Views & Reviews
Important Things Needed To Know About Gaidinliu
If you can laugh at your own Folly, you are a matured Person: Any person, who can own its own Mistake, is a mature confident Person. If the Naga can laugh at it own folly, it is a Society on its way to maturity.
It is secret for most Nagas, even sacred for a small minority that considers India as its ancient Adversary.
On other hand, the behaviour of India is oftentimes incomprehensible and disconsolate to many a Naga.
No European Nation, in the 16th to 19th Centuries, considered it Immoral, Unethical and Unconscionable to colonize non-European Lands in the Continents of Africa, North America, South America, Asia, Australia and set up their Empires.
With Spears and precious few fire-Arms; Naga Hills resisted the British Colonial Power for nearly half a Century from 1832 to 1879. Then 7 years after Karamchand Mohandas Gandhi in 1921, for the first time, demanded a Constitution of India “without outside Interference”, the Naga in 1929 -the British colonial Power in its zenith- tiny David of Naga Hills demanded the Goliath of the British Empire to leave the Naga alone.
Yet throughout their stay from 1878–1947, there has not been a single Terrorist Movement by Naga Hills against the British.
The hall mark of the British Administration in the Naga Hills was Law and Order, Justice and clean Governance; Corruption was an unheard of thing. The Administration was powerful but reasonable, receptive, nonviolent; emphasizing Honesty, Truthfulness and most importantly responsive to the people, respecting the native life and its Culture. These qualities earned them the Respect of the People and the Naga whole heartedly supported the British in their World War II against Japan.
Outside Naga Hills, there was a Kuki Rebellion in 1917 against Manipur Government selection of Kuki Labor Corps to Europe; there was Abor War in the then North Eastern Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh. The Government put them down with a firm hand but never in Vengeance or Revenge to the populace. None of the more than half a dozen Kuki Chiefs who rebelled were dealt with violence, they were simply banished to remote Sadya of North East Frontier Agency.
Compared, the Indian Army actions today armed with AFSPA in Nagaland and Manipur is fearsome like medieval Genghis Khan’s Campaigns.
The British strictly prohibited Head hunting among the Naga, Law and Order was meticulously maintained and civilized Values were strongly promoted:
The Angh of Oting, in those days in far off periphery of the Administration just outside Singphan Reserved Forest in remote Konyak area, was summoned to Kohima way back as early as in 1920s to explain a Villager shooting a banned off season Hoolock Gibbon reportedly in the Reserved Forest!
Petty Offences were punished with public Canning in the public Court Yard and public Pilloring for miscreants. The barbaric mutilations of the Hand, slicing off of the Nose, cutting off of the Fingers or the Ear, practiced formerly by the Native Manipur Rajas on its Subjects, were strictly abolished. Heinous Crimes of murder and killings were punished specifically only after the consent of the white Colonial Representative.
In early 1931, one Jaduanang, a first World War Labor Corps Returnee from Europe, of Poilon (Kambiron) Village, a Rongmei Naga of Tamenglong Manipur, a fugitive from the Law, was arrested from Cachar on March 8 on charges of connection with the Murder of the Raja’s Subjects in Kambiron by an agitated worked-up mob in the public Ground under repelling and revolting violence. Jaduanang was the Leader of the Rongmei community was much against the more martial migrating Kukis having settled in the Rongmei Territories was charged under Case No. 108 with incitement of mob violence and hanged.
Just on the heels of the hanging of Jaduanang, a young Rongmei Girl of another Village of Manipur appeared in public scene, disturbing the simple peaceful hard working atmosphere of the Village with her Witchcraft and Sorcery.
She behaved queer, walked over Eggs without getting them crushed, much to the wonder of the ignorant villagers, once she got seriously sick of a queer ailments but claimed the power of her demons would make her well. Incidentally she got well and claimed her Demons gather around her house at dead of night by hanging on the Trees upside down outside the hut with their long hairs rather than sit inside the house. She cured a woman from another village of ailment similar to hers.
She taught people need not go to work in the field, that her Demons would supply them rice. Some well to do Villagers believed her and shared their granary with her and her company. She preached people need not send their children to School, they need only sleep with their Books under their Pillow and knowledge would get into their head. She and her company use to pass the whole time singing and dancing on the bounties of the credulous well-to-dos in the Village but when her Promised Rice from the unknown demons did not arrive, her Luangkao Villagers began to suspect her and turned against her; they discussed exiling her from the Village.
She went away to the nearby Hangrum Village in Assam from where she had earlier cured a woman of her sickness. She drew credulous well to do villagers to her singing, dancing and feasting youth Company but when some dissention rose, she began to threaten the dissenters and grew dictatorially violently. The Villagers of Hangrum in Assam got enough of her and reported the matter to the British Authorities.
