A Nagaland tribal body has denounced a warning to ostracise Naga MLAs and other members of the community in Manipur if they attend a special session of the Manipur Assembly or any meeting for discussing peace talks.
The peace talks referred to is the 21-year-old dialogue between New Delhi and the Isak-Muivah faction of National Socialist Council of Nagaland, with which a Framework Agreement had been signed in August 2015.
The United Naga Council (UNC), an umbrella organisation of Nagas in Manipur, and Naga Hoho, the apex body of Naga tribes in the Northeast, had on August 23 announced that “anyone defying the Naga political principle and its position shall be treated as anti-national and their entry banned in Naga areas”.
This was in view of the Manipur government’s alleged attempts to sabotage the Naga peace talks. The Manipur government has made it clear that the State must not be affected by the final peace deal that is suspected to make the State give up swathes of land for a “unified Naga homeland”.
The UNC-Naga Hoho diktat has not gone down well with the Nagaland Tribes Council (NTC). The latter said that the joint statement by the two groups was intimidatory and arrogant than mature, and that they should have instead worked out a mechanism through which everyone is taken on board towards an inclusive solution.
“The UNC is an exclusive umbrella organisation of the Nagas of Manipur and it is no authority over the Nagas outside Manipur,” the NTC said in a statement. The NTC also said that the Naga Hoho was no longer the organisation it used to be as some tribes have distanced themselves from it.
Issuing warning to Naga people in general was thus questionable, the NTC said. The Manipur government had planned a special session of the Assembly on August 16. The session was postponed, but the government is reportedly under pressure from non-Naga groups to hold it soon.
The 60-member Manipur Assembly has 10 Naga MLAs. Four each are from Naga People’s Front (NPF) and Congress and one each from the BJP and National People’s Party (NPP). The NPF and NPP are part of the BJP-led coalition. The NPF is also the dominant partner of a coalition with BJP in Nagaland.