Unearthing silenced voices

Around 30 km from Kohima is Mao Gate, the border between Nagaland and Manipur. Mao Gate takes its name from Mao village that falls on both sides of the border and the Mao community of the Nagas that inhabits this region. This border area is part of Senapati district, which along with adjoining Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Chandel districts (four of the five hill districts of Manipur), form a continuum of present-day ‘Nagaland’ in every sense— topographically, socially and culturally. This southern stretch is now in Manipur only due to the arbitrary boundaries that were created by the Indian state. These boundaries took off from the British occupation of the historical political entity ‘Nagalim’ (the homeland of the Naga people) and its division between India and Burma (Myanmar). After Independence, the Indian state further divided the Naga areas under its control, despite it being a contiguous area, into (parts of) four states: Nagaland, Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Likewise, the Nagas under Burmese occupation were divided between Sagaing sub-division and Kachin state.

It is in the context of this historical injustice done to the Naga people that we need to understand the tensions of May 2010 between Manipur and Nagaland. The crisis that started on 1 May when the Manipur government banned Thuingaleng Muivah, general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah (NSCNIM) from visiting Somdal, his village in Ukhrul district (after more than four decades of being away), is not about a person or a village but about the illegitimate power of a government over a people. It is about the quest of a people for their homeland that was unjustly wrested from them, the quest of a people for sovereignty that was not respected, when a legitimate demand was quelled by brute force, when every trick was used to sap their fine spirits and make them bend under the weight of an unjust rule. And now after a history of pain, even when a formal peace process has been in place for the last thirteen years, no consideration is shown towards the leader of a people by the state government, even though the central government is supposedly negotiating with NSCN at the highest level as an equal. How are self-respecting people supposed to understand this?

This is yet another instance where the government resorts to militarization, allegedly to avoid tension and maintain ‘law and order’, but instead plunging the entire region into a full-scale crisis— social, economic and political. Its belligerent stand led to protests that have by and large remained peaceful. The protests have, however, failed so far to make the government rethink its decision. Instead, the government has stubbornly stuck to its original line thereby continuing to cause hardship to the citizens on both sides, fuelling the tension that was already created and sowing seeds for a possible larger conflagration.

In Mao Land

The story began on 1 May 2010 when all the local dailies announced that the Manipur government had denied permission to Muivah on the ground that it might cause ‘communal disharmony endangering the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic communities’. This decision came as a jolt since the centre had already given its consent to the visit.

The tone was set the following morning, when a heavy deployment of hundreds of Manipur armed forces including police commandos, Manipur Rifles and Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) personnel moved into the border areas and villages at Mao Gate (on NH 39) to prevent Muivah’s visit, scheduled for 3 May. One of the first actions of the forces was to pull down the traditional welcome arch and banners put up by the Naga community to welcome Muivah at Mao Gate. Soon after, Section 144 CrPC was imposed in Senapati and Ukhrul districts and curfew was clamped in the area. By then, a tense atmosphere prevailed at Mao Gate, with police flag marches and armoured vehicles on display. People in the hill districts had started protesting against the imposition of Section 144 and the ban on Muivah’s entry. In Ukhrul town, there was a public meeting of over 10,000 persons followed by a candlelight vigil. Women of nine villages around Mao started an indefinite protest in Mao village, as did women of thirteen surrounding villages in Tadubi. Even as news came of peaceful protests from all Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur, one also began to hear of more direct action like the attack by a group of women on a police station in Ukhrul and the torching of five stranded trucks with Manipur number plates by unidentified persons late at night on 3 May.

I visited Mao Gate on 4 May, as part of a women’s team that included two leading Naga activists. Just outside Kohima, our vehicle started climbing a winding road through villages and forests, leaving the terraced fields at a distance below. We could see that the past loomed above and everywhere in many ways. The ‘security’ forces occupied entire hill ranges. As we went past the Assam Rifles camp, we saw a board outside which boldly declared: ‘Friends of the Hill People’. We went past Kigwema village and sure enough the Kigwema ‘army’ camp was right above. Be it the Indian army, paramilitary or the police, there have been so many different armed forces and for so long—more than five decades—that for the Nagas, this ‘friendship’ under the shadow of the gun has become part of their daily life and landscape.

A little beyond Viswema, 8 km before Mao Gate, we saw a truck burnt to cinders and soon another four vehicles in a similar state. At Khuzama village, we met some members of the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF). We learnt that NSF is the oldest civil society organization there, older even than the Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA) and the Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR). Each tribe has its own students’ union and all are under the NSF. The organization also covers all the Naga youth in Nagaland as well as the Naga-inhabited areas. Later, together with these NSF representatives, NMA women of the Mao area and some local media persons, we proceeded to the border.

We were stopped at the border by the Manipur police, who said they had orders not to allow any ‘media’ to enter. Eventually they allowed us entry for a short while. We were able to visit the women’s protests in Mao and Tadubi villages, where we found impressive assemblies of thousands of Mao Naga women in traditional black and red shawls, of all ages, many with children, settled on both sides of the National Highway 39. These were ‘silent’ protests, but not if one read the scores of placards women were carrying: ‘Muivah has a right to visit his birthplace’, ‘Respect Indo-Naga ceasefire’, ‘Down with the Ibobi government’, ‘We want peaceful settlement’, ‘Nagas are one’, ‘No more militarization’, ‘We want peaceful coexistence’, ‘Expedite peace process’, amongst others.

‘Why were curfew and Section 144 imposed? There was no turmoil here, no reaction, even after they directly provoked us by pulling down our welcome gate,’ said one member of the Mao Naga Women’s Welfare Association. Another woman in her thirties said: ‘I have never seen so many forces in the last three decades. Why have they been deployed? We are not having a war.’ Other women and men said: ‘This is unconstitutional and undemocratic’, ‘Our future is threatened’ and ‘Such actions are inviting ethnic clashes’.

Despite these democratic protests, the Manipur cabinet reaffirmed its earlier decision to deny permission to Muivah. Meanwhile, feelings of indignation and anger were building up. The students were irked by the government’s stand and use of armed forces to deny entry to the public as well as to turn away Naga Hoho, NSF, NMA and NPMHR leaders from the border. The NSF maintained that by denying them access to the Nagas on the other side and ‘an entry in our own land’, the government had insulted all the Nagas. On 3 May, the NSF had issued an ultimatum demanding that the Manipur government revoke Section 144 in Naga-inhabited areas and issue an apology within twenty-four hours, else there would be a bandh on all Manipur vehicles in these areas. Since these conditions were not met, the indefinite bandh started from the evening of 4 May. This bandh obstructed vehicular movement on the main road connecting Manipur and Nagaland.

On the evening of 5 May, a villager from Songsong was assaulted by IRB personnel. The next day, when women of Songsong and other villages protested against this assault and demanded that the forces should leave, they were tear-gassed by police commandos and then fired upon by IRB personnel. Two college students, Daikho Loshuo (twenty-three) and Neli Chakho (twenty-one) from Kalinamai village, were killed on the spot and Lokho, a postgraduate student from Songsong, was critically injured. As the public ran for cover, the security personnel fired tear gas, injuring at least seventy people, mostly women since they were at the front, though the exact number of injured is not known as many fled to the jungles. The inspector general of police however denied the firing in a media interview, saying that ‘We did not have any firing order so there was no open firing’.

(Excerpted with permission from Bela Bhatia’s ‘India’s Forgotten Country’; published by Penguin)