Rival extremist groups and civil society organisations in Nagaland have come on the same page to criticise the State government’s directive asking employees to disclose the names of relatives who are in “underground groups”.
They said the July 7 directive, along with a self-declaration form issued to all State government employees, was a “retrograde step” to “cripple the Naga political movement and forcefully bring the Naga political issue under the purview of ‘law and order’ issue.”
The “Naga political issue” is a reference to the ceasefire inked between the Centre and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim, or the NSCN faction led by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah, in mid-1997. Other extremist groups, including rival factions of the NSCN, came on board later.
Apart from the NSCN (IM), a conglomerate of seven rival extremist groups called Working Committee of Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) and Naga Hoho found the directive “insulting, demeaning” and a “desperate attempt to browbeat Naga freedom fighters into submission”.
Naga Hoho is the apex body of all tribe-based organisations in Nagaland.
Such a “despicable directive” stands incompatible with the spirit of the India-Naga peace process, the NSCN (IM) said in a statement issued on July 21, alleging that Indian intelligence agencies were spreading the fear that government employees with relatives in Naga underground groups would be fired.
While the other organisations were critical of the directive in general, the NSCN (IM) trained its guns on Nagaland Governor R.N. Ravi, who is also the Centre’s interlocutor to the protracted peace process. Mr. Ravi, in a June 16 letter to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, said “armed gangs” were virtually running a parallel government in the State.
“If Mr. Ravi has taken NSCN to be an underground organisation, how come he signed the historic Framework Agreement with NSCN General Secretary Mr. Th Muivah as his co-author, guided and supervised by the Prime Minister of India... Ravi has reduced Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi and top leaders of the GoI to a mere laughing stock,” the NSCN (IM) said.
The NNPGs pointed out that each of more than a lakh Nagaland government staff from the head of department to the grade IV employee “has a blood relative standing for the Naga national cause”. The conglomerate asked if there were “no men of guts and intellect to grasp the social and historical implications (of the directive)” to advise the Chief Minister.
The NNPGs also reminded the State’s political parties, including the ruling coalition of Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, of their 2018 manifestos that “clearly say all sections of Nagas have involved, suffered, given blood and tears, calling for early acceptable and honourable solution”.
A solution has eluded the stakeholders for 23 years now.
