No one can blame Dr. S.C. Jamir, at the age of 94 (a nonagenarian and congratulations to him), if some details of a long and eventful political history have faded from memory. But his article, “Unveiling bare facts of Naga political struggle,” published in Nagaland Post on September 20, 2026, requires some historical clarification, particularly where the history of the Naga political movement is presented as though its ownership belongs exclusively to the Nagas of the present-day Nagaland.
First organised institutional platform for the modern Naga political movement.
There is no dispute that the Naga Hills provided the first organised institutional platform for the modern Naga political movement. The Naga Club formed in 1918, its memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929, the emergence of the Naga National Council in 1946, armed conflict intensified in 1954-55 and the subsequent political mobilisation all took place principally in the Naga Hills. By 1957, significant fighting took place in Manipur. These pioneers deserve their rightful place in Naga history. But being first is not the same as owning the movement.
Every political movement has to begin somewhere.
An idea germinates in one place, finds its first organised expression there, and subsequently travels to other places. The people at the place of origin deserve recognition for having taken the first step. They do not thereby acquire proprietary rights over the aspirations of people who later become part of the same movement. This distinction is particularly important in the Naga context.
Where were the Nagas outside the Naga Hills?
Dr Jamir asks us to remember who suffered, who sacrificed and who took the initiative. That is a legitimate part of history. But if history is to be invoked, the circumstances in which different Naga communities lived at that time must also be remembered.
The Naga Hills were then a district of Assam.
The Naga Club memorandum of 1929 itself was explicitly a “Memorandum of the Naga Hills” submitted by the Nagas of the Naga Club at Kohima. It described the Naga Hills as being under British administration and spoke of tribes within the administered area as well as other tribes outside it.
The situation of the Nagas living in the hills of Manipur and other areas was different.
They were living under a different administrative and political system and had different commercial and administrative links. In the 1920s and 1930s there was no mass media (television, internet, social media, widespread telephone network) or modern road connectivity through which a political idea arising in Kohima could instantly reach villages in Ukhrul, Senapati, Tamenglong or other Naga-inhabited areas. Even Tuensang, which subsequently became part of the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area, was described by the Nagaland Government as having had almost no contact with the outside world; its first administrative centre was established only in 1948. It is therefore historically unfair to judge people living in distant and differently administered areas by asking why they did not participate in a political development of which they might not have been aware or to which they had not been connected. The question was what they did when the political movement reached them?
The Naga political idea did not remain confined to the Naga Hills.
There is an important historical fact which should not be overlooked. The Naga National Council itself did not originally conceive of the Naga political question as belonging only to the Naga Hills. In 1946, the NNC declared its solidarity with all Naga tribes, including those living in the so-called unadministered areas. Jawaharlal Nehru, in his August 1946 response concerning the Naga question, expressly acknowledged that the NNC stood for the solidarity of all Naga tribes, including those in the unadministered territory. This is important because it shows that the political imagination of the Naga movement was already wider than the administrative boundaries of the Naga Hills.
There was also political activity among Nagas in Manipur.
The Naga National League was organised in Manipur in 1946 with the stated objective of bringing together Nagas separated by colonial administrative boundaries. Contemporary accounts of the period also record political activity among Naga organisations in the Manipur Hills. Therefore, the historical record does not support a simple narrative in which one group conceived the Naga political idea and the others remained indifferent until much later. There were different political circumstances, different administrative jurisdictions, and different stages of political awakening. But there was also an increasingly shared Naga political consciousness.
A movement cannot be judged by the date on which every participant joined.
When the armed phase of the Naga struggle developed, participation was no longer confined to the Naga Hills. Naga areas outside present-day Nagaland became part of the wider political and armed movement at different stages. People may have joined at different times. Some were pioneers; some came later. Some worked politically; some participated in underground organisations; some suffered imprisonment, displacement, and destruction; some lost their lives. But a person who joined a national movement later does not become less of a participant merely because he was not present at its birth.
The same principle applies to the Nagas of Manipur.
They did not need a certificate of patriotism merely because their geographical location and administrative circumstances meant that their political participation developed later. The historical record should distinguish between late participation and absence from the cause. They are not the same thing. The later history of the Naga movement itself demonstrates how artificial such territorial distinctions can become. One of the principal founders of the NSCN in 1980 is a Tangkhul Naga from Manipur’s Ukhrul district. Whatever one’s political assessment of the subsequent history of the Naga movement, his involvement is itself a reminder that the Naga political struggle cannot historically be confined to people born within the boundaries of present-day Nagaland.
The Simon Commission was a beginning, not a title deed.
The 1929 memorandum to the Simon Commission is rightly regarded as an important milestone. But even that document does not support an exclusive territorial interpretation. The memorandum was submitted by the Naga Club at Kohima on behalf of the Naga Hills. It referred to the tribes within the administered area and acknowledged that there were other Naga tribes outside it. That is perfectly understandable. The people who had access to the political authorities used the opportunity available to them. But that does not mean that Nagas living elsewhere had surrendered their political identity because they did not sign that memorandum. Nor should the 1951 plebiscite be used retrospectively to establish exclusive ownership of the Naga political struggle. The NNC conducted the voluntary plebiscite on May 16, 1951, and the NNC subsequently claimed an overwhelming vote for independence. The NNC’s own records describe the exercise as having been organised to demonstrate Naga unity and the aspiration for independence. But even the historical record surrounding the plebiscite needs to be understood in its proper geographical and political context. It was an NNC-organised exercise, and its precise geographical reach and representativeness have subsequently been debated.
