Nagalim Voice May-June 2025
EDITORIAL
NAGAS WOULD NOT ACCEPT THE CRUELTY OF THE COLONIAL ERA…
The Nagas have had enough of the Government of India tormenting the Naga people for over 75 years and will not allow the state’s hegemony to go unchallenged.
Gone are the era when the Naga people were treated as no better than ‘sub-human’ and kicked around to suit the administrative convenience of the ruling authorities, British India, India and Burma (Myanmar). With such disregards for the human rights of the Naga people as indigenous peoples, the Nagas were divided into half between India and Myanmar, without taking the rightful consent of the Naga people.
Not enough of this division, in India, the Nagas were again made to come under different administrative control in Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh. The same thing happened in Burma where the Nagas were placed under different state control, Sagaing and Kachin.
The Government of India is up again testing the nerves of the Naga people, scrapping the time-honored Free Movement Regime (FMR) and hegemonistically starting the border fencing, blatantly ignoring the sentiment of the Naga people residing in both side of the artificial border.
Significantly, the mass protest rallies against these two issues have already witnessed unprecedented height of Naga nationalism not seen in the history of Naga political movement. The Naga political struggle is to defend the history, culture and political identity of the Nagas as a people and as a nation. This heightened scale of protest has taken the nature of something to call ‘wake-up call’ for the final showdown with the Government of India. The mode of the mass rally across the four corners of Nagalim is clearly seen, ‘No surrender no retreat’.
KUKNALIM