1956, as the fighting intensified
between the Indian security forces and the Naga rebels, the first
fissures in the NNC surfaced with the mysterious murder. Thieyieu
Sakhrie, one of the rebel leaders. The NNC chief A. Z. Phizo was blamed
for the assassination, and a case is pending against him for alleged
complicity in the murder. Sakhrie’s murder shocked the Nagas as he had
played an important role in boosting the propaganda machine of the NNC.
Sakhrie’s death led to the first desertions from the underground.
In 1957, a few Naga leaders convened a
meeting under the banner of the Naga Peoples Convention (NPC), saying
that they wanted to “mediate” between the Indian Government and the NNC.
The NPC was made up of several former underground sympathizers, many of
them fed up with the blood shed. The NNC initially agreed to send
representatives but later backed out, “sensing that this was am Indian
ploy to get us to the table at any cost” (Zashie Huire, former NNC
chairman). Of the Indian government the NPC demanded the merger of the
Naga Hills District with the Tuensang Frontier Division and its
placement under the External Affairs Ministry as a pre-condition
necessary for a political settlement, to which Prime Minister Nehru
agreed. It also appealed to the NNC to give up its “cult of violence”
and promised to work for a peaceful settlement to end hostilities that
would lead to the withdrawal of the army and the de-grouping of
villages. The NNC however rejected these moves, dubbing the NPC as
“stooges of the Indian Government”. The NPC then moving away from its
role as mediator drew up a sixteen-point agreement which formed the
basis for the sixteen-point agreement between Indian state and the NPC
in 1960. This led to the creation of a separate state called Nagaland
incorporating the Naga Hills district and the Tuensang frontier area.
Phizo then in London, denounced the NPC-Delhi understanding.
The sixteen-point agreement was a
substantive agreement between the two parties. The Indian state took a
big step forward by making Nagaland a state. The northeast had been
largely kept out of the linguistic re-organisation. The creation of
Nagaland as a state was an attempt to put in place a new and moderate
leadership which would accept the Indian Constitution and its control
over Nagaland for substantial concessions of autonomy. So, in a way,
the NPC was able to get much more out of Delhi in the 1960 agreement,
than which the rebel leaders managed to get in the Shillong Accord.
With the establishment of Nagaland as a
separate state, the rebels unleashed a furious guerrilla campaign.
While the attacks on the security forces mounted, “moderate” Naga
politician were also killed. The assassination of the NPC President Dr.
Imkongliba Ao further divided Naga society. The Naga rebels were well
trained and armed by Pakistan. They also set off major explosions in
rail stations in areas of Assam bordering Nagaland and on trains in
1963, 4 and 5 killing nearly 160 persons.
The fierce rebel campaign evoked an
equally strong military response. The civilian population continued to
suffer, caught between the army and the rebels, between the two
governments, one run by India and the other by the NNC. The essential
problem remained, becoming more complex as time went on. Amidst fresh
initiatives by the Baptist church, the Peace Mission was born in
February 1964. Under its stewardship, the Suspension of Operations
agreement, popularly known as the Cease-fire agreement was signed in
August that year. Under the agreement the security forces undertook to
suspend (1) jungle operations (2) raiding of rebel camps (3)
patrolling beyond 1000 yards of the security posts (4) searching of
villages (5) aerial action (6) arrests and (7) imposition of forced
labour as punishment.
The Naga rebels undertook to discontinue
(1) sniping and ambushing (2) imposition of taxes (3) kidnapping and
sabotage (4) fresh recruitment (5) raiding or firing on security
outposts, towns and administrative centres and (6) movement with arms.
The talks were spread over the next few years and were conducted in two
phases -- the first between Indian officials and the Naga leaders which
ran into seven rounds of discussions and the second between the Indian
political leadership and the Naga leaders which spread over six rounds.
The wide difference of views found no
meeting point as the Indian officials insisted that any kind of further
autonomy could be conceded to the Nagas but not sovereignty, and the
Nagas insisted on “nothing short of independence”. Mutual
recriminations continued throughout the seven rounds of
official-level-talks. At the second round of talks the Peace Mission
stepped in with the proposal to get both sides to “renounce violence”.
