Dimapur, July 20 (MExN): With recent incidents heightening tension along the Nagaland-Assam border, the Nagaland Tribes Council (NTC) on Tuesday sought the Nagaland Chief Minister’s intervention in ‘retrieving’ the ancestral, traditional and historical lands of the Nagas.
It rejected the Assam government’s claim of 1925 Inner line as the boundary between Nagaland and Assam, stating that it was never meant to be land boundary between the two States. The Inner Line, the NTC said, was constituted by the British long before Indian Independence and placed in their convenience for administrative purposes.
In its representation to the CM on July 20, the NTC placed what it termed ‘points of factual position on the long standing Nagaland-Assam Border issue’ and urged the CM to react appropriately on the issue.
According to the NTC, after the seizure of the Ahom Kingdom of Assam by the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826, virgin jungles belonging to the Nagas along the Nagaland-Assam plain areas were cultivated by the Colonial administration without the consent of the unlettered villagers, and turned into tea gardens and reserved forests. These were then “subsequently transferred to Assam district by the British government of India solely for the purpose of the Administrative conveniences in total violation of the land owner’s right,” it added.
The NTC reminded that a petition was put up by the Nagas to the Simon Commission for return of the transferred forests back to the Naga Hills.
After 18 years, in 1947, the then Governor of Assam Akbar Hydari came to Kohima and negotiated a Nine-Point Agreement with the Nagas which included an agreement to return the reserved forests taken away from the Naga Hills and “to bring back into the Naga Hills District all the forests transferred to Sibragar and Nowgong District in the past.”
The transferred integral lands of the Nagas were not included in the formation of a separate administration unit called Naga Hills Tuensang Area (NHTA) in 1957, due to which the Nagas were greatly dissatisfied and demanded the creation of a full-fledged Nagaland State with all their ancestral lands included, the Council noted.
As per Point 12 of the Sixteen Point Agreement, “The Naga delegation discussed the question of the inclusion of the Reserved Forests and of contiguous areas inhibited by the Nagas. They were referred to the provisions in Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution, prescribing the procedure for the transfer of areas from one state to another.”
After accepting Statehood, the Naga people had hoped that the Government of India (GoI) would take immediate action to readjust the boundaries between the two states of Nagaland and Assam. “For nearly sixty years now, the Naga people have been still waiting without any solution to the problem in sight,” it added.
Citing that eight agreements have been signed between the two neighbouring States, the NTC claimed that the neutral forces deployed in the troubled areas have not been “equal to the task.”
In every past agreement, Assam betrayed Nagaland, it alleged, adding that there were intermittent loss of lives and troubles in the area. The NTC accused the Assam government of frequently sending strong armed police parties to Nagaland border areas and added that Nagas have lost maximum ancestral, traditional and historical lands to Assam.
Rejecting the 1925 Inner Line, the NTC stated that the first boundary of the then Naga Hills District was notified in 1867 and then rectified in 1875 via a “notification issued vide No. 89 No 3386 P. dated Fort William, 24th December 1875.”
“The ancestral, traditional and historical territory and that of the reserved forests of the Nagas therein as Naga Hills District of Assam was properly demarcated in this Notification. This boundary of the Naga Hills District of Assam is ultimately the State boundaries of Nagaland and Assam,” it claimed.
In this regard, the NTC urged the Nagaland CM to impress upon the GoI to respect the successive agreements and invoke Article 3 and 4 of the Constitution of India and arbitrate the boundary of Nagaland and Assam on the basis of the Nagaland-Assam boundary demarcation as mentioned in the December 24, 1875 notification.
