The Naga Club was established by educated Naga government servants and strengthened by returnees from the Naga Labor Corps, who had served in France during the First World War.
Origins and Character
In 1918, the Naga Club was established in Kohima by educated Naga government servants, including interpreters, clerks, teachers, and others, partly inspired by the exclusive club for European officers. Returnees from the Naga Labor Corps, who had served in France during the First World War, strengthened the Club and broadened its outlook, although most signatories of the 1929 petition were local officials rather than Labor Corps veterans. Membership was limited and elite; the Club was not a mass organisation. Its practical activities included promoting inter-tribal contact, notably by providing a free guest house in Kohima to reduce head-hunting and foster familiarity among tribes that had long been mutually hostile. The Club remained largely dormant after the Second World War damaged its building, but its political seed had already been planted.
The 1929 Memorandum: Core Political Act
When the Indian Statutory Commission (Simon Commission) visited Kohima, about 20 members of the Club submitted a petition on the Club’s letterhead. Key arguments included:
• The Naga Hills had been incorporated into the Reformed Scheme of India without their knowledge or consent.
• Before the completion of the British conquest, around 1879–80, the Nagas had never been subject to Assamese or Manipuri rule and had often been described as a “terror” to the peoples of the plains.
• The various Naga tribes lacked unity among themselves; British administration alone held them together.
• Cultural, linguistic, and dietary differences, including dietary practices regarding beef and pork, set them apart from both Hindus and Muslims. They feared the loss of customary law, excessive taxation, and dispossession of their land under a provincial council dominated by the majority.
• Their educational attainment was limited, and their population was small; consequently, their representation in an Indian legislature would have been ineffective.
Immediate and Medium-Term Impact
The memorandum did not secure independence; however, it articulated a formal political position. Under the Government of India Act 1935, the Naga Hills were designated an Excluded Area, placed under the Governor’s direct control, and excluded from Assam’s ordinary ministerial politics. This did not constitute sovereignty; rather, it represented an administrative acknowledgment that the hills were not an ordinary district. The petition also produced the first written collective expression of a pan-Naga identity distinct from the plains societies of Assam and Manipur. In a society still organized around independent village republics, this marked a significant shift from exclusively local political thought to a supra- tribal perspective.
Long-Term Political Legacy
The Club’s memorandum became the foundational document of Naga nationalism. Subsequent generations repeatedly cited the 1929 demand as the moral and historical basis for asserting that the Nagas constitute a distinct people entitled to determine their own future. In 1946, the Naga Hills District Tribal Council was reorganised as the Naga National Council (NNC), widely regarded as the political successor to the Club. The NNC advanced the same core demand: it rejected full integration into the Indian Union, signed—and later disputed—the Nine-Point Accord with Sir Akbar Hydari, declared independence on 14 August 1947, and conducted the 1951 plebiscite, which it claimed showed near-unanimous support for sovereignty. The subsequent armed struggle, the establishment of the Federal Government of Nagaland, and later organisations such as the NSCN have all drawn, in part, on the continuity of the claim first articulated by the Naga Club.
In brief, the Club transformed experiences in the Labor Corps, missionary education, and colonial administration into a durable political vision: that the Nagas were not merely subjects of the empire or prospective citizens of a future Indian state, but a people with a distinct history and the right to determine their status upon the withdrawal of British power.
Limitations and Nuances
The Club was a small, elite organisation based in Kohima; it did not represent all Naga tribes or the unadministered areas beyond the Inner Line. Its language was petitionary and protective rather than revolutionary. Some accounts emphasize that British officers, including the Deputy Commissioner, facilitated or even guided the memorandum, suggesting that it constituted as much an administrative dialogue as an independent nationalist assertion. After 1946, the Club receded as a political actor, while the NNC and, later, other groups assumed a leading role. Debates continue among Naga writers regarding the precise founding date, the relative importance of Labor Corps returnees and local officials, and whether the Club was primarily social or political.
Overall Assessment
The Naga Club’s political influence was considerable given its size and level of activity. It produced the first coherent written articulation of Naga distinctiveness and the right to be “left alone.” This statement endured beyond the 1947 transfer of power, informed the institutional transition from the Club to the NNC, and remains a historical reference point for the unresolved Naga political question. Without the 1929 memorandum, subsequent claims to self- determination would have lacked their earliest and most frequently cited documentary foundation. In this respect, the Club marks the transition from village-level resistance to modern, organized Naga political aspirations.
Besesayo Kezo, IPS, Retd DGP