DIMAPUR, MARCH 21 (MExN): The Naga International Support Center (NISC) has written an open letter to the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, asking the latter to “honour the rights of the Naga Peoples and also to look into how their rights can be restored in practice.” In the letter, Dr FAM Welman, Secretary, NISC stated that the question of repairing damages inflicted upon Nagas by the Indian armed forces should also be discussed and determined.
It hoped the Prime Minister would “agree that justice should be done to those who have been treated unjustly since 1947.” The NISC viewed that “many lives could be spared on both sides if you let your wisdom prevail.”
It further informed that the NISC has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom asking the latter to provide the Naga Peoples with conclusive evidence that indeed the British Government had transferred all of Nagaland to the Union of India and to what was then Burma.
“We asked that because we know that around 65% to 75% of all Naga lands were never colonized by Great Britain and so even if Nagaland was officially transferred; papers to that effect should show this beyond doubt, still the rest of Nagaland, termed by Britain as ‘un-administered areas of the FREE Nagas’ or Excluded areas, could not have been transferred and so were free when the British decolonized,” the NISC said.
The NISC apprised the UK Prime Minister of how the National Naga Council declared independence a day before India, “and although this was ignored by India and all other nations, the United Nations received the declaration.” “However, possibly because Great Britain did not react by providing papers, Nagaland was not recognized as a sovereign nation,” it presumed.
Asserting that the Naga Peoples have “every right to determine their own future,” the NISC further stated that former Indian PM, Jawaharlal Nehru and U Nu, the former leader of Burma “had no right to draw the border through Nagaland thus separating them internationally.”
