The recent attack in Manipur is the result of deep mismanagement of the 18-year-long second phase of the Naga peace process. It feeds into the perennial refrain of the Armed Forces — that the insurgency in the North-East is essentially a series of political contestations
If media reports are true, the Union Government is rekindling its counter-insurgency measures for the North-Eastern States. It is determined to ‘smash’ the outfits, responsible for the death of 20 Army soldiers of the 6 Dogra Regiment near Moltuk village in Chandel, Manipur on June 4. The Government is planning to deliver to them, the same kind of carnage that was done to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland.
Senior functionaries as well as the Chief Ministers of various States, from where the soldiers hailed, have expressed the need to go ‘all out’ in squelching those who threaten the unity and integrity of the country. The Opposition too has seized the opportunity to accuse the Government of being soft-on-terror and has demanded immediate results.
Predictably, the national media has jumped in the fray, taking belated notice of the string of Army casualties in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the past few months, haphazardly connecting the dots, and has all but declared that the North-East is sliding into chaos.
That it routinely takes setbacks to an arm of the Central State machinery for North-East to even reach our living rooms, before disappearing again in a collective national amnesia is deeply unfortunate in itself. Nevertheless, the current spate of attention throws up the chance to revisit the multiple layers of breakdown between the region and the mainland.
First, the immediate context: It is well established by now that the splintered faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang)-led the attack. It did so in cohort with the Meitei-centered Kanglei Yawol Kanna lup and the Kangleipak Communist Party, under the umbrella of the recently formed United liberation Front of Western South East Asia, based just across the border in Myanmar.
While it is apt to remind Myanmar of its routinely flouted promises to flush out ‘Indian’ insurgents, the history of India-Myanmar joint counter-insurgency offensives in the 1960’s and 1970’s attest to the impossibility of either fully fencing or manually sealing the deep jungle terrain.
Moreover, in pursuit of its own national interest, Myanmar in 2012 reached an agreement with the Khaplang group, offering it free movement throughout the country and substantial autonomy in several Naga inhabited areas in the Sagaing and Kachin districts. Clearly, irrespective of its pronouncements, Myanmar is not particularly driven to help hand-over the perpetrators to India.
The attack is understood not just to be a show of strength by the Khaplang group but also a bargaining chip to engage the Government of India again, after abrogating a 15-year ceasefire in March this year. After having cultivated the Khaplang faction of the NSCN throughout the 1990’s decade to reign in the rival NSCN (Isak Muivah), the Government’s strategy subsequently has been to build up the IM faction instead and help it consolidate the six-decade old Naga national movement.
Thus, a cold peace in Nagaland notwithstanding, the current attack is a clear fall-out of the deep mismanagement of the 18-year-long second phase of the Naga peace process (the first phase lasted from 1964 to 1972). This feeds directly into the perennial refrain of the Armed Forces — that the theatre of insurgency in the North-East is essentially a series of political contestations.
And while the Forces, be they the Border Security Force, the paramilitary forces, or the Army, can provide tactical support to stem the violent acts of resistance, it cannot do the job of nation/State-building, which is the prerogative of the Centre alone.
This begs the inevitable question: What good are the routine eruptions of outrage at Army casualties and perennially regurgitated resolves to ‘crush’ the anti-national elements, if not accompanied by an extremely pro-active effort towards some rigorous, old-fashioned nation-buildingIJ Moreover, if India is aspiring towards a sustainable multinational and secular self-image, why must the inherent burden for integration rest with the peripheral sub-national communities and move uni-directionally towards the mainlandIJ
Why must we obliterate regional histories from school text-books, ignore regional concerns over governance and public goods in the mainstream news media, and stamp-out regional sub-national sentiments like that of the Nagas and the Kuki’s that might just be cross-border in nature and which preceded the career of the postcolonial Indian state itselfIJ It is a misnomer in today’s time and age to assume that every sub-national aspiration in the North-East poses a challenge to the unity and integrity of India.
Undoubtedly, the Naga national movement was the progenitor of all self-determination movements in the region and comprises the heart of the insurgency industry, which today involves the elements from within the state machinery as well. However, the overwhelming focus of the Naga’s today is not sovereignty from India, but Naga territorial integration within the Indian Union.
Additionally, the socio-political dynamics as well as the geo-strategic significance of the region dictates that every collective articulate its grievances (usually over the distribution of public goods) in nationalist and separatist terms in order to secure the attention of the Centre. In other instances, the disillusionment with the idea of India is directly a result of the state’s excesses, be it in political or security manoeuvres; and rather a reflection of the state’s incomplete and imperfect nation/state building efforts, rather than an inherent malaise.
None of the above observations take away from the palpable security threats posed by the proliferation of Armed outfits, often backed by external actors, and which include the thriving gun-running and drug-smuggling networks. However, in the rush for befitting replies and immediate results, we would do well to not lose sight of the larger questions of nation-building plaguing our past and imploring our futures.
(The writer is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She specialises in the Naga national movement)