Nagaland: A Ceasefire Without Peace

Twenty-five years ago, the Indian government and the main Naga insurgent group, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), signed a ceasefire agreement. While the signing of the truce set in motion a peace process, paving the way for talks, a peace settlement has remained elusive. The ceasefire ended fighting between the NSCN-IM and the Indian security forces, but it has not brought real peace to local communities.

The Nagas’ conflict with India stems from their demand for an independent Nagalim (Greater Nagaland) comprising all Naga inhabited areas in India’s Northeast as well as those in Myanmar. The demand for a sovereign Naga state is based on a distinct identity and the fact that the Nagas were not a part of British India but under a special dispensation during colonial rule. The Nagas were opposed to being brought under Indian rule.

The Nagas’ struggle for self-determination predates Indian independence. A day before India became free of British rule in August 1947, the Naga leader Angami Zapu Phizo declared Naga independence. In the following years, Phizo held a referendum to signal Naga support for an independent state and boycotted Indian elections. The situation in the Naga Hills turned volatile in the early 1950s and erupted in a full-scale armed insurgency in 1956. India adopted a three-pronged approach to the Naga insurgency, which included military, political, and economic measures.

Security forces were deployed to crush the Naga insurgency. The Naga Hills were declared a “disturbed area” and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 enacted to quell the insurgency. To isolate the insurgents and cut their access to villagers, grouping of villages was undertaken, which involved shifting thousands of villagers. While the military measures in a way broke the back of the insurgency, it deepened Naga alienation from the Indian state.

The Indian state also pursued political measures to draw the Nagas into the mainstream. They were promised autonomy. A province for the Nagas (Nagaland) was carved out and granted statehood within the Indian Union in 1963. In 1975, India signed the Shillong Accord with sections of the Naga underground under which the latter agreed to surrender arms and accept the Indian Constitution.

Ceasefire agreements have been an important part of the Indian government’s efforts to manage the conflict in Nagaland. The 1997 agreement with the NSCN-IM was followed by truce accords with the NSCN-Khaplang in 2001 and other armed outfits, including the NSCN-Khole-Kitovi (NSCN-KK), the NSCN (K)-Khango, and others.

The Indian government has engaged in around 100 rounds of talks with insurgent groups. In 2015, the Indian government and the NSCN-IM signed a framework agreement that was supposed to culminate in a Naga peace settlement. However, the settlement remains elusive to date and violence continues. Why is peace still a distant dream?

While fighting between the Indian forces and the NSCN-IM cadres has ended, violence between the various factions of the NSCN continues. The Naga insurgency has been bitterly divided from the start over an array of issues including power, ideology and tactics. The NSCN, for instance, emerged in 1980 in opposition to the Naga National Council signing the Shillong Accord with the Indian government. Another split in 1988 resulted in the emergence of the NSCN-IM and the NSCN-Khaplang. Divisions continue to roil the Nagas to date. In 2017, the NSCN-Khaplang’s military commander Sumi floated his own group, the NSCN (K) Niki.

More Naga lives have been lost in the factional fighting than in the anti-India insurgency. Such fighting has turned increasingly ferocious with the criminalization of the militancy as groups battle for control of the drug trade. Under these circumstances, internecine fighting has persisted despite ceasefires with the Indian state. In fact, the ceasefires with the state may be enabling the criminal activities of the armed groups. Unafraid of action by state authorities, armed groups are engaging in kidnapping, extortion, and the narcotics trade with impunity.

This has severely impacted the lives of Naga civilians.

Critics of the peace process have also drawn attention to the inordinate role that the Indian government has accorded the NSCN-IM in the peace process. It has engaged in talks as though the conflict involves only two actors – the state and the NSCN-IM. This has angered other groups like the NSCN-Khaplang, which then unleashed violence to draw attention to their relevance to the situation in Nagaland. In 2015, the Khaplang faction unilaterally abrogated the ceasefire.

Although in 2017, an umbrella grouping of seven Naga armed groups, now called the Naga National Political Groups, were included in the talks, the NSCN-IM continues to call the shots.

In 2019, Nagaland’s then governor and the government’s interlocutor with the Nagas, R. N. Ravi set October 31, 2019, as the deadline for concluding an agreement with or without the NSCN-IM’s consent. Interpreting Ravi’s tough posture as an attempt at arm-twisting them to sign a deal, the NSCN-IM accused him of making “reckless statements” – in a letter to the chief minister, Ravi apparently referred to the NSCN-IM as an “armed gang” engaging in “extortion” – and insisted he be removed as the interlocutor.

The Indian government caved in to its demand and Ravi was moved out of Nagaland.

It is evident that the government fears that the NSCN-IM will walk out of the ceasefire agreement. Hence New Delhi has been kowtowing to the NSCN-IM’s demands relating to who will be included in the talks and how the negotiation process will be conducted. Consequently, the talks have largely been an NSCN-IM directed process.

Indian political commentators have said that a Naga peace settlement will reduce NSCN-IM chief Thuingaleng Muivah to irrelevance. “If a settlement is reached, it is the end of the story for Muivah. And that is why he must delay this settlement for as long as he can, because the status quo suits him,” observed The Print’s editor-in-chief Shekar Gupta.

The NSCN-IM’s intransigence is a major stumbling block in the way of a peace settlement. The group has refused to budge on the borders of the Naga state – it wants the government to extend the current borders to include Naga-dominated areas not only in the neighboring Indian states of Assam, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh but also in Myanmar.

Decades of violence and insurgency have wracked India’s Northeast, and it is only in recent years that the situation has been calmed somewhat. Redrawing of boundaries to include territory in Manipur and Assam to meet the NSCN-IM’s demand for Nagalim will ignite an already restive region.

Additionally, the NSCN-IM is insisting on a separate flag and constitution for Nagaland. These demands are seen as undermining India’s sovereignty and therefore unacceptable to New Delhi.

An important grievance raised by Naga civil society as well as non-NSCN-IM factions is the lack of transparency in the process. A peace settlement, they point out, involves the future of the Naga people but they are being excluded from discussions.

The talks have been in a state of impasse since 2019. Ordinary civilians are bearing the burden of the failure of the ceasefire to produce a settlement. Nagaland’s sons and daughters continue to be drawn into the armed groups and militias, and to be killed and disappeared.

A botched counterinsurgency operation by a special forces unit of the Indian Army in December last year resulted in the death of 13 civilians in Nagaland’s Mon district. It led to violent protests across the state. In early August this year, the banned NSCN- Khaplang-Yung Aung faction (NSCN-K-YA) targeted Indian forces, resulting in injuries to two soldiers.

Naga civil society has played a major role in keeping the ceasefire alive for 25 years. But a ceasefire without peace is meaningless. Civil society actors will need to push the NSCN-IM to reach a pragmatic settlement to the long-running conflict.