Says removing the word Rengma from East Rengma Mouza is ‘part of a well-documented history of dispossessing the Rengma Naga people of their ancestral land … and de-legitimizing their identity as a people’
DIMAPUR, OCTOBER 9 (MExN): The Global Naga Forum (GNF) today stated that “no government or organization - local, state, national or international - has the authority or the right to edit a Naga tribe out of their history or remove the Naga people from their homeland.”
In a press release, the GNF said that it stands in full support of the recent statement by the Rengma Naga People’s Council of Karbi Anglog in Assam to oppose the renaming of East Rengma Mouza as East Mouza. “Removing the word Rengma from East Rengma Mouza may seem harmless, but it is not. The removal is an insidious move. It is part of a well-documented history of dispossessing the Rengma Naga people of their ancestral land, a systematic process of alienating them from their indigenous rights and de-legitimizing their identity as a people,” the GNF stated.
It asserted that their stand has the “backing of history going back to the creation of the Rengma Hills in 1841.” Thereafter, Rengma Hills was divided and placed under different district administrative units of British Assam. It came under Naga Hills district in 1867 and Nagaon district in 1898; and in 1887 the Rengma Reserve Forest was put under the Sivasagar district administration, the GNF pointed out.
It added that as the Rengma Naga People’s Council (RNPC) has made clear that the Rengmas in Assam “have not fared better under Independent India.” “Since the late 1970s, the Assam government has used the Rengma Reserve Forest to settle refugees and ex-service personnel and their families including from Nepal and Bangladesh. And now the new local Sarkari Gaon Burah Association wants to remove the Rengma identity altogether from East Rengma Mouza,” it rued.
The GNF said that the “separation and de-legitimization of the Rengma Nagas in Assam is a microcosm, a synecdoche, of the larger story of the Nagas as a whole. Naga people’s modern history, 1947 to 2020s, shows this.” The division of ancestral Naga lands into several separate administrative units has led to a steady de-recognition of the peoplehood of the Nagas, it observed.
The forum noted that when colonial Britain left the subcontinent in 1947, it left the Naga people separated in two countries, India and Burma. “The same year, when India became a postcolonial nation-state, India did not only keep the colonial-era division of the Naga people in place. It did even worse. When Nagas reiterated their long-standing demand for political self-determination—an appeal going as far back as 1929—India sent the full force of its army into Naga territory in the mid-1950s to suppress the Nagas. It did not stop there. The Indian government separated the Naga people in four states – Assam (1947), Nagaland (1963), Manipur (1972, and Arunachal Pradesh (1975),” the GNF reminded.
Even today, it stated that the Indian armed forces “continue to keep a tight control over the Nagas under the extra-judicial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA); and Indian government functionaries and agents have started removing the word ‘Naga’ from Naga areas in Arunachal Pradesh and ethnic Naga names like ‘Rengma’ from Naga areas in Assam.”
The GNF said that the RNPC has its complete support. “We join them in appealing to the Assam government and the Karbi Anglong Autonomus Council (KAAC) to stop the Sarkari Gaon Burah Association from their ill-conceived action. And we hope the people of Assam and the government will act decisively to safeguard the historic rights of the Naga people and refrain from becoming part of Government of India’s systematic annulment of Naga peoplehood,” the GNF added.
