Markson V. Luikham
New Delhi
Foundations of nation-states are ideally forged on shared identities and the consensual agreement of their peoples, a principle enshrined in international law through instruments such as the UN Charter (1945) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). Yet, the formation of Manipur involved incorporating Naga ancestral lands without any formal treaty or genuine negotiation, a violation of these universal norms. Historical records, including colonial-era ethnographies by J.H. Hutton and T.C. Hodson, confirm that long before colonial incursions, the Naga Hills were governed by autonomous, self-governed village republics operating under customary laws and distinct socio-political systems. These republics, such as Mao, Maram, and Tangkhul, maintained sovereignty through decentralized councils and collective decision-making, with no historical allegiance to the Meitei Maharajas, whose authority was confined to the Imphal Valley. The absence of any consensual merger, as evidenced by the lack of treaties or recorded agreements between Naga chiefs and the Manipuri court, irrefutably undermines claims of legitimate territorial integrity for Manipur. Instead, it exposes the state as an imposed colonial construct, crafted through British administrative convenience rather than organic unity. This foundational violation of the Nagas’ right to self-determination, codified in Article 3 of the UNDRIP, remains the bedrock of their seven-decade-long struggle for autonomy and identity restoration.
The myth that the Naga Hills were historically under Manipur’s dominion collapses under scrutiny. Pre-colonial Naga societies, as documented in the Gazetteer of Manipur (1886) and colonial officer Alexander Mackenzie’s The North-East Frontier of India(1884), operated as independent polities with minimal interaction with the Meitei rulers. Their socio-political organization, rooted in clan-based councils (khels) and communal land ownership, contrasted starkly with the feudal monarchy of the Imphal Valley. The Meitei Maharaja’s influence, limited to symbolic tributes from a handful of border villages, never extended to the Naga highlands. British colonial surveys, such as Lt. R. Stewart’s Notes on Northern Cachar (1855), explicitly noted the “complete independence” of Naga tribes, further invalidating retroactive claims of Manipuri suzerainty.
British incursions into the Naga Hills began in 1832 with Captain Francis Jenkins’ punitive expeditions, escalating into formal annexation by the 1850s. In 1851, Captain John Butler’s Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam documented the deliberate imposition of house taxes on independent Naga tribes as a tool to assert sovereignty, a policy institutionalized under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation (1873). Following the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891, which dissolved Manipur’s monarchy and installed British political agent Frank Grimwood, colonial authorities extended their administrative grip into the hills. By 1901, the Naga Hills were administratively severed from Manipur and annexed to Assam, as recorded in the Census of India Report(1901). House taxes, far from reflecting Manipuri authority, became instruments of colonial extraction, generating ₹23,000 annually by 1922 (adjusted for inflation, approximately ₹5 crore today). Scholar B.C. Allen’s Naga Hills and Manipur: Socio-Economic History (1905) corroborates widespread Naga resistance, including the 1917 Rongmei uprising and 1929 Heraka movement, which rejected both colonial and Manipuri claims.
The British further entrenched fragmentation through arbitrary borders. The 1934 Pemberton Line, named after Surveyor General R.B. Pemberton, dissected Naga homelands between Manipur and Assam, disregarding ethnic boundaries. This artificial division, intended to streamline administration under the Government of India Act (1919), reclassified the Naga Hills as “Backward Tracts” to bypass local governance structures. Colonial correspondence, such as J.P. Mills’ 1926 memorandum, admitted the absence of historical Manipuri control, stating, “The Nagas have never paid tribute to Manipur… their inclusion is purely a British administrative measure.”
For Nagas, house taxes symbolized subjugation. Villages like Khonoma and Kohima adopted non-payment as resistance, a tradition revived during the 1948 No Tax Campaign led by the Naga National League (NNL). By redirecting taxes to Charles Pawsey, the Naga Hills’ Deputy Commissioner, Nagas asserted their political alignment with Assam’s Naga districts, not Manipur. This act, detailed in Pawsey’s 1949 report to Governor Sir Akbar Hydari, explicitly repudiated Manipur’s jurisdiction, citing the 1873 Inner Line Regulation that legally separated Naga areas from the valley.
