Solidarity Message for 14 August – Naga Independence Day
By Frans Welman
Secretary, Naga International Support Centre (NISC)
What is the Priority for the Nagas at This Juncture?
Let me begin by naming the most urgent priority facing the Naga people today:
To become one people again—united not in rhetoric, but in resolve.
Not NSCN (IM) versus NNPGs. Not Eastern versus Western. Not Nagas under India versus Nagas under Burma/Myanmar. Not church versus state. But one people, one history, one mandate: to demand accountability from the colonizers who enslaved and abandoned us.
The division within the Naga family is not natural—it is engineered. By colonial powers. By Delhi’s divide-and-rule policies. By exhaustion and betrayal. And unless we reclaim our unity, we will lose the only weapon that has ever made us powerful: our collective will.
Why Is This So Important and Urgent?
Because time is running out.
India and Myanmar are not negotiating—they are neutralizing.
Britain is not innocent—it is silent.
And the world is not watching—because we are not making them look.
This is not just a political stalemate—it is a slow erasure.
Naga political rights are being diluted.
Naga ancestral lands are being fragmented.
Naga youth are being turned into statistics—unemployed, uninspired, depoliticized.
Our identity is being commodified, Christianized without power, decolonized without justice.
The colonial project did not end in 1947. It mutated.
And the longer we delay confronting this truth, the more permanent the damage becomes.
What Are the Consequences If We Don’t Make This Our Priority?
Let me speak plainly:
If Nagas do not demand postcolonial accountability,
If Nagas do not unite against both India, Myanmar and Britain,
Then the Naga Nation will not be defeated—it will be forgotten.
And forgetting is worse than defeat.
The Agreed Position of the NNPGs and India will bury the Naga history.
The next generation will not know the meaning of August 14.
The world will accept India’s engineered narrative, including that of Myanmar.
Britain will continue pretending it never had anything to do with us.
And what will be left?
A people once sovereign, now spectators.
A Homeland once sacred, now fragmented.
A declaration once thunderous, now silent.
Why Should This Deeply Worry the Nagas?
Because the greatest danger is not oppression.
It is despair.
I know the fatigue.
I see the disappointment.
I feel the disillusionment—in the Naga leaders who refused to act, in the youth who stopped hoping, even in the work I’ve tried to do with NISC that fell short.
But here’s the truth:
Even when the struggle seems to go nowhere, it matters that you are still struggling.
What should worry the Nagas is not that India and Myanmar oppresses you. That’s expected.
What should worry you is when you begin to accept it.
When you start believing that unity is impossible.
When you start believing that nothing will ever change.
That’s when colonialism wins.
And that is exactly what we must refuse.
What Must We Do—Starting Now?
We must do what we should have done decades ago:
Turn the fight global.
Turn the fight historical.
Turn the fight against both India, Myanmar and Britain.
Here is what we at NISC are doing and will continue to do:
We are preparing a public campaign to expose Britain’s abandonment of the Naga people—with documents, timelines, and testimony.
We are connecting with Indigenous resistance networks across the world—from Māori’s to Mapuche—to build pressure on former colonial empires.
We are proposing a Truth and Justice Tribunal on Britain’s failure to decolonize the Naga Country (Naga Homeland), under the gaze of international observers.
We are publishing materials and translating them for global circulation—including my book Black Rice, a fictional thriller based on real political trauma.
But this is not enough.
I say this with all humility and frustration: we have failed to move the Naga leadership. We have failed to push the international community hard enough. And perhaps, I have failed to do justice to the work.
But I have not given up.
And you must not either.
Final Call
So, what is there to celebrate today?
We are not celebrating a paper declaration.
We are not celebrating the silence of the world.
We are celebrating the fact that we are still here.
That we still remember.
That we still fight.
That we still believe freedom is non-negotiable.
Let August 14 mark a new beginning—not just for mourning the past, but for demanding justice for that past.
Call Britain to account.
Expose India’s duplicity.
Unite the Naga people in one voice.
And never stop demanding freedom—not in fragments, but in full.
This is our duty. This is our history.
And this is our unfinished revolution.
Kuknalim!