Nishit Dholabhai
New Delhi
The NSCN (Isak-Muivah)’s well-oiled publicity machine has flooded the video-sharing Internet site YouTube with pro-Nagalim propaganda, including a two-part interview with an American sympathiser who is introduced to viewers as the “honorary ambassador to Nagalim”. The video clippings show the interviewer, representing an organisation that calls itself Conflict Solutions International (CIS) Inc, asking Grace Collins about the Naga community’s struggle for “independence” from India. “Nagalim is a Christian nation founded by American Christians in the Northeast region of India,” says Collins in the first clip.
Collins has visited Nagaland at least twice and is believed to be an “agent” for the NSCN (I-M) in the US. Her brief is to highlight the outfit’s demands at the international level. A website describes Collins as a “cultural diplomat” who graduated in fine arts from Boston College in 1985, went on to do her MBA from the University of Durham, UK, in 1989 and is partially through a second masters in education and museum studies from Columbia Teachers’ College in New York.
This is not the first time that the NSCN (I-M) has gone beyond the boundaries of the northeastern states to promote its cause. It started its own website — nscnonline.org — a few years ago and found willing friends in the Netherlands. The Naga International Support Centre (NISC) supports the outfit’s demands and organises programmes across Europe to spread awareness about the Naga cause. The same group allegedly created a website recently for the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) to spread awareness about Bodo culture.
Collins quotes no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi to justify the Naga community’s desire to be independent of India. “Mahatma Gandhi said if you don’t want to join the Indian Union, you need not,” she says, eager to drive home the point that Nagalim is a “separate nation”.
.jpg)