Tensions climaxed on August 27, 1948, during the Mao Gate Incident. Manipuri forces, under Maharaja Bodh Chandra Singh’s orders, fired on unarmed Naga protesters, killing five and injuring dozens. British intelligence files (IOR/L/PJ/12/2, India Office Records) confirm the Maharaja’s collaboration with Assam Rifles to suppress the NNL, arresting leaders like A Daiho. The massacre, memorialized annually as “Naga Martyrs’ Day,” strengthened the resolve forged by earlier assertions of self-determination, including the Naga Club’s 1929 petition to the Simon Commission. This continuity of resistance culminated in the 1951 plebiscite, where 99% voted for independence, cementing their unbroken struggle against external domination.
The 1949 Manipur Merger Agreement, signed on September 21 between Maharaja Bodh Chandra Singh and V.P. Menon of the Indian government, is emblematic of diplomatic exclusion and coercion. Negotiated under duress in Shillong without Naga representation, the agreement violated the foundational principle of free, prior, and informed consent later codified in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969). While princely states like Tripura or Cooch Behar engaged tribal councils in merger negotiations, exemplified by the 1949 Tripura Merger Agreement’s safeguards for tribal autonomy, Manipur’s annexation bypassed the Naga National Council (NNC), which had already declared independence on August 14, 1947. This unilateral integration, executed under the Indian Independence Act’s Section 7 (which dissolved princely states’ sovereignty), disregarded the Naga Hills’ status as “Excluded Areas” under the Government of India Act (1935), where British administrators like J.P. Mills had affirmed Nagas’ “absolute independence from Manipur” (The Ao Nagas, 1926). The merger’s legal frailty is further exposed by its contradiction of Governor Hydari’s 1947 Nine-Point Agreement, which guaranteed Naga self-governance, a pledge abandoned to serve geopolitical expediency.
British colonial policy had long recognized the Nagas’ distinct political identity. The Government of India Act (1935), through Section 92, classified the Naga Hills as “Excluded Areas,” insulating them from provincial legislatures and Manipuri authority. Anthropologist Verrier Elwin’s Nagaland (1961) documents how Naga villages like Khonoma, Mokokchung, Ukhrul or other Nagas tribes operated as sovereign republics, resolving disputes through customary councils (khels) rather than Ahom's or Imphal’s diktats. Sir Charles Pawsey, the final British administrator of the Naga Hills, noted in his 1946 memorandum: “The Manipur Maharaja’s authority ceased at the valley’s edge; the Nagas paid neither tribute nor taxes to his court.” Post-1949, however, India’s administration erased this autonomy, absorbing Naga territories into Manipur against their will, a move the International Commission of Jurists later condemned as “a breach of the right to self-determination under Article 1 of the UN Charter” (1963 report).
The Meitei leadership’s rhetoric of “territorial integrity” collapses under legal scrutiny. The Supreme Court, in Samsher Singh v. State of Punjab (1974), ruled that postcolonial India inherited colonial boundaries as administrative conveniences, not sacrosanct borders. The International Court of Justice, in its Western Sahara Advisory Opinion (1975), further clarified that territorial claims require “demonstrated pre-colonial sovereignty”, a standard Manipur fails, given the Nagas’ documented autonomy. The Meitei narrative also ignores the 1951 Naga plebiscite, where 99% of Nagas voted for independence in a referendum supervised by the Naga National Council (NNC). This act of self-determination, though dismissed by New Delhi, aligns with Article 1 of the UN Charter and the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law, which affirm that territorial integrity cannot override the rights of peoples subjugated by force.
Since 1949, Manipur’s administration has institutionalized colonial-era inequities, channeling resources into the Meitei-dominated valley while starving the Naga-inhabited hills. Between 1950 –1970, 84% of state funds were allocated to valley infrastructure, per Manipur State Planning Committee Reports, relegating the hills to marginal “tribal sub-plans” with no fiscal autonomy. This apartheid persists: fiscal data from 2017 – 2021 reveal the valley received ₹27,354 crore (93% of allocations) compared to ₹483 crore (7%) for the hills, a disparity starkly at odds with the hills’ 90% land share and 38.5% population. Alfred Kanngam Arthur, MLA for the 44th ST constituency, highlighted in a 2020 Assembly session that “the hills generate 70% of Manipur’s forest revenue and 60% of its hydropower, yet remain shackled by deliberate underdevelopment.”
