In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India [1 ed.] 9780199093267, 0199093261

Table of contents :
00_Prelims
01_Chapter_01
02_Chapter_02
03_Chapter_03
04_Chapter_04
05_Chapter_05
06_Chapter_06
07_Chapter 07
08_Epilogue
09_References
10_Index

Citation preview

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency

BIHAR

NEPAL

Gangtok

SIKKIM

TIBET

MIZORAM

Aizawl

MANIPUR

Imphal

MYANMAR

Source: Adapted from http://www.emapsworld.com/north-east-india-map.html. Note: This map does not claim to represent authentic international boundaries. This map is not to scale and is provided for illustrative purposes only.

Bay of Bengal

TRIPURA

Agartala

BANGLADESH

MEGHALAYA Shillong

ASSAM

PRADESH

NAGALAND Kohima

HAL AC N U AR

Itanagar

CHINA

Dispur

BHUTAN

Political map of Nagaland and Northeast India

WEST BENGAL

JH AR K HA ND

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India

Jelle J.P. Wouters

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press 2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India © Oxford University Press 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. First Edition published in 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-9485703 ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948570-4 ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-9093267 ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-909326-1

Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro 10.7/13.3 by Tranistics Data Technologies, Kolkata 700091 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020

BIHAR

NEPAL

Gangtok

SIKKIM

TIBET

MIZORAM

Aizawl

MANIPUR

Imphal

MYANMAR

Source: Adapted from http://www.emapsworld.com/north-east-india-map.html. Note: This map does not claim to represent authentic international boundaries. This map is not to scale and is provided for illustrative purposes only.

Bay of Bengal

TRIPURA

Agartala

BANGLADESH

MEGHALAYA Shillong

ASSAM

PRADESH

NAGALAND Kohima

HAL AC N U AR

Itanagar

CHINA

Dispur

BHUTAN

Political map of Nagaland and Northeast India

WEST BENGAL

JH AR K HA ND

To Beduhü Tunyi who adopted me as his son

Figures

1.1 View of Phugwumi village 1.2 View of Noksen village

24 25

2.1 Tunyi clan meeting in Phugwumi 2.2 Modern village gate in Noksen 2.3 Old village gate in Phugwumi

49 52 53

4.1 Megaliths erected in honour of a feast-giver in Phugwumi

157

6.1 Frontier Nagaland banner hung on the facade of a shop in Noksen Town

206

7.1 Polling day in Phugwumi

239

Preface and Acknowledgements

T

his book invites its readers to the upland tribal state of Nagaland in India’s Northeast to reflect upon what happens to a society long saturated in violent political conflict. It points to the ways in which Naga insurgency and the Indian state’s response to it aggravated the imbrications of violence and disorder, tribalism, failing development, volatile politics, and corruption into the socio-political fabric of post-statehood Nagaland. However, for all the precarity and strain that political conflict produces, Naga society is not incarcerated in a terrifying epic of violence and political disorder in any simple sense. Theorizing from the vantage of rural Nagaland, I shall show ethnographically how the acts, articulations, and aspirations of Naga villagers are infused with an agency and imagination of their own making, albeit often in ways that complicate, if not contradict, normative practices and principles of state, development, and democracy. Their everyday enactments are undoubtedly a product of the condition of protracted political conflict but not necessarily wholly

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preface and acknowledgements

eclipsed by it, often revealing themselves, indeed, in the shadows of Naga insurgency. First things first, however. For over six decades, the Naga Movement— in its now different forms, factions, and, dare I say, facades—rejects and rebels their enclosure into postcolonial India, aspires to realize Naga independence through the barrel of the gun, and in doing so presents itself as a people’s movement. A ceasefire is in place since 1997. However, this manifests itself on the ground not foremost as a period of relative political stasis but as a complex social reality that witnesses the continuation of conflict by other forms and means. These can be seen in a rampage of factional faultlines and an ever more complicated relationship between the offices and officers of state and Naga ‘underground’ actors. While the antecedents of the Naga uprising trace back to the era of late colonialism, in more concrete form the Naga nationalist project took off in the 1950s. ‘Simply because a strong people got the control of political administration of a country over a weaker people it does not mean the end of history’, A.Z. Phizo (1951), the erstwhile president of the Naga National Council (NNC) and the prophet of Naga nationalism, pronounced, as he orchestrated a near millennial movement galvanized by a messianic, salvific promise of Naga political and spiritual redemption. ‘I always have a feeling that God, our Heavenly Father—our Creator— is with us and guiding us. What is there for us to fear?’, Phizo added. The Naga armed resistance that emerged provoked a massive escalation of violence from the Indian state, the dense militarization of the Naga highlands, and the enactment of draconian laws that turned the Naga highlands into a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 2005). This was soon followed by stories and reports of wanton killings, unprecedented levels of violence, torture, abductions, village regrouping, ambushes, and burning villages and granaries of what seemed to be a murky geography of misery. It did not cause the NNC’s Naga Army to give up its fight. ‘For every Naga life that was taken, ten others joined the Naga Army’, an NNC veteran once told me with lingering patriotic fervour. As with most people’s movements, however, the spread of the Naga Movement and the ways in which the Indo-Naga conflict evolved, are not reducible to a simple singular narrative of Nagas mobilizing as one homogenous and uniform group against the domination and overrule they experienced at the hands of the Indian state. Among other things, such a narrative

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xiii

glosses over the diversities and politics internal to the Naga struggle, in particular the generational, tribal, and factional conflicts that came to divide and drain the Naga Movement and the very diverse attitudes and aspirations taken on by different Naga communities and individuals. Today, listed amongst the most protracted postcolonial struggles anywhere, the impact of the conflict on Naga society is complicated, dispersed, and polyphonous and felt in the everyday contexts of social relations and moral judgments, governance and politics, societal tensions and violent memories, imagination, affect, and affliction. For these reasons, I wish to see Naga insurgency not as a historical and straightforward narrative of resistance nor yet as extracted from wider social processes, or, for that matter, in terms of clear victims and victors. Instead, this book explores how protracted political conflict affects and afflicts ‘the everyday’. I, therefore, approach Naga insurgency—and herein lies this book’s main contention—as a complex, an ‘insurgency complex’, and explore the consequences of and corollaries to protracted conflict, illustrating and arguing how Naga insurgency and the state’s reaction to it has long flooded the banks of political conflict and surges through all areas of social life. Amidst the Indo-Naga conflict, which, at the time of my research and writing remains unresolved in spite of two decades of political dialogue, it is impossible to write anything about Nagas without it being some kind of politics and protest. In a way, participant observation and ethnography, on which this book heavily relies, is, writes Shah (2017: 56), always a ‘political act’, even a ‘potentially revolutionary praxis’ because it ‘enables us to challenge received wisdom and produce knowledge that previously had no space in the world, was confined to its margins, was silenced’. Projecting ethnography as politics connotes not just the search for new ontologies and cosmologies, or the genuine appreciation of fundamental moral differences between societies, but also to foreground and privilege in the art of theorizing, the views, experiences, and concerns of ‘ordinary’ men and women as they go about their lives and make sense of the world around them. Every ethnographer, I would like to think, has an academic (and moral) obligation to not be allied with power—whatever form that power might take—but to breathe ethnographic life into the everyday acts and articulations of the people he or she resides and works with, in

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our case Naga villagers whose selves, individual biographies, and social lifeworlds have long been wrought by political violence and volatility. If doing so, in the Naga context, amounts to a ‘potentially revolutionary praxis’ it is because the competing analyses and discourses that emerged from the Indo-Naga conflict belong either to the Indian state or to Naga militant leaders, in the process often glossing over the experiences and views of Naga men and women living in villages (and towns). Besides being scant on people’s experiences, the now considerable literature on the Indo-Naga conflict, both contemporary and historic, remains, with few exceptions, also largely derivative of formal declarations and manifestos, colonial documents, and other secondary sources. Starting with depictions of who the Nagas are, most such accounts narrate the history of Nagas’ resistance to British colonization, the arrival of missionaries and the spread of evangelical Christianity, the creation of the Naga Club and the memorandum its members sent to the Simon Commission in 1929 (which goes as the first official record of Nagas’ desire for Independence), the advent of the Naga National Council (NNC), and the role of A.Z. Phizo in conducting the 1951 plebiscite and in organizing the Naga rebellion. They then discuss the state violence and repression, the enactment of the state of Nagaland in 1963 as an envisaged (but failed) political compromise, the abortive treaties and peace processes of the 1960s and 70s, the demise of the NNC, the rise of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) and its subsequent splits into rivalling factions, and finally the 1997 ceasefire and the elusive status of the peace talks. This literature, while certainly valuable, pays virtually no attention to the dialectical interactions between the Naga Movement and Naga society, to the particularistic state-society relations that protracted conflict and capricious violence produces, and to the wider consequences and carryovers of conflict on the fabric of Naga social and political life. This lack is understandable as all these years of insurgency and counter-insurgency was hardly conducive to the practice of ethnography in the area. Moreover, a stringent Inner-Line regime and the additional requirement for foreign nationals to obtain a (sparingly granted) Protected Area Permit long restricted access to the Naga highlands. This long-lasted impossibility of doing fieldwork in the Naga highlands feeds into a larger absence, as Shah and Pettigrew (2009: 230) note, of

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ethnography and analysis of insurgency and revolutionary movements as they unfold because ‘most anthropological work is done post-conflict, when the guns are silent’. The relaxation of restrictions on foreigners to enter Nagaland from 2011 onwards was the awaited policy change that enabled my fieldwork and which subsequently took place in the liminality between conflict and post-conflict with ‘guns’ less ubiquitous but far from locked away. This account, based on extensive fieldwork, now hopes to add ethnographic flesh to the theoretical bones of the Naga Movement and the Indo-Naga conflict through a discussion of the implications of long years of insurgency and counter-insurgency on Naga society and polity. The story of this book is told through many Naga voices, weaving a texture that pays attention to both individual biographies and sentiments widely shared, to commonalities and disagreements and debates, to generality and specific struggles, aspirations, and concerns. My arguments, I hope, will have some resonance beyond Naga society with which they are immediately concerned. Particularly so in the context of Northeast India, a region long home to animated political conflicts over identity and belonging, territory, and ethnic self-determination. A region located on the margins, but whose historical specificities and social and political processes offer a crucial site for reflection on the theories and concepts central to the production of knowledge in South Asia (and not just there). Within the Indian polity, the label ‘Northeast’ clubs together eight states, most of which contain hilly expanses that fold and unfold in neighbouring China, Burma/Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal and connect to India’s ‘Mainland’ only through a narrow swathe of land couched between Nepal and Bangladesh. On a political map, consequently, Northeast India assumes a peculiar shape, jutting out of India as though it is ‘an inconvenient outlier that is regulated to an inset’ (Van Schendel 2002: 652). Its appearance on India’s map—as simultaneously part of it and beyond its pale—has contributed, certainly in parts, to a popular ignorance of the region and its ethnicities, languages, and historical narratives in national discourses, prompting a leading magazine to paint India’s Northeast as On the map but off the mind (Tehelka 2006). While studies on Northeast India witnessed a surge of promising scholarship in recent years, at the national and popular levels the region remains subject to social processes of ‘othering’ and marginalization.

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The nomenclature ‘Northeast’ itself contributes to this marginalization as this is the only region in the country named after a cardinal direction. The name is further ambiguous because as a region with a reasonable level of internal coherence and commonalities, the location and identity of the ‘Northeast’ or ‘Northeasterner’ does not exist (Subba 1998), at least not within the region itself. Per contra, its communities have been likened to an ‘ethnic explosion’ (Nibedon 1978), an ‘ethnic mosaic’ (Bhaumik 2009), a ‘rainbow of people’ (Rajkumar 2010), and because of such ethnic and cultural diversities (and because of the stereotypical conviction that this is what anthropologists necessarily crave for) an ‘anthropologist’s dream’ (Narahari 2002: 4). To the extent, then, that the ‘Northeast’ or ‘Northeasterners’ exist as a unitary region or identity, it does so as a social category produced in relation to India’s mainstream. The Northeast has become a coherent and meaningful unit, as Tanka Subba and I argued elsewhere, only through colonial and postcolonial administrative and political conceptions of order and institutionalized discursive spaces, including the enactment of special government institutions and ministries such as the Ministry of Development of the North-Eastern Region (MDoNER) and the North-Eastern Council (NEC) (Wouters and Subba 2013: 131). In academic parlance, Northeast India is also part of a region recently inaugurated as Zomia—that vast upland tract that transcends political and academic boundaries (Van Schendel 2002) and whose historical peopling, according to James Scott (2009), was the result of communities consciously ‘opting out’ or ‘evading’ the oppressive tax, conscription, and corvée obligations of states that flourished in adjacent valleys (for more and less constructive critiques of Scott’s thesis see, among many others, Lieberman (2010), Jonsson (2010), Brass (2012), and for Northeast India specifically Wouters 2011 and Karlsson 2013). Despite vast variations between people of Zomia, or highland Asia, what they seemingly share is, first, their peripheral inclusion in different nation-states (in the case of Nagas their enclosure into two distinct nation-states: India and Myanmar), and secondly, that from ‘Mainland’ points of view, they—be they ‘Jummas’ in southern Bangladesh (Van Schendel 1992), highland communities in Myanmar (Gravers 2007), the Miao minority in upland China (Schein 2000), or ‘Northeasterners’ in India—are imagined as collectively different (in terms of history, language, religion, social mores,

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cultural expressions, and phenotypes) from national mainstreams (Wouters and Subba 2013). Such differences, both real and imagined, have led, in whole or in parts, to Zomia communities’ uneven, hesitant, or haphazard accommodation in different nation-states. While I have some reservations about the contemporary exultation of Zomia, in the sense theorized (or politicized?) by James Scott (2009) (What, in the end, is the point of talking about a region that exists only in scholarly imagination?), the more modest trend of taking highland Asia as a field of comparative ethnography and study, the way originally intended by Willem van Schendel (2002), offers a fertile counterpoint to the ‘methodological nationalism’ (Gellner 2012) that long impeded scholarly imagination. Naga resistance against the Indian state, for one thing, is part of a wider pattern in highland Asia, spawning precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial epochs that saw fractured, often hostile, relationships between highland communities and kingdoms, dynasties, and modern states with their powers centred in the plains. I first arrived in India’s Northeast in 2007 when I, rather innocently, took admission as an exchange student in the Department of Anthropology at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Shillong, situated on a pine-clad plateau and the capital of Meghalaya. To not appear altogether ignorant of my new surroundings, I recall trying to memorize the names of the eight states and their major cities the night before the start of classes, as I was told that NEHU attracted students from across the region. One of the names I learned that night was ‘Nagaland.’ I also learned that its capital was Kohima and that its inhabitants, called Nagas, lived not only in Nagaland, but also in the neighbouring states of Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as across the border with Myanmar. As is regularly the case with ethnographers, my eventual interest in the study of Naga society grew out of a host of personal encounters and friendships. Not only were many of my classmates Nagas but so was my roommate. Unable to get a hostel-seat inside the University campus (the University was adamant in their conviction that it would be impossible for me to adjust in one of the student halls, a stance they finally changed in 2011, when I enrolled in a PhD programme, although not without my supervisor having to exert considerable pressure on my behalf ), I began searching for a place

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to live inside the main city of Shillong. In this search, I was joined by Wungreithing Sali, a Naga classmate whose application for a hostel seat had been similarly unsuccessful, although for different reasons. We decided to rent a room together. For the next year we shared the same living-space, during which Mark (the Catholic name by which he was better known) often spoke about life ‘back home’, the Naga struggle, and the many conundrums Naga society was facing. While Mark and I were formally the only tenants of the room, there was a continuous arrival of his relatives and fellow-villagers, who came to Shillong for admissions in schools and colleges, medical treatment, or in search of employment, and who rolled out blankets on the floor and often stayed for weeks. Besides the pleasure of making new friends (and the taste of the dried meat they invariably brought with them), the many stories and personal experiences they shared as we sat together during evenings gradually convinced me that I wanted to pursue ethnographic research among the Nagas. Of course, back then, I was formally still an undergraduate student and lacked the training required to conduct fieldwork. In any case, Nagaland was then still near hermetically sealed for foreign nationals. In more concrete terms, this book has its origins in a PhD programme at NEHU, which culminated into a thesis unimaginatively titled: State, Development, and Democracy in Nagaland. Initially, my research project was registered as ‘Land relations and development in Nagaland: A case of the jhum and terrace villages’, but even as I collected a good amount of ethnographic data on this while in the field, I soon discovered that my informants were greatly interested in talking about the Naga struggle, governance, development, and, most of all, politics. This eventually led me to request the University to allow me to change the topic of my research. My request was granted, although I was advised to leave out the politics of Naga insurgency, at least so from my thesis title. From Shillong, the town of Dimapur, the main gateway into Nagaland, was just an overnight bus journey away, making ‘my field’ readily accessible (at least so in theory as military checkpoints, Assam floods, and abruptly announced bandhs now and then blocked the highway and prolonged journeys). Being a doctoral student at a university inside the region, moreover, helped me navigate the exhaustive paperwork and permits needed to carry out prolonged fieldwork in Nagaland (again, in theory, as despite possessing the necessary permits, intelligence agencies continually doubted my presence and intentions

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in Nagaland. I hope this book, at last, proves that my intentions were what I insisted they were; carrying out ethnographic research). Few worlds are perhaps as cosmopolitan as the world of anthropology. However, it does not (as yet) seem common practice for an anthropologist first trained in the so-called ‘West’, as I was in Amsterdam and Oxford, to pursue a doctorate from a university within the broader region of ethnographic study. This is understandable for a variety of reasons. I, however, found residing and writing in a university campus close to my fieldwork area extremely rewarding on a number of counts. First, most of my teachers hailed from the Northeast, including from Nagaland, and their teachings and insights, often based on first-hand experiences, have been formative of my understanding of the region. To all of them, and in particular to T.B. Subba, B.T. Langstieh, L. Zehol, H. Lamin, Q. Marak, R. Khongsdier, and V. Pakyntein, I remain heavily indebted. Second, my fellow PhD scholars, hostel-mates, and friends in NEHU were all researching the region in a wide variety of disciplines. A good number of them hailed from Nagaland, or from Naga inhabited areas in surrounding states, and over the years our countless conversations greatly helped me to work towards a better understanding of my fieldnotes and of the issues troubling Naga society. Sincere thanks to the following: Zhoto, Neibu, Asiele, Chan, Chiete, Mhonthung, Asakuo, Sezolu, Chumchano, Temsu Among, Robert, Gideon, Sunep, Aaron, Kensibo, and Nsungbemo—your friendship is what made Shillong such a happy place. Third, while the NEHU library cannot, as it stands, compete with the library resources available in major research universities elsewhere, it houses a precious collection of material published by local scholars and intellectuals. They significantly shaped my own thinking and ‘seeing’ of the Northeast, but which, often poorly printed and distributed, are hardly available outside the region. Lastly, but most importantly, pursuing my doctorate at NEHU allowed me to work under the supervision of Tanka B. Subba, who supported me far beyond the call of duty, shipped my thesis through some very murky waters, and through it all was a never-ending source of inspiration. I owe him not just much of my anthropological thinking but also important lessons that he taught me about life in general. Over the years of researching and writing this book I have incurred many other debts in many different places, too many, I fear, to do complete justice here.

