The Naga political struggle, spanning generations, has
exacted sacrifices that defy quantification: centuries of cultural and
political defiance, rivers of blood spilled in pursuit of self-determination,
and the relentless attrition of hope within every Naga home. Yet the promise of
a cohesive resolution lies shattered, fragmented into nearly as many shards as
there are Naga tribes. This splintering transcends political discord; it is a
crisis of societal identity, a collapse of collective vision. Like a tree whose
roots no longer draw from shared soil, the branches of the Naga struggle have
twisted away from each other, bearing little fruit and much decay. To salvage a
resolution worthy of the blood and tears invested, the movement must confront a
brutal reality: unity cannot be bartered in secret deals between armed factions
alone. It must be resurrected through the villages, tribes, and civil
institutions that constitute the soul of Naga society.
The very idea of sovereignty, if not anchored in
people-driven legitimacy, is reduced to a flag without a nation, a drumbeat
without a march, a faulty compass needle spinning wildly in a storm. The Forum
for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), despite its laudable yet insufficient efforts,
will court irrelevance if it clings to factional diplomacy while neglecting the
deeper fissures in Naga solidarity. Political factions derive their authority
from tribal patronage and civil networks; to side-line this symbiosis is to
treat symptoms while the malignancy of division metastasises. If politics is
the stage, then the tribe is the scaffold, and ignoring the base only ensures
collapse.
The erosion of unity is exacerbated by the decay of
institutions that once bound Nagas beyond tribal allegiances. The Naga Hoho,
once an authoritative arbiter of inter-tribal justice and the vanguard of
pan-Naga consciousness, now staggers under the weight of disunity, like a
bridge crumbling under the feet of those it was meant to carry. The Naga
Students’ Federation (NSF), once the crucible where Naga cultural, political,
and intellectual consciousness was forged, has fractured into tribal student
bodies chasing parochial agenda; their idealism diluted into the shallow
streams of tribal rivalry. The Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA), whose moral
force once bridged political chasms, now struggles with fractured
participation, its voice muffled as if speaking through a gag. These were not
symbolic entities; they were the vertebrae of Naga unity, forums where
divergent voices clashed, compromised, and coalesced around the non-negotiable
ideal of Naga reintegration and sovereignty. They functioned as the lungs of a
body politic, oxygenating the aspirations of the people and giving breath to
the vision of freedom. Their failure is not administrative; it is systemic,
akin to an immune system turning against its own body. Their disintegration has
birthed a vacuum usurped by tribal self-interest, where myopic gains eclipse
the existential imperative of collective survival. Reviving these institutions
is not an exercise in nostalgia but a tactical imperative. Without a unified
civil front, political negotiations will remain tethered to tribal vetoes, and
any accord, be it under the Union of India or outside of it, will lack the
sacrosanct legitimacy bestowed only by a people’s indivisible will. Negotiation
without unity is like constructing a dam on a fault line, destined to crack
under the weight of mistrust.
Reconciliation demands a dual offensive. As the FNR engages
factions, it must orchestrate a grassroots reckoning with the malignancies
fracturing civil society: land disputes weaponised as tribal battlegrounds,
historical grievances and tragic fratricidal wounds calcified into generational
vendettas, and communities alienated by the political elite’s betrayal. These
are not just issues of the past; they are living, festering wounds that bleed
into every conversation, every decision, every alliance of Naga polity today.
Tribal Hohos must be compelled to re-join the Naga Hoho, not through hollow
appeals, but by proving that their agency will dictate, not trail, the
political agenda, much like how a river’s current shapes the canyon through
which it flows. Student leaders, seduced by tribal chauvinism, must be
confronted with the NSF’s original mandate: to forge a generation united by
Naga identity, not fractured by clan loyalties. The NMA’s unparalleled moral
currency must be deployed to disarm hardened positions, leveraging the sacred
authority of motherhood to dissolve animosities that politics alone cannot.
Mothers, after all, bury sons regardless of faction. Who better to remind a
fractured society of what it truly loses in conflict? This is not abstract
idealism; it is cold pragmatism. A divided civil society guarantees divided
politics, while unity creates an inexorable tide that factions must ride or be
swept aside. Reviving these institutions is not merely a virtue here; it is the
fulcrum on which the survival of the Naga movement tilts.
The FNR’s mandate must expand to dismantle the structural
engines of division. Decades of conflict have birthed a war economy where
factions and tribes vie for dominance and resources, entrenching cycles of
dependency and distrust, a self-devouring serpent consuming its own tail. Youth
marginalised by systemic neglect are conscripted into factional ranks or tribal
militias, their potential hijacked from nation-building, their futures
mortgaged to the whims of warlords. Civil institutions, starved of resources
and relevance, lack the vigor to counter these centrifugal forces. A
revitalised Naga Hoho, NSF, and NMA could dismantle this decay by mobilising
resources for education, inter-tribal economic collaboration, and cultural
revival projects that suture societal fractures. Envision tribal elders codifying
a shared historical narrative, students erecting development projects across
contested territories, and mothers spearheading truth-telling forums in
war-scarred villages. These actions must not be cosmetic; they must function as
tectonic shifts in public consciousness. They would transcend symbolic gestures
and recalibrate the political landscape, anchoring demands for sovereignty in
the unassailable reality of a people already united in purpose. Where people
build together, fight side by side, and grieve with each other, politics can no
longer divide what life has already united.
The stakes are existential for Naga future destiny. Without
societal cohesion, even a meticulously drafted political accord will
disintegrate under tribal discord, like parchment in a monsoon. External
powers, state governments, and rival ethnic blocs will exploit fractures to
neuter Naga aspirations, reducing sovereignty to a bargaining chip in a
geopolitical game. The sacrifices of ancestors, lives extinguished, villages
razed, cultural sovereignty defended, will be betrayed if Naga tribes fail to
reconcile with one another. This is not a plea for homogenisation, but a demand
for unity-in-diversity, where tribal pride bows to the supreme imperative of
collective survival. The FNR’s historic task lies in recognising that political
factions, though they emerged from leadership’s ideological or ego clashes and
selfish interests, are mere actors in a drama authored by the people who
support them. True power resides in the villages deliberating around hearths,
the student unions debating in dormitories, the mothers’ collectives mourning
in solidarity, and the tribal councils deliberating vital issues. The script of
freedom is not written by those who wield weapons alone, but by those who build
bridges amid burning fields. By rekindling these flames of solidarity, the
Nagas can transmute their struggle from a fractured insurgency into an
indivisible political entity, one that negotiates not from the desperation of
division but from the inviolable authority of a people indivisible. In the end,
only when the people stand as one, shoulder to shoulder, will the dream of
sovereignty cease to be an illusion and become, finally, a legacy.
