By Thangkhanlal Ngaihte
The
accord, whatever its substance, has further burnished the perception
that the BJP-led NDA government is a government that gets things done,
particularly in the northeast
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi witnessing the exchange of the peace accord text
by the Government of India interlocutor RN Ravi and NSCN(I-M) leader
Th. Muivah in New Delhi on August 3, 2015. Credit: PTI Photo
These are exciting, if anxious, times for anyone interested in the history and politics of India’s northeast region.
Last week, the Government of India and the National Socialist Council
of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) announced they had come to an ‘historic’
agreement on the Naga issue. We were even treated to a televised accord
signing ceremony.
But what exactly have the two sides agreed to? More than a week has
passed and we are none the wiser. What we know now, through selected
leaks, is that the most contentious and crucial demand of the NSCN
(I-M), i.e. political integration of Naga-dominated areas in the
northeast, is not a part of the accord. The sovereignty issue
was discarded a long time ago. As for what’s in the accord, we may have
to wait till the agreement is placed before Parliament, as the
government has promised to do. However, the fact that the NSCN(I-M) has
agreed to formally end its armed insurgency and come to a compromise
agreement with the government is itself very significant.
Advantage BJP
The accord, whatever its substance, has further burnished the
perception that the BJP-led NDA government is a government that gets
things done: while the BJP is a party of action, the Indian National
Congress (INC) is a party of the status quo, at least in matters
concerning the northeast.
This perception is not without basis. On matters concerning the
northeast – which is usually seen through the prism of ‘national
security’ – the INC has always seemed undecided, always second-guessing
every option. Take the case of the Armed Forces (Special Powers)Act. The
BJP’s position in support of AFSPA is well known, and nobody expected
it to do anything about the Act. However, the ambivalence of the
Congress-led UPA government on the issue is telling. It was convinced
that AFSPA needed to be either repealed or amended. Toward this end, the
Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee was set up. The committee recommended
the Act be repealed but the government didn’t have the stomach for
this. P. Chidambaram, who was home minister in the UPA government, has
since confirmed that while he was in favour of repeal and pushed for it,
the government ultimately dared not overrule the objections of the
army.
For some people, this is yet another sign of
the centralising nature of Modi. May be it is. But it is also marks the
welcome reassertion of the civilian executive vis-a-vis the national
security establishment in matters of the northeast.
On the Naga issue, it was, indeed, the Congress-led government under
PV Narasimha Rao that first decided to search for a political solution
through talks. There soon emerged a consensus amongst all the major
parties on this. But, it was the BJP-led Vajpayee government that was
willing to recognised, in a written declaration, the ‘uniqueness’ of
Naga history and situation. Of course, it was also this government that
took the decision – which proved untenable and politically costly in
the wider region – to extend the ceasefire ‘without territorial limits’.
Throughout UPA-I and UPA-II, NSCN(I-M) leaders fretted and fumed about
the lack of leadership in the government, and how they wished a
‘statesman’ like Vajpayee come back to power. Now the Modi government,
in a little more than a year, has produced an accord. Even if it is just
a ‘framework’, with a lot of details still to be filled in, the BJP
certainly has some bragging rights.
The dramatic manner in which the accord came about is also telling.
News reports say that only four people – the Prime Minister, the
National Security Advisor, the official interlocutor R.N. Ravi, and the
Home Minister – had advance knowledge of the accord. The home ministry
bureaucrats and the army were apparently kept in the dark. Modi himself
said that his office directly oversaw the final stretch of the talks
process. For some people, this is yet another sign of the
centralising nature of Modi. May be it is. But it is also marks the
welcome reassertion of the civilian executive vis-a-vis the national
security establishment in matters of the northeast. In any case, the
issues and the compromises necessary have long been well known, so it is
disingenuous to say that more consultations are necessary.
Electoral picture
Will the Naga accord help the BJP in terms of electoral politics? It
is important to note that the BJP has been seen as a Hindu party in the
hill states of the northeast, some of which are predominantly
Christian. In the 2014 general elections, while the Modi-led BJP wave
swept through mainland India, the northeast remained an outlier to this
national trend. Out of the eight northeastern states, including Sikkim,
the BJP managed to make its presence felt only in Assam and Arunachal
Pradesh. In Assam, which has 14 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won seven seats
while the INC got only three. In 2009, it was the INC that won seven
and the BJP four. In Arunachal Pradesh, the BJP wrested one seat (out of
two) from the INC, which had won both seats in 2009. In Nagaland, the
Naga Peoples Front (NPF), which has an alliance with the BJP, retained
the only seat. The party failed to make its mark in the other five
states.