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To start with, I must thank Ellen Bal, who, about a decade ago, when I was an undergraduate student in Amsterdam, dissuaded me from taking up admission as an exchange student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which I had applied for and been granted. Instead, she suggested that I must take admission at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, some of whose faculty she knew personally. Everything else followed from this early intervention. When, as an MPhil student at Oxford University, I first started thinking and writing seriously about Naga society and political conflict, David N. Gellner generously commented on my ideas and drafts and was an incredible source of intellectual inspiration. I also thank Willem van Schendel, whose student I was, much to my regret, only briefly, but whose insights on the region, encouragement of my research, and in his role as an external examiner of my PhD thesis was a beacon of light. I received similar encouragement from Philippe Ramirez, whose deconstruction of ethnicity and kinship in the Assam-Meghalaya borderland influenced my own understanding of social bonds among Nagas. I carried out fieldwork in Nagaland for roughly two years between 2011 and 2014. I am grateful to Lucy Zehol, Besasayo Kezo, and Kühüpoyo Puro for guiding me to the Chakhesang Naga village, which I shall call Phugwumi, and for facilitating my fieldwork there. Kühüpoyo Puro especially was a constant source of support and his house in Kohima a place of intellectual and bodily nourishment. My second fieldwork took place in the Chang Naga village of Noksen, for whose arrangements I thank Achu Chang in Pune and his extended family in Noksen. My fieldwork in Nagaland was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, for whose generosity I remain deeply grateful (the dissertation fieldwork grant that they awarded enabled me to release myself from a very edifying but marginally paid position at the Don Bosco Museum for Indigenous Cultures in Shillong and to fully concentrate on my PhD research). My greatest debt, as ever, is to the Phugwumi and Noksen villagers who warmly welcomed me into their lives and whose never faltering cooperation, hospitality, and kindness I am at loss to ever be able to reciprocate. For reasons of confidentiality, and in view of the sensibilities that run through this book, I have to restrain myself from mentioning those who helped me so immensely, but they certainly include my hosts, interlocutors, and friends in both villages. While I have used

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pseudonyms throughout, I am sure some of you will recognize yourself in the pages that follow. I am less sure that all of you will be equally pleased with what this book has turned into but I nevertheless hope that my arguments will contribute, even through their criticisms, to debates on the past, present, and future of Naga society. Elsewhere in Nagaland I thank Toshinaro Longchar, Aziebu Shaiza, Panger, Aküm Longchari, Takatemjen Ao, Thungti Chang, Ejan Ngullie, Dzuleno Zhimomi, I.L. Chingmak, Wondangbeni Shitiri, C.M. Chang and his family, Dozhuhy Tunyi, Zubenthung Ngullie, Shiroi Shaiza, and Muzito Tunyi. In Kohima, I specifically thank Neichute Doulo, a trusted friend and sparring partner for many of the arguments I advance in this book, as well as Michael Heneise for his friendship and many fruitful conversations. This book was written, in bits and pieces, while teaching at three different academic institutions. When my supervisor, Tanka B. Subba, was bequeathed the position of Vice-Chancellor of Sikkim Central University in Gangtok he took me along to assist him in establishing a department of anthropology. While I hardly got any writing done during the first couple of semesters in Sikkim, starting a department from scratch (with Samson Singh, who took care of physical anthropology) was a privilege and opportunity I would not have wanted to miss. I started writing my ethnography in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, where I was invited on a ‘Teaching for Excellence Award’ granted by the German Research Foundation. In Tübingen, I thank Gabriele Alex, Roland Hardenberg, Baktygul Tulebaeva, and particularly Vibha Joshi Parkin and David Parkin for their support and insightful discussions. The bulk of this book was written at Royal Thimphu College, my present institutional home-ground, during the early hours before and after dawn when most students are still asleep and our hilltop campus is an abode of silence and serenity. At Royal Thimphu College, I thank Tenzing Yonten, T.S. Powdyel, Shivaraj Bhattarai, and Samir Patel for creating such a conducive environment. I also express my gratitude to Leishipem Khamrang, colleague and neighbour, for reading through multiple drafts and for many stimulating discussions. Several other colleagues and friends generously read portions of this book, offered useful comments and prevented me from fossilizing to paper some embarrassing mistakes (for those that still remain the

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responsibility is solely mine). I thank, in no particular order, Zhoto Tunyi, Michael Heneise, Iris Odyuo, Shrochis Karki, Riku Khutso, Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh, Arkotong Longkumer, Jasmine Yimchunger, and Asojiini Rachel Kashena as well as two anonymous reviewers at Oxford University Press, India. I also thank my student Karma Yangden for helping me sort out the references. Certain sections of this book are based on earlier versions of my research published in various journals and permissions to reproduce them are gratefully acknowledged. Parts of the following article have been used in Chapters 2 and 5 in this book: ‘Who is a Naga Village? The Naga “Village Republic” through the Ages’, The South Asianist: Journal of South Asian Studies 5(1): 99–120 (2017), (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License). Parts in this book, especially in Chapter 7, have been reproduced or expanded upon from: ‘Polythetic Democracy: Tribal Elections, Bogus votes, and Political Imagination in the Naga Uplands of Northeast India’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 121–51 (2015), (Creative Commons-Jelle J.P. Wouters- Attribution 4.0 International). The following article has been used in parts at various places in this book especially in Chapter 2: ‘Sovereignty, Integration or Bifurcation? Troubled Histories, Contentious Territories and the Political Horizons of the Long Lingering Naga Movement’, pp. 97–116, originally published in Studies in History, Vol. 32 No. 1, copyright © 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi. I thank the team at Oxford University Press, India for their constant support and inputs in the journey of this book. I end by thanking my family; my parents for never doubting my lifedecisions, no matter where and how far they took me, and my siblings, Elke and Remy, for their support, even as the friction of distance often prevents us from meeting for long stretches of time. Finally, I thank Kikee. Without her, nothing. Jelle J.P. Wouters Thimphu, September 2017

Abbreviations

ACAUT AFSPA APBF BDO CPO CTC DUDA ENPO ENSF FGN FGN- N/A FGN-A FNR GOI GPRN MDoNER

Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation Armed Forces Special Powers Act Asian Pacific Baptist Federation Block Development Office Chakhesang Public Organisation Chang Tribal Committee (Council) Department of Underdeveloped Areas Eastern Naga Peoples’ Organisation Eastern Naga Students’ Federation Federal Government of Nagaland Federal Government of Nagaland (Non-Accordist) Federal Government of Nagaland (Accordist) Forum for Naga Reconciliation Government of India Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim Ministry of Development of the North-Eastern Region

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abbreviations

MGNREGA MLA MP NBCC NEC NEFA NHDTC NHTA NNC NNC-A NNC-N/A NNO NPC NPF NPMHR NPSC NSCN-IM NSCN-K NSCN-KK NSCN-R NSCN-U PWD RGN UDF UNPO VC VDB WGIP

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Member of the Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament Nagaland Baptist Church Council North-Eastern Council North-Eastern Frontier Agency Naga Hills District Tribal Council Naga Hills Tuensang Area Naga National Council A Naga National Council (Accordist) Naga National Council (Non-Accordist) Nagaland Nationalist Organisation Naga People’s Convention Naga People’s Front Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights Nagaland Public Service Committee National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak/Muivah) National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khole-Kitovi) National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Reformation) National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Unification) Public Works Department Revolutionary Government of Nagaland United Democratic Front Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organisation Village Council Village Development Board UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples

1

Introduction

The Shadows of Naga Insurgency

I

t is autumn 2013 and a mass protest is scheduled in Dimapur. Schools and educational institutes are closed, and shops and business establishments have rolled down their shutters. Only a few minutes have passed and already thousands of Nagas are spilling onto the streets to air their anguish against the internal divisions and perceived degeneration of the Naga National Movement. The number of protestors first swells below the clock-tower, a landmark in the heart of Dimapur, from where they fan out across the town’s lanes and streets, shouting, sloganeering, and flaunting banners as they march. For over 60 years, since the mid-1950s, the Naga Movement— in its various forms, factions, and guises—has fought for Naga Independence, and in doing so presents itself as a people’s movement supported by tribal and Christian uplanders.1 The Naga armed struggle provoked a massive escalation of violence from the Indian state, a dense

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0001

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militarization of the Naga highlands, and countless tragedies. The Naga Movement persevered across decades, and in 1997 a ceasefire was struck between India’s Central Government and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah (NSCN-IM), arguably the dominant force in an increasingly divided and disjointed Naga Movement. It was from the moment of ceasefire, my Naga friends and interlocutors explain, that the perceived downfall of the Naga Movement began. Post ceasefire, they narrate, the earlier mostly noble and selfless motivations of ‘national workers’, as cadres of Naga underground groups are called locally, quickly degenerated into greediness, intimidation, and internal bickering, leading to a general air of unpleasantness between rivalling Naga factions and the wider Naga populace.2 Of course, in a region long poised between the violence of insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrible things keep on happening, but it is nevertheless widely held that the ceasefire has not made things better for ordinary Naga men and women. Frustrations long cropped up, or expressed only in hushed conversations, finally turned to shouts on a hot and humid Dimapur afternoon. In most visual representations, the Naga highlands make for idyllic sceneries of forest-clad, rolling hills veiled by low-hanging fog, and dotted with picturesque hilltop villages. Oftentimes the Naga uplands are painted as a landscape filled with age-old traditions, year-round festivals and merrymaking, and colourful culture and customs; the perfect stuff for ‘ethnic’ and ‘exotic’ photography and glossy coffee-table books (for example, Kunz and Joshi 2008; Stirn and Van Ham 2003; Welman and Jagoi 2013).3 Not here in Dimapur (neither in Naga villages, as this book will variously show), which is a town of business and bustle built on flatland alongside, and across, the Nagaland–Assam border.4 Rows of buildings sit in a monotonous urban landscape of concrete, while new shopping complexes and apartment clusters sprout fast to cater and accommodate Dimapur’s rapidly expanding population. Because of its commerce and trade, Dimapur is also the territorial locus of Naga underground groups, which collect the bulk of their finances from taxing all peoples, goods, and services in the area; rebellion and resistance, including the maintenance of a ceasefire, after all, requires resources and thence ‘rebels must raise capital’ (Weinstein 2007: 7). Camp Hebron, as the designated post-ceasefire headquarters of the NSCN-IM was christened, is just a few miles away, and so are

Introduction 3

the camps and hideouts of several other underground groups such as the National  Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) (NSCN-K), National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Unification) (NSCN-U), Naga National Council (Non-Accordist) (NNC-N/A), and National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khole-Kitovi) (NSCN-KK).5 Many of its leaders and cadres have built houses in the town, sometimes neighbouring those of Naga bureaucrats and politicians with whom, formally, they are at loggerheads. What is protested in Dimapur, more specifically, are the endless and excessive taxes and collections Naga underground groups, and their respective parallel governments (even as Naga factions resist the Indian state, each faction simultaneously mimics structures and functions of the Indian government to themselves look like a state) levy from government offices and ordinary Nagas, and which have long curbed household budgets, business profits, and public monies. Protested, too, is the prevailing factionalism that spreads violence and death, and which results from an enormous struggle that is fought out between seven or eight Naga underground groups over historical legitimacy, ideological differences, leadership, and territorial and tribal domination within the broader Indo-Naga conflict. While the plot of Naga resistance was never simple, the post-ceasefire era witnessed further seizures and splits within the Naga Movement. Some of the banners protestors carry now read: ‘One [underground] government, one tax’,6 ‘We don’t work to feed you guys’, ‘Stop factionalism!’, ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’, and ‘Who lives, if Nagaland dies?’ The public rally was organized by a newly floated civil society organization that called itself the Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation (ACAUT), and took place in spite of dictums served against it by Naga underground leaders, who insisted the rally went against Naga nationalism. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah, for one, declared the ACAUT as ‘anti-national’, condemned the rally as maligning the Naga cause, and as undermining the peace talks it had held with the Centre since 1997, and which, they insisted, was making good progress. The Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation spokespersons reasoned differently. The protest march, they explained, was not against but in support of Nagas’ historical and political rights for sovereignty and self-determination. What they, and the protestors,

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rejected and resented, however, was the current form and factions of the Naga Movement, and which to their eyes had reduced Naga nationalism to a pretext for national workers to accrue purely private material gains and to fight over interpersonal and intertribal differences. I was not in Dimapur at the time of the rally, but seven hours of winding roads away in a Chakhesang Naga hilltop village I shall call Phugwumi, and where I learned about the protest march, as did the villagers, through the radio, newspapers, and phone calls.7 Most villagers talked about the protest as ‘bold’ and ‘daring’. One villager, whom I grew to know well, told me: ‘There is a problem with our national movement. Before we used to respect national workers, almost worshipped them as supra-humans, but now they fight amongst themselves and things are topsy-turvy’. Another commented: ‘Earlier national workers served the Naga cause, but today it seems we are serving them’. Some in the village, however, expressed apprehension about the possible consequences of the rally: ‘Could the Central Government use the protest march to weaken the NSCN-IM’s negotiation position and so impede an honourable political solution?’,8 ‘Would Naga underground groups react and retaliate by going after the organizers of the protest?’, ‘Might this lead to a new wave of violence?’ These were genuine worries villagers expressed. Dimapur’s public rally drew widespread attention, both within and outside Naga society. Never before, in long decades of political conflict, had ordinary Nagas come out in large numbers against the form and functioning of the Naga Movement. But even as multiple analysts, commentators, and media channels interpreted the protest march as foreboding the implosion of the Naga Movement, this was not the message either the ACAUT or the protestors, several of whom I spoke with later, wanted to express. For instance, while they rejected the excessive and multiple taxes levied by national workers, they did not object to contributing financially to the Naga Movement per se. A Dimapur resident (and a former classmate) working in a government office told me: ‘I  am ready to contribute part of my salary to the Naga cause. Almost all Nagas remain willing to do so. But we cannot be expected to finance the existence of rivalling underground groups and governments whose existence serves no purpose except causing hardship, violence, and tribalism’. In fact, by rejecting the disintegration and degeneration

Introduction 5

of the Naga Movement, most protestors, if anything, saw themselves as protectors, not dissenters, of the Naga cause. In Phugwumi, too, villagers usually separated their frustrations and disillusionment with the present-day Naga Movement from the deeper rationalities and doctrines of Naga sovereignty, a political aspiration many supported, or certainly felt sympathetic towards, even though they understood that chances of Nagas achieving this were both complicated and slim. Not a few Phugwumi villagers had their individual biographies linked to the Naga Movement and, in the past, had risked their lives and limbs battling India’s military and paramilitary forces, while all villagers had variously suffered as the result of the conflict. Most villagers had experiences to share and stories to tell, and to which I spent many evenings listening. This was no different in the Chang Naga village of Noksen, where I carried out a second stint of fieldwork, even as for many Noksen villagers, and the Chang more widely, the Naga Independence struggle has been put on the backburner in favour of a—for them—more pressing political demand: the bifurcation of Nagaland state through the creation of a new state to be called Frontier Nagaland (Chapter 6). Their political and territorial demand cuts through an envisaged integrated Naga homeland, and makes one of the multiple complications, convulsions, and apparent contradictions that have emerged within the broader contours of the Indo-Naga conflict. These internal complications, as well as the protest rally, evade most popular images of the Naga struggle, which conjures that of a marginalized and culturally distinct community resisting, against all odds, invading and repressive Indian and Burmese states; of a popular movement driven by rights of self-determination and self-preservation as a distinct Naga nation. Oftentimes the term Nagalim (or Naga Land) is invoked, which projects the political integration of a contiguously inhabited Naga territory presently bifurcated between India and Burma/ Myanmar,9 and ultimately the emergence of an independent, upland country where Naga culture and Christianity structure social life.10 My ethnography, as ethnography does, complicates any such singular and simplistic readings by providing a worm’s eye-view of Naga insurgency, revealing some of the complex ways in which the tentacles of insurgency and counterinsurgency attach themselves to everyday social and

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political life. Roughly two years of fieldwork revealed a plethora of political voices, motivations, and aspirations, the articulation of social binds and divides that obscure images of the Naga nation as a single ethnic rubric, and an ever-contested linkage of ‘overground’ apparatuses of state, development, and democracy with the politics of Naga insurgency. ‘Nothing is ever what it seems in Nagaland,’ as a Naga friend in Shillong once confided to me. Through a fine-grained ethnographic account, this book nevertheless hopes to distil some of the inner logic, intricacies, and indeterminacies that shape everyday social life as it unfolds in the (often murky) ‘shadows’ of Naga insurgency.

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency ‘In this transitional period of history, we the Nagas are in a very delicate position,’ wrote A.Z. Phizo from Calcutta’s Presidency Jail, where he had been incarcerated on charges of ‘stirring trouble’ in the IndoBurma borderland. The year was 1948. India had just woken up to ‘life and freedom’ and the Nagas, of whom Phizo introduced himself as a spokesperson, now wanted India to set them free. His letter continued: ‘We occupy a territory at a point of transfusions and we cannot permit Naga territory to be political polemics.’11 What Phizo invoked was the colonial geopolitical objectification (Zou and Kumar 2011), the administrative and cartographic ordering and reordering of a hitherto non-state upland space, thence transmuting Naga lands from a fringe, rugged and remote, into a crucial and potentially subversive border or buffer zone between India and China, Burma, and, at some distance, (erstwhile) East-Pakistan. ‘[The Nagas] are not planning Machiavellian politics’, Phizo, witty as always, assured, then asserting that it was ‘not the nature of the Nagas to be secretive…. We never made a secret of our aspiration to be independent again when the British leave India’. This letter by Phizo was sent to Rajagopalachari, the first GovernorGeneral of free India, but he immediately rejected its plea, as did Nehru, Patel, and other Indian leaders (bar, it must be said, Mahatma Gandhi).12 Phizo, after his release from jail, became the fourth president and main ideologue of the National Naga Council (NNC), which launched and spearheaded the Naga Movement for Independence. To justify its claim for Independence, the NNC insisted and persisted that neither

Introduction 7

were Nagas Indians, nor had their hills ever been Indian terrain, be it in terms of precolonial political realities, mythological and cosmological configurations, or the cultural stretch of Bharat. Naga spokespersons had articulated this viewpoint as early as 1929, when a memorandum signed by members of the Naga Club, the first Naga apex body of sorts, was submitted to the Simon Commission, which had come to British India to study constitutional reform. The memorandum read: Before the British Government conquered our country in 1879–80, we were living in a state of intermitted warfare with the Assamese of the Assam Valley to the North and West of our country and Manipuris to the South. They never conquered us nor were we subjected to their rules. On the other hand, we were always a terror to these people…. Our language is quite different from those of the plains and we have no social affinities with the Hindus or Mussalmans. We are look[ed] down upon by the one for ‘beef ’ and the other for our ‘pork’ and by both for our want in education … (cited in Vashum 2005: 175)

Were the British to depart, as rumour already had it, they pleaded, ‘we should not be thrust to the mercy of other people … but to leave [sic] us alone as in ancient times’ (cited in Vashum 2005: 175). It was a reading of history and a future political vision India’s newly Independent government rejected. In the 1940s and early 1950s, these conflicting interpretations of what was, and what was not, Indian territory, and who was, and who was not, an Indian, were battled with rhetoric, historical narratives, political treatises, and symbolic acts. However, when subsequent talks, negotiations, and attempted treaties failed, Jawaharlal Nehru ordered in his military and paramilitary forces. In those early days, few perhaps had foreseen that this political disagreement would become accompanied by anything like the protracted conflict, violence, and bloodshed that eventuated. ‘Troops moved into Tuensang by Oct. 1955’, B.N. Mullik, then Director of India’s Central Intelligence Bureau recounted, ‘and the war with the Nagas started from then’ (cited in Vashum 2005: 12). The subsequent history of the Indo-Naga conflict is a history of a daring resistance, one defying the odds of a small, initially ill-equipped Naga force holding out despite being outnumbered many times over. Over the past decades, several ceasefires and treaties were signed, but in

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the end each failed to hold or backfired, turning Naga insurgency into a multi-generational struggle. But there is more to the Naga Movement than resistance against Nagas’ enclosure into the Indian nation-state. ‘When history is written as a history of struggle’, Pandey (2004: 4) writes, ‘it tends to exclude the dimensions of force, uncertainty, domination and disdain, loss and confusion, by normalizing the struggle, evacuating it of its messiness and making it part of a narrative of assured advance towards specified (or specifiable) resolutions’. Pandey diagnoses this in relation to the history of Partition, but, in adapted form, his observation bears on the Naga struggle, which besides a history of resistance (and an advance towards a political solution favourable to Nagas) also contains a history of multiple dissensions, coups, rivalries, acts of tribalism, and factional feuds within, splitting and complicating the Naga Movement into myriad rivalling underground groups. What sets the Indo-Naga conflict apart from most armed conflicts is its longevity, its listing amongst the longest postcolonial struggles worldwide. Scholarship on armed conflict is voluminous, and I do not intend to traverse its theoretical triumphs and pitfalls here. What nevertheless needs pointing out is that most treatises on conflict concentrate on tales of violence, resistance, and survival, often emphasizing the destructive nature of violent conflict on social life. Violent conflict, Carolyn Nordstrom (2004: 68) posits, ‘undermines core foundations of society … [it causes] the wounding of culture, social dislocation, and the destruction of the very epistemological and ontological tools by which we construct our world and ourselves in it’. The realization that the ramifications of armed conflict go beyond bodily damage and destruction is pertinent, and perhaps still too often overlooked. However, most such approaches end up essentializing armed conflicts in terms of violence, and in so doing quarantine them from wider social processes, struggles, and realities that continue alongside it, rather mistakenly presenting the conflict as a ‘thing in itself ’ (Richards 2005: 3). Tobias Kelly (2008: 351) critiques such ethnographic studies of armed conflict for ‘over-determining violence’ and ‘ignoring the mundane nature of most political conflicts’. This is not to underestimate the real devastation and destruction armed conflicts cause, but to acknowledge that social life, even in situations of conflict, usually remains a great deal more complex and ‘thicker’ than tactics of coping alone (Thiranagama