This was agreed upon, but successive meetings could decide upon the
modalities.
The Peace Mission came up with an
interesting proposal -- the NNC, it said had the right of
self-determination but it should exercise it in favour of staying with
India, following which further discussions could be held on the future
relationship of Nagaland and India. The NNC demanded a plebiscite on
the proposal of joining India and the upgradation of the talks to
Ministerial level. But in the next round of talks the Indians rejected
the demand for plebiscite.
The NNC also demanded the inclusion of
Phizo in the talks and the Indian state agreed, but he did not turn up
for the upgraded “ministerial level talks”. They spread over 18 months
and involved the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Ato
Kilonser (Prime Minister) of the Federal Government of Nagaland. By the
time the NNC leaders sat down with Mrs. Gandhi, the decision to send a
guerrilla batch for training and arming to China which had offered
assistance had been taken. On the very night that the NNC leaders
arrived in Delhi for talks, two bombs allegedly planted by the Naga
underground killed a number of persons. They were viewed by the Indian
government as being an attempt by the “hard-line section of the
underground” to sabotage the talks. The first round did not yield much
and in the second round the two Prime Ministers Gandhi and Kughato
Sukhai met without their aides. This created suspicion within the NNC/FGN
set up and though Kughato stuck to the demand for sovereignty, some of
his colleagues openly accused him of taking bribes from the Indian
government.
Mrs. Gandhi, though hard pressed by her
own partymen to cancel the talks insisted that “it was the need of the
hour to exercise utmost restraint, without which the long standing Naga
problem cannot be solved”. Many argue that this was the stage that the
Naga rebels could have got anything out of India short of sovereignty.
The Indians unlike the Pakistanis in the Bengali nationalist struggle in
east Pakistan, used in the Naga hills a clever mix of military
operations and political initiatives. In the process, it successfully
divided the Naga underground and managed to prop up a noticeable
overground element in Naga society and politics who would depend on
India for their existence.
The carrot-and-stick (or the Kautilyan
Sham-dam-dandha-bhed) policy of India brought to the surface the inner
contradictions within the Naga underground (the schism on tribal lines,
the crisis over leadership and the difference in tactics to be
adopted). A society, where the tribe and the clan were still very
strong institutions and where “nationalism” exist in reaction to the
Indian state, could not hide the divisions that existed. They surfaced
soon after the Ministerial level talks between Indira Gandhi and Kughato.
The military wing long content with the classic hill guerrilla warfare
tactics, turned to modern urban terrorism and were hobnobbing with one
of India’s major rivals, China. This discovery upset Mrs. Gandhi and
the talks ended by mid, 1966.
Immediately after the break-down of the
ministerial talks the Naga Federal Parliament (Tatar Hoho) condemning
Kughato for the failure of the talks. He resigned in 1967 after a
no-confidence motion was passed against him. His brother Kaito Sema was
also removed from his position as the Defence Minister and removed from
the Tatar Hoho itself. Kughata’s and Kaito’s brother-in-law Scato Swu
was removed from the post of President and was replaced by Mehiasiu
Angami who “assumed all executive powers”. The new President Mehiasiu
Angami and the army chief Mowu Angami were significantly from Phizo’s
village. The changes in the top leadership was reflective of the
Sema-Angami rivalry. This was compounded by the assassination of Kaito
in 1968, presumably on the orders of the Federal Government. The Sema
rebels immediately responded by kidnapping Zimik Ramyo the Home Minister
as he was suspected of passing the orders for Kaito’s assassination.
These incidents drove a clear wedge in the rebel movement, and so began
the decimation of the NNC/FGN and the Naga Federal Army.
The Semas formed a “Council of Naga
People” and unilaterally the dissolution of the FGN, and formed the
“Revolutionary Government of Nagaland” (RGN). Scato Swu was elected as
its Prime Minister and the RGN committed itself to a “peaceful solution”
of the Naga problem. The formation of the RGN was predictable denounced
by the NNC/FGN. The Nagaland state government headed by Hokishe Sema
tried to win over the RGN (mostly from his own Sema tribe), which though
technically an underground movement could freely move around in the
state. S. C. Jamir, Hokishe’s arch-rival in the ruling Naga Nationalist
Organisation (NNO) was seen as being close to the NNC/FGN. Hokishe
wanted a settlement with the RGN, totally excluding the FGN, while Jamir
insisted that no peace was possible without a settlement with the FGN.