It is therefore one thing to honour the plebiscite as an important event in the history of Naga nationalism. It is another to convert it into a historical instrument for questioning the legitimacy or patriotism of Nagas who lived outside the Naga Hills.
The NPC and the 16-Point Agreement tell an even more revealing story.
There is an irony in Dr Jamir’s presentation of history. When the talks between New Delhi and the NNC reached an impasse, moderate Naga leaders formed the Naga People’s Convention. The first Convention was held in August 1957, and its proposal for combining the Naga Hills District with the Tuensang Frontier Division resulted in the creation of the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area on December 1, 1957. The Naga Hills-Tuensang Area Act, 1957, formally created that administrative unit. The third session of the NPC was held at Mokokchung from October 22 to 26, 1959. It adopted sixteen points as the basis for negotiations with the Government of India. Those sixteen points eventually became the basis of the 1960 Agreement. But what is particularly relevant to the present discussion is Point 13.
It recorded:
“The Naga leaders expressed the view that other Nagas inhabiting contiguous areas should be enabled to join the new State.”
The Government of India responded by referring to Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution, while stating that it was not possible to make a commitment in that regard at that stage.
It is an important historical admission. The Naga delegation negotiating the creation of the new State itself recognised the existence of “other Nagas inhabiting contiguous areas.” The very wording demonstrates that the Naga political question was not regarded by the negotiators as ending at the boundary of the NHTA. So why were the other Naga areas not included? This is the question that deserves a candid historical discussion.
By 1960, there was no pre-existing Naga State.
By 1960, there was no pre-existing Naga State whose boundaries could simply be enlarged. The NHTA itself had been created only in December 1957. The proposed State was to be formed from the territories already comprising the NHTA. The inclusion of Naga-inhabited areas belonging to other administrative units would therefore have raised a much more complicated constitutional and political question. That is precisely why Point 13 referred to Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution. The Government of India did not say that the question was illegitimate. It said that it could not make a commitment at that stage. The historical question consequently remains: was the territorial issue deferred because the immediate political objective was the creation of a State from the NHTA, while the question of other Naga areas was left for a future stage? That is a legitimate question for historians and political leaders to debate. But whatever the answer, it cannot logically be used today to tell Nagas outside present-day Nagaland that they have no historical stake in the Naga political question.
The danger of converting history into ownership.
History becomes dangerous when contribution is converted into ownership. The Naga Hills can rightly claim the honour of having provided the early institutional platform of Naga political mobilisation. The Naga Club deserves its place in history. The signatories of the Simon Commission memorandum deserve recognition. The founders and leaders of the NNC deserve recognition. Those who participated in the plebiscite deserve recognition. Those who suffered during the armed conflict deserve recognition. But none of this creates a hierarchy of Naga patriotism. A national movement is not a family property in which the eldest branch inherits the exclusive title.
The Italian Risorgimento offers an instructive historical analogy.
Italian unification developed through different movements, regions, and leaders over a period of years. Garibaldi’s famous Expedition of the Thousand departed from the area of Genoa in 1860, landed in Sicily, and moved through southern Italy. Its importance lay not in giving Genoa or Sicily ownership of Italian unification, but in becoming part of a much larger process that brought different territories into a common political entity. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 17 March 1861. However, unification was completed only when Venetia was incorporated in 1866 and Rome in 1870. The lesson is simple: the place from which a movement begins can claim the honour of beginning it; it cannot claim ownership of everyone who subsequently becomes part of it. The same principle should be applied to our understanding of Naga history.
The real question before us is:
Dr Jamir says that the Naga political movement began with the people of the Naga Hills. That historical fact can be acknowledged. But the next question is whether that beginning gives one section of the Naga people the authority to question the political credentials of another section. It does not. The Nagas living outside present-day Nagaland were separated from their brothers by administrative boundaries created by history. Their political and economic orbit was different. Their access to information was different. Their political awakening necessarily took different forms and occurred at different times. That does not make their aspirations less genuine.
If Dr Jamir argues that the NHTA Nagas once faced domination and therefore sought to escape it through a separate political arrangement, then the same historical principle should be applied consistently to Nagas who today find themselves dominated in other States and who feel politically, administratively and economically disadvantaged within those States. Their circumstances need not be identical to those of the Naga Hills in the 1950s for their concerns to deserve consideration.
The question should therefore not be “Where were you when we suffered?”
It should be: “What can we do today for all Nagas who, for historical reasons beyond their control, found themselves divided among different administrative units?” That is a more constructive way of understanding Naga history. It is also consistent with the historical record. The NNC spoke of solidarity with Nagas beyond the administered Naga Hills; the 1947 political discussions contemplated bringing Naga areas together; and the 1960 16-Point Agreement explicitly recorded the desire that other Nagas inhabiting contiguous areas should be enabled to join the new State. The pioneers of the Naga Hills deserve honour for starting that journey. Those who joined later deserve recognition for carrying it forward under circumstances of their own.
The history therefore belongs to all those who became part of the Naga political journey, pioneers and later participants alike. The Naga Hills may claim the honour of being the place where the organised political journey began. But no part of the Naga people can claim ownership of the journey itself.
No Naga inherited a greater share of the Naga political struggle merely by being born on the right side of an administrative boundary. And no Naga became less of a Naga because history brought his village under a different state or country. The beginning belongs to those who began it. The sacrifice belongs to those who made it. But the history and the future belong to all Nagas.
Ngaranmi Shimray
New Delhi
(The views and opinions in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of Rural Post)