Introduction 9

2011: 7). To capture everyday life amidst continuing conflict, Kelly (2008: 353) argues, ‘an examination of the ordinary is just as important as the apparently extraordinary or exceptional…. If we are to understand the specific shape that armed conflicts take, with their particular peaks and troughs, we need to understand the lulls as much as the spikes of violence’.13 Wars and armed conflicts, especially protracted ones, Stephen Lubkemann (2008: 1) contends, should not be understood as a suspension of social life but as a complex ‘social condition’; it is ‘not an “event” that suspends “normal” social processes but instead has become the normal—in the sense of “expected”—context of the unfolding of social life’. For several generations of Nagas, the politics, perils, and precarities of insurgency and counter-insurgency, the militarization of the landscape, and ceasefires and their breakdowns have indeed been the ‘expected’ context of social life as most Nagas have no historical point of political stability they can refer back to. Instead of reducing conflict to violent struggles for territory and power, anthropologists studying (in) conflictscapes, Lubkemann (2008:  14) postulates, should concentrate on ‘everyday social life and the process of its realization’, taking into account the many ‘complex and multidimensional social struggles and concerns, interpersonal negotiations, and culturally scripted life projects’ that continue to orient the social lives of ordinary men and women, and which may deviate from ‘the macro-political terms of the conflict’. In approaching Naga insurgency, I perceive as its ‘macro-political terms’ the different political positions that exist between Naga undergrounds and the Government of India, the armed conflict, violence, and current ceasefire that emerged from this, and the political shadow this casts over Naga society. This shadow, as shadows are in spite of their darkness, is nevertheless translucent; through it can be seen the social practices, processes, and relations, political aspirations, normative imaginations, moral values and struggles that inform the more minute texture of everyday life, and which, while certainly influenced by the macro-political terms of Naga insurgency, are not fully eclipsed by it. For most of my Naga friends and respondents, and especially after the 1997 ceasefire and the related withdrawal of Indian Armed Forces (mostly) to their barracks, Naga insurgency existed behind the immediate scenes and compulsions of everyday life. Even if past experiences told

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Naga villagers that violence could potentially re-emerge without prior notice, the conflict did not preoccupy their daily lives in the ways that fulfilling kinship obligations, religious duties, studying, marrying and establishing families, cultivating fields, or otherwise carving out a living did. While war and conflict, as Sharika Thiranagama (2011: 6) rightly argues, tends to have ‘its own parameters, frames and codes, and generated different forms of sociality’, it does ‘not obliterate preexisting social projects, fantasies or social mores’. In line with these approaches, I do not perceive of the Indo-Naga conflict as dissected from wider patterns and precepts of social life. However, with Thiranagama (2011) I argue that this should not lead to an abandoning of the social and political specificities of life in a conflict zone. Naga insurgency, as I will variously show, has long flooded the banks of political conflict and washes through all fields of social life, and is thence best understood as a complex—an ‘insurgency complex’. Approaching Naga insurgency as a complex, thus traversing beyond armed conflict in the strict sense, recognizes how Nagas’ historical and embodied experiences of resistance and state aggression, violence and political volatility, struggle and suffering link together, how they produce long-term mentalities and prejudices, shape social norms, moral evaluations, local struggles, and magnify interpersonal and intertribal relations in expected and unexpected ways. What emerges from this is perhaps not a complete transformation of social life (or conflict-induced ‘cultural chaos’ as Lubkemann (2008) argues armed conflict causes), but a situation in which social relationships, moral reasoning, political sociality and aspirations, and culturally scripted life-projects become variously entangled in, and complicated by, the past and present of Naga insurgency. What follows, then, is not a panoramic overview of the protracted Indo-Naga conflict, but an ethnographic underview of the social corollaries, carryovers, and consequences of Naga insurgency.14 The seven chapters that make the main body of this book explore, in multiple ways, the form and substance of social life as it emerges in the shadows of political conflict. I variously look at how kinship networks, social bonds, and tribal identities constitute themselves and interrelate with the politics of insurgency, the kind of state-society relations that have grown, how development schemes and projects manifest themselves

Introduction 11

locally, and, amidst all this, what agency and imagination Naga villagers possess to appropriate and rework apparatuses and policies of state, development, and democracy to their own uses, understandings, and distinctive lifeworlds.

Where Is Nagalim? When the Central Government, in 2016, began fencing and trenching the international boundary between India and Myanmar the ‘trans-border’ Khiamniungan Naga tribe protested. Its apex body condemned it as a ‘felonious act’ and explained that the ‘Khiamniungan have always lived as one community’ but that ‘after British colonialism an imaginary line was drawn between India and Myanmar, dividing the tribe between two countries’. This ‘imaginary line’, it is popularly imagined, ‘was drawn over the Patkai ranges when Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minster of India, and U Nu, the then Prime Minister of Burma, flew over the area to determine the international boundary, thus unwittingly dividing villages perched on the mountaintops between the two nations’ ( Joshi 2013: 166). The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah also objected to the physical demarcation of the international boundary in, what it called, ‘the heart of the Naga homeland’. It stated, in a public communiqué, ‘We shall no longer accept any policy to further divide the Naga family in the form of an artificial boundary fencing between India and Myanmar’. The Naga Hoho—a pan-Naga apex body—similarly issued a newspaper statement rejecting the border fencing as ‘an attempt by India and Myanmar to rewrite the history of Nagas’. Nagaland’s Chief Minister, in turn, stated: ‘Even if we may not be able to do much to change the international boundary, we will do everything to see that the traditional right of the Naga people to move about freely within their own ancestral land is not taken away’. These public outpourings were followed up by Nagaland’s lone representative to the Lok Sabha, who wrote, in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, that ‘the people living in both sides of the border in the Naga areas belong to similar tribes and have been living as one community since time immemorial’.15 If borders are amongst the ‘most paradoxical of human creations’ (Gellner 2013: 2), this is, in parts, because they often either join what is different or divide what is similar (Van Schendel 2005a: 9).

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The  contemporary criss-crossing of political boundaries across the Naga highlands—and the mismatch between tribal, ethnic, and political borders this generates—is a prime example of ‘borders that divide’. Political boundaries, of course, are not natural and permanent, but reflect the historicity and politics of a place, and always carry within themselves the potential to be redrawn or abandoned. Such a redrawing of borders lies at the heart of the territorial and political projection of Nagalim, which protests the bifurcation of Naga territory by the Indo-Myanmar border, and its further fragmentation, within India, by the political boundaries of four states (Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh). Hence, the NSCN-IM defining as ‘the heart of the Naga homeland’ that which the Indian and Myanmar states perceive as the outer edges of their respective territory and nation. Akin to colonial subalterns subjugated and marginalized elsewhere, Nagas had little or no say in the drawing of borders that divided them. Its delimitations, instead, were concocted and chiselled at the convenience of the colonial administration and later confirmed and congealed (but also added to) by the postcolonial Indian government. Even as boundaries in South and Southeast Asia did not dwell on the catastrophic notion, once popular in colonial Africa, that straight lines make uncomplicated borders, they hinged on arbitrary considerations, political motives, and bird-eye perspectives all the same. Consequently, for Nagas, they not just truncated what was, or came to be, Naga political consciousness across different state territories, but also cut across single tribes and villages, and in at least one instance runs through a house, as happened to the dwelling of the Konyak Naga chief of Longwa village (Longvah 2014: 44). In crafting his case for Naga Independence, and the territorial reorganization of the region, Phizo wrote: The Nagas were divided by the British administration into three major units. About one fifth of the Naga population with that much in proportion of our land were administrated from British India [Naga Hills district]. About the same proportion was administrated by British Burma. And approximately sixty percent of the population occupying a territory of about seventy percent of Nagaland [Naga-lands] were left untouched and undisturbed, who were absolutely independent. (cited in Nuh 1986: 101)

Introduction 13

It is the coming together of these Naga lands under a single political, administrative, and sovereign roof that remains projected as the ultimate outcome of the Naga struggle. Even as the NSCN-IM, in its political dialogues with the Centre, professed readiness to absolve its demand for complete Independence, it remains firm on the unification of Naga territories: ‘We will never compromise on our demand for the reunification of the Naga homeland. We were divided first by the British and then India perpetuated the divisions. The NSCN wants a unified Naga homeland and we will either have it or we will fight for it’ (Muivah cited in Samaddar 2009: 182). This desire to unify Naga lands (certainly those lying within India) elicits support across the Naga political spectrum, and a resolution unanimously adopted by the Nagaland Assembly in 1994 reads thus: Whereas, by quirk of history, the Naga-inhabited areas have been disintegrated and scattered under different administrative units without the knowledge and consent of the Nagas…. Whereas, the Nagas irrespective of territorial barriers have strong desire to come together under one administrative roof … the Assembly, therefore, resolves to urge upon the Government of India and all concerned to help the Nagas achieve this desired goal. (cited in Chasie 2005: 61)16

Naga civil societies, too, demand this and, in 2010, the Naga Hoho proclaimed: ‘henceforth, we derecognize any artificial boundary lines drawn across our ancestral lands in the so-called Manipur state’ (cited in Longvah 2014: 44).17

A Brief Naga Historical Detour The kinds of past we conjure, David Lowenthal (1985: xvi) writes, is ‘largely an artefact of the present’. This is because we selectively recall and celebrate some historical events, and invoke them to justify the present, but expunge or ignore others. Lowenthal explains: ‘as the past has new consequences for each successive generation; we are forever reinterpreting it’ (1985: 62). Most Naga history writing is fraught with the volatile politics of the Indo-Naga conflict. Ask a Naga and Indian scholar to interpret the same historical sources and the conclusions drawn by

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each are likely to differ. Nor, perhaps, could this be otherwise. Besides political colouring, our understanding of Naga history is also ‘thin’. Much of what we assume we know about Nagas’ ancient and precolonial pasts is either derived from oral histories, legends, songs, and folktales, or is an interpretation of fragments and shards of historical accounts written, not by Nagas, but by litterateurs of neighbouring kingdoms and dynasties in the Assam and Imphal valleys. This section, in the briefest of summaries, sketches Nagas’ political history up till the demand for Naga Independence on 14 August 1947, one day before India gained hers. The Naga inhabited hills are usually said to be made up of disparate tribes. These, prior to their (partial) incorporation into the British Empire and later complete enclosure into the Indian and Burmese states, were political communities with a fierce history of self-governance. In actual practice, however, both the locus and ethos of Naga political organization was vested not in the tribe, but in the prototypical Naga ‘village republic’ (Chapter 2 in this volume). It was only seldom that separate villages asserted themselves as a tribal entity that in its functioning was considerably constant, corporative, and cohesive. From the earliest documentary accounts we have, we know that these Naga villages maintained complex sets of relations with kingdoms and dynasties in the adjacent Brahmaputra, Barak, and Imphal Valleys, and which across time and space included raids and retaliations, trade and tribute, cooperation, co-optation, and conflict, suzerainty, and submission (Devi 1968; Mackenzie 1884; Wouters 2011). As a general principle, however, Naga villages, while occasionally subdued, were never administrated by an external force, but left to fend for themselves. This relative seclusion was—though never completely isolated, bounded, and sealed—first, because the rugged uplands seemed to offer little of value to dynasties in the plains. Secondly, because plain dwellers both scorned and feared the upland Nagas as headhunters, found their behaviour as fickle as the upland winds, and generally looked upon the hills as a fortress of savagery, nakedness, and barbarity best kept away from.18 And thirdly, because Naga villages and communities themselves fiercely resisted intrusions into their hills, putting up ferocious fights to push back invaders. This was also the evaluation of the few European travellers who ventured into Assam before its formal annexation by the British Raj, and who described the Naga highlands as

Introduction 15

the place where civilization ended and unruly, violent savages took over (Mackenzie 1884). With measures of historical verifiability, the relations between Nagas and Ahoms (whose princes and nobles reigned over large swathes of the Brahmaputra Valley from roughly the thirteenth till nineteenth century) were documented in the Ahom Buranjis, or court chronicles. Some selected passages detail: ‘the Itania Nagas revolted’, ‘the Chiefs of the Lakma Nagas came down and hurdled spears into the air’, ‘the Nagas of Tirualia revolted…. They entered into our villages, murdered our men, and pillaged the people. For many days, they devastated the villages and our men had no peace’, and ‘Malauthupia Nagas killed a number of our villagers and pillaged their properties’ (Baruah 1980). While such accounts evidence the early presence of upland Nagas, specifications as Itania, Lakma, Tirulia, and Malauthupia Nagas but also ‘Barduria, Paniduria, Mithonia, Banfera, Joboka, Jaktungias [Nagas]’ (Prakash 2007: 384) have long fallen into oblivion, and it is hard, though not always impossible, to reconstruct to which Naga villages or villageclusters they referred. By the first decades of the nineteenth century, and as a result of Burmese incursions followed by the authoritative arrival of the British in Assam, Ahom rule first crumpled, then was obliterated. The colonial administration that followed, certainly in the beginning, strongly revolved around the causes of tea, taxes, and timber. It was the cause of tea that led the British into the Naga foothills, which, even if not always inhabited, were used by Nagas as ancestral hunting grounds. As early as 1844, Owen, a British officer, invoked a report from ‘scientific gentlemen’ to claim that ‘these Naga Hills must undoubtedly bear better sorts of tea than is found in the plains of Assam’ (1844: 8). Soon, the acquisition of Naga lands began. In fact, a major contention between the British and upland tribes, including Nagas, was the ‘pushing of hill tribes up into the hills, alienating them from land previously under their control and granting such land, formally declared “wasteland”, to tea planters and immigrant peasants from Bengal’ (Karlsson 2011: 270).19 Naga villages responded in ways they knew best, and carried out raids on tea plantations and the Assam plains beyond. They would swoop down, usually after dark, and destroy produce, loot harvests, and, in some instances, capture labourers which they put to work in the hills

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or traded as slaves.20 These raids reduced British revenues and were retaliated with punitive expeditions, often including the burning of Naga villages and granaries. The first such expedition ensued in 1832 and was led by Captains Jenkins and Pemberton accompanied by ‘a party of 700 soldiers, and 800 coolies’ (Mackenzie 1884: 101) All along the way, they were attacked by Angami villagers who ‘rolled down stones from the summit of the hills, threw spears, and did their utmost by yelling and intimidation to obstruct the advance of the force’. Such and subsequent British-Naga encounters were never fought on equal footings: ‘[Naga warriors] were astounded at perceiving that their wooden shields were no protection against leaden bullets’ (Butler 1855: 171). Still, Nagas refused to surrender, and it took the British several decades, the loss of many lives, and tremendous expenditure, to subdue Naga villages into notional submission (Elwin 1961: 147–95). To effectuate control, the Naga Hills district was created in 1866, of whose decision Colonel Woodthorpe (1882: 57) wrote: ‘Suffice it to say that in consequence of the raids continually made by the Nagas on our territory, it was found necessary to locate a Political Officer at a place called Samaguting, just in the hills’. In 1878, this outpost was moved up to Kohima, which remains Nagaland’s state capital today.21 While slow at first, and not without setbacks, the colonial government gradually expanded its sway over swathes of the Naga uplands. Once in place, colonial rule led to the political, economic, and legal restructuring of the Naga uplands. Headhunting and slavery were made illegal, and punishments meted out against those who transgressed.22 The new colonial administration also introduced ‘house-tax’ and monetized the local economy to enable Naga villagers to pay these. These taxes turned into a source of continual contention, and in their memorandum to the Simon Commission (mentioned above), Naga representatives wrote: ‘We are afraid new and heavy taxes will be imposed on us, and when we cannot pay, then all lands have to be sold and in long run we shall have no share in the land of our birth and life will not be worth living then’. If the Naga highlands, and adjacent hills, were already remote, what made them more remote still was the imposition of the Inner Line in 1873 with the motive to provide a ‘territorial frame to capital’ (Kar 2009: 51). More deeply, Kar explains, it sought to ‘demarcate “the hills” from the “the plains”, the nomadic from the sedentary, the jungle from the

Introduction 17

arable—in short, “the tribal areas” from “Assam proper”’ (Kar 2009: 52). What lay beyond the Inner Line, the Naga Hills included, was legally notified as ‘backward tracts’, which entailed that laws passed by legislatures did not apply to them but that they were administrated directly by the offices of the Governor. Later the term ‘backward’ was replaced with ‘excluded’ and ‘partially excluded’ areas, although the same principle of governance largely remained in place (Robb 1997).23 Areas beyond the Inner Line were also subjected to a permit regime, ostensibly to ‘protect’ Nagas against the perceived cunning and deceit of the more ‘advanced’ plainsmen. But even as total seclusion was not enforceable since hill and valley people needed to meet for purposes of trade, more stringent forms of regulations did curb the frequency with which such interactions took place, in the process isolating the Naga uplands in unprecedented ways. In the wake of British rule came missionaries, most of them belonging to American and Welsh Baptist missions. Within the course of a century, they succeeded in converting most Nagas to Christianity ( Joshi 2012; Thomas 2016). Besides ‘sin and salvation’, missionaries also brought with them modern education and medicine, which they promoted across the hills, and in doing so shaped not only novel religious and moral outlooks but also new perspectives, ways of thinking, and expectations. Some colonial officers supported, and facilitated, the arrival of missionaries and missions—‘Who shall say that the Bible will not be the means of changing the habits and ideas of these wild savages? The experiment is worthy of trial,’ wrote John Butler (1855: 66). Most British officers, however, felt ambivalent, if not rancorous, towards these missionaries, whom they accused of destroying Naga traditions and culture. J.P. Mills (1935: 148) wrote thus: ‘Government has been at pains to preserve them [Naga customs] to the utmost limit possible…. In strong contrast has been the attitude of the American Baptist Mission. As religion is a part in every Naga ceremony and as that religion is not Christianity, every ceremony must go’. In spite of cultural loss, what Christianity did offer was a common denominator among Naga communities in a way disparate languages, cultural practices, customs, beliefs, and bloodshed histories of inter-village strife could not. Ultimately, it was Christian faith, and the universal truths it espoused, that ‘mediated the formation of a modern political identity among Nagas’ (Thomas 2016: 1). Over time, Christian discourses, symbols, and slogans became

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deeply intertwined with the Naga Movement, as evidenced by the still popular slogan: ‘Nagaland for Christ’. Then came the World Wars into which Nagas were drawn in unexpected ways. During the First World War, about 2,000 (estimations vary) Nagas were assembled and dispatched as part of the labour-corps to war trenches in France and Mesopotamia, where they were introduced, for the first time, to ideas of nation, nationalism, and patriotism. Henry Balfour, then curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum and with a keen interest in Naga artefacts, came across ‘a gang of Nagas’ in France ‘engaging in road-repairing in the war zone, within sound of the guns’. Balfour was to reflect later: One wonders what impressions remain with them from their sudden contact with higher civilizations at war. Possibly, they are reflecting that, after what they have seen, the White Man’s condemnation of the relatively innocuous headhunting of the Nagas savours on hypocrisy. Now that they are back in their own hills, will they settle down to the indigenous simple life and revert to the primitive conditions which were temporarily disturbed? (Balfour 1921: xvi)

Settling back into ‘indigenous simple life’ they did not, and France returnees were amongst those who initiated the Naga Club in 1918, the first pan-Naga apex body. Initially a social club, which ran, among others, a football team and a cooperative store, the Naga Club gradually assumed a more political character as its members started, the Naga historian, Mashangthei Horam, writes, Preparing themselves politically in the event of India gaining her Independence from the British—a happening they then visualized as being imminent. Thus their chief concern was the political future of their homeland after the exit of the British. The Naga club was still in its infancy then, but the pattern of the future had already been installed in their minds. (cited in Franke 2009: 60)

Whereas the Naga Labour Corps had travelled far to participate in the First World War, the Second World War announced itself at Naga

Introduction 19

doorsteps as Japanese and Allied Forces battled over Kohima in 1944. In this battle, Nagas fought, suffered, and sacrificed at the behest of Allied Forces, making Swinson (1956: 213) conclude: ‘how many [Allied] lives were owed to the courage and skill of these remarkable [Naga] hillmen will never be known; but the figure must certainly run into thousands’. The battle of Kohima often fails to make it into standard textbook versions of the Second World War, but it was in Kohima that the Japanese expansion was fought to a halt, making Kohima to the Japanese ‘what Stalingrad was to Russia and Alamein to the Desert’ (Philips cited in Horam 1988: 57). For Naga villagers, the Japanese invasion and the presence of large numbers of Allied Forces provided ‘a definite break from the uninterrupted past and brought to their unaccustomed eyes the glare of a totally new world—new people, new weapons, new attire, new food and above all new ideas’ (Horam 1992: 162). One such ‘new idea’ was the vision of an independent Naga nation. The war reduced Kohima to ruins and rubble. The colonial government, in an attempt to compensate Nagas’ loyalty and losses, offered post-war reconstruction. It was to streamline the distribution of materials and cash that Charles Pawsey, the last British District Commissioner of the Naga Hills, facilitated the formation of the Naga Hills district Tribal Council (NHDTC) in April 1945, and whose mandate it became to unite Naga tribes to effectuate reconstruction. Less than a year later, the council had re-christened itself as the NNC, and became the platform for debates on Nagas’ political future. Initially the debate was between those who envisaged a genuine Naga autonomy within Assam and India and those who insisted that only an independent ‘government of the Nagas, for the Nagas, by the Nagas’ (Kevichusa cited in Archer 1947) would ensure Nagas’ welfare. At first, it was the stance for autonomy that drew majority support, and found expression in several memorandums the NNC dispatched to Jawaharlal Nehru. For a number of reasons, but including the ‘indifferent and non-committal’ attitudes of Indian national leaders (Thomas 2016: 2) and because no definite agreement seemed forthcoming, the voice for Naga Independence amplified in sonority.24 This initially led to a division within the NNC, and the split of a group calling themselves the ‘People’s Independence League’, of which A.Z. Phizo was a member. It was the People’s Independence League

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which on the 14th of August 1947 unilaterally, and without consent of the NNC, declared Naga Independence. In the confusion that followed, Phizo was first arrested, then released, and in 1950 selected as the fourth President of the NNC. Under Phizo’s leadership, the NNC’s stance formally changed from meaningful autonomy to complete Independence. Characterized as a ‘swayer of men’ (Horam 1988: 27), Phizo travelled across the Naga uplands to promulgate the stance for Naga Independence, and did so with notable success: ‘for the first time, who for centuries had had no contact with the people of the next village, had been chopping of each other’s heads without pity, fear or remorse, joined hands to attain independence’ (Anand 1980: 70). This was followed by a monumental plebiscite held in 1951, presided over by Phizo and the NNC, during which, Naga historians tell, 99 per cent of those Nagas consulted pressed their thumb in favour of Naga Independence. In 1954 the NNC declared the People’s Sovereign Republic of Free Nagaland, which was soon replaced by the Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN) as the political wing of the NNC and the government of Nagaland. Soon after, the war began.

