Going by the statement issued by Th Muivah, the General Secretary and Ato Kilonser of NSCN (IM), last week, it seems like the peace talks between the government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM) have hit the roadblock, if not the dead end. Muivah has warned of resuming “violent armed resistance against India” if the GoI rejects its proposal for a “third-party intervention to resolve the betrayal of the letter and spirit of the Framework Agreement of August 3, 2015” and that they would not wait for India to recognise and acknowledge “Nagalim sovereign national flag and Nagalim sovereign national constitution in the political agreement”. The NSCN (IM), which has been under a ceasefire agreement with the GoI for the last 27 years, seems to have run out of patience with negotiations being held over the years going nowhere over the group’s demand for a separate flag and constitution. However, the new development is disturbing and should be prevented from escalation for several reasons. For this, it is essential to look into what has transpired so far between the negotiating parties and take pragmatic trust-building measures in good faith.
In retrospect, the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the GoI and the NSCN (IM) in 1997, and later with several other factions, was a defining moment in the attempt to solve the decades-old Naga political issue. It paved the way for peace to return and eventually curb violent conflicts between armed groups. The signing of the Framework Agreement, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed “historic” in 2015, was another landmark in the attempt to end the country’s oldest insurgency. The GoI then signed another agreement with the Working Committee, Naga National Political Groups (WC-NNPG), a conglomeration of several insurgency groups, two years later. This parallel move by the Indian government created confusion among those following the Naga issue and the public alike. However, what really came as a disappointment was the failure to exploit the agreements and seal the final settlement by talking all the insurgency groups and stakeholders on board. Instead, the negotiating parties resorted to rhetoric, accusing each other of trying to change the narrative, with the then interlocutor RN Ravi being accused of manipulating the Framework Agreement. This should have been avoided if the parties were serious about solving the issue. To rebuild the broken trust, it is necessary to re-visit the agreements, take forward from where it was left and implement without any manipulation. Violence is never the right way to solve the decades-long political issue. In fact, the price of undoing the gains made over two-and-a-half decades of peace talks is going to be huge and a disastrous one. We can’t afford to disrupt the hard-earned peace, a luxury that Nagas have been enjoying for just over two decades.