The Naga Story First Armed Struggle in India

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HARISH CHANDOLA has been a journalist for the past 60 years with a vast experience of covering conflicts and wars in Africa and Asia.

He began his career in journalism with a series of articles written on his experiences of travels inside Tibet in 1950 and 1954. He went into Tibet from his native Garhwal on foot since there were no roads and was detained by the Chinese for three months.

In 1955 he was posted to Shillong as the Northeast Correspondent for The Times of India. That was the beginning of his long and intimate association with the region, especially with the Naga national movement which had just launched its armed struggle.

In the 1960s he was posted to Cairo from where he covered the Algerian War of Independence; and was witness to the setting up of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

In 1964 Chandola returned to India. On the request of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri he assisted the Peace Mission trying to broker peace between the Nagas and the Indian Government.

Thereafter Harish Chandola was posted to Singapore and was a correspondent for several Indian and British papers. He covered the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and later the events in Malaysia and Indonesia. From Southeast Asia he once again found himself in the Middle East where he covered the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US led Gulf War. He returned to India in 1993.

Chandola lives in Joshimath, Uttarakhand where he continues to write for the local newspapers, and grows apples and potatoes.

This book tells the story of the Naga people who live in the northeast corner of India. Some of them, under the leadership of Mr. Zapuhizo had in early 1950's launched an armed movement to form an independent country.

The book relates the various stages through which the Naga struggle has passed, from mobilizing political consciousness among the people, organizing a guerilla force, a period of bitter fighting and bloodshed, getting weapons from abroad, a failed period of negotiations, to fighting again and a second ceasefire.

Many people suffered and several got killed in this fighting. This was the first armed struggle in India. It gave rise to many other such struggles in the northeast. The Naga movement is the mother of armed struggle in India.

The book describes the long history from the birth of the State of Nagaland to the current movement led by the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) for the unification of Naga inhabited areas of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh under one administration. It deals with the Indo-Naga peace talks and the possibility of political resolution through negotiations.

India is inhabited by a large number of ethnic minorities, or tribes as they are called, about whom the country knows little. Where have these people come from, at what period of time?

The Naga tribes live in Nagaland state and also in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, extending up to northwest Burma (Myanmar). It is believed that they came from Southeast Asia, some say from southeast China, over a thousand years ago, and established their villages in eastern Himalayas where these mountains take a southern turn. Their villages have throughout been self-governed, which gives them their special character. At the time of Indian independence in 1947, some of these tribes declared themselves independent.

In the second half of the 19th century many of them had been conquered by the British who transferred their territory to India with the rest of the country at the time of independence.

How did the British Empire enter these hills, how many wars it fought to conquer and subjugate some of these tribes and how some of them decided to remain independent and not be a part of India, is the story this book tells. Their fight has not quite ended. There is a ceasefire in these hills between the Indian forces and fighters of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), a large Naga organization, to allow them to negotiate a settlement.