From a Cradle of British Social Anthropology to Ethnographic Scarcity In studying the Naga highlands, and tracing social and political change and complexities, contemporary scholars grapple with a decades-wide ethnographic void, largely as a side effect of the protracted Indo-Naga conflict which long impeded the rise of Naga scholars and imposed research restrictions on nonlocal researchers, be they Indian or foreign nationals. Thankfully, academic interest on Nagas is currently on the rise, as evidenced by several recently published monographs (Longkumer 2010; Joshi 2012; Thomas 2016). On the whole, however, scant academic treatises, even less ethnographic ones, emerged between roughly the 1950s, when the Indo-Naga conflict erupted, and the second decade of the twenty-first century.25 The limited ethnographic scholarship that does exist is fundamentally patchy as while formerly colonially administrated tribes such as the Angami, Lotha, Ao, and Sema have attracted some scholarship, our ethnographic understanding of eastern Naga tribes remains much more deficient (fewer still are accounts of Naga

Introduction 21

tribes across the border into Myanmar). Much important work is yet to be done, but for which a large number of Naga anthropology and sociology students are now being trained in universities inside and outside India. Important to highlight, however, is that today’s ethnographic scarcity contrasts starkly with the colonial era during which Naga tribes turned into an ethnological hotbed, arguably even a cradle of British Social Anthropology. While administrated ‘lightly’, Naga culture and customs became subjected to intense ethnological scrutiny and speculation, mostly by ‘administrator-anthropologists’. British military and civil officers like Davis, Butler, Woodthorpe, Godden, Mills, and Hutton repeatedly addressed gatherings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and amongst whose eminent audiences their ethnographic material incited lively, if at times fantastical, discussions. After retiring from the colonial Indian Civil Service, J.H. Hutton and J.P. Mills, moreover, and based on their ethnological studies of Nagas, were appointed as Anthropology Professors at Cambridge University and the London School for Oriental and African Studies respectively. Till date, most reputed university libraries in places across the globe flaunt a shelf of Naga colonial monographs, most of them bound in characteristic dark blue colour covers, and carrying titles such as The Angami Nagas (Hutton 1921a), The Sema Nagas (Hutton 1921b), The Lhota Nagas (Mills 1922), The Rengma Nagas (Mills 1937), The Ao Nagas (Smith 1925), another The Ao Nagas (Mills 1926), The Naked Nagas (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939), The Naga Tribes of Manipur (Hodson 1911), and Naga Path (Bower 1950).26 Ethnographic museums—be they in Oxford, Basel, or Berlin—too continue to showcase Naga skulls, spears, headgear, and other artefacts. Such was the interest in Naga material culture that there are reportedly ‘over 12,000 Naga artefacts in Britain alone’ (Macfarlane and Turin 2008: 370), all of which were variously confiscated, gifted, and procured by colonial administrators, missionaries, curators, and travellers, today spurring, besides a continuing popular interest in Naga material culture, complicated debates on authenticity and ownership, including calls to have these artefacts returned to their villages of origin. Back then, writings on Naga communities were diverse and colourful, including detailed narrations of religious beliefs and rituals, origin and

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migration stories, headhunting, megalithic culture, khel (village ward) and clan set-ups, political structures and sentiments, ornaments, architecture, tigermen, and so-called feasts of merit. While colonial writings were certainly rich; not all early writers were equally careful in their gathering and interpretation of data, while their analyses remained invariably (and understandably) couched in dominant ideas of socio-evolutionary paradigms and British hegemony (Asad 1973; Said 1978). This has led, in recent years, to a trend of ‘corrective anthropology’ in which mostly Naga scholars try to rectify what has been written about them (Wouters and Heneise 2017: 7). Commenting on early colonial writings on Nagas, Elwin (1969: 1) evaluated: ‘There are certainly many mistakes of fact, misunderstanding of customs and institutions; almost everything is very different now’. Much has continued to change since Elwin’s observation. But few societies perhaps witnessed social change at such rapid pace as Naga villagers have over the past 150 years or so. These changes can be captured along a number of axes: from a non-state to a state society, ‘animism’ to Christianity, tradition to modernity and developmentalism, from powerful chiefs and village elders to participatory democracy, or from a social landscape inhabited by disparate clans, villages, and tribes to a political projection of a more or less unified Naga nation. This book treats some of these axes in conjunction with my ethnography, and in doing so it aims to return some of the fine-grained ethnographic understandings Naga society was long known by.

Fieldwork during Ceasefire After 138 years of dubious service, Nagaland’s Inner Line was partially lifted in 2011, permitting freer movements of foreign nationals within the confines of the state. The year 2011 was also the year I started my fieldwork, and had it not been for the Centre’s shift in policy—the Nagaland government had long asked for the partial removal of the Inner Line with the view of promoting international tourism—this book would not have been written. At the time the Inner Line regime was in place, and because of the Indo-Naga conflict, entering Nagaland was not just notoriously difficult, but a permit, if granted, would hardly exceed seven days, not a time span that enables sustained ethnographic inquiry.

Introduction 23

Naga classmates and friends had invited me to visit them before 2011, but my duly filled out application forms for a permit were unsuccessful, cancelling our plans. The law, as can happen, remained ahead of several Naga policemen, however, and during my first ‘scouting trip’ in August 2011, and while carrying out fieldwork later, I was regularly asked to produce my Inner Line permit at checkpoints. It would usually take a while before the police officers staffing the checkpoints had verified my claim that I needed no such permit. I was still, however, required to register my presence with the Foreign Resident Officer, a post which, in the absence of many foreigners, had been added to the portfolio of Kohima’s Superintendent of Police. I am now in the proud possession of over forty stamps which detail my entries and exits into Nagaland. The whole procedure, mandated by the Centre, clearly frustrated Kohima’s Superintendent; ‘Delhi is treating Nagaland as though it is a foreign country. You already have an Indian visa, why should you need a separate stamp for Nagaland? Some of our Naga brothers [national workers] are fighting for Independence, but in reality India is already treating us as though this is another country’. As the head of police, he was often busy with meetings and inspections, and I often sat for long hours in front of his office, waiting for his return to collect my stamp. The superintendent himself was ever friendly and encouraged my research (‘I wonder how you can manage to stay in a village for so long’, he would remark and laugh). In the end, he offered to stamp my arrival and departure dates at one go; ‘just tell me the date you intend to go back to Shillong. I will give you the stamp in advance. Easier for me, easier for you’. In preparation of my fieldwork, I had contacted several Naga friends and acquaintances and talked to them about their villages and solicited advice about where to carry out my fieldwork. I wanted to carry out research in one village in ‘western’ Nagaland and one village in ‘eastern’ Nagaland, as this would broadly align my fieldwork with a historical and contemporary divide in Naga society. A historical divide because socalled western Naga tribes (among them, the Ao, Rengma, Lotha, Sumi, Angami, and Chakhesang Nagas) had been under colonial rule as part of the Naga Hills district while eastern Naga tribes (the Konyak, Chang, Khiamniungan, Yimchunger, Phom, and Sangtam Nagas) had remained outside the immediate pale of colonial control and administration.

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Both areas were joined politically when Nagaland state was created, but their different historical trajectories had recently resurfaced into a contemporary divide as eastern Nagaland became home to a statehood demand that envisaged the bifurcation of Nagaland, a political aspiration opposed by both western Naga tribes and the underground leadership (Chapter 6 in this book). My resolve to study two villages, located at opposite sides of the state, instead of one village, was further guided by the hope, first, to formulate findings that may be of a more generalized character and, secondly, to be able to identify contrasting and comparable cases within Naga society. Through acquaintances, the Chakhesang Naga village of Phugwumi (see Figure 1.1) was suggested to me as a possible field-site in western Nagaland. While houses in Naga villages are built for living, not for renting, I was told that a family was willing to take me in. I decided to go for a visit. Phugwumi was a large village, the largest in the area, and perched high on a hilltop at roughly fifty-five winding kilometres away from Kohima. The Phugwumi villagers were heir, I soon learned, to a fierce political history of raiding neighbouring and nearby villages. As I looked up the village in the colonial archive, I found a handful of old pictures and an administrative report, written midway the nineteenth century, that described the village as ‘containing 1,000 houses’ and its inhabitants as ‘dreaded by all around as bloodthirsty people, who think

Figure 1.1 View of Phugwumi village Source: Zhoto Tunyi.

Introduction 25

nothing of murder for the sake of plunder: they boasted of having a man in their village who had killed seventy men’ (Butler 1855: 208). After the British withdrawal, many Phugwumi villagers had joined the NNC’s Naga Army, while after the enactment of Nagaland state others had turned themselves into bureaucrats and politicians. This apparent crisscrossing of political allegiances, loyalties, and motivations, within the framework of village social bonds, intrigued me, as did the many development undertakings that were visibly carried out (and whose intricacies I wanted to study). In any case eager to start my fieldwork (the Inner Line had been lifted only provisionally and its possible re-imposition could end my stay without prior notice) I sought permission from the village council and soon after commenced my fieldwork. My entrance in the Chang Naga village of Noksen (see Figure 1.2), in eastern Nagaland, was similarly mediated by preexisting contacts. Noksen, too, was a hilltop village, although considerably smaller in size compared to Phugwumi. It was also much more remote, and from

Figure 1.2 View of Noksen village Source: Author.

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Kohima it would usually take me the best part of two days (sometimes more) to reach the village. In both villages I resided with families, an extended family in Phugwumi and a nuclear family in Noksen. This arrangement benefitted my research in several ways. First, it helped me to swiftly integrate and better grasp the intricacies of village life, as seen and lived through the conduit of a family. This included long morning and evening conversations with my hosts, usually around the hearth. It also helped me to better acquaint myself with the local languages; Chokri in Phugwumi and Chang and Ya in bi-lingual Noksen. Admittedly, it proved to be beyond my intellectual capacity to acquire complete fluency in three distinct languages within the span of two years, but as my fieldwork prolonged I acquired a working knowledge of Chokri and Chang, and was able to interact with villagers in their own language. In Phugwumi, I stayed in the house of a village elder I call Athe (a Chokri classificatory term for grandfather) and his wife, Atsa (grandmother). Athe’s life history—he was well into his eighties (in spite of his advancing age, he still insisted on cultivating a paddy field. ‘Just exercise’, he would tell his wife and children when they pleaded him to take rest whenever he readied himself to go to his field)—offered valuable insights into the recent history of the village, its surroundings, as well as the Naga Movement. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Athe was a guerrilla in the NNC’s Naga Army. He had come ‘overground’ after the enactment of Nagaland state in whose civil services he joined, even as he remained a Naga nationalist at heart. His retirement had meant the beginning of his active involvement in the Chakhesang Public Organization (CPO), the tribe’s apex body, and in whose capacity he toured the Chakhesang area (‘all but two Chakhesang villages I have visited’, as he told me proudly). Now, in the autumn of his life, Athe was ever generous in recollecting and reflecting on his rich experiences, which run through a number of this book’s chapters. In Noksen, I stayed in the house of a school teacher, whom I shall call Abou (a classificatory term for father) and his wife Anyu (mother). Abou was also a church deacon and a former secretary of the NNC (Chang region). His son, Thungti, had just completed his undergraduate studies from a Dimapur college, and, now back in the village, he became my research accomplice and contributed to my research in manifold ways. During the course of my fieldwork, I also regularly visited the administrative hubs of Kohima, Dimapur, Pfutsero,

Introduction 27

Mokokchung, and Tuensang where I interviewed government officers, public leaders, and politicians. When I started my fieldwork, the Indo-Naga ceasefire was in its fourteenth year. Peace talks were held intermittently, but there was still no sign of a political settlement. Formally, Nagaland was still a conflictzone, though my research was not a Fieldwork under Fire (Nordstrom and Robben 1995). In fact, the only gunshots I heard were those coming from the hunting-rifle a friend in Phugwumi taught me to use. I wasn’t particularly talented in it, and the only things I managed to shoot were tree trunks and branches, allowing the birds and small game I had aimed at to live a little longer. This is not to say there was no violence and killings in Nagaland during my fieldwork. There were regular factional clashes, occasional army operations (in spite of the ceasefire), and assassinations, but such events always seemed to happen far away (even if they took place just a few hill ranges away) and I learned about them only through the radio and newspapers. But while insurgency and counterinsurgency had ceased to be part of everyday life, memories of violence existed in nearly every household (Chapter 4), as were ceasefire insecurities with some fearing (and some hoping [Chapter 3]) the possible resumption of all-out conflict were the peace negotiations to break down. The landscape also remained densely militarized, which included a large military base in the vicinity of Phugwumi, through which I had to pass to reach the village, at times leading to questioning frowns by the soldiers guarding its gates. Perhaps fortunately, we did not share a common language, making it impossible for them to ask me questions and saving me from lengthy explanations about the academic rationale of my work. My presence, however, did elicit the interest of Intelligence Agencies, and a few months into my fieldwork, Phugwumi’s pastor confessed how he received weekly phone calls from intelligence officers inquiring about my activities. The pastor tried hard to assure them that my intentions were academic and genuine, as they indeed were. Intelligence officers were not to be convinced, however, causing me professional and personal hardship and misery which, alas, I should not detail here. What posed a particular methodological challenge during my fieldwork in Phugwumi was the study of the 2013 state legislative elections (Chapter 7). On studying elections ethnographically, the great M.N. Srinivas (2002: 11) wrote: ‘When it is necessary to get data from

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opposing groups, as happens during campaigns, the fieldworker may have no choice but to give each side the impression that he is with them. Judging by strict moral standards this is no doubt wrong, but it is difficult to avoid’. I find this approach somewhat questionable, and instead I made it clear, when asked by one or more villagers in whose political camp I was, that I belonged to none of them, and that neither was there any need for me to favour a candidate given that I was not entitled to cast my vote. I maintained a similar stance towards the Naga Movement, and its many factions, and always refrained from divulging where my personal sympathies lay. In researching political conflict, and its social consequences, I focused particularly on the voices and views of ordinary villagers, taking heed from Nordstrom’s (1995: 252) realization that ‘the louder the story, especially when it comes to violence and war, the less representative of the lived experience it is likely to be. In the midst of wars of propaganda and justification, the most silenced stories at “war’s” [and, I argue, “ceasefire’s”] epicentres are generally the most authentic’. Research for this book was conducted between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2014 and spanned roughly fourteen months of residence in Phugwumi and eight months in Noksen. My comparatively longer fieldwork in Phugwumi reflects in this book’s ethnography, of which comparatively more ethnographic material figures from this village. This is especially so in the context of discussions on democracy and elections, as it was in Phugwumi that I was carrying out fieldwork in the wake and aftermath of the 2013 Nagaland state elections.

