DIMAPUR, AUGUST 3 (MExN): The Eastern Nagaland National Workers Association (ENNWA) has taken exception to the statement issued by the Eastern Naga National Workers Forum (ENNWF) disproving the stand of the Working Committee (WC) of Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) on the proposed Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) that “any person (s) living in Nagaland including those Nagas from outside the present Nagaland state who came after the 1st December, 1963 shall not be entitled indigenous status.”
In a rejoinder, the ENNWA maintained that while taking up the matters on the identity of the Nagas, the present political position of the Nagas in each territorial boundary should be taken into consideration.
It stated that the direction that NNPGs on RIIN strongly adheres to the Naga customary practices and procedures and confines only to the present political state of ‘Naga-Land’ and has no bearing on the ‘Naga Lim.’
Citing instance, the Association reminded of the established indoctrination in the Naga customs that in the internal matters of one tribe, another tribe cannot intervene. Each tribe of Nagaland has a well established territory, politically well demarcated and customarily known as Naga country. Each such territory has their respective linguistic and cultural identities, social values. Common language, customs and practices and their identity stems out from the villages of each Naga tribe. A bonafide Naga is identified by his village and clan.
It therefore pointed out that these cardinal principles and procedures still in practice cannot be thwarted or destroyed by the vested interests of the Nagas from other territories or states or countries.
The Association also stated that there is no authority other than or above the ancestral village which has the power and authority to issue any form of identity to a Naga. Only such Nagas identified with clan and village alone can have a stake in the customary and political affairs of the Nagas of Nagaland. In the same way, Nagas of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have their own respective identities and customary systems. It is beyond the competence and powers of any authority outside the purview of the customary system of one Naga territory to certify, identify or interfere with same affairs of another territory.
Such violations or authoritarian indulgence in the territorial boundaries of one tribe by any authority or tribe from another territory will be an infringement on the sovereign constituent powers of the respective village authorities and the internal affairs of that Naga tribe. In the same way, Nagas of Burma cannot endorse the Indigenous Inhabitant identity of the Nagas of Nagaland or any other state and vice versa, the Association maintained.
It also stated that any Naga from one linguistic and tribal territory settled in the land of another tribe cannot indulge in the affairs of that tribe adding that the “spirit of Naga Nationalism is founded on the principles of Naga identity that withholds the sovereign power and authority with unfettered political rights on the territories vested within them in the free and vacant form. Whether it be citizenship or identity, the rights of individual Nagas flows from the authority vested within the villages of their birth.”
Towards this, the Association said the customary system should not be left open for political debates and statutory interventions through such conflicting arguments in the public forum. If any clarification on any matter is required, the concerned organisations through their representative tribal bodies are free to raise the matters with the NNPGs, the doors are open for anyone to understand and deliberate on critical issues, it added.
While maintain that the opinion of the NNPGs on RIIN was in good faith to clearly identify who is who is this complicated world, the Association also sought to point out the “sacrifices and untold sufferings and the agonies of the Eastern Naga (Burma Naga) people for the national cause is held fresh in our minds and will be written with golden letters in the annals of the history of the Naga National Movement.” However, it said the Nagas of Nagaland cannot certify them as indigenous inhabitants of Nagaland state.
“Therefore the question of undermining or betraying them does not arise. We are addressing the matters pertaining to state of Naga-Land and not about Naga Lim,” it stated.
