This is the first part of a two-part series in which the author explores the socio-legal ramifications of the North-East region of India. The piece delves into the complex factors that compelled the Central Government to enact special laws, examining the region’s unique challenges and the legislative responses designed to address them. – Editors
The North-East of India, being the most isolated among the Indian states, has a unique geopolitical background. The area comprises eight states and shares most of its international borders. Due to the highly permeable borders and differential treatment meted out by mainstream India, there has always been a tendency among the indigenous tribal peoples residing in those areas to demand a sovereign state. The demand for a sovereign state among the Naga tribes in the hills led to an insurgency movement in the region. The only recourse for the Government to respond to the rebel movement was to deploy the armed forces in the region to contain the militant groups. In this context, this chapter of the thesis discusses the geopolitical history of the North-Eastern states and the creation of eight individual states. Furthermore, it elaborates on the background of insurgency in the region and examines why there was an urgency for the enactment of a new law conferring special powers to the armed forces.
The North-East is a geographical region comprising eight Indian states. These states share a highly permeable international border with China in the north, Myanmar in the east, Bangladesh in the south-west, and Bhutan in the north-west. The region is relatively poor and backward in terms of both industry and communication, with most of its states ranking poorly on India’s human development index. Since colonial times, the North-East region has been isolated and marginalised economically, socially, and politically. As the region is essentially the dwelling place of various tribes with diverse ethnic cultures and heterogeneity, that diversity has often led to conflicts. Although the region is highly penetrable through international borders, it has very slim connection with mainland India.
Barely four per cent of the region is contiguous with the rest of India; the only link to mainstream India is the circuitous Siliguri Corridor, the so-called Chicken’s Neck, a narrow wedge of territory between Nepal and Bangladesh. Defence analysts from India, such as Kanti Bajpai, argue that this region is complex and has always had very complicated relations with New Delhi and the Indian mainstream. Consequently, to reintegrate the region with the mainstream economy, the Central Government of India has maintained a differential policy approach towards the North-Eastern region. This attempt to integrate the region with the mainstream economy through a differential policy has, in a sense, disintegrated the region and widened regional disparity, thereby making it one of the most conflict-prone zones in India.
The region became a periphery, a curious appendage to the rest of India. Attempts at integration were followed by alienation and neglect, and often by assimilation, both responding to and fuelling claims for secession, autonomy, and statehood from different ethnic groups in the region. It can be said that the region has been a battleground for generations of sub-national identities confronting insensitive nation-states and their bureaucracies, as well as internecine strife.
Barely four per cent of the region is contiguous with the rest of India; the only link to mainstream India is the circuitous Siliguri Corridor, the so-called Chicken’s Neck, a narrow wedge of territory between Nepal and Bangladesh.
Creation of the North-Eastern States
The eight federal states of the North-East were created as part of peace deals with insurgent groups and pre-emptive political initiatives by the Indian State between 1963 and 1987. The region’s current geopolitical reality is a legacy of colonial administration that separated hills and plains, the partition of British Burma from British India in 1937, the creation of India and Pakistan during Partition in 1947, and the subsequent reorganisation of the region into independent federal states. Indeed, the creation of the ‘North-East’ is one of the least studied aspects of the vast literature on the creation of separate nation-states in Asia during decolonisation. According to B.P. Singh, the North-East states “emerged as a significant administrative concept…replacing the hitherto more familiar unit of public imagination, Assam”. During the colonial period, the North-East region was divided into three major entities: the North-East Frontier Province (NEFA) of the North-Eastern Borderland, Assam province of British India since 1912 (which included the Naga Hills, Mizo Hills, and Meghalaya), and the princely states of Manipur and Tripura, both of which opted for merger with India soon after Independence.
Initially, they became what the Constitution called ‘Part C’ States and subsequently union territories, until becoming full-fledged states in 1972. Assam was regarded as the mother state of the region during the colonial period as it included the larger area comprising three major parts: the Naga Hills, Mizo Hills, and Meghalaya. However, the campaign for an independent state by the Nagas residing in the hills district of Assam and Manipur led to the creation of the new state of Nagaland in 1963. The grant of statehood to the Naga areas was the result of negotiation between the Central Government and the Naga civilian population, marking the beginning of the Balkanisation of the State of Assam. Similarly, in 1966, the Mizo campaign for an independent state began, and the mother state failed to prevent the violence in those tribal areas. In response, in 1972, Delhi split the Union Territory of Mizoram and Meghalaya from Assam, while also making Manipur and Tripura full-fledged states. The former North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) was renamed Arunachal Pradesh with a legislature and the status of a Union Territory in an effort to bring it out of the ‘Stone Age’ and into modern times. Both Mizoram and Arunachal emerged as full-fledged states of India in 1987.
Insurgency in India’s North-East
India’s North-East has been the theatre of the earliest and longest-lasting insurgency in the country. Historically, research has shown that since the inception of the Indian Republic, the North-Eastern region has been gripped by armed insurrections and political violence, directed equally against settlers, different ethnic groups, and the authorities. The oldest of these ethnic conflicts is the Naga conflict, which began as far back as 1918 with the formation of the Naga Club. The Naga conflict appears to have surfaced right after the British East India Company started flexing its politico-territorial control following the defeat of the Burmese and the signing of the Yandabo Treaty in 1826. The basic issues leading to armed ethnic conflicts in the North-East were identity, ethnicity, desire for political empowerment, and land. Added to this was the colonial residue of being treated as ‘excluded’ areas based on the Inner Line Regulation of 1873. As Vashum states, the Naga national identity owes much to the British. “It was obviously the British who popularised the term, giving it a common ethnic identity, especially since the early 19th century for their colonial administrative convenience. The British, who conquered Nagaland, brought them under their regular administration, directly or indirectly, created a feeling of isolation and separateness from the Indians and the Myanmarese and gifted a sense of unity among them.”
