Khonoma village has from the very beginning contributed her fair share to the launching and nurturing of the heroic Naga struggle to become a people and a nation. Today her sons and daughters are humbly grateful and proud of the role their village too has played along with all other Naga villages and tribes to establish our people’s common identity and nationhood. What the Nagas have become as a result must be understood for what it is so that we may build on what we have achieved together.
The Nagas have reached perhaps the most testing time in their journey into the modern world when the fundamental facts of their history are being questioned and even sought to be misinterpreted. Khonoma people have realised it is imperative for them to declare the position they have seen to be their right, their asset and guide for the road ahead.
Looking back Nagas understand the newly independent Governments of India and Myanmar had no choice but to defend their new purported maps they inherited when Great Britain terminated her Empire in South Asia. A very small area of Naga Homeland had been illegally and purportedly made a part of the British Empire as a District of Assam by the then British India without the consent of the Nagas through unilateral interpretation of a “No More Fight Agreement” made on 27th March 1880. The larger portions of the lands of the Nagas were in Northwest Burma and the yet unexplored lands of the Naga tribes between Burma and the British Province of Assam and further northeast which has become part of today’s eastern Arunachal Pradesh.
Given the facts and reasons given below we Nagas maintain that India too will understand the Nagas cannot be blamed for the position they have taken from the outset to defend their sovereignty. In 1929 they had reclaimed their right to decide their own future as their history fully entitled by them. 18 years later they reaffirmed their stand taken in 1929 and declared their independence on August 14, 1947 one day before India became an independent nation. Since then Nagas have unwaveringly defended their position up to this day for over seventy years. They have paid a heavy price resisting India’s violation of their legal political status as understood by them.
The Nagas were not against India or anti- India when they declared their political identity as a sovereign, independent people and nation before the British left India. No malicious intention to harm India, and no hatred or bitterness motivated the Nagas. Hatred, the poison that creates conflicts and destruction, has come into the crisis today because of disrespect shown to the facts of our history. The people of India should know the Nagas dared to claim the right and privilege their history entitled them to claim. Their defence of the stated status at immense sacrifice till date clearly shows what their aspiration and their struggle for it mean to them.
It is therefore clear to the Nagas India has no right to treat the Naga struggle as “secessionist”, “separatist” or “anti-national” as Government of India has done thus far. The Nagas were never a part of India at any stage or any other neighbouring nations before the 1880 agreement to restore peaceful co-existence. The unilateral interpretation of the agreement by the British was the only confusion.
Nagas have not asked India to give us our sovereignty. Nagas asking from India anything that is not legitimately theirs does not arise. Nagas expect India to recognise the facts of our history. We therefore earnestly urge India not to unwisely use force to treat us as a people who “have no option but to keep fighting or surrender”. Without violence Nagas will fight to defend their rightful position, and their sovereignty shall never be compromised. The Naga struggle has revealed India cannot even discuss Naga sovereignty as India is a young democracy although a very ancient nation and civilisation. But that does not mean we are to treat our history as if it is not true or not important for our proper development.
Today’s Nagas have understood India’s problem. It is extremely difficult for India to discuss the sovereignty issue with the Nagas. Therefore whatever any settlement any Naga political group/s may reach with India will have to leave sovereignty out to wait for the day in the future when the situation will have improved and India will be ready to discuss for a settlement with the Nagas of that time that will be honourable and acceptable to both sides.
