New Delhi, Dec. 26: Angry at being left out of the ongoing peace process, the NSCN (Khaplang) has questioned the importance of its rival, the NSCN (Isak-Muivah), and the Naga Hoho in the context of the Naga movement.
“Let the world and the Naga Hoho know that it was not Isak Chisi Swu (alone) who formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland. It was formed by Swu and S.S. Khaplang. What Th. Muivah formed was an organisation called Nagalim, to which the Nagas never accorded recognition,” states a booklet published by the “Government of the People’s Republic of Nagaland”, which is the political wing of the NSCN (K).
The NSCN, formed in the wake of the Shillong Accord, split into two in 1988 after a tussle for leadership between the Swu-Muivah duo and S.S. Khaplang. The two groups have sparred at regular intervals since then. According to official records, over 200 members of both sides have been killed in fratricidal clashes.
The 16-page booklet published by the NSCN (K) bears the title, “On Naga Hoho’s integration”, and attempts to distinguish between the Nagas of Nagaland and Manipur in terms of their antecedents and participation in the movement.
“The Nagas never knew the Tangkhuls before 1990. The Crown Colony Proposal of 1941, the Coupland Plan of 1946 or the declaration of Naga Independence in 1947 never saw the participation of the community as they were then under the Manipur Raja, who was a puppet of the British,” it says.
Muivah, the general secretary of the NSCN (I-M), is a Tangkhul Naga. He and Kaito Sema had led the first batch of insurgents to China’s Yunnan province in 1967 for training.
The NSCN (K)’s frustration at being ignored is reflected in its comments on the Naga Hoho, the apex organisation of the Naga tribes. “Whenever the Naga Hoho projects Naga identity, it is based on unrealistic and illogical criteria. The Naga Hoho cannot make anybody and everybody a Naga based on its own comfort or liking. What is not cannot be made,” it says in the booklet.