There are many reasons for this. The BJP’s Hindu character is
certainly one. To the tribal Christians of northeast India, the BJP’s
pet themes like ban on cow slaughter, its emphasis on Hindi, uniform
civil code, etc. are anathema. The recent attacks on minority religious
institutions and the general ascendancy of Hindu right groups make them
worry about religious freedom. Also, the BJP has never had committed
cadres and grassroot organisations in the region to match that of the
Congress. The northeast has never been the BJP’s priority.
In places like Manipur valley, the Indo-Naga talks have cast a dark
shadow. It is significant that in the summer of 2001, when Manipur
valley was in turmoil over the Central government’s ill-fated decision
to extend its ceasefire agreement with the NSCN(I-M) without territorial
limits, the BJP had 26 MLAs in a 60-seat assembly. In the assembly
election held the next year, 2002, the BJP’s tally came down to four
seats and in the last two assembly elections, in 2007 and 2012, the
party drew a blank even as the Congress further consolidated its gains,
both in the valley and hills.
The latest Naga accord will further cement the Manipur valley’s
hostility towards the BJP. But in the hill areas, things may change. The
hill-valley divide is deep. While the valley is consumed by fear of the
nameless outsider which presently expresses itself through the
agitation for the Inner Line Permit system, the hills are in fear of
being overwhelmed by the valley Meiteis. As the INC-led government in
the state and the party itself come to be seen as representing Meitei
interests, the hill tribals are on the lookout for a party sympathetic
to their concerns.
Sixth Schedule as way forward
While the politics of the Naga dominated districts is generally
aligned with the greater Naga movement, politics in the Zomi-Kuki areas
is controlled by two underground groupings, i.e. the United Peoples
Front (UPF) and Kuki National Organization (KNO), both of which have had
a Suspension of Operations arrangement with the Indian army since
around 2005. They are demanding an ‘Autonomous Hill State’ and a
full-fledged Kuki state respectively and anxiously waiting for political
talks with the Indian government. With no talks on the horizon, they
have become increasingly frustrated with the state government and the
INC generally. Their anxiety is heightened by the present accord which
will likely contain something about the Naga areas in Manipur. What will
become of the Zomi-Kuki areas, they ask.
Under the circumstances, the longstanding demand for the provisions
of the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule be implemented in the tribal areas
of Manipur is expected to escalate in the coming days. The Sixth
Schedule is titled ‘
Provisions as to the
Administration of Tribal Areas in the States of Assam, Meghalaya,
Tripura and Mizoram’ and envisions the creations of districts and
regions within these states that can enjoy a measure of administrative
autonomy on certain subjects.
Between the Meitei stand against
dilution of Manipur’s territorial unity and the hill tribals’
insecurity, the Sixth Schedule seems to offer the best compromise for
both sides. The demand for the Sixth Schedule for Manipur Hills has a long history.
As recently as September 2014, members of the six Autonomous District
Councils (ADCs) in the Manipur Hills held demonstrations in Delhi’s
Jantar Mantar demanding upgradation of the existing ADCs to
Sixth Schedule areas. Indeed, it was on this issue that a crack opened
up between the state government and the ADCs, both of which are
controlled by the Congress, during the ADC elections in May-June this
year.
In 2010, when ADC elections in the hills were held after a gap of 21
years, it was dominated entirely by the INC. In the last election held
in June, the picture became fragmented. In Churachandpur district, which
is the biggest district in Manipur dominated by the Zomi-Kuki group,
most of the incumbent candidates, who were already awarded INC tickets,
spurned the Congress party and contested as independents. 18 independent
candidates were elected (out of a total of 24 elected seats) and 17 of
them later formed the Hill Peoples Alliance (HPA). The INC managed to
win only five seats while the BJP opened its account by winning one
seat. In fact, while the INC was in power in all the six ADCs during the
last term, the party managed to retain a majority only in the Sadar
Hills ADC this time round. While HPA leader Langkhanpau Guite, who was
re-elected Chairman of the Churachandpur ADC, says he endorses the
demand for an Autonomous Hill State for Manipur Hills, he also
recognises that the Sixth Schedule remains the most feasible way forward
under the present circumstances.
Thangkhanlal Ngaihte is an independent researcher based in New Delhi
A
news clip aired by an Assamese news channel, which went viral on social
media, has equated young girls wearing shorts to monkeys, giving rise
to a heated debate in civil society in the northeastern state with some
saying "nowadays we are more scared of the media than the police".
