Kohima, March 19 (MExN): The Naga Hoho on Friday issued a cautionary note on the ‘demand for hasty implementation of Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN)’ in Nagaland, stating that the issue should be “handled with utmost care as it could have unforeseen and dangerous implications for the Nagas as a people.”
In view of the demands made by organizations for implementation of RIIN with datelines, the Naga Hoho stated that the professed objective of RIIN is to prevent outsiders from obtaining fake indigenous certificates for seeking jobs and benefits of government schemes.
Accordingly, the Government of Nagaland constituted the Banuo Commission for studying, examining, recommending and advising on all issues relating to RIIN, it stated.
While reserving its comments on the merits and demerits “as it is not privy to the committee’s report,” the Hoho is expressed apprehension regarding the “negative ramifications if certain organizations are allowed to piggy back on it to advance their vested interests…”
According to the Naga Hoho, the advocates of RIIN demand that ILP should be subjected to the status of inhabitants’ categories as defined by RIIN.
While the Hoho agreed that the demand for extension of ILP to Dimapur is a genuine cause, it also raised concerns on the conflation of RIIN and ILP and its blanket application by reducing ‘indigeneity’ to ‘permanent settlement’ in Nagaland prior to December 1, 1963 stating that it “will rip the Nagas off with dreadful consequences.”
It highlighted that there are Naga tribes across the State boundaries in Assam, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh in India and also in Burma as indigenous people to their ancestral homeland with a legitimate claim to their right to self-determination as a people.
Asserting the fact that there are thousands of Nagas who have bought lands, built houses and settled down in Nagaland for several decades, the Naga Hoho cautioned that in the absence of records such as land pattas, house taxes paid or enrolment in electoral rolls prior to December 1, 1963 as per the 1977 notification, “many procedural anomalies will crop up even within the so called ‘pure Nagas of Nagaland’.”
As for the non-indigenous Nagas, this will mean that they will be treated as “illegal immigrants” and their lands and properties will be considered as illegal and confiscated. The idea of the Nagas as a people to live together and their aspiration to live with self-determination will be irreparably damaged, the Hoho stated.
The entangling of ILP and RIIN as synonymous seems to be a ‘gambit’ to create a division in the Nagas’ aspiration for integration of Naga ancestral homeland, the Hoho claimed. Cautioning on the adverse consequences of the move, the Naga Hoho said that “RIIN imposed on the Nagas by the Nagas themselves is going to be the perfect stratagem to erect the Berlin wall of the Nagas.”