Outline of the Book An ethnography of an ongoing political conflict’s relation to social life is inherently an open-ended undertaking. In the Naga situation, events often change quickly, and things will continue to change, perhaps, at some point, resulting in Naga society moving outside the shadows of Naga insurgency (In the ‘Epilogue’ I reflect on whether, after over six decades of armed struggle, there is life, still, after Naga insurgency. And if so, what sort of life that might be.). This fast changing ethnographic field notwithstanding, what remains undisputed is that six decades of Naga insurgency has moulded—in manifold ways—the selves, life

Introduction 29

cycles, individual biographies, and the wider political and moral outlooks of several generations of Naga men and women. Since I am especially concerned with the consequences, carryovers, and corollaries of Naga insurgency, I have chosen four broad areas that are variously impacted by (but also generative of ) the history and politics of Naga insurgency: I focus on identity and the Naga nation (Chapter 2), ceasefire and conflict (Chapter 3), the state, development, and struggles over state resources (Chapters 4, 5, and 6), and vernacular forms of democracy and elections (Chapter 7). In the next chapter, ‘Clan, Village, Tribe, and Naga Nation’, I offer an ethnographic view of local processes of identity and identification by highlighting the social binds and divides that emerge from the structuring, foundational, and affective realities of clan, village, and tribe. I then show how these variously connect and disconnect with projections of a unified Naga nation and the nationalistic politics of Naga insurgency. I argue that the form and functioning of the Naga nation is best approached, not as a single ethnic rubric, but as a ‘tribal confederacy’ in which connected yet self-directed tribes fissure and fuse. Chapter 3, ‘Ceasefire as Conflict: Factions, Taxes, and National Workers’, gives voice to ordinary villagers’ experiences, views, and concerns vis-à-vis Naga insurgency, and particularly evaluates the post-ceasefire practices and patterns they speak about. While a ceasefire connotes the cessation of hostilities, political stasis, reconciliation, and peace talks, I show how the Indo-Naga ceasefire manifested itself as a complex and contentious social reality that saw the continuation of conflict by other forms and means. I also probe the boundaries between state and national workers and illustrate the mutually beneficial, if illegal, relations that may exist between them, which leads me, among others, to argue towards the critical importance of studying social networks as central to the functioning (and fragmentation) of the Naga Movement. Chapter 4, ‘Seeing the State: Violence, “Seduction” and Neo-Tribal Developmentalism’, explores how Naga men and women ‘see’ the postcolonial state. The history of the Naga present, I argue, is shaped by an embodied past of state violence and governmental ambiguity. I show how narratives of state repression are a key arena through which the postcolonial state is represented, imagined, and understood. Nagas’ historical

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experiences of the state, however, are multifarious. Much changed with the contested creation of Nagaland state in 1963, as an envisaged (but failed) political compromise to the demand for Naga Independence. For the first time, the postcolonial state was no longer essentialized as an external entity best resisted, but also seen as a localized apparatuses that, at least formally, projected the welfare of Nagas as its rationale. Increasingly, villagers came to levy demands on Nagaland state and saw it as a lucrative, if morally ambivalent, ‘source.’ Such expectations were nourished by the post-statehood influx of Centre-directed largesse that instantly turned Nagaland into the country’s per capita highest recipient of development funds. I theorize this state largesse as part of a politically driven policy of ‘seduction’ through which the Centre attempts to deeply penetrate the Naga highlands and to tie local livelihoods to existing state structures and the political status quo. Chapter 5, ‘Corruption and the Moral Economy of State Resources’, builds further on arguments made in Chapter 4 and uses the vantage of corruption as a ‘stepping stone leading to other phenomena’ (Blundo and Olivier de Sardan 2006: 4), that is the nature of state-society relations. Through a focus on the narrativization of corrupt practices (Shah 2009), I explore the moral reasoning and perspectives villagers adopt in their dealings with the state and its development resources, and show the ways in which they may self-justify their ‘corrupt’ practices. My view is that there exists a distinct and specific relationship between Nagas’ historical experiences and understanding of the postcolonial state and its policies on the one hand, and local subjectivities, moral evaluations, and contested loyalties on the other. The upshot of this is the local emergence of a particular social and moral field in which corrupt practices must be situated. Chapter 6, ‘The State as a Resource: The Quest for “Frontier Nagaland”’, discusses a statehood demand that has emerged within (or against?) the Naga Movement. Through a set of socio-historical and ethnographic explorations, I show how the demand for Frontier Nagaland, while tracing back to divergent colonial trajectories, implies that the creation of Nagaland state produced new constellations of power, new fault-lines, and new axes of differentiation. Seeing the state foremost as a ‘resource’, six eastern Naga tribes today lament—what they experience as—the dominating and exploitative influences of western Naga tribes,

Introduction 31

whom they see as ‘advanced’ and accuse of preventing eastern Nagas from receiving their development dues. Chapter 7, ‘Performing Democracy in Nagaland’, shows how Naga insurgency, preexisting political practices and principles, and poststatehood electoral politics interrelate in complex and counterintuitive ways. While Naga underground groups formally oppose, what they call, ‘Indian elections imposed on Naga soil’, in actual practice national workers, I will show, intervene and influence election outcomes. More broadly, the question I ask in this chapter is: ‘What do ordinary Naga villagers make of the modern democracy they have to engage with?’ To discuss this, and more, I zoom in on Phugwumi to explore the historical and cultural inferences that guided two crucial episodes that ensued in the run up to Polling Day. First, the villagers (successful) attempt to protect the village electoral list from the deletion of ‘bogus votes’ initiated by the government. Second, the villagers’ (unsuccessful) attempt to agree on a village ‘consensus candidate’. The analysis of these events lead me to critique preconceived definitions of ‘normative democracy’ (Nugent 2008) and highlight Naga electors’ normative imagination of ‘the political’ and politics. The overall picture that emerges on social life unfolding in the shadows of Naga insurgency can hardly be reduced to a set of simple and straightforward conclusions (and which makes me end with an epilogue, rather than with a concluding chapter). What all the chapters variously advance, however, is the need for critical, ethnographic, and grounded explorations of Naga insurgency as a ‘social condition’ that overflows the banks of political conflict and inundates the more mundane spheres of social life. As such, and as noted, it is not the Indo-Naga conflict per se that the following chapters discuss. What they offer instead—individually and collectively—is an ethnographic underview of the complexities and corollaries produced by over six decades of Naga insurgency, and the consequences of these on the flow and realization of everyday social life.

Notes 1. Waging amongst the most violent, vexed, and enduring struggles in the postcolony anywhere, the Naga Movement for Independence has been dubbed the ‘Mother’ of Northeast India’s manifold insurgencies and

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conflicts (Hazarika 2008: 104; Manchanda and Bose 2011: 52). It is labelled the ‘Mother’ not only because the tribal Naga were the first to reject and rebel their enclosure into the postcolonial Indian state, or because of the entire army divisions, additional battalions, and extra paramilitary troops India dispatched to enclose Naga inhabited hills and dales, but also for the spillover effects the Naga Imbroglio (Chasie 2005) has on the political stability of the region more widely (Baruah 2003a). 2. Over six decades of Naga insurgency has resulted into an expansive local vocabulary of insurgency. In this book I mostly use the terms ‘Naga faction’ or ‘Naga underground group’ to refer to the multiple organizations that now make up the Naga Movement, even though most ‘Naga underground groups’, after the signing of ceasefires, are no longer technically operating ‘underground’. In nevertheless calling them either Naga factions or ‘Naga underground groups’, and individual cadres as either ‘Naga undergrounds’ or ‘national workers’, I follow the colloquial expressions I found most common amongst my respondents and friends in their references to them. 3. These coffee-table books are mostly aimed at international audiences and build upon a longer history that traces back to the colonial era when visual images of Naga communities conjured images of the ‘primitive’ and ‘exotic’ to audiences in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Describing this new surge of pictorial images and coffee-table books on Nagas, Vibha Joshi (2012: 260), who herself contributes to this genre, writes: ‘While these coffee-table books do not purport to scholarly analysis, their pursuit of the exotic gives us some ideas of the continuity of some traditions and thus counter the pessimistically styled writings of some Western scholars who consider that Christianity has led to the destruction of a people’s culture and a feeling of shame about past cultural practices. These books capture a resurgence of interest among the Europeans.’ However, if these images capture a ‘resurgence of interest’ they also lead to a resurgence of colonial stereotypes, making it highly questionable, Michael Heneise and I argue elsewhere, whether these coffee-table books succeed in ‘steering the European imagination away from exoticising the Naga “Other”’ (Wouters and Heneise 2017: 10). 4. Ever since Nagaland was carved out of Assam and the North-Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA), the Nagaland government has claimed some portions of present-day Assam that, Naga communities insist, historically and traditionally belong to them, but which, for various reasons, were transferred out of the colonial Naga Hills district by the British. The current Nagaland-Assam border is also rejected by Naga underground groups who envisage the territorial and political integration of all Naga inhabited

Introduction 33

5.

6.

7.

8.

areas, some of which are now in Assam. For discussions on the AssamNagaland border dispute see Kikon (2008, 2009a) and Vandekerckhove (2011). As part of ceasefire ground rules the NSCN-IM was permitted to set up camps to house its cadres and to coordinate its activities. Within these camps, cadres are permitted to carry arms and wear military uniforms, but no so, according to the agreement, outside its confines. Here I must also qualify that the Indo-Naga ceasefire must be understood in terms of multiple ceasefires. The first ceasefire was agreed between the central government and the NSCN-IM in 1997. This was followed, in 2001, by a ceasefire between the Centre and the NSCN-K (abrogated unilaterally by the NSCN-K in 2015). After a number of divisions and splits within the NSCN-IM and NSCN-K, subsequent ceasefires were signed between the Centre and newly formed Naga underground groups. At the time of writing, the NSCN-KK witnessed a further split that saw Khole, and his close followers, join the NSCN-IM. While, as further chapters will show, Nagas pay taxes to multiple Naga factions they are exempted from paying income tax to the Nagaland or central government on account of their perceived backwardness. Their taxexemption is guaranteed under section 10(26) of India’s Income Tax Act, which dictates that members of a recognized Scheduled Tribe within the following areas: North Cachar Hills, Karbi Anglong, Bodoland Territorial Areas district, Khasi Hills, Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura are exempted from paying income tax, provided however that the person resides in that area and accrues his or her income from that area. ‘Naga’ is a generic term denoting a conglomeration of tribes, of which the Chakhesang Naga is one, and who identify themselves as Naga in addition to the identities and loyalties that come with their separate clan, village, and tribal affiliations (Chapter 2). The state of Nagaland houses sixteen state recognized tribes, of which a few are considered indigenous but non-Naga. While the ‘Naga’ are popularly associated with present-day Nagaland, many more Naga tribes reside outside the political boundaries of Nagaland state. The term ‘honourable solution’ is invoked by the NSCN-IM as the desired outcome of the peace talks. Whereas A.Z. Phizo, as President of the Naga National Council (which launched and initially spearheaded the Naga Movement), asserted in the 1960s that Nagas would accept ‘nothing short of sovereignty’, Manchanda and Bose (2011: 58) write how, after six decades of insurgency, this proclamation ‘has narrowed down to an “honourable

34

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

in the shadows of naga insurgency solution” at the Indo-Naga peace table’. ‘What that “honourable solution” has got whittled down to,’ they continue, ‘is mired in confusion and secrecy, haunted by memories of earlier accords of betrayal and division’. More on Phizo, the NNC, and these accords will follow further in this book. Except for some incidental remarks and references, this book focuses on the politics of Naga insurgency as it unfolds within India, thus excluding Nagas in neighbouring Myanmar. Comparatively speaking, we know very little about the form and substance of the Naga Movement as it unfolds in the hills of Myanmar, which, so far, have been by and large inaccessible for carrying out fieldwork and scholarship. At the time of writing, the NSCN-K (Khaplang) is often portrayed as representing Burmese or Myanmar Nagas, even though formally this faction, akin to all factions, proclaims to represent all Nagas. Naga nationalism and Christianity are deeply intertwined (Thomas 2016), and in political imaginaries of a sovereign Nagalim Christianity is often projected as the state religion. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim manifesto reads thus: ‘We stand for the faith in God and the salvation of mankind in Jesus, the Christ, alone, this is “Nagaland for Christ.” However, the individual freedom of religion shall be safeguarded and the imposition of this faith on others is strictly forbidden.’ It remains unclear, and hypothetical, what this ‘Nagaland for Christ’ would mean in terms of actual governance and politics, and whether, besides religious freedom, non-Christian Nagas, or non-Naga citizens, would enjoy equal rights and opportunities. For Phizo’s entire letter see V.K. Nuh (1986: 84–102). Gandhi reportedly told a Naga delegation that had called on him in Delhi in 1947: ‘Nagas have every right to be independent. We did not want to live under the British and they are now leaving us. I want you to feel that India is yours. I feel that the Naga Hills are mine just as much as they are yours. But if you say that they are mine, the matter must stop here. I believe in the brotherhood of man, but I do not believe in force or forced unions. If you don’t want to join the Union of India, nobody will force you to do that’ (cited in Vashum 2005: 77). Gandhi’s ‘support’ for Naga Independence has become part of the ‘official discourse’ of the Naga Movement, and regularly refigures in political treatises, speeches, and demands levied by Naga underground groups. While carrying out ethnography during the Second Intifada in the West Bank, Kelly (2008: 353) observed how despite the escalation of violence, ‘for most Palestinians the second intifada has been marked by boredom and frustration’. He then elaborates: ‘In this sense the intifada is probably

Introduction 35

14.

15. 16.

17.

little different from many armed conflicts, from the Congo to Columbia. More  time is spent watching TV, waiting for buses or preparing food, than it is shooting guns, hiding in basements or burning houses. More people want to be dentists, accountants or teachers, than warlords and soldiers.’ This makes Kelly (2008: 364) conclude: ‘While writing about the seemingly mundane is obviously not as immediately engaging as trying to understand why people become armed militants, it is equally important.’ Kelly’s intervention in studies on armed conflict is important because it can help us to understand the role of conflict in the lives of Nagas, and while over the past decades many Nagas joined the armed struggle, many more sought to disentangle their everyday lives from the conflict and instead aspired to pursue higher education, secure employment, and start new families. Those interested in the genesis and evolution of the Naga Movement should consult the comprehensive works of Horam (1988), L. Ao (2002), Gundevia (1975), Nibedon (1978), Nuh (1986), Iralu (2002), and Chasie (2005), among several others. These statements variously appeared in Nagaland dailies in the days and weeks after the border fencing began. This was not the first time the Nagaland Assembly articulated this political aspiration. In fact, clause 13 of the 16 point agreement that led to the enactment of Nagaland state in 1963 (Chapter 4) already read: ‘Consolidation of contiguous Naga areas: the delegation wished the following to be placed on record: “The Naga leaders expressed the view that other Nagas inhabiting contiguous areas should be enabled to join the new state. It was pointed out to them on behalf of the Government of India that Article 3 and 4 of the Constitution provided for increasing the area of any state, but it was not possible for the Government of India to make any commitment in this regard at this stage”’. The ‘integration’ of Naga lands is part of the current political dialogues between the NSCN-IM and the Centre, which, as Thangkhanlal Ngaithe (2014: 26) writes, ‘have little to do with the present state of Nagaland. It is rather about uniting and putting under Naga control loosely defined and highly disputed Naga ancestral lands—of which Nagaland state constitutes only a small part— much of which have since been parceled off under different states within India and Myanmar’. The prospect of Naga integration however remains staunchly opposed by the states potentially affected by the redrawing of state boundaries, and whose governments invariably insist on the integrity of their territories. Given such political volatilities, local pundits have now begun to explore

36

18.

19.

20.

21.

in the shadows of naga insurgency possibilities of ‘de-territorialized integration’, for instance through cultural and emotional means, or supra-tribal institutions. In recent years, moreover, the Naga People’s Front (NPF), Nagaland’s ruling party at the time of writing, took a leap by expanding its party scope beyond the territorial confines of Nagaland (after first changing its name from Nagaland People’s Front), thus trying to unite, with varying degrees of success, Nagas across Indian states behind their party. On the territorial quandaries of the Naga Movement, see Baruah (2003a), Longvah (2014), and Khamrang (2015), among others. To illustrate, when the Missionary couple Edwin and Mary Clark set out to preach the Gospel in the Naga inhabited hills, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Assamese Christian converts warned them thus: ‘They are savages, sahib, village warring with village, constantly cutting off heads to get skulls’ (Clark 1907: 9–10). When British colonial forces first expanded their sway into the Brahmaputra Valley, an officer reported the frequent incursions by hill tribes, among them the Nagas: ‘We found the Assamese Valley surrounded north, east, and south by numerous savage and warlike tribes whom the decaying authority of the Assam dynasty had failed of late years to control, and whom the disturbed condition of the province had incited to encroachment. Many of them advanced claims to rights more or less definite over lands lying in the plains; others claimed tributary payments from the villages below their hills, or the services of paiks [a corveé labour system institutionalized by Ahom kings] said to have been assigned to them by the Assam authorities’ (cited in Mackenzie 1884: 7). Not a great deal is known about past practices of slavery, and slave-trade, among Nagas, but that it occurred on a considerable scale can be inferred from a colonial government directive, in the early 1840s, that recommended colonial and military officers to regularly visit Naga villages adjoining the plains ‘with a view to the suppression of the slave traffic carried on by the Nagas with the Bengalis of Sylhet’ (Mackenzie 1884: 107). Davis, for the Ao Nagas, wrote: ‘This custom [slavery] was universal throughout the Ao tribe. Since our occupation of the country, every effort has been made to suppress the custom, and the selling and buying of slaves is now, I fancy, very uncommon.’ He, however, added: ‘Slaves were and are I believe, on the whole, very well treated, being considered almost as members of the family’ (Davis 1891 cited in Elwin 1969: 326). Of the creation of the Naga Hills district, Allen (1905: 9–10) wrote further: ‘The cost of the administration of the district is out of all proportion to the revenue that is obtained, and we only occupied the hills after

Introduction 37

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

a bitter experience extending over many years, which clearly showed that annexation was the only way of preventing raids upon our villages.’ To illustrate, when in 1884, three Lotha Nagas were accused of murdering a Sema girl for the ‘sake of her head’, two of them were quickly apprehended, trialled, and put to death, making them ‘the first criminals who had ever suffered capital punishment in Kohima’. The third accused was apprehended later and died in custody, reportedly ‘from fright’ (Administrative Report of Assam 1884). Some tribes in the region, especially those living directly adjacent to the plains, were evaluated by the colonial government as generally better developed and therefore had to be only ‘partially excluded’ from colonial administration and jurisdiction. Nagas, however, were classified as ‘wholly excluded.’ Legally, the difference was that in ‘excluded areas’ the Governor could implement laws and regulations without consulting existing jurisdiction while in ‘partially excluded’ areas the arbitrariness of the government was checked by at least some jurisdiction and local participation in decision-making processes (Baruah 1999: 36). ‘Since the early years of Indian Independence in 1947’, Vibha Joshi (2013: 170–1) writes, ‘alleged Indian high-handedness in political negotiations and the forceful suppression of the Naga movement have simply fueled Naga demands for sovereignty. There is some truth in the claim that the alienation of the Naga peoples is directly related to blunders committed first by the India Committee and then by brutal army action by the Indian government to quell the Naga armed uprising.’ Notable exceptions include Alemchiba (1970), Yonuo (1974), Das (1992), Ganguli (1984), and Jacobs et al. (1990). See Wouters and Heneise (2017) for an overview of scholarship on Nagas during the postcolonial period. Lhota was later respelled as Lotha. When citing colonial sources, in places across this book, I have retained the spelling of villages and clans as they appeared in those texts, even though, in many cases, village and clan names are spelled differently now.

2 Clan, Village, Tribe, and Naga Nation

T

his chapter discusses the complexities that arise when the question ‘Who are the Nagas?’ or ‘What is the Naga nation?’ is brought up. Let it be declared upfront that Naga identity, akin to all modern identities, is historically contingent, constructed, and continually debated. As an ethnic rubric, the Naga is neither a monolithic entity nor a historically stable community. But while such constructionist arguments conclude most treatises of Naga history and identity, what is more fruitful analytically is to explore what the Naga nation is constructed of, and how this constructedness reveals itself in everyday acts and articulations. To explore this, and more, this chapter concentrates on foundational, structuring, and affective identities that persist within the Naga category, particularly social formations of clan, village, and tribe whose emotive realities contribute to the complex, vexing, at times volatile character of the Naga nation. Even as popular images from within the Naga Movement construe the Naga as a historically and culturally unified people seeking political redemption, ethnography In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0002

Clan, Village, Tribe, and Naga Nation 39

reveals, I will illustrate, that the Naga category is best understood as a thicket of fluctuating and multilayered identities and differences, then complementing, then seemingly contradicting projections of the Naga nation as a singular category. To start with, any characterization of the Naga nation must acknowledge that historiography, administrative policies, demotic discourses, and political and nationalistic rhetoric all approach the Naga category differently, in the upshot producing a complex tangle of identity articulations. Such complexity is compounded by borders that divide contemporary Nagas between India and Myanmar (and within India between four states). Even though Nagas broadly identify as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 2006), different Naga communities have, in recent decades, been adapted into two distinct nation-states with dissimilar historical trajectories of government and governance, political institutions, development policies, and politics of recognition and self-assertion. The staunchest of Naga nationalists envisage the political coming together of all Naga inhabited areas, and the making of an upland, sovereign Naga state. In the colloquial, however, a distinction is today made between ‘Burmese Nagas’ and ‘Indian Nagas’, as well as, within India, between ‘Nagaland Nagas’, ‘Manipur Nagas’, ‘Assam Nagas’, and ‘Arunachal Pradesh Nagas’, suggesting that this territorial division has impinged on social imagination. At the public and popular nexus of defining the Naga nation, or ‘Naga-ism’ as a Naga ‘collective tribal association’ is sometimes called (Vashum 2005: 65), remain situated the evocative ethnohistorical discourses espoused by Naga underground groups that promote a Naga historical consciousness of a distinct people that traditionally flourished in Independence and whose collective identity sits at odds with the historical and cultural stretch of Bharat, as well as with mainland Burma’s Buddhist civilization. Many of the Naga national workers I interacted with displayed a strong cultivated sense of this version of political history, and were ever ready to drum up the discrepancies between Naga and Indian history and culture to explain and justify Nagas’ (ultimate) desire for Independence. This discourse of mutual incommensurability derives its inspiration from the eloquent political mind of A.Z. Phizo. ‘The Nagas have nothing to do with India,’ Phizo (1951)1 stated, then continued:

40

in the shadows of naga insurgency Historically, Nagas and the Indians did not have a common tradition. Racially, Nagas belong to the Mongolian family while the Indians belong to entirely a different race…. Politically, neither the Nagas nor the Indians know each other…. Culturally, the Nagas and the Indians never had occasion to meet each other; and, there is nothing in common. Socially, the Indians abhor the Nagas and the Nagas despise the Indians…. The difference is too varied, the feeling is too deep, and the attitude is too wide and too malignant for the two nations ever to think to live together in peace…. The only way to live in peace is to live apart.

