Aheli Moitra
Tamenglong district in Manipur is known for its oranges. So sweet and popular that an Orange Queen sashays down the ramp at the Orange Festival, held annually since 2001. The women carry little baskets of oranges dressed in out-of-place gowns. The bid is to promote the district’s oranges to marketing gurus. Alas, a large quantity of the oranges produced has to go down the rural drain. Connectivity is poor, and technological inputs into processing and marketing are a fetch too far.
Tamenglong district is also known for its other natural resources. In this case, it is the problem natural resource oil. Found mostly under the ground, an underground group was raised to protect peoples’ right over the resource. According to the people of Tamenglong, the Government of Manipur, along with India, has plans to extract the oil, and the existing Naga movement has given its approval. The terms of extraction favours the State and the extracting company more than the people. So in February last year, people were introduced to the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF), along with its armed wing Zeliangrong Tigers Force (ZTF). With a stated objective to protect the people, lands and culture of the Zeliangrong, the ZUF has been in news almost all of this year. Turf war has broken out between the NSCN (IM), already well stationed in the region, and the ZUF. For the ZUF, the NSCN (IM) has not sufficiently protected and recognized the contribution of the Zeliangrong people to the Naga movement. Now the ZUF claims to have 300 armed men fighting its war, with a fuzzy end, though other sources pit their strength at 120, if not less.
Through this Naga versus Naga war, too many have already died and the community embroiled in a war they don’t want. In May two died, one was injured. In June, seven died in separate incidents. In August, a student union leader was shot dead. In September six died and a civilian injured. At least three cases of gun fights have broken out between the groups in October alone.
Such figures, after an ardent and strenuous Naga reconciliation process that has made peace possible, do not match the times. Such figures, while the Indo-Naga peace process seems to gain weight, do not fit the times. Such figures, while most Nagas have politically figured the practical meaning of sovereignty, do not go with the times.
The Nagas of Manipur, through the UNC, and the Nagas of the East, through the ENPO, have formed a systematic and politically peaceful way to negotiate what rights they deserve within the Naga framework. The women of Nagaland have decided on the 33% strategy to access their rights. All marginalised groups, so to define, now have a political strategy to become sovereign bodies that could, in the future, access rights together.
That leaves the Nagas of Assam, the Zeliangrong people, out in the former N.C. Hills with their Dimasa problem. As much as in Assam, they suggest the feel of being under threat in Manipur and Nagaland. If one considers the demand that they want to fall under one political umbrella, perhaps the leadership strategizing fresh political maneuvers to bring the Nagas together should take another look at the ZUF.
The way violence is proliferating, neither the Naga political leadership nor the Forum for Naga Reconciliation can afford to remain silent. The people of Tamenglong district headquarters, instead of picking oranges, are now picking up dead and injured bodies. In this circumstance, the politics of inclusion have to be shown as being on the card. The politics of peace applied now as was done in Nagaland over the past decade. Without (a show of) concern for the Naga brethren in the broken corners of the region, both peace and oranges will continue to rot.
