Shinglai Thothuingam
Introduction: Sighting of elephant movement by the villagers near Chatric Khullen and Chahong Khunou villages in Naga Hills, bordering Myanmar under Kamjong Sub-Division, Manipur on 4th September 2025 speaks about existing vast tract of land and resources upon which the animals could thrive upon. It also denotes cross countries movement of animals and other endangered species. On the other hands, the United Naga Council (UNC), an apex civil organisation of the Nagas in Manipur have called for indefinite Trade embargo in the state of Manipur from 8th September 2025 Midnight in protest against fencing in Naga homeland and scrapping of Free Movement Regime (FMR). All these activities are happening in the month when Prime Minister of India is speculated to visit the state of Manipur (13th September 2025). The Plans to fence sections of the 1,600-km Indo–Myanmar border is framed as responses to security, drug trafficking, and irregular migration. Yet for the Naga peoples whose ancestral lands pre-date modern boundaries—and for endangered wildlife whose ranges ignore passports—hard borders risk splitting societies and ecosystems alike. This write up examines the proposed fencing through a socio-ecological lens, with particular attention to its implications for Naga communities and the broader Naga political movement.
A border that cuts through a living homeland
The Indo–Myanmar boundary was drawn during the colonial period and later affirmed by post-colonial states. It bisects contiguous Naga homelands across present-day Nagaland and Manipur in India and Sagaing and Kachin in Myanmar. Villages, clan networks, customary trade routes, and ritual landscapes span this line. For decades, the Free Movement Regime (FMR) acknowledged these realities by allowing local residents limited cross-border movement for kinship, markets, and cultural events.
A continuous fence would convert a permeable, socially negotiated boundary into a hard barrier. The result is not merely inconvenience; it is the administrative fragmentation of a people who articulate their political identity across the border. For communities that rely on intermarriage, shared festivals, jhum (shifting cultivation) rotations, and customary dispute resolution across village clusters, the fence risks institutionalizing separation.
Social fragmentation and the Naga movement
The Naga political movement—diverse in its organizations but united in asserting a peoplehood that transcends state lines—derives legitimacy from lived connections: village to village, clan to clan, ridge to ridge. Fencing threatens to weaken these connective tissues in four ways:
1. Kinship and social reproduction: Weddings, funerals, and clan gatherings could face new permit barriers. Over time, reduced interaction can erode shared norms, languages, and mutual obligations—undermining the cultural base of collective political claims.
2. Civil society and reconciliation: Cross-border Church networks, student unions, and women’s groups have often mediated tensions and advanced reconciliation efforts. Physical barriers raise transaction costs for such peace infrastructures.
3. Narratives and memory: When a generation grows up without visiting relatives or ancestral sites across the border, memory gives way to myth. Political imagination then narrows to the administrative unit, complicating any inclusive settlement in the long run.
4. Negotiated security: Many frontiers’ zones function on tacit understandings among village councils, civil society, and security forces. Fencing may replace negotiated coexistence with a “command-and-control” logic that can provoke friction rather than reduce it.
In short, fencing risks reshaping the political opportunity structure: it may deliver short-term surveillance gains while inflicting long-term social costs that weaken organic cross-border trust and dilute the constituency for peaceful, people-centric solutions.
Livelihoods and indigenous stewardship
Socio-ecological systems in Naga areas are entwined. Pastoral corridors, seasonal cultivation plots, forest product collection (bamboo, wild edibles, medicinal plants), and weekly markets often straddle the boundary. A fence interrupts: 1) Mobility for livelihoods: Shifting cultivators and foragers adapt to micro-climates and soil cycles across hill slopes. Fragmentation narrows options and can push marginal farmers toward risky extraction or out-migration. 2) Customary commons governance: Village councils regulate shared forests, hunting taboos, and water sources. A fence can split stewardship units, creating “management vacuums” where neither side feels responsible or empowered. 3) Small-scale trade: Informal cross-border barter sustains household economies. Hard borders without viable legal alternatives redirect commerce into coercive or illicit channels, raising exploitation risks.
Ecological fragmentation and endangered species
Eastern Himalayan–Indo-Burma interface landscapes host clouded leopards, hoolock gibbons, pangolins, bears, hornbills, dholes, and myriad amphibians and orchids. These species depend on connectivity—seasonal movement between feeding, breeding, and refuge habitats. Fences (especially those with barbed wire and electrified segments) can: Sever wildlife corridors: Linear barriers reduce gene flow and isolate small populations, increasing inbreeding and local extinctions. Create edge effects: Patrol roads and cleared strips invite logging, invasive plants, and human disturbance, degrading interior forest quality. Escalate human–wildlife conflict: Animals blocked from traditional routes may raid farms more frequently, triggering retaliatory killing. Complicate conservation enforcement: Fragmented jurisdiction weakens joint anti-poaching and fire management, while new roads bring market access for illegal wildlife trade. From a conservation planning standpoint, the Indo–Myanmar hills are a textbook case for landscape-scale management that stitches protected areas to community forests via ecological corridors. Fencing moves in the opposite direction.
Security, but which kind?
Border fencing is typically justified on national security grounds. Communities in these regions bear real risks—from armed violence to extortion and trafficking. However, security is multi-dimensional: Human security: Food, health, and dignity depend on movement, markets, and family support. Constricting these can degrade human security even as surveillance rises. Ecological security: Watersheds and forests provide flood moderation, pollination, and climate regulation. Fragmentation weakens these services, heightening disaster vulnerability downstream. Relational security: Trust between state agencies and border citizens is crucial. Policies perceived as unilateral or dismissive of customary rights can fuel grievance, which itself is a security risk. A narrow “fence equals security” equation ignores these interacting layers.
Law, rights, and procedural justice
International norms on indigenous peoples emphasize free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) for projects affecting ancestral lands. Domestically, constitutional protections, Sixth Schedule analogues in spirit (even where not in force), forest rights jurisprudence, and longstanding Gaon Bura/village council authorities point to a duty to consult. A credible process would include: Public disclosure of fence alignments and environmental assessments in local languages. Participatory mapping of sacred sites, commons, and wildlife routes. Grievance redress with real power to adjust alignment or provide alternatives. Time-bound reviews and sunset clauses for emergency measures. Absent of the above, fencing risks being experienced not as governance but as imposition.
Conclusion
A hard fence promises clarity but delivers fractures: between relatives, between villages and states, and between forests and the species that animate them. In fragile mountain ecologies and culturally intricate landscapes, blunt instruments rarely solve complex problems. A socio-ecological approach—rooted in consent, co-management, and connectivity—can meet legitimate security concerns without amputating the living ties that make the borderlands resilient. For the Naga people and for endangered species alike, the most secure frontier is one where relationships thrive and not fencing.
