Meanwhile, Gandhi told a delegation of Nagas that the Nagas had a right to be independent of India. Angami Zapu Phizo took a leading role in this revolt, and on August 14, 1947, the NNC declared independence for Nagaland. Since then it has been a story of successive groups taking up the call for a ‘sovereign’ Nagaland comprising of Naga-inhabited areas of India as well as those that lie in Myanmar.

• When did the NSCN(M) appear on the scene?

The government of India took a tough stand since day one; several top Naga leaders were almost immediately arrested. The NNC, bent on achieving a ‘sovereign’ state, held its own plebiscite in May 1951 with 99.9 per cent voting for Naga independence. The government rejected it. The Nagas then boycotted the 1952 general elections.

On March 22, 1956, the NNC set up its Federal Government of Nagaland with a military wing called Naga Home Guard, which was soon rechristened as the Naga Army. Meanwhile, the Naga People’s Convention signed a 16-point agreement with the government in July 1960 that led to the creation of Nagaland as a separate state within the Indian Union. Phizo, with the patronage of Pakistan and China, however, continued to step up the armed movement.

In 1975, the NNC signed the Shillong Accord, but a section of leaders under Thuingaleng Muivah, Issac Swu, and S.S. Khaplang dismissed it as a sell-out.

In January 1980, the trio formed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). The group, however, split into two in 1988, one led by Issak Swu and Muivah called NSCN (IM) and the other led by Khaplang called NSCN(K). Of these the NSCN(IM) has been described by intelligence agencies as the group spearheading the “mother of all insurgencies in the Northeast.”

... contd.