Phizo’s voice travelled far and wide across the hills, and besides political mobilization, inspired an expansionist body of Naga nationalist literature that sought to flesh out a unified identity based on a Naga history, culture, and psyche characteristic only of itself.2 The National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), which supplanted the NNC in power and sway from the early 1980s onward (Chapter 3), similarly paints Nagas as ‘a people with their own unique history, culture, and identity…. A unique socio-political community that has existed since time-immemorial’ (cited in Morung Express 2015a). Such a historical Naga substance, the NSCN insist, is today animated by Nagas’ shared desire for political Independence, economic salvation through socialism, and spiritual salvation through Christianity. Over the past decades such essentialist constructions of Naga identity—both past and present—found fertile soil in the transnational movement for the protection of indigenous lives and lifeworlds, and on whose status Nagas lay claim. In 1993, NSCN-IM delegates joined the UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples (WGIP) and ‘since have been the single most active “ethnic organization” from India’ (Karlsson 2003: 409). Nagas’ indigenous enthusiasm flourished in spite of controversies their participation incited initially as, in WGIP sessions and meetings, Naga spokespersons advocated ‘secession’ from India based on its self-preservation as ‘an independent nation that is fighting a war of resistance against invasion by Indian and Burmese forces’ (Karlsson 2003: 409), thence promoting a violent nationalistic discourse, and the breakup of existing states, the WGIP hesitated to offer a platform to.3 Naga indigenous discourses, however, caught the imagination of people across the globe, and found favour in several international platforms and organizations that now frame the Naga struggle as that of a

Clan, Village, Tribe, and Naga Nation 41

marginalized and oppressed indigenous community resisting invading Indian and Myanmar states. Listed among these is the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which describes the Naga as a ‘racially and ethnically distinct people’ that call as their homeland a ‘compact territory’ wrongly divided and subjugated by successive British, Indian, and Burmese governments. This Naga indigenous discourse can be read at different levels, but it has become thickly entangled with Naga nationalist politics. Postulating thus is far from dismissing such accounts as false and fabrications, or to reduce the Naga nation to a figment of collective imagination, but acknowledges that the social production, circulation, and external consumption of these narratives offer Naga nationalist groups a discursive space in which a political ‘Naga-ness’ can be asserted. However, when it comes to Naga history and identity there are more stories to be told. Prime among these is the story of intra-Naga politics of belonging and difference. It is parts of this story that the remainder of this chapter wants to tell. When colonial officers first climbed the Naga uplands, they did not encounter a more or less culturally homogenous hill people who uniformly self-identified as Nagas. What they found instead was ‘ethnographic chaos’; ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of small villages seemed to be somewhat similar to each other but also very different, by no means always sharing the same customs, political system, art, or even language’ ( Jacobs et al. 1990: 23). Languages and dialects particularly were many and varied; ‘I suppose,’ wrote the colonial officer Hutton (1965: 19), there is no part of the world with so much linguistic variation in so small a population or in so small an area … some thirty different languages as different as those of different nations in Europe, in an area the size of Wales, and that without taking account of dialects often so different in neighbouring villages of the same tribe as to make mutual understanding difficult.

This linguistic fragmentation reflected (and was a reflection of ) a social kaleidoscope of predominantly clan and village identities that were diverse and disjointed. Nascent sets of shared experiences, among them state-enclosure, massive conversations to Christianity, the rise of Nagamese as Lingua Franca and English as Nagaland’s official language, and a flowering politics of Naga identity has worked to somewhat

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reduce such diversities. As a category the Naga remain a rich repository of ethnographic and linguistic variation, however. In the pages that follow I shift between the historic longue durée and contemporary ethnography to paint a multilayered picture of the Naga nation by discussing, historicizing, and complicating the social signifiers of clan, village, and tribe. While doing so, I simultaneously explore how such layered identities and loyalties interlace with broader articulations of the Naga nation. Most, though not all, my arguments originate from Phugwumi and Noksen, and the Chakhesang and Chang tribes more widely, but which will introduce us to common themes, trends, and tendencies perceptible across Naga society. Identities, Amartya Sen (2006) reminded us, remain all too often perceived as ‘singular affiliations’, creating what Sen condemns as the ‘solitarist approach’ as it wrongly conceals that all identities contain multitudes, that loyalties are contextual, and that notions of belonging can be articulated at different levels. This is a truism, but an important one nevertheless. In ‘dissecting’ Naga identity, as, I worry, some might interpret the drift of this chapter, I however, remain far from disregarding, leave alone dishonouring, projections of a unified Naga political identity. Over the past decades, Naga nationalism has been repeatedly invaded, violated, and transformed, but as an emotive reality it remains very much alive. My aim here, however, is to highlight the multiple frames of reference Nagas resort to in defining themselves, and to show the complex relationship that exist between the partisan units of clan, village, and tribe, and the modern realm of the Naga nation. But first the next two sections briefly discuss the Naga ethnonym and the origin and migration stories that flourish from one Naga village to the next.

What’s in a Name? Of debate amongst those trying to situate the Naga historically is the origin and meaning of the term ‘Naga’. Conjectural interpretations are many, and ethnohistorical and semantic reconstructions include that the word ‘Naga’ means ‘hill people’, derived from the Sanskrit word nag, which translates as ‘mountain’, or that it means ‘naked’ from the Sanskrit nanga (Hutton 1921a: 5). Others postulate that Naga is derived from

Clan, Village, Tribe, and Naga Nation 43

nok, a word common to several Tibeto-Burman language groups and which denotes ‘people’ or ‘folk’ (Peal 1894), or that it originates from the Burmese word naka, which translates as ‘pierced ears’ (Shimray 1985). This is an old and animated debate, and to which Colonel Woodthorpe (1882: 53) wanted to put a stop long ago, arguing: Not one of these derivations is satisfactory, nor does it really concern us to know more about it, seeing that the name is quite foreign to, and unrecognized by, the Nagas themselves … a Naga when asked who he is generally replies that he is of such and such village, though sometimes a specific name is given to a group of villages.

But if of no concern to Colonel Woodthorpe, the antecedents of the term ‘Naga’ greatly concerns Naga nationalists and scholars, many of whom interpret the early occurrence of the term in historical records as evidence of a deep continuity of Naga presence and identity in the hills. Oftentimes the Greek traveller and geographer Ptolemy, who visited India in the second century AD, is invoked. In his Magnus Opus Geographia he referred to a people he called Nagalagoi (‘the realm of the naked’) (Thoring 2010: 6) at a geographical location possibly close to what are the Naga uplands today. The connection is striking, but while Ptolemy’s Nagalagoi could have been the ancestors of Nagas today, this description could equally have referred to a host of other people in the region. Moreover, the linkage between ‘naked people’ and Nagas can hardly be taken for granted. By the time the British entered the Assam hills, they found, for instance, that the Garo are ‘especially and habitually accustomed to a greater degree of nudity than any of the Naga tribes’ (Robinson 1841: 380). Equally conjectural, however, is Verrier Elwin’s (1961: 2) argument that ancient Nagas were part of the wider Kirata fold, a community invoked abundantly in Sanskrit literature and Hindu epics in which they figure as ‘hillmen living mostly on game, fruits, and roots, dressing in skins, warlike and wielding formidable weapons … a good-looking folk … [with] “gold-like” colour in contrast to the dark skin of other preAryan people of the plains’. For Elwin, who disavowed the Naga claim for Independence, this proved that Nagas ‘form part of an important branch of the great and varied Indian family’ (1961: 2), a reading of history that contravenes the rationale of Naga nationalist politics.

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But while the etymology of the term ‘Naga’ is difficult to ascertain, it is certain that ‘Naga’ is an ethnonym, not an autonym; an exogenous nomenclature in all probability first coined by inhabitants of the adjacent plains, subsequently adopted by colonial officers, and ultimately infatuated locally by those it referred to. The Naga historian Horam (1988: 24–5) writes thus: ‘Whosoever first called the Nagas by that name and whatever the word may mean, the Nagas themselves knew each other by the name of the tribe to which they belonged … the present awareness of being one people was understandably absent among them till very recently.’ This awareness of ‘being Naga’ spread to different parts of Nagalim at different points in time. For instance, when the NSCN sought to establish its guerrilla base in the secluded hills of northwestern Burma in the 1980s, its President, the now late Isak Swu, recalled the difficulties he and other Naga leaders faced in convincing its inhabitants that they were Nagas; ‘when we first came, the Eastern Nagas didn’t understand our struggle for Independence … Most of them hadn’t even heard the word “Naga”—they just knew the name of their village cluster’ (cited in Lintner 2011: 112). This process of, in a way, becoming Naga also unfolded in Manipur; ‘the Naga identity has become such a force’, Banerjee and Athparia (2004: 79) write, ‘that many groups like Koirao, Loireng, Anal, Aimol, Chote, Lamkang, Mensang and Moyon who were formerly not known very much as “Naga” have in recent years claimed themselves as Naga’. Most tribal appellations, too, ‘seem to have been coined by outsiders’ (Horam 1992: 25). The connotation ‘Angami’, for instance, is thought to be a corruption of the name ‘Gnamei’ given to them by Manipuris of the Imphal plains (Hutton cited in Joshi 2012: 31). In classifying upland Nagas, British administrators usually appropriated those designations they thought were most widely known. In doing so, they were often influenced by what names the Assamese and Manipuri plains people used for different hill tribes, or by those designations Naga tribes within their notional control used for more distant tribes (Subba and Wouters 2013: 94). ‘Kutcha (or Katcha) Nagas’, now known as Zeme Nagas was, for instance, a name given by their Angami neighbour (Kamei 2004: 13), while Mazung, which translates as ‘wicked people’, was a name Ao Nagas used for the adjacent Chang Naga, and which

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was initially adopted by the colonial government as the official designation of them (Chapter 6). Some British officers were aware of the differences between ascribed nomenclatures and local self-referrals. The Lotha Naga, Hutton (1921a: 362) wrote, call themselves ‘Kyong’. This knowledge, however, did not prevent J.P. Mills from titling his monograph about them as The Lhota Nagas, a nomenclature then widely in use in the Assam plains. In recent years, Mills’ ‘mistake’ in naming the Kyong/Lotha has led Kyong leaders to agitate for an official change of nomenclature from Lotha to Kyong.

Of Origins and Migration Besides discussions on the Naga ethnonym, most attempts to define ‘Who are the Nagas?’ also engage the genealogical question: ‘Where did the Nagas come from?’ This question, too, elicits varied responses, and is usually answered with reference to oral histories, myths, songs, and legends rather than based on written history, of which Nagas, in the absence of writing, kept none. What folktales do, among Nagas, is first and foremost to situate historically clans, villages, and tribes in their present-day territories, and vis-à-vis other social groups and neighbouring populations. Writ large, they offer explanations about origins and migratory routes Naga communities undertook before arriving in their current territories, about why Nagas reside in the hills in the first place, or what made Nagas not (or no longer) have a script of their own.4 At times, such narratives appear highly politicized and interested accounts that emphasize Naga origins well outside the Indian subcontinent, in places as Mongolia, China, or as far as islands in the southern seas, in the process further disentangling Nagas from Indian history and civilization (Wettstein 2012). Writ small, however, Naga folk stories seem to operate as ‘cult of origins’ (Lowenthal 1985: 55) as beneath broad narratives of genesis and migration flourish minute accounts of specific clan, village, and tribal settlements in their present locations. Those who settled first often assume social precedence, and folktales are readily invoked to explain and justify existing intra-village power hierarchies, differential status and standing, and unequal patterns of landownership between clans. Among Ao Nagas, Küchle (2016: 54) writes, ‘high clan ranks were justified by the

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seniority of the clan founders’, as communicated through folktales. To illustrate, the Pongener clan claims seniority and elevated social standing based on the Ao origin myth in which three males and females emerged out of six stones with the Pongener apical ancestor emerging first (Ao 2004: 161). Oral histories, then, work to explicate and reproduce power relations, and this makes them a bone of contention as ‘different clans use competing origin narratives to legitimize or challenge the clan order of a village’ (Küchle 2016: 54). Even as most Naga communities broadly agree on origins in faraway places, localized contests over such narratives simultaneously indicate that, closer to home, commonalities and agreements are often few and far between. To illustrate; whereas many Chakhesang Nagas (as well as several other Naga tribes) refer to the village of Khezhakenoma as their place of historical ‘dispersal’, elders in Phugwumi make no mention of Khezhakenoma in recounting the village’s past settlements. In Noksen, in turn, a section of villagers trace their mythical origins, akin to the neighbouring Ao Naga, to an ordained ‘emergence’ from the legendary Longtrok (six stones) site near the village of Chungliyimti, while others in Noksen point to a now deserted place on the Changsang hill range as their place of ancient settlement, and make no mention of Longtrok (Wouters 2017a). Such stories, when taken to the letter, seem difficult to reconcile, and they therefore remain best engaged with as social facts, as constitutive of social identities, and generative of meaning, rather than necessarily as source-based histories.5

The Calling of Clan ‘Hurry up! Have your rice and get ready,’ Athe summons. ‘There will be a Tunyi clan meeting today. Since you are living in a Tunyi house, you are a Tunyi now. You must attend.’ The day just dawned, and a thick veil of mist hangs low over Phugwumi. Athe has already started his morning meal when I emerge from my room; rice and nüna (snails), a local favourite, available in abundance in the mud of the wet rice fields from where village women collect them in small tins they wear tied around their waists while toiling the fields. Soon we are on our way. In Phugwumi, a villager’s clan background was central to his identity, and it was impermissible, even unthinkable, for any ‘outsider’ to reside

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in the village for a prolonged period without being ‘adopted’ in one of the six village clans. This applied to the few non-Naga shopkeepers, to Mr Gupta, the dedicated and long-serving school teacher from West Bengal, as well as to the lone anthropologist studying the village. In Phugwumi, human relations were mediated through the ‘clan’, which functioned as a patrilineal, more or less exogamous, affective, and corporate unit. Clan attachments and loyalties were strong with the six village clans—besides Tunyi, Kezo, Vero, Puro, Yhobu, and Thira—seen as natural and stable units, each with ascribed peculiarities and qualities, as well as certain distinctive clan folktales, oral histories, migratory routes, and genealogical tracing. Clan attachments were spoken of in a vocabulary of ancestors and blood connections with villagers usually inquiring, to strangers, not ‘what clan are you?’ but ‘whose clan are you?’ (Hutton 1921a: 117). Village settlements are traced to the coming together of members of different clans, which often arrived from different directions. With clan exogamy the general rule, the presence of multiple clans in a single village ensured conjugality as ‘each clan would supply wives for the other, [reducing] the inconvenience of marriage outside the village’ (Mills 1926: 5). In not a few Naga villages clanmembers reside clustered together in village khels, thus collating ‘blood’ with ‘territory’, at times resulting in ‘villages within a village’. Not so in Phugwumi, however, whose social demography of khels is a composite of clans and which, village elders explain, historically contributed to the upkeep of social order as it prevented inter-clan struggles from inflating into territorial conflicts. More than a social unit, in places across the Naga uplands individual clans were traditionally associated with ritual dispositions, qualities, as well as specific taboos and food restrictions, making Hutton (1921a: 390) postulate the possibility of an ancient totemic setup arranged on the basis of ‘exogamous clans dating back to a time before the present division into tribes’. In Noksen, for instance, each clan was associated with ritual dispositions and duties, and while the coming of Christianity erased such ritual associations from the popular mind, they are remembered by village elders. In Noksen, the Oungh made up the priestly clan and was bestowed with performing most village rituals. It was from their ranks that the ‘Ounghbo’, which roughly translates as ‘announcer’ but who usually functioned as the village’s nominal head, was traditionally

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selected. Next, the Houngang clan was associated with village defence and its members assumed leadership in constructing and maintaining defence walls. The Kangshou clan traditionally adjudicated over the start of the annual agricultural cycle, a responsibility symbolized by the ritual sowing of the first seeds and which only a Kangshou clan member was entitled to do. Finally, the Lomou clan was ascribed with special powers to keep epidemics away from the village and birds, insects, and rats from houses and crops—a ritual duty equally crucial given that a failed harvest could induce instant starvation. The four village clans were also associated with specific rituals, feasts, and festivals in the village. This division was strict in the sense that it was ritually sanctioned and if, for instance, a non-Kangshou would adjudicate over the start of the agricultural cycle or a non-Houngang assume leadership in village defence, divinely induced misfortune was thought to be certain.6 In Phugwumi, relations of clan pervaded all spheres of social life, and interlinked with marriage preferences and prohibitions, customary law, landownership, but equally with modern-day village administration, development projects, church organization, and electoral politics. Church deacons, for instance, were selected clan-wise, as was membership of the Village Council (VC) and Village Development Board (VDB).7 But not just the form and structure of social life cantered largely on clan, so, often, was its substance. Nebo, a former VDB secretary (the post most coveted within the VDB), narrated how, before he took office, successive VDBs attempted to construct a road crossing one of the village khels, but found their efforts thwarted by a village elder who refused to let the road cross his ancestral land. Several attempts to dissuade him proved futile. The village elder and Nebo, however, belonged to the same clan, and when Nebo requested permission for the road to pass over his land, the village elder promptly agreed. Nebo recounts: When I approached Apo [a classificatory term for father] for the land he told me, ‘I did not want to give my land to a VDB led by a secretary from another clan. But you and I are same. You are like my son. I want this road to be constructed during your tenure so that our people will remember you and our clan’s contribution to the village’s development’.

The construction of the road was subsequently completed during Nebo’s tenure.

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Figure 2.1 Tunyi clan meeting in Phugwumi Source: Author.

Athe and I arrive for the Tunyi clan meeting well in time (see Figure 2.1). It was held in an open space at the village’s outskirts where red and blue plastic chairs, borrowed for the occasion from the village’s Baptist church, had been arranged in neat rows. Clan elders and leaders, Athe among them, sit upfront, facing the gathering, and are expected to preside over the proceedings. Clan meetings are an annual affair in the village, and each of the six clans holds them. In them, the attendance of all clan-members is expected (or at least of an adult male representative of each household), and this includes those families who have settled outside the village. Absentees are not just noticed, but criticized. The Tunyi clan meeting prolongs throughout the day and discussions involve a large range of topics, including the performance of Tunyi students in schools and colleges, upcoming marriages involving a Tunyi spouse, the control of the forest land owned collectively by the clan, but also the condition of village administration (and the role of Tunyi representatives in it), state-level politics, and the ongoing Indo-Naga peace talks. Throughout my stay in Phugwumi, this is the only clan meeting I attend

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as the social necessity of categorizing me into a particular clan inevitably means that I am excluded from attending the meetings held by other village clans. Not just in Phugwumi, but across the Naga-inhabited hills, the axis of clan constitutes a close, cohesive, and corporate social until (at least ideally), and is a prime source of identity and identification. But if clans are expected to be united internally, inter-clan relations are often competitive, at times inimical, even within the same village. Hutton (1921a: 109) observed, for the Angami Naga, how ‘the rivalry or antagonisms of clan with clan within the village has coloured the whole of Angami life’. In the Chang Naga village of Tuensang, where clan and khel largely overlapped, Hutton, moreover, observed in the 1920s: Between the Bilaeshi and the Chongpho khels there is a deep ditch digged, formerly filled with ‘panjies’ [bamboo spikes] most of which were pulled by Ongli Ngaku’s [A Dobashi or ‘interpreter’ working with the colonial government, see Chapter 6] orders last time he came here, when he tried to settle the long standing feuding between the Chongpho and Bilaeshi khels. For the present it is abated, but I saw in Chongpho khel a long row of hide shields set out as they are put when trouble with the Bilaeshi is toward. (1929: 49)

While inter-clan feuds, or at least their most violent manifestations, largely ended with British pacification, rivalries and resentments between clans lingered (Chapter 7), and occasionally become mired into Naga nationalist politics. In the Angami Naga village of Khonoma, a reconciliation ceremony in 2008 ended half a century of inter-clan strife that went back to at least the murder of T. Sakhrie (Lievüse clan), Secretary of the NNC, allegedly at the orders of A.Z. Phizo (Dolie clan), then NNC’s President. Both Sakhrie and Phizo hailed from Khonoma. What returned to Khonoma, after Sakhrie’s assassination, were rudiments of, what Colonel Butler had called, Nagas’ characteristic ‘blood-feud’ in which, akin to a ‘Corsican vendetta’, village disputes and disagreements, even ‘mere family quarrels’, were quickly taken up ‘by their respective clansmen’ and subsequently ‘break out into bitter civil wars which devastate whole villages’ (cited in Elwin 1969: 56). A volatile rift between the Lievüse and Dolie clans

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descended over Khonoma, a rivalry that deepened by subsequent killings, disputes, and political disagreements over the Naga cause. After half a century of discord, the village resolved to enact a peace committee bestowed with the mission of reconciling the two clans. It proved an arduous task, but after several years of meetings, negotiations, and an apology of an elder belonging to Phizo’s clan the two clans agreed to reconcile, an act that was symbolized by the two clans jointly praying and feasting ( Joshi 2012: 242; Nibedon 1978: 70–2).

