The Naga Club (NC) has warned that the scrapping of Free Movement Regime (FMR) from Indo-Myanmar border would only serve to push the wedge of mistrust deeper in the Indo-Naga political conflict, which did not heal because India refused to acknowledge the ground realities of its occupational aggression.
In a statement, the club alleged that the “brutality and savagery of India’s divisive politics” over the Nagas was clearly manifest in the Centre’s decision in connivance with the then Burma to divide the Nagas and their land with an arbitrary line. NC pointed out that the line was arbitrarily drawn out of administrative convenience was apparent from the fact that the international boundary line passed through and inside the house of the chief of Longwa village in Mon district.
The club alleged that India under the Modi-Shah leadership continued to uphold Nehru’s legacy of arrogant aggression against the Nagas, manifest in New Delhi’s move to end the FMR.
According to Naga Club, what made the Centre’s latest move even more cruel, inhuman and criminally inclined was that it had been decided purportedly at the behest of Manipur chief minister Biren Singh, who it claimed was already infamous for the alleged ethnic cleansing orchestrated on a section of tribal Christian population.
Hence, the club said this had made the present ruling dispensation in New Delhi a partner in crime.
NC asserted that what made it more sinister and ominous in the policies of India was that it purportedly decided to end the FMR on the strength of the justification by Biren Singh who used the existence of FMR to justify the violence and crimes committed on a section of tribals under his watch.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right. The Nagas cannot remain mute spectators while Manipur CM blames the FMR to cover up his crimes and manipulates Delhi to abrogate the FMR. Any such move therefore shall be vehemently opposed,” the statement declared.
The club claimed that long before India was granted Independence, Nagaland had submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929, desiring to be left alone as in ancient times of its existence as independent republics without external dominion.
This was again reiterated in the declaration of August 14, 1947 as Naga Independence Day, a day ahead of India’s Independence, in consultation with Mahatma Gandhi.
Even as India tried to suppress and subjugate the Naga voice and political rights, the club stated that the free and indomitable Naga spirit had demonstrated its sovereignty and its desire to be left alone through the Naga Plebiscite of May 16, 1951.
These three landmark events amongst many others were enough proof of the legitimacy of Naga political rights, the club asserted.
NC asserted that the Nagas would oppose any restriction of movement in their ancestral lands and erection of any physical barrier on the arbitrary and imaginary lines drawn to divide and separate the Naga tribes, who were already in homogeneous existence long before India came into being and long before any arbitrary line was drawn by Nehru and Burma’s Unu. The club hoped that wisdom would prevail over the leadership in Delhi, before the Northeast burned again with greater intensity over a greater geographical distribution.