The State’s strategy to exercise territorial and political control over indigenous peoples is not limited to military campaigns. The Naga experience has from time to time been punctuated by agreements. The interplay of military force and peace agreements form the parameters on which India defines its relationship with the Nagas. It is a classic “carrot and stick policy” where the exercise of military force induces some form of peace agreement, which in turn provides the claim for State rule and legitimacy. The author Marcus Franke pointed out that the historical experiences indicate that the Indian State approaches negotiations with a colonial mindset based on a position of perceived fear and insecurity with the intent to win time through using divide and rule tactics. A critical dimension in this statecraft is that people are often left out of the peace process, thereby confining negotiations only to power-blocs.
Given the asymmetrical balance of power and the absence of third party, the State has used the language of peace agreements to strengthen its grip over the people, and one that leads to dependency on the State. For instance, the Sixteen Point Agreement is a point in case, which led to Nagaland State’s formation but did not address the Naga people’s core aspirations. Most importantly, it did not end the Indian State’s desire to exert authority and control over the Naga people. Rather, it only sought to legitimize an imposed system of politics and governance upon the people, thereby denying their right to decide not only the form of government, but also the right to decide who should govern them. While the Sixteen Point Agreement provided “special provisions,” it also arbitrarily decided who is in and who is out on the basis of territorial boundaries.
Through this Agreement, the collective Naga fabric was disrupted by creating new territorially based identities, and to demoralize the Naga spirit by allowing a limited Naga population to and enjoy these “special provisions.” An underlying consequence of the Agreement was to reduce the Naga peoples’ status as peoples to a “scheduled tribe” under the “Sixth Schedule” of the Indian Constitution. The academician Lima Imchen says the “establishment of a legalistic custodianship” under this “Sixth Schedule” created a “legal category which imposes limitations and facilitates state control … to define Naga history, Naga identity, and Naga aspiration.” He points out that this category presents the tribes “selective or positive discrimination” with “special welfare measures to emerge from a deprived social aggregate to become full-fledged individuals within the so-called mainstream” without “providing for recognition of scheduled tribes’ inherent rights.”
In order to establish legitimacy over the Nagas, specific provisions of the Sixteen Point Agreement were incorporated into the Constitution of India under Article 371(A). This Article contains what it terms as “special provisions to protect religious or social practices of the Nagas, Naga customary law and procedure, and ownership and transfer of land and its resources.” The “special provisions” under Article 371 (A) confers no creative power required to translate the Naga peoples’ aspirations into lived reality. The scholar Kumar Sanjay points the irony that it only grants what may be considered a form of autonomy that is essentially a gift by the Indian State and not the result of a negotiation to redefine the relationship between India and the Nagas.
For JustPeace to be realized, the Naga peoples’ voices need to be heard and respected by all power-blocs. The Naga people’s active participation in processes that concerns their lives and future is a cultural, as well as, a political reality and necessity. This also implies overcoming the existing divisions within the Naga fabric and non-violently confronting both internal and external forces that suppresses the Naga humanity with the same intensity. The violence of peace needs to be transcended, and it may well begin by engaging in a praxis of embracing a common vision for the shared Naga future.