The socio-economic divide is quantified in the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019– 21): hill districts report poverty rates of 37.5 – 45.3% (Senapati: 38.5%, Ukhrul: 42.2%, Chandel: 37.5%, Tamenglong: 45.3%), triple the valley’s 13.8 – 17.1%. This stems from systemic neglect: the Imphal Valley contains 92% of Manipur’s paved roads, 85% of hospital beds (including tertiary centers like RIMS and JNIMS), and 94% of higher education institutions (Manipur University, NIT). In contrast, 68% of hill schools lack electricity, and 82% of health sub-centers in Ukhrul are non-functional (Manipur Economic Survey, 2022). The Smart Cities Mission (2016 – present), which funnelled ₹1,500 crore exclusively into Imphal, epitomizes this valley-centric development, entrenching what economist Utsa Patnaik terms “internal colonization.”
The electoral structure codifies Meitei hegemony. Despite constituting 90% of Manipur’s territory, hill districts hold only 20 of 60 Legislative Assembly seats, while the valley’s 10% landmass commands 40 seats. Each valley MLA represents 35,294 people over 56 km², whereas hill MLAs serve 44,107 constituents across 1,004 km², a gerrymander upheld by the Delimitation Commission’s 2008 order. This imbalance stifles Naga voices in critical debates, such as the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act (1960), which bars tribal land ownership in the valley but permits Meiteis to acquire hill territories, displacing over 300 Naga villages since 1960 (NPMHR, 2018).
Unlike Tripura, where the 1985 Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council Act granted tribal communities legislative and fiscal powers over land, forests, and culture, Manipur’s Hill Areas Committee (HAC), established in 1971, remains a hollow institution. The HAC cannot enact laws, allocate funds, or veto valley-centric policies, rendering it powerless to address systemic inequities. This deliberate disempowerment violates Article 371C of the Indian Constitution, which mandates “special responsibility” for hill areas, and underscores the political, not legal, basis of Meitei hegemony.
Manipur’s political landscape is deeply divided between the Meitei-dominated valley and marginalized hill communities such as the Nagas and Kukis. Decades of unequal resource allocation, political underrepresentation, and cultural suppression have made unity impossible. A political reorganization that acknowledges pre-1949 realities – including the “Excluded Areas” status granted to Naga territories under the Government of India Act of 1935 – would bring India’s statecraft in line with its constitutional commitment to justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The 2015 Framework Agreement between the Government of India and the NSCN-IM acknowledges the unique history and sovereignty of the Naga people by affirming that true sovereignty resides with the people. It calls for a new relationship based on shared sovereignty and mandates the inclusion of all Naga-inhabited lands, transcending colonial-era boundaries. Honoring this framework is both a constitutional duty and a moral imperative to correct historical injustices and align India’s pluralist ethos with its democratic principles.
The struggle of the Nagas resonates globally in debates on indigenous rights and decolonization. Criticism from the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples and case studies from Bolivia to Nepal expose similar patterns of marginalization. India’s reluctance to recognize the distinct political identity of the Nagas contrasts with its support for international indigenous rights. Diplomatic examples such as Greenland’s autonomy within Denmark and the 2005 Aceh Peace Agreement in Indonesia demonstrate that negotiated self-governance can remedy historical injustices and should guide the Indo-Naga political resolution.
Re-unification of Naga-inhabited areas into a cohesive political entity carries significant geopolitical weight. The arbitrary fragmentation of Naga territories across Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Myanmar undermines their rights to cultural preservation and self-governance and destabilizes the region. A unified Naga homeland would be a cornerstone for any final political resolution with the Nagas, addressing long-standing demands for dignity and self-rule while countering the hegemonic narrative imposed by the Meitei leadership.
A pragmatic solution would involve shared sovereignty within a federal framework that recognizes both India and a unified Naga land as distinct yet cooperative entities as envisaged in the Framework Agreement of 2015. Domestically, India could invoke Article 3 of its Constitution to reorganize state boundaries in a manner that respects historical realities and indigenous aspirations. Internationally, diplomatic and legal efforts must address the inclusion of Naga territories along the India-Myanmar border. Such reorganization would not only fulfill indigenous rights but also enhance India’s strategic security by strengthening its north-eastern borders, bolstering regional stability, and supporting its Act East Policy. Integrating Naga territories would improve resource management, infrastructure development, and bilateral relations with Myanmar, ultimately benefiting all stakeholders.
Kuknalim!