The Government of Manipur began to search for her. Gaidinliu ran away from Assam to Nagaland and hid herself inside a palisade of Banana Plants ostensibly on the belief the watery Stems would stop the Police bullets.
She was ultimately arrested in Kenoma with the help of the First Naga Doctor Haralu, a Zeliang himself and a Khasi SDO Mr Haselblah also and was charged under CRPC Nos. 149. 201, 202, 302. Legal experts informed the Writer that these sections involve:
- Riotous assembly,
- Destruction of Evidence of Crimes,
iii. Intension to cause failure to lawful actions relating to Murder.
To shorten an incredible, incredulously interesting often amusing story of delusion of a Witch Cult leader, the then Manipur Court tried her and put her in Jail.
It is very important to know that Gaindinliu was not charged for waging War against the Nation; or that she joined Gandhis Movement against the British. She was charged under relevant section of the Law in connection with Murder under Section 302. The question of her name in connection with the Freedom Fighter of India against British Government in India is an amusingly recently concocted story.
Dr. LM Murry in conversation privately in London with Sir, Charles Pawsey, the last Deputy Commissioner of Naga Hills remembers the latter mentions “She (Gaidinliu) was arrested for causing social disturbances, not for rebelling against the British Government”.
On release from Jail at India gaining Independence in 1947, she was ExileD to remote Yimrep Chang Village of Tuensang, Nagaland where she lived for quite some years there and was baptized by Rev. Kichung, an American Baptist Association decorated Church Leader of Nagaland into the Baptist Church.
After some years people from her place came and took her to her native people in Manipur and there she continued her Cult activities.
The Government of India has a very significant hand in encouraging the Cult to oppose the Naga National Council, designated as Hostiles in those days. Paid and given Arms, she favoured to designate her Force not as VG (Village Guard) but preferred to designate it in her own native tongue –Khampai- and acted in opposition to the NNC.
The tired Naga National Council wanted to make Peace with her and a delegation of 16 unsuspecting Officers led by a Khapur, NNC Sub-Region Administrative Officer, and went to her Camp where they were treacherously slit to death and a little of their blood distributed to her armed Members for tasting to get Power of the spirit of the deceased.
The Writer’s informers told me the Brigadier of Gaidinliu’s Khampai Force was ultimately converted to Christianity by Mr. Zakievilie Chase of Khonoma, a Major in the Naga Army, and it is from the Brigadier that people ultimately come to learn all about the activities of Gaidinliu and her Khampai’s taking the life of others one by one pressed down flat on the floor and slitting the neck always perpetrated inside the dark house away from the open observation of the Public.
The Authority in India declaring Gaidinliu a ‘Freedom Fighter of India status’ is an example of the intelligent machination of the Indian Army in its fight against the NNC.
Understandably the intriguing details of the story of the Government of India, toeing Government of Nagaland to make an Agreement with the supposed Rani, pardoning all her criminal records “on understanding with the Government of India”, is extremely interesting. This supports the Naga Public Suspicion of granting the Title of a Freedom Fighter to Gaindinliu, on an unimaginable but interesting actions in the Government’s Interest.
If Gaidinliu was a Freedom Fighter of India, then the whole of the Khonoma and Kikrüma Villages have much more priorities for the status of Freedom Fighters for openly fighting the British for 47 years, a century before even the Parents of Gaindiliu were perhaps born.
It is up to the Rongmeis to adore their Rani Gaindinliu, but the writer would personally like to keep it record that the Naga of Nagaland has nothing to do with the adoration of Gaindinliu in Nagaland; she spilled the blood of Naga National Workers gone to her Camp without fire-arms to negotiate Peace. The NTC and the CNTC of Nagaland have stated in One Voice their opposition to her veneration anywhere in Nagaland.
The following is the Government of Nagaland’s mysterious and incredulously interesting Agreement, (all words in future tense), with “surrendered” Gaidinliu:
“An Agreement was reached on the following on 5th January 1966 at Tening:
- All criminal Cases pending against Rani and her Party be dropped.
- Every protection was to be provided with the Rani on surrender.
- She agreed to lay down Arms and Ammunition.
- She agreed to walk over-ground for the welfare of the Zeliangrong people through peaceful, non-violence and democratic means.
Sd.
S.C. DEV.
D.C. Kohima.
“On behalf of Nagaland Government in collaboration with the Indian Government.”
(Mr. SC Dev was very energetic active officer of Nagaland, after 2 year of this Agreement he was honoured with a Padma Shree, a title much sought after by small Fishes of mountain streams in remote difficult areas of the Northeast not finding much spaces among the big fishes in the rivers of the wide Gangetic Plain or the Jamuna at Delhi!)
Thepfulhouvi Solo, IFS Retd (RR-68)
Principal Secretary, Retd.
NAGALAND