The day was 26th July 1960. The venue was Denison House in London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road. It had been just 44 days since Phizo landed in London on 12th June. But still then he had been successful in convening a press conference to tell the world about the desire of the Nagas to live as an independent sovereign nation and also about the injustices and atrocities meted out to the Nagas by both the Indian government and the Indian army.
The buzz of expectant chatter died to silence in the crowded room at Denison House in London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road on that day as Phizo entered the room. Reporters of many national newspapers were present; the London-based Indian foreign correspondents were there in full force. Although his frail stature was dwarfed by the six-foot Michael Scott at his side, Phizo’s presence was one of assurance. He was immaculately dressed and mentally alert. His bearing on that first public appearance was composed because he had faith in himself. He had never deviated from his personal philosophy that man for his earthly, apart from his spiritual, existence needed a clear mind and regular exercise to balance all his functions. Throughout his life he had maintained that bodily sickness came from bad habits of eating, drinking and stress, and from useless negative habits of emotional thinking.
For the first time Phizo was about to address a gathering of international men of affairs and he proposed to make the best of his opportunity. Before the press conference ended ‘it was not extraordinary that some should begin to think of him, not merely as Phizo, the Naga, but as Mister President’.
Scott introduced him and sketched his role in Nagaland and the circumstances of his people. He drew of him the parallels of Banda, Kaunda and Nkrumah; he prophesied that the name Phizo would emulate one day in Asia what those he had mentioned had accomplished for their countries in Africa. Meanwhile Phizo, unused to politicized western ways, stood quietly before the gathering of what he whimsically termed ‘voracious vultures’, ready to play his part. ‘I knew exactly what I wanted to say, it was clear in my mind and all set out in my printed hand-out. I waited to say it, but Michael had warned me the press needed to be fired-up first’.
Phizo’s turn finally came to take the stage. Undaunted by, or just because of, the presence of certain antagonistic Indian newspapermen, he spoke, not entirely fluently, in English. He told the assembly why he had left his country: ‘I have come to explain to the people of Britain and the world, including Indians, the terrible plight of my countrymen…..’ As he spoke he looked pointedly in the direction where members of the Indian High Commission were seated.
He traced the history of Nagaland. He spoke of atrocities perpetrated against the Nagas; he spoke of perfidy and betrayal in Whitehall and in Delhi. He digressed often from his prepared statement as he dwelt on the humiliation of Naga women and children at the hands of Indian military personnel. He concluded:
I will not take up your time by going into details. I have prepared for the press extracts from documents which have been submitted to the government of India from time to time since the repressive campaign began. It is in your hands. It contains only a summary of what has happened these last seven years and which is continuing. Surely Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Destruction, could not have conceived more barbarity than that which has overtaken my country since Britain relinquished power and the dawn of freedom began for India.
He did quote one instance of barbarity, using names foreign to his listeners’ ears, of men caught up in the tragedy in Nagaland. In Mima, on 27 February 1956 a village chief, Thepfücha, and his assistant, Lhoupizzhü, were shot dead by police. Theirs were the first of many riddled corpses to be callously exhibited in Kohima. ‘Now where are human rights for the Nagas?’ he asked. ‘Where shall our people go – to the sky or under the earth?’ The prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, has often said: “Human beings ultimately count”, but are not the Nagas human beings? So how can we live in peace under constant threat and molestation?’ He was visibly torn by the emotion of his oratory – his voice becoming sibilant like the hiss on angry coals.
The occasion had been very well orchestrated to present Phizo in the best possible light. When question time came, the first to speak was someone from the Observer, who set a sympathetic tone: ‘Mister President, we are appalled by your account of atrocities on Nagaland. Do you confirm that since you left instances of brutality against the villages have continued, and by what means do you receive information from your country?’ Other journalists suggested that the Naga army might be equally guilty of bullying, if not even more forcibly coercive in the hills. The Indian contingent was vociferous, as was to be expected, in their support of India’s stance in Nagaland, and in their denigration of Phizo himself.
Phizo faced their barrage with frankness and emerged with credibility, maintaining that once the Naga National Council had come to the decision to oppose India militarily that decision would be implemented whether it took one day, or a thousand days. ‘I have a line of communication with Nagaland….. We will fight to the last man,’ he declared emphatically.
From that first press conference, which Phizo thought to be less than satisfactory, it was decided that greater effort was required to elicit sympathy in Britain. In journeying into the west in his desperate attempt to internationalize the Naga issue, Phizo discovered an entirely different approach was taken to politics and diplomacy in the corridors of power in London from those he had left behind – the secrecy of intent surprised him. Nagaland was a name known only to a handful of people – anthropologists, botanists, tea-planters and a dwindling number of retired Indian civil servants. It was a tiny, remote place in an even remoter part of Asia; its name rarely reached the media because of an Indian-imposed news embargo. In Britain, in the 1960s, the average man cared nothing for it. Others, those with experience of service in India, wished to put behind them the trauma of the dissolution of what they had once looked upon as the very empyrean of imperial greatness.
Henceforth, if he wished to further his cause, Phizo would have to gear his thoughts to events and crisis in Europe and across the Atlantic. In doing so he could count on guidance from his friends, David Astor and Michael Scott. The road he was destined to travel would be rough and hard, full of disappointments and, at times, anguish. He would have to come to terms with his position – a leader leading from the rear. He would agonize whether to return to Nagaland, with or without Delhi’s sanction. On one point he would remain adamant – Sovereign Nagaland was not for barter.
There was no doubt that as he surveyed the international political scene from close quarters, he must have begun to suspect how little he could ultimately count on Britain or the United States of America. His thoughts inevitably turned to the People’s Republic of China. But his natural inclination was to shy away from the communist Chinese. That path would evoke uncontrollable misgivings in Christian Nagaland. Yet he foresaw China as an option he might not be able to ignore& hellip;…..Altogether, after his arrival in Britain, Phizo faced enormous difficulty in putting Nagaland’s case before the bar of world opinion…….
(These accounts of the first international press conference of A.Z. Phizo are excerpts from Phizo’s biography ‘Zapuphizo – The Voice of the Nagas’ written by Pieter Steyn. These details are found in pages 114-116 under the chapter ‘A Question of Genocide’ of the said book).
