Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan had fought a war immediately after the birth of the two nations, is still a bone of contention today. The British had left the issue unsettled at the time of the partition. Despite there being a standstill agreement , Pakistan had sent in its troops disguised as tribal leaders to invade Kashmir in September 1947. The ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, had acceded to India and asked for military help. The Indian army had thus landed in Kashmir and pushed back the Pakistani raiders, but a UN-ordered ceasefire in 1948 had led to Pakistan holding a third of the state.
Since then, Pakistan had been asking for the remaining two thirds. India’s arguments – that it was Pakistan that had attacked Kashmir first in 1947, violating the standstill agreement; that India had sent troops only after the helpless maharaja had appealed for help; and that even a UN-mandated plebiscite could be held only after Pakistan vacated the one-third of Kashmir it had occupied in 1947 – fell on deaf ears.
Several rounds of talks had been held between India and Pakistan over Kashmir during Nehru’s time, but there had been no meeting ground. Every time, Pakistan had resorted to commando-style diplomacy. For instance, just when the Indian delegation reached Rawalpindi for talks in December 1962, Pakistan announced that it had ceded part of the Kashmir territory it had been holding to China. (Only a month earlier had China invaded Indian territory and annexed a portion of Kashmir adjoining the territory that Pakistan had now ceded.)
The whole of Kashmir, which legitimately is India, has been divided into that of POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), China annexed Kashmir, and the Kashmir ceded by Pakistan to China. The Naga people can feel India’s pain because we too have been divided much against our will. As such, we can very much relate with our Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the BJP National Council meet in Kozhikode. The PM was speaking the Naga language when he addressed directly to the people of Pakistan. Nothing more, nothing less. He had said, and I quote, “I want to speak to the people of Pakistan. I want to remind them that before 1947 your forefathers too used to consider this country as your motherland, worship it. The people of Pakistan should ask their rulers…. POK is with you, you can’t even manage that. Earlier, East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, was with you, you could not manage that. You are unable to manage POK, Sindh, Gilgit, Baltistan, and Balochistan, and you are talking of Kashmir… . They are misleading you on Kashmir.(Unquote).
The land of the Nagas, and along with it, the Naga people, have been segmented even more than the Kashmiris, much against our will. Having said that, the Naga people are much hopeful and optimistic today than ever before after the coming to power of the Narendra Modi led government, and the signing of the Framework Agreement. As much as India has the very legitimate right not just over Jammu & Kashmir but also of the POK, Naga people also have the right, at the least, to live under one administrative umbrella with a common border.
The Nagas have oral tradition and folklores which cements our position as having been living in our this ancestral land since time immemorial. The proof of it dates back to even 150 AD when Claudius Ptolemy wrote about the Nagas in his book Geographia Vol. VII (ii) as “Nagalagoi” which means “the realm of the naked.” This historical fact shows the continuity of the Naga people inhabiting the present territory. The Chinese pilgrim, Huang Tsiang, who spent 15 years in India, was in the present Assam around 645 AD. He gave his description of the hill people, including the Nagas, which was as follows: “The east of this country is bounded by a line of hills so that there is no great city to the kingdom. The frontier are contiguous to the barbarians of the west China. These tribes are infact akin to those of the MAN people in their customs.”
In 1866, Mr Muir, who was Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, in his letter to the Secretary to the Government of West Bengal, Letter No. 538, Simla, 8th June 1866, mentioned about the name “Naga” and the boundary as follows: “That the tribes inhabiting part of the great mountain system which lies to the South of Assam Valley-tribes, many in number and differing in characteristics but extended under the generic name of Naga from Bori Dihing River and Singapho country of Lakhimpur west to the Kopeli River in Nowgoan and South to the confines of Manipur and Cachar.” Such a political document of the then Government of India substantiated not only the extent of the land areas but also the generic name of the tribe, the Nagas.”
It was Jawaharlal Nehru who actually divided the Nagas under different political and administrative heads. The content of his letter to Medhi, the then CM of Assam, in 1956, had read: “One of their grievances is that under our constitution we split them up in different political areas. Whether it is possible or desirable to bring them together again is for us to consider. Also what measure of autonomy should we give them so that they can lead their own lives without any sensation of interference?” (source: White paper on Naga integration, compiled by Naga Hoho in 2002)
The existence of the Naga people in the present contiguous territory is a historical reality. Nagaland was not created by courtesy of states or individuals, but certainly was divided and subjected to the administrative control of different states in India, and to Burma, by the then rulers of the day for their convenience. Since then, Nagas have gone through the motion of talks with the Indian Government many times before. Since Nagas had lived independently for time immemorial, this independent streak of the Nagas could well have been the reason for the absence of any breakthroughs in the talks. Nagas today, however, have watered down to the least common multiple, and is seriously desirous of the integration of all Naga contiguous areas, and thereby, live under a single common administrative umbrella. We know that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can manage it. And to this end, Nagas wholeheartedly do support the new beginning initiated by our Prime Minister.