By then, the United Democratic Front (UDF)
had emerged as a party, ready to challenge the NNO that finally joined
the Congress Party. The UDF was strongly supported by the NNC/FGN and
they demanded that talks should only be with the FGN. The formation of
these overground parties with strong underground links, served to
further dilute the underground that was already riven with dissension.
The 1971 Bangladesh war further deprived the Naga rebels of a foreign
base, a regrouping area which could be used for training and expansion
of the rebel army. The frustration in rebel ranks was made evident in
the attempt by FGN to assassinate Chief Minister Hokishe Sema in 1972.
This followed the imposition of a ban on the FGN/NNC and its armed wing,
the Naga Federal Army.
This was followed by relentless
counter-insurgency operations by the Indians, the surrender of many FGN
commanders and fresh attempts to bring peace, which also failed. With
the advent of the “President’s Rule” the Nagaland government and the
Indian army conducted the military-political offensive with more force.
S. C. Dev the one time Commissioner of Nagaland says the “President’s
Rule provided the ideal situation in which we could operate, free from
the interference of politicians.” He argues that the “softening of the
FGN” is directly related to the “free-hand” accorded to army and the
administration.
It is this context that the Nagaland Peace
Council was formed with several church leaders and Phizo’s brother. Mr.
Dev says that the administration was promised by some NPC members that
“they (the underground) are willing to sign anything that the Governor
might like them to”. The meetings between the NPC, the underground and
the Governor and his advisers finally resulted in the Shillong Accord in
1975.
The accord was a victory for India -- the
underground leaders had agreed to accept the Indian constitution of
their own volition, deposit their arms at appointed places and
“formulate other issues for discussion for final settlement”. a
supplementary agreement detailed the process of depositing weapons and
other modalities for housing the underground members in peace camps.
The Naga rebel leaders got nothing out of the Accord -- absolutely
nothing. As detractors of the agreement maintained it was a
“sell-out”. Interestingly, the Accord was signed with “representatives
of the Naga underground”, rather than with an organisation like the NNC
or the FGN. Phizo neither endorsed nor renounced the agreement. It may
be said that he was only too aware of the ground realities. In any
case, the FGN/NNC was totally sidelined in the process and soon withered
away.
This paved the way for the formation of
the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). Nagas who were still
not reconciled with being part of India (their number today not being
inconsiderable) rallied behind the NSCN, as it grew, in Muivah’s words,
“on the ruins of the Shillong Accord”. The Shillong Accord marked the
end of the most volatile phase of the Naga rebellion -- an era during
which the movement was broadbased, militarily strong and relatively free
from the virus of tribalism. The NSCN has emerged as a strong rebel
organisation and a rallying point for other guerrilla groups in the
region, but has never enjoyed the popular support that NNC enjoyed at
its peak.
The Shillong Accord had a principal lacuna
in that it did not set out a final settlement. The Indian government is
now engaged in just such an exercise with the NSCN (Issac Muivah
faction), but progress has been slow. The discussions have so far been
held outside of India and the Naga leaders have stuck to their demand
for independence -- but clearly that is not possible.
Meanwhile the factional squabbles continue. The NSCN, which split in
1988 (on tribal lines, like the NNC in 1968), bears the legacy of a
divided movement whose leaders are more hostile each other than towards
India. Recently, the leader of the NSCN’s Khaplang faction, Dally
Mungro was killed by NSCN (Muivah) guerrillas. This led Delhi to warn
that the talks would be shelved if such killings continued. The Indian
government says that it wants to broadbase the Naga talks by including
all rebel factions -- but unity among them has remained elusive, and
Delhi is discovering to its own discomfort, that it is easy to split a
rebel movement for limited tactical gains, but not quite as easy to
arrive at a political settlement with a movement that is a divided
house.
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