The formation of the excluded areas in the Naga Hills, as a strategy of administration by the British after 1930, also led to crystallising the Naga identity. The promulgation of Inner Line permits, restricting the intrusion of non-Nagas into Naga territory since 1873, led to the isolation of the community much earlier. The Nagas were determined to politically organise themselves as a separate political identity. It is also noteworthy that, although colonial policy played an important role in differential treatment, the Nagas were mainly motivated by World War II, as they came across the European battlefield during that period. Hence, it can be said that ‘the Naga national feeling or the Naga nationality’ is a product of British colonialism, World War II, modernisation, and the Naga movement for political sovereignty; however, the Naga desire for self-determination first emerged as an expression in 1929 when the Naga Club submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission demanding that the Nagas be kept out of the proposed constitutional changes to ‘save them from being overwhelmed by the people of the plains’ and pleaded with the British, “we should not be thrust to the mercy of the people who could never subjugate us, but leave us alone to determine ourselves as in ancient times”. Further, while presenting the case of the Nagas to the Commission, John Henry Hutton, the then Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, asserted that the tribes of the North-East were very distinct from the mainland people. Apparently, he believed that they would suffer by joining a people of irreconcilable culture in an unnatural union that would harm them and the people of the plains too.
The formation of the excluded areas in the Naga Hills, as a strategy of administration by the British after 1930, also led to crystallising the Naga identity.
However, in 1946, the Naga Club was further reinforced with the formation of the Naga National Council under the leadership of Angami Zapu Phizo. It was then that the organisation began advocating for independence. Initially, the main political objective of the NNC was to unify all Nagas, including those of Manipur and Burma, and to include the hills in the province of Assam ‘in a free India with local autonomy and adequate safeguards for the interests of the Nagas’. As Chakraborty observes, “We have no evidence to suggest that the NNC had any clear policy about the political future of the Naga Hills before the emergence of Phizo in 1947.” Under Phizo’s leadership, the NNC transformed “from an amorphous middle-class organisation into a militant outfit wedded to the idea of a sovereign Naga homeland”. It was Phizo, the charismatic Naga leader, who first submitted a memorandum to the British Government in 1947 for the establishment of an interim government for ten years, at the end of which the Naga people could form a government of their choice. Further, the Constituent Assembly of India set up an Advisory Committee on aboriginal tribals to better understand the situation in the Naga Hills.
Subsequently, when this Committee visited the Naga Hills in May 1947, the NNC presented the above proposal of an interim government of ten years before the Committee. This led to the negotiations between the Committee and the NNC, culminating in a Nine Point Agreement known as the Akbar Hydari (the then Governor of Assam) Agreement, which granted the Nagas special privileges and rights. The Hydari Agreement was approved by the NNC by a majority vote, but the ninth and final clause of the agreement caused much resentment and led to opposition from the extremist section of the NNC.
Naga National Council (NNC)
The clause stated: “The Governor of Assam, as representative of the Government of Indian Union, shall have a special responsibility for ten years to ensure observance of the agreement. At the end of this period, the Naga National Council will be asked whether they require the above Agreement to be extended for a further period or if a new agreement regarding the future of the Naga people should be reached.” The Nagas interpreted Article 9 from their perspective and declared that it granted them the right to complete independence at the end of the ten years of the interim government. However, this was not acceptable to the Government of India, which insisted that the article granted the Nagas the right to suggest administrative changes within the Indian Union, but not to secede.
Eventually, the agreement was repudiated by both the Union and the Assam State. This rejection by the Government led the Naga National Council to take another drastic step against the Government. Under the leadership of Zapu Phizo, the NNC declared independence on August 14, 1947, one day before India’s independence was declared. The Nagas opposed the merger of their state with the rest of India and held a plebiscite on the question of Naga independence. The plebiscite was followed by the boycott of the first general election in 1952 by the Nagas, demonstrating their non-acceptance of the Indian Constitution, and they raised the banner of revolt and engaged in acts of violence against the Indian State.
In the early 1950s Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, visited the Naga Hills to meet the Nagas, but the NNC organised the entire audience to walk out of the meeting. Eventually, many Naga leaders were arrested, and some were tortured and terrorised by the armed forces.
The Nagas thereafter started a civil disobedience movement. They refused to pay house taxes and boycotted offices and schools. As a countermeasure, the Assam Government enacted the Assam Maintenance of Public Order Act, 1953, and intensified police action against the rebels. This was the first of a series of successive legislations designed to govern the Naga Hills and then other parts of the North-East, where other groups rose in revolt and espoused secessionist policies. In the same year, Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, visited the Naga Hills to meet the Nagas, but the NNC organised the entire audience to walk out of the meeting. Eventually, many Naga leaders were arrested, and some were tortured and terrorised by the armed forces. Consequently, the Nagas formed a self-proclaimed independent government in 1954, and armed operations by the Naga National Council (NNC) began two years later. As the situation worsened, the State Government deployed the Assam Rifles in the Naga Hills and enacted the Assam Disturbed Areas Act, 1955, to provide a legal framework for the paramilitary forces and State police to combat insurgency in the region.
However, the Assam Rifles and the State police could not quell the Naga rebellion, and in 1956, the NNC, reinforced by the formation of the Federal Government of Nagaland, initiated armed insurrection to continue their struggle for independence. Within a short period, the Naga movement, initially strong only in the Naga Hills District, spread to Tuensang Frontier Division and the Naga-inhabited areas in Manipur.
To be continued