The Naga ‘Village Republic’ ‘Nothing much happens these days. We are just fulfilling our duty being here,’ Chuba, a village defence guard in Noksen says while brewing ‘pica’, or black tea, to taste on a smoldering fire. Firewood is stacked close by. Lunch is to be prepared next. The place is Noksen’s village defence post, a makeshift fortification, erected a few steps above the village’s towering, newly built, neatly whitewashed Baptist Church, but nonetheless complete with an underground escape route, a weapon and ammunition storage stocked with rifles and bullets, and gun emplacements all around. Besides Chuba, four other men are on duty in the defence post, sitting clustered around the fireplace and wrapped into shawls to keep out the January cold. Their assigned duty: to ‘protect’ the village against Naga undergrounds of rivalling factions and with whose cadres the Noksen villagers share complex and fluctuating relationships of kinship and resentment, sympathy and dislike, love and hate. While thus a militia of sorts, Noksen’s village guards wear sandals, casual sweaters, and simple pants rather than sturdy army booths and neatly ironed uniforms embroidered with insignias and medals, and instead of busying themselves with daily patrols, routine roll calls, and regimented training exercises, they spend most of their time playing carrom-board, cooking meals, and chewing betel nut. But then, the salaries paid to them by the government are low: ‘next to nothing’, as Chuba complains. However, with duties few (only a handful of 12-hour shifts a month) and with agriculture the prime mainstay any cash at the end of the month is always welcomed. The necessity of guarding one’s village against invaders and foes has long been intrinsic to Nagas’ political history, and in days now

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bygone Noksen villagers variously assumed the role of perpetuator and recipient of raids and retaliations. Before British pacification, it was customarily for each Naga village to guard its village gates (see Figures 2.2 and 2.3) around the clock against intrusions, ever looming.

Figure 2.2 Modern village gate in Noksen Source: Author.

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Figure 2.3 Old village gate in Phugwumi Source: Zhoto Tunyi.

Noksen was thus hardly exceptional in barricading its surroundings. When Mofatt-Mills toured the Angami Hills in 1854, he found most villages enclosed by ‘stiff stockades, deep ditches, bristling with panjies, and massive stone walls’ (Moffatt-Mills 1969: 229). While such elaborate defence works already impeded the entrance of unwelcome guests, in Noksen, akin to most Naga villages, the additional act of ‘watching over’ the village was a duty vested in morungs, or bachelor sleepinghouses, and of which each of Noksen’s four khels had one. ‘To guard the whole village was one of the most important duties of the members of the morung’, Mark Pongener (2011: 24) explains. Its members were deployed as ‘sentries at the village gates’ where they ‘kept vigil in turn throughout the day and night’ and ‘signal the possible intrusion of an enemy’. But if such village and morung-wise defence strategies would frame Noksen’s current village guards in a continuous past, in their present form its concrete origins trace back to the late 1950s and to a controversial counter-insurgency strategy adopted by Indian military and paramilitary troops to counteract the then surging sway of the NNC. The Naga National Council’s Naga Army relied on villages for food,

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shelter, monies, intelligence, and, of course, recruits, and it was in a classic attempt to separate ‘insurgents’ from ‘civilians’ that Indian Army officers sought to establish village militias. To help persuade Naga villagers into accepting this military scheme, special development packages were offered to consenting villages and monthly salaries, weaponry, and basic military training to those villagers who enlisted themselves as guards. A former Indian Army General recounted thus: ‘We supplied them [village defence guards] with smooth bore muskets and established camps to train them in musketry and simple field-craft. This force proved effective because I gave them the task of guarding only their own village’ (Thorat 1986: 83–4). Though most Naga villagers swore fidelity to the NNC, some villages accepted the enactment of a village defence post on its soil. In its effects, this policy was divisive, pitching certain Naga villages against the Naga Army. The Naga National Council, on its part, labelled any Naga village agreeing to a defence post as ‘pro-Indian’ and ‘reactionary’, and promised them a revenge that was lethal. For long, much longer compared to several neighbouring and nearby villages, Noksen withstood army pressures to allow a village defence post to be constructed. ‘Some of our own boys were part of the Naga Army’, Chuba explains. ‘They were our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. How could we possibly accept weapons and training from the Indian Army to shoot at them?’ It was only after the gradual decline of the NNC from the mid-1970s onward, the rise of the NSCN in the 1980s, its subsequent split into warring factions, and when earlier forms of annual ‘house-tax’ and ‘army-ration tax’ to the Naga Movement increasingly appeared, to the villagers, as ‘extortion’ that Noksen gave in. A village defence post was built, paid for by the Indian Army, while a couple of dozen villagers were trained as guards. ‘Still then’, Chuba continues: We had an understanding with the Naga undergrounds. We told them that we would not attack them if they come to our village, but that they should inform us ahead of their coming. Although there was a lot of division in the underground already, they are our own people struggling for our cause. We are not against them. Even taxes they can come and collect. We are ready to contribute. But no force and no extortion. That we told them clearly. We also told them that we would not allow factionalism on our soil. And that if such would happen our guns would not stay quiet.

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The guns owned by Chuba and his men indeed do not stay silent when, in 1997, cadres of two rivalling underground groups clashed head-on at the village’s fringe, leaving one morung charred and bullet holes in several houses. ‘We chased them away that day’, Chuba recalls. ‘We emptied our guns at both the factions. We did not care who was who. We warned them.’ This ethnographic vignette introduces us not just to a controversial chapter in Nagaland’s theatre of insurgency and counterinsurgency, but it is also illustrative of the remarkable resilience of the prototypical Naga ‘village republic’ as a political, partisan, and self-protective unit. The idea of Naga villages as ‘republics’, somewhat akin to Greek city states, is an old one, and one endlessly invoked in both scholarly and popular writings on Naga history and lifeworlds.8 This discourse is also invoked by Naga underground groups, and the NSCN manifesto reads thus: ‘From time immemorial, Nagas maintained in their villages a type of selfgovernment which could be called a little republic or a city state … This self-governing system worked excellently and people enjoyed peace and justice … The basis of the Naga system is the village organization’. Even as there always was considerable strife within villages, in Naga historical memory as well as political thinking, the past of (semi)independent Naga village republics is seen as a golden age of ‘community’, order, and justice. So pervasive is the image of the Naga village as a self-governing unit that villagers themselves speak about their village as a republic. ‘Phugwumi is an independent republic’, a villager told me as soon as I began my fieldwork. ‘We have our own customary laws and court, and nobody has the right to interfere with our village matters, not the government, not the police.’ This centrality of the Naga village did not disappear with state-enclosure but saw itself remapped in the postcolonial, poststatehood era. Through a special Amendment to the Indian Constitution, Nagaland’s Village Council Act, 1978, Village Development Boards, and the ‘Communitisation of Public Institutions and Services Act, 2002’ (Chapter 5), extraordinary executive and judicial powers were delegated to Naga village levels, while, as a general principle, ‘the government tries not to interfere with the village administration’ (Horam 1988: 18). These ‘self-governing’ Naga villages became variously involved with the Naga Movement, and, as Naga insurgency protracted, the NNC

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came to differentiate between ‘national’ and ‘anti-national’ Naga villages. Meet Abi, an aged NNC veteran residing in Noksen town. Abi’s life story is fraught with hardships and experiences of brutal violence, both as its executor and recipient. For long years, he served in the Naga Army and battled Indian armed forces. While, now in the autumn of his life, Abi rationalizes his often fierce, lethal past encounters with Indian troops as part of his call to duty, what he deeply regrets are the attacks on those Naga villages which were seen as collaborating with the Indian Army. ‘We took revenge and punished them’, Abi says. ‘We used brute violence and killed many. It should not have happened. I regret it. They were Nagas. Our own brothers.’ In addition to a political unit, one’s village belonging is also a prime source of identity, and each village is thought of as having characteristics of its own. ‘Phugwumi is a very peculiar village. When they fought amongst themselves they would bite off their opponent’s nose and earlobes. It is a dangerous village.’9 Such and similar remarks were made to me with some frequency when I spoke about my fieldwork to people outside the village. Important here is that my friends’ views of Phugwumi were usually not based on any first-hand knowledge of the Phugwumi villagers but was based on the stories that circulated about them. In broad terms, albeit in strikingly different ways, the one-thousand odd villages dotted across Nagaland are similarly constructed by descriptions and depictions produced and reproduced about them. The timely demise of national character studies notwithstanding (Gorer 1949; Mead 1946), in the animated world of social perceptions Naga villagers are more than geographical places containing peoples, more than the background décor on which lives are lived, but they are seen in the vernacular as social personas with distinctive traits, historical trajectories, attitudes, and outlooks. A Naga village, then, encompasses a moral community characterized by its temporal and spatial rootedness, and whose inhabitants define themselves through the conduit of historical memory—a nexus, indeed, between history, locality, ancestral genealogy, and social personality—and which orients their relations with neighbouring and nearby villages. Of course, identities, both of persons and places, are always as much ascribed as avowed, and during the course of my fieldwork my Naga friends and interlocutors would variously typify a village as ‘aggressive’, ‘greedy’, ‘weak’, ‘boisterous’, ‘aloof ’, ‘drunkards’,

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‘well-built’, and so on, in the process collating territory and people in terms of character and behaviour. These, of course, are stereotypes, which, anthropologists know, are usually constitutive of social reality as much as they are a reflection thereof. Yet, such stereotypes nevertheless work to orient the social landscape, and, in the upshot, produce a social reality in which an individual’s genealogical tracing to a particular village is held as indicative of his or her temperament and ways of ‘thinking’. Colonial officers recognized the ‘Naga village’ as central to political structures and systems in the hills, and while, in their administrative and ethnological structuring and restructuring of Naga society, they sought to establish ‘the tribe’ as the pillar of Naga society (more in the next section titled ‘tribes and tribalism), British administrators remained acutely aware that it was in the Naga village, not the tribe, that the locus and ethos of political life was vested. For the Sema Naga, ‘the tribe’, Hutton (1921b: 121) wrote, ‘is not an organized community at all’, rather the basis of Sema society is the village, or part of a village [khel]. About the Lotha Naga, Mills (1922: 96) similarly observed how ‘every village is an independent unit in the tribe. Leagues of villages were formed for the purposes of war, and in these cases the advice of the most powerful village would naturally carry much weight … But except for war, no village ever acknowledged the authority of any other village’. For the neighbouring Ao Naga, the missionary Smith (1925: 51) noted how ‘theoretically the village acts as a unit in all things’. Mills (1926: 176) couldn’t agree more: ‘as with all Nagas, the real political unit of the tribe is the village’. While the Naga village republic is variously accounted for in folktales, ritual arrangements, and origin and migration stories, its historical centrality—as a conduit of social life, a political actor, and a moral community—was also the cumulative outcome of two landscapes. First, a geography that was rugged and difficult to traverse and which long impeded communication and regular relations between villages. Secondly, a human landscape stained by frequent inter-village rivalries, raids, and retaliations that nourished an air, an atmosphere, that bristled with mutual suspicion, distrust, and danger. Hutton (1965: 32) wrote thus: At the time of the British acquaintance with them, many villages were still isolated from their neighbours by thickly forested hills and by rivers unfordable for several months in the year, and they tended to be on terms

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in the shadows of naga insurgency of head-hunting warfare with their nearest neighbours, or at best of an armed and ever suspect truce, almost every village being an independent political entity.

The act of ‘head-hunting warfare’, long held to be a Naga trait of sorts (Tinyi 2017), itself was informed by parochial convictions directed towards ‘ritually fertilizing’ the village, or so Elwin (1961: 11) construed: The practice of headhunting is probably based on a belief in a soulmatter or vital essence of great power which resides in the human head. By taking a head from another village, therefore, it was believed that a new injection of vital and creative energy would come to the aggressor’s village when he brought the head home. This was valuable for human and animal fertility.

Distinct village identities were further reproduced by linguistic fragmentation, and mother tongues usually did not align with tribal boundaries. In fact, for most Nagas the idea that a tribe should speak a single language is a strange idea indeed. This can be read in the following pun Hutton (1921b: 266–7) found in vogue among the Sumi Naga. Seven men of different villages happened to meet by the road one evening. They asked one another what they had with them to eat with their rice. Each mentioned a different thing—atusheh, gwomishi, mngishi, amusa, akelho, etc. including, as some understood it, dried fish, meat, and various kinds of vegetables. They agreed to pool their good things and share alike and sat down prepared for a feast, each one thinking how he had scored by agreeing to share with his neighbours. When they opened their loads, they all produced chillies.

The Naga village was also a ritual unit. Among the Angami Naga, for instance, the Tevo, or village priest, who operated as ‘the mediator between the [village] community as a whole and the supernatural world’ (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939: 13) was to be kept ‘safe’ from the polluting touch of other villages. Fürer-Haimendorf wrote: ‘During the first three and a half years of his office he [the Tevo] may not visit any other village, and even later on he may never partake a meal in a strange village but must always carry his food with him’ (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939: 13). Consider the following instance:

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A woman from a neighbouring village came to see the Tevo’s wife, and during a friendly chat obliged her by picking a few lice out of her hair. Later it became known that the treacherous friend had abstracted one hair from the head of the Tevo’s wife and taken it back to her own village. The Tevo and his wife were immediately deprived of their dignity and exiled, for a part of one of them, and therefore a part of the ‘virtue’ of the whole [village] community, had been carried off to a foreign village. (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939: 14)

‘Virtue’, clearly, had geographical boundaries and these broadly aligned with the village gates. Summarizing it all, Elwin (1961: 9) wrote how ‘the basic interest of every Naga is in his family, the clan, the khel, the village. This is what he regards as his culture which must not be interfered with’. Much, of course, has changed since these colonial portrayals of ‘village republics’. And while the Naga village was never fully selfenclosed, self-sufficient, and sealed, its village gates have been (forced) open more widely in recent decades. Many also have passed through these gates to more or less permanently settle in urban centres both inside and outside Nagaland, while many more currently growing up in villages aspire to study and pursue careers outside of it. However, those who leave the village often remain deeply connected to it: they make sure to have their ancestral home to return to, may lease out their land rather than selling it, return to the village to celebrate Christmas and traditional festivals, retain their local church memberships, and always respond with the name of their ancestral village when asked ‘who they are’ (even if they were not actually born there). In reviewing the condition of South Asian Anthropology in the 1980s, Fuller and Spencer (1990: 86) diagnosed the demise of the once coveted ‘village studies’, plainly because anthropologists got ‘bored’ with them. A decade on, Gupta (2005a) announced the withering of the traditional diacritics of Indian village life. Anthropologists, it was suggested, would better move away from villages and study mobility, migration, and urban spaces. Recently Mines and Yazgi (2010: 13) offered a much needed corrective to this conception, arguing how, despite forces of urbanization, modernization, and capitalism, villages often persist as ‘ontological existents, key aspects of experience, reservoirs of discourse or projections, units for collective actions, elements of consciousness of self or

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otherness’. This certainly applies to most Nagas, for whom the village remains firmly etched at the centre of social consciousness. Or as it was once explained to me: Those who leave their villages to settle in Kohima or Dimapur are often those with a salaried job. They therefore do not need to sell their land in the village. Nagas always want to keep some land in the village, even if they hardly come there and don’t cultivate it. Without land it is difficult to claim that you belong to a village. And without belonging to a village, it is difficult to claim that you are a Naga.

Tribes and Tribalism Even as, up close, the affective realities of clan and village assume social precedence within the Naga category, Nagaland is also referred to as a ‘tribal state’, an upland realm inhabited and governed by tribes and tribals alone, but also where an emphasis on tribal particularity manifests itself as a political, social, and material (and volatile) resource. ‘Disband private tribal armies!’ (cited in Nagaland Post 2016b), Nagaland’s Home Minister appealed in 2016. His plea was in reference to mounting tribalism—here broadly understood as outbursts of ‘excessive’ identification and loyalty to one’s tribe and antagonistic sentiments towards other tribes—resulting from a land dispute between the Chang and Yimchunger tribes. The dispute had spiraled into violence as both communities enacted tribal militias to defend a swathe of land they both claimed was ancestrally theirs. ‘The prevalence of tribalism’, another Nagaland Minister lamented, ‘is destroying the social fabric of Naga society … This monster of tribalism overshadows us and curbs all minds’ (cited in Nagaland Post 2010). As a sentiment, ‘tribe’, among Nagas, is deep enough to sacrifice and die for, and ‘tribalism’, in turn, to kill for—as such, tribal belonging is existential. ‘Do-or-die’, a Naga friend in Shillong told me one day as he was agitatedly exploring ways to travel home immediately in response to an intertribal clash which had cost the life of at least one member of his community. Acts and articulations of tribalism are not just bemoaned by Naga politicians, who, at least formally, are expected to preserve communal

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harmony across the state. Many of my Naga friends speak of tribalism as a form of societal corruption, as endangering normal coexistence, and for sowing suspicion, misgiving, and disunity. Yet, rather than adjudging present-day tribalism as the final spasms of, say, premodern, uncontrolled primordial affects and affinities, now on the verge of being replaced through an ‘integrative revolution’ (Geertz 1973) and the emergence of a modern Naga society reliant on civic values and unity, they insist that tribalism is not just persisting in public life, but is actually on the rise, and saturating society. As I will discuss further below, the term ‘tribalism’ plays an important role in Naga everyday speech, and its invocation is readily accepted as self-explanatory for manifold social actions, ranging from corruption, job appointments, and unequal distributions of state resources to the reshuffling of cabinet posts, communal tension, and factionalism within the Naga Movement. The genealogy and formation of Naga tribes, and today’s outpourings of tribal essentialism, is complex, and would merit a book by itself. But even as most Nagas speak of their own tribe in a discourse of ‘time-immemorialism’, as though tribes and tribal boundaries are innate structures set for all time, a dispassionate historical reading suggests that ‘the tribe’, among Nagas, is not a suprahistorical entity, not an ancient survival, and certainly not a quasi-natural group, but a social and political identity that emerged, in its current form, under special historical and political circumstances. For long, much longer than many Naga historians wish to acknowledge, identities locally were segmented and disjointed, and centered on clan, khel, village, and occasionally village clusters, not on the principle of ‘the tribe’. By and large, and as a general principle, I hold that Naga tribal formation, if not originated, certainly expanded under colonialism and was a reactive process to the colonial emphasis on ‘the tribe’ as the social base of Naga society. As a projected political and moral community, the ‘tribe’, then, was largely a modern ‘state-effect’, one that entailed the ‘tribalization’ of social identities (Wouters 2017a). This is a complex discussion, but it is telling that the term ‘tribe’ itself is exogenous to Nagas, and India more widely. Scholars indeed variously emphasize how ‘originally the term tribe was used in African contexts and was transferred to British India’ (Berger and Heidemann 2013: 6) or that ‘prior to the colonial era the use of a generic term to describe tribal peoples was, on the whole, absent’ (Xaxa 2005: 1363).

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In fact, when the concept of tribe was first promoted to chart and categorize Nagas, British officers soon realized the problematic cultural transitivity of the tribal concept locally. Captain Butler, for instance, remarked: These various tribes all dovetail into each other in a most remarkable manner, and it is impossible to assign to them any hard-and-fast limits, or to say that beyond certain limits a tribe does not extend; for not only do we often find men from two or even three tribes living in the same village but in many cases villages belonging to the same tribe are separated from each other by those of several other tribes.10

For Captain Butler and other colonial officers it often proved impossible to clearly define and delineate Naga tribes. But then, who expected them to arrange their lives in the form of discrete and homogenous tribes in the first place? The answer, in hindsight, was given by J.H. Hutton, when, roughly 30 years after his retirement from the Naga Hills, he reflected: ‘The present [postcolonial] administration of the area, for one thing, have gone still further than we did in my time in particularizing tribes’ (1965: 16, emphasis mine; Wouters 2017a). Little analytical attention has been devoted to this process of ‘particularising tribes’, driven, no doubt, by the colonial government’s wish to simplify the Naga ‘social hieroglyph into a legible and administratively more convenient format’ (Scott 1998: 3). It was under colonial rule, I argue, that the notion of distinct, discrete, and politically organized Naga tribes was first institutionalized and etched itself at the heart of colonial administration and ethnological identification; districts and administrative zones were delineated on the basis of imagined tribal territories, monographs written on individual tribes, each tribe associated with particular behavioural traits,11 missionary stations setup tribe-wise and the Bible translated into selected languages, while the census, too, was conducted tribe-wise. In doing so, colonial rule gradually altered the manner in which identity was experienced, enacted, and represented, giving rise to a collective consciousness (or false consciousness?) of Naga society as made up of a conglomeration of distinct tribes. But if the British wanted clearly separable tribes for purposes of governance, Nagas appeared ready to construct them, and ‘tribal entrepreneurs’12 started organizing tribal

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associations committed to bringing education and development to their hills, uniting clans and villages, and instilling in them a sense of common belonging, at times reinventing mytho-historical charters for the purpose. The 1940s and 50s particularly saw the emergence of tribal apex bodies, and of which I will introduce an example shortly. To be sure, this is not to argue that, in all cases, ‘the tribe’ was wholly a colonial invention, but that it was only after the entrance of colonial offices and officers that ‘the tribe’ became part of a singular taxonomy that categorized and represented Nagas’ hitherto more fragmented and disjointed social identities.13 As a matter of historical evidence, it was possible, until not so long ago, for a Naga village to not belong to any tribe in particular. Note, for instance, the following account written by Mills (1922: 2): Yacham and their small neighbour, Yong … speak a dialect resembling Chongli [and Ao Naga language] but follow Phom or Konyak customs to a great extent. Yacham recently told me that they really did not know what they were—Aos would not recognize them as Aos and their trans-Dikhu neighbour [Chang Naga] would not accept them as kinsmen. The question to ask here is when and why it suddenly became problematic for the inhabitants of Yacham and Yong to not belong to a tribe? This answer might tell us a thing or two about the emergence, institutionalization, and local infatuation with the idea and praxis of tribe. Note, too, the following observation by Elwin in the 1950s: ‘tribal groups in Nagaland are forming new affiliations and using names hitherto unknown to Anthropology’ (1961: 5). The Chakhesang Naga was one such new affiliation. As a tribe, it entered administrative and ethnological annals in 1946, in August of that year to be precise (Vitso 2003: 1). This is when the tribe was assembled through a merger of different language groups previously part of other tribes. Its amalgamation was hardly based on cultural and linguistic similarities, but part of a process of ‘negative solidarity’, as Subba (1988: 375) explains the frequent fission and fusion of communities across India’s Northeast. Such impromptu and flexible ‘tribal solidarities’, Subba writes, are ‘adopted’, not ‘inherent’, ‘temporary’ rather than ‘permanent’, but always, and crucially, directed at mitigating common grievances and the pursuing of shared interests. The imperative for forming a separate Chakhesang tribe, Krocha and Dukru (2013: 1) write, ‘was realized by the Chakhesang people partly

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for political reasons and mostly to develop its own people socially, economically and educationally’. Such processes of modern tribe-making occurred widely across the Naga highlands. Imlong Chang, a ‘tribal entrepreneur’ (Chapter 6), for instance, envisaged the creation of the Chang Tribal Committee (CTC). Of his motivations, Takam Chang (1988: 24–5), his biographer, wrote: He [Imlong Chang] was the first and foremost personality in setting up the then Chang Tribal Committee (later Chang Tribal Council). Although he was a brave warrior, he despised war. His main concern was to ensure that the head and body were buried as one and not in separate villages (as was common for the war victims during the days of headhunting) … On 1 April 1945, Imlong called 10 elders to his house in Mokokchung [where he was a head-dobashi, Chapter 6], and formed a Committee called the Chang Tribal Committee for the advancement of the tribe. (Intervention is author’s own)

At its enactment, its members set themselves two immediate objectives, in addition to ‘advancing’ the tribe materially and educationally. First, so it was narrated to me by the current CTC president, to permanently pacify the area by resolving feuds that lingered between and within villages. The second objective was to define which villages were culturally and customarily Chang. Given that cultural expressions, languages, historical trajectories, and political allegiances were varied and fragmented (even within single villages), to the Committee this second objective must have been as complex as the objective to foster peace. But even as the CTC gradually succeeded in defining and delimiting the Chang tribe, the levels of manufacturing, moulding, and persuading this required made it a protracted and initially inept process. To illustrate: a Chang pastor who had researched the growth of Christianity among the Chang narrated, when I visited him, that in his study of Church registers, he had found that in the 1950s the Chang tribe suddenly ‘lost’ roughly 900 Christians. The reason, he eventually discovered, was not the revival of past religion, as he had first suspected, but the result of a cluster of Chang villages changing their tribal affiliation from Chang to Phom (Wouters 2017a). While, in concrete form, ‘the tribe’, as an administrative resource, ethnological entity, and effective (and affective) unit of political action

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first appeared during colonial rule, these then emergent tribal identities assumed particular force during the postcolonial, post-statehood era when new districts, constituencies, development allocations, and job reservations increasingly became arbitrated on the basis of tribe. What grew, in this process, was a tribal political machinery and a ‘strategic efficacy’ (as Tambiah [1989: 343] argues for ethnicity and ethnic claims) of invoking ‘the tribe’ for political mobilization and to claim resources of the modern state, so reinforcing and solidifying the modern framework of ‘tribe’. Undoubtedly, the category of tribe is the way most Nagas nowadays perceive, experience, and articulate their social landscape. Yet, in spite of a flourishing discourse of tribal ‘time-immemorialism’, this has not always been the case, certainly not to the extent it unfolds today. Historically and analytically, part of our problem in conceptualizing Naga identities and society arises from the observation that we have not yet fully appreciated the intensity of the social rupture of the ‘tribe’.

The Naga Nation as a Tribal Confederacy ‘Nothing in the Yehzabo [NNC Constitution, 1956] or by any law shall allow any tribes to secede from the [Naga] Union.’

After discussing and detailing the foundational and emotive units of clan, village, and tribe, what then constitutes the substance of the Naga nation as a form of ethnic mobilization? The condition of Naga nationalism, I argue, is that it is overlaid and undercut by a politics of tribal differences and divisions. While this does not negate the palpable existence of a Naga nation, far from that, it complicates its existence and articulation with a flexibility of social and political networks. This flexibility made Horam (1988: 24–6) argue that the projection of a collective Naga nation, in the wake and aftermath of India’s Independence, was a ‘semblance’, one ‘mistaken for reality and not reality itself ’. All nations, of course, are semblances, but what particularly punctuated Naga nationalism, Horam explained, was a ‘miasma of tribalism’; ‘a movement intended to unite all Nagas in common cause has at times proved to be otiose as it is constantly dogged by tribal pulls’ (Horam 1988: 23). Rather than a single ethnic rubric, the Naga nation, then, is best approached as a tribal confederacy; a political coalition in which connected yet self-directed tribes produced through ethnic mobilization a

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pan-Naga configuration to counteract perceived threats against their autonomy and identity, cultural survival, and land and property. This Naga tribal confederacy effectuated certain social transformations, broadened political horizons, and was articulated in terms of the modern and modular category of the territorial nation-state, but crucially, I will illustrate, it did not rise above or dislodge more affective, more partisan collectivities of clan, village, and tribe. As such, Naga nationalism always remains more an aspiration than an achievement, and remains ever compromised by the deep loyalties distinct tribes evoke. In a version of Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) vintage segmentary lineage system, levels of Naga national consciousness, cohesion, and cooperation remain secondary to the immediacies of kinship and social bonds of individual tribes, as well as, further down, of villages and clans. Despite decades of Naga identity politics, those Naga individuals, Horam (1988: 26) writes, ‘who rise above tribal considerations … are considered to be renegades by their own tribes’. Ostensibly this appears somewhat of an overstatement as many joined the Naga Movement and envisaged an independent and unified Naga nation when it was in their mortal interest not to. What Horam (1988) rightly emphasizes, however, is that different Naga tribes’ participation in, and commitment to, the Naga Movement is never simple and straightforward but manifests itself as contingent on intertribal relations and often purely local issues and concerns. Through a few historical and ethnographic excursions, I will attempt to justify this approach, of Naga nationalism as a tribal confederacy, but so without dismissing the political imagination and agency that produced the Naga nation as an enduring, if at times fluctuating, and volatile political reality.

Tribal Battalions In the 1960s, Vezohü, a Phugwumi elder, joined the NNC and was sent to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to undergo guerrilla training and bring back weaponry and ammunition donated to the NNC by the Pakistan Government. Vezohü’s following recollections of this trip show how ‘the tribe’ reconstituted itself as a unit of organization, support, and loyalty within the rank-and-file of the NNC.

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About 600 of us went. Nearly one hundred were Chakhesangs. Each day we started marching at 2 AM. It was safer to walk in the dark. All of us carried food, including a tin with five kilograms of rice each, and which we refilled in friendly villages. After the day’s march, members of each tribe would sit together and prepare meals on small fires. During the day, each tribe formed a battalion and a roster-system was put in place. One day we Chakhesangs would lead, and, for instance, the Lotha would form the rear-guard. The next day the Sumi would lead and the Angami make the rear-guard, and so on. Communication was always a problem as we could not understand much of other tribes’ languages. Only our officers could speak in different tongues, and they would always issue commands in multiple languages. It often took a while before everyone understood what we were supposed to do. We travelled via Burma, as it would be more difficult for the Indian Army to trace us there. Two months of daily marches brought us to East Pakistan. Once there, we were treated well by the Pakistanis. The Pakistan government constructed a camp for us, and served plenty of food. The Pakistani officer in charge told us: ‘Since you have come with great difficulty, we will let our best officers train you, and when the training is over we will give you as much weapons and ammunition as you can carry’. They kept to their promise, and after we completed the training, each of us was loaded with 40 kilograms of weaponry. We expected the return journey to be tough. Our heavy loads would surely slow us down, while we were sure that, by now, Indian intelligence agencies must had found out about our trip and that the army would try to intercept us. The night before we departed, all Chakhesangs had a meeting in which each of us took an oath pledging that was any eventuality or misfortune to happen we would not leave any Chakhesang behind. That even if other tribes would desert us, we would stay together, and carry those injured or exhausted amongst us along on bamboo-stretchers if indeed. Fortunately, by the time we crossed back into India, the first Indo-Naga ceasefire had just started, which made our return journey uneventful.

Tribes and Factions Given that through tribal battalions ‘the tribe’ was affirmed and recognized as an enduring organizing principle of the Naga Movement, it perhaps becomes less surprising that factional splits and struggles, long intrinsic to Naga insurgency, often fomented along tribal lines.14

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Manifestations of political autonomy and tribal divisions within the Naga Movement emerged, in most cases, not primarily out of political and ideological differences—minor differences apart, most factions broadly share the same political commitment—but resulted from rejections of particular leadership and the perceived domination of a certain tribe(s) within the Naga Movement. The next chapter discusses Naga factionalism and fragmentation in some detail. Here I limit myself to a brief discussion on the first major split within the NNC. The year was 1968 when the majority of Sumi Nagas split from the NNC, and established the Revolutionary Government of Nagaland (RGN). Causes were multifarious, and remain debated, but the split was widely framed as the cumulative outcome of a longstanding Sumi– Angami tribal opposition, one that predated the Naga Movement but resurfaced as ‘tribal crisis’ (Aye 2000: 25). When the Naga Movement emerged it was initially the Angami and Sumi tribes that offered ‘both the brains and muscle towards the underground fronts’ (Nibedon 1978: 156). By the 1960s, however, ‘divisions [between them] were manifesting itself again and flowing into tribal channels’. ‘The Angami-Sema rivalry’, Nibedon concluded, ‘had deepened’ (1978: 156). This tribal divide was not confined to the Naga Movement, but, it is argued, began ‘as a tribal dispute over land in the Dimapur plains’ (Lintner 2012: 77). Most reconstructions however highlight leadership differences and dissent within the rank-and-file of the NNC following the onset of the first Indo-Naga ceasefire in 1964 (abrogated in 1972) and subsequent peace-negotiations. At the time, both the Commanderin-Chief of the NNC’s Naga Army and the President of the FGN belonged to the Sumi tribe, and this, it is said, was resented by ‘many Angamis, who saw themselves as the founders of the national movement’ (Lintner 2012: 77).15 The lull of violence offered the stage for such sentiments to emerge above the surface, and in sessions of the Tatar Hoho (the FGN parliament), held in 1966 and 1967, the Sumi leadership was made to resign, and was replaced by an Angami leadership. This change of leadership connoted ‘the end of Sema hegemony in Naga politics’ with ‘power pass[ing] to the Angami tribe’ (Horam 1988: 140). Events then followed in quick succession. The deposed Sumi general, Kaito, was assassinated, allegedly by an Angami. A battalion of China returning NNC cadres, bringing with them new guerrilla tactics and

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modern weaponry, was arrested and disarmed by a Sumi battalion of the Naga Army, which also kidnapped the FGN’s new Angami President (Vashum 2005: 91). Mutual suspicion led to intertribal violence and to Scato Swu, the overthrown Sumi FGN President, to declare the Sumi tribe’s split from the NNC and the establishment of a rival underground government. With few exceptions, all Sumi cadres within the NNC joined Swu’s Revolutionary Government of Nagaland, thus splitting the NNC. The formation of the RGN was as controversial as it was shortlived, however. In 1973, in an orchestrated ceremony, Scato Swu and roughly 1500 predominantly Sumi cadres surrendered to the Indian Government, and were subsequently rehabilitated (Chapter 4). Self-justifying his surrender later in life, Swu asserted that ‘tribalism overrides sovereignty in Naga society’ (2013: 37) and that ‘Even if we get Independence, Nagas would not be able to live together. We will fight among ourselves as there is a lot of tribal politics’ (cited in Horam 1988: 153).

Tribal Hohos, Non-Cooperation Notices, and Underground Bans Besides tribal battalions and ‘tribal factionalism’, yet another complicating factor became ‘overground’ tribe-wise apex bodies. It is these tribal apex bodies (called Hohos), of which every Naga tribe has one, that are looked at as the representative voice of the tribe. It speaks for its culture and history, customary laws, and collective rights, and it is within their jurisdiction and resolutions that a tribe’s political positioning, including associations and disassociations with the Naga Movement, or a particular faction, resides. Throughout the Naga struggle, such political allegiances proved contingent and fluctuating. To illustrate, while, in 1956, ‘the Konyak dissociated themselves en masse from the struggle’ (Anand 1980: 159), they later resurfaced as a dominant force, particularly within the NSCN-K. The primacy of tribe, as a structuring device of contemporary Naga political sociology, similarly reflected in the inner workings of the Naga People’s Convention (NPC), which drew up a 16 point memorandum out of which Nagaland state emerged (Chapter 4). One sub-clause read: ‘The convention further requests the cooperation

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of every tribe to make effective steps to bring normalcy in the country’ (Yonuo 1974: 233). Without the separate and individual endorsement of tribal apex bodies, NPC leaders realized, any resolution adopted by the Convention would fail to materialize. All along the Naga struggle, relations between Naga tribes and factions manifested themselves as complex, contentious, and contingent. In 2013, the Sumi Hoho, for instance, withdrew the Sumi tribe’s support to the NSCN-IM through the issuing of a ‘non-cooperation order’. This had been preceded by a Sumi public uprising in which thousands of Sumi villagers, armed with spears, sticks, machetes, and hunting rifles besieged an NSCN-IM designated ceasefire camp within the Sumi area, insisting on its immediate vacation. The immediate catalyst behind the uprising was an incident in which NSCN-IM national workers stopped a vehicle, and allegedly molested two Sumi female passengers, as well as assaulted their male co-passengers. In 2015, after several reconciliatory meetings, the Sumi Hoho withdrew its noncooperation order. This episode, in a way, was a reverse of a situation in 2008 when it was not the Sumi Hoho that banned the NSCN-IM but the NSCN-IM that banned the Sumi Hoho on the accusation that it was extending support to its main rival, the NSCN-K. This ban was later withdrawn. To illustrate further: in 2015, the NSCN-K issued a public notification declaring ‘henceforth, the Ao Naga tribe in general shall be treated as expunged in both the content and context of the Naga political struggle’ (cited in Morung Express 2015b). The Ao Senden, the tribe’s apex body, on its part, had already issued a non-cooperation notice vis-à-vis the the NSCN-K. The history of this conflict dates back to at least 2002 when a fiery Ao mob set ablaze the house of an NSCN-K official and lynched two national workers. What had incited the violence was the killing of an Ao woman reportedly at the hands of the NSCN-K. But while Ao Naga public bodies explained the lynching as tribal justice, the NSCN-K blamed it on tribalism, and given that the national workers killed belonged to the Lotha Naga, described the event as that of a ‘frenzied [Ao] mob baying for Lotha blood’ (cited in Nagaland Post 2015). In yet another incident that illustrates the complex and shifting relationships between Naga tribes and factions, the NSCN-IM banned the

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Poumai Naga Union over a local dispute concerning the tribal affiliation of Thiwa village in Manipur. While officially classed as a Poumai village, this was objected to by a section of villagers who invoked ancestral genealogies to claim that the village should be re-categorized as a Tangkhul Naga village. No sooner, the disagreement was fought out on tribal lines, and in the public contest that followed the NSCN-IM sided with the Tangkhul voice of the village, allegedly so, the Poumai Naga Union insisted, because of the dominance of Tangkhul leaders within the NSCN-IM. With the Poumai Naga Union refusing to accept the NSCN-IM arbitration and judgment, the latter banned the Poumai from the Naga Movement on account of ‘anti-national activities’, a ban which the Poumai Union reciprocated by issuing a Poumai-wide noncooperation order to the NSCN-IM (Eastern Mirror 2015). Several months and multiple meetings later, both groups agreed to lift their reciprocal bans. What above vignettes—the tribal battalions, factions, and tribe-wise non-cooperation orders—exemplify is that an appreciation of the deep partisan emotions and loyalties the ‘tribe’ evoke are fundamental to any understanding of the internal politics of Naga insurgency. It helps to understand why factionalism started, why it became so pervasive, why it continued, even intensified after the ceasefire (Chapter 3), and why several intra-Naga reconciliation missions initiated by Naga church bodies and civil societies, most notably the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) failed.16 This makes scholars and commentators describe tribalism as the enemy of Naga nationalism (for example, Panwar 2017; Shimray 2005). But even if such an evaluation is justifiable, it does not fully do justice to the ‘semiotic thickness’ of the term ‘tribalism’ across Naga society where it seemingly turned into a catchall phrase to capture all that is deemed wrong in the society. Political instability and rivalry within the Nagaland government, land disputes, corruption and nepotism, communal tension, malgovernance, potholed roads, or failing development, the notion of ‘tribalism’ often serves as a discourse explaining and critiquing it. The absence of tribalism, in turn, is often taken as synonymous of an imagined peaceful, developed, and modern Naga society. While violent intertribal rivalries and tensions are real, ‘tribalism’ also operates as an ‘artifice’ and ‘political performative’. Steven Pierce

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(2016: 21) employs these terms to discuss certain dimensions of corruption in Nigeria; while corruption is pervasive locally, people also levy accusations of corruption ‘in order to achieve political ends, which are accomplished in and through the act of labeling [someone or something as corrupt]’. The spoken accusation of a particular state functionary being corrupt, Pierce explains, may have serious consequences, including his fall from grace and removal from office, even if actual corruption is not always proven. Pierce calls such accusations ‘perlocutionary speech acts’, which are ‘acts accomplished because the words are spoken’ (2016: 21). I find Pierce’s insights and terminology helpful to understand the complex interlinking of the practice and discourse of tribalism among Nagas. Besides stirring violence and divisions, understandings of Naga tribalism must also recognize, I suggest, that the language of tribalism is also used to struggle over disagreements and disputes, to defame rivals, to achieve political ends, and to justify decisions and divisions. When, for instance, the NSCN was established in 1980s, its leaders legitimized, at least in parts, its existence in opposition to the ‘tribalism’ and ‘tribal propaganda’ they accused the Phizo-led NNC of, and assured that, in their ranks, tribalism ‘shall be given no room’ (NSCN cited in Nuh 2002: 364–73). However, when the NSCN witnessed a violent rift in the late 1980s, the term tribalism was instantly invoked as explanatory. In its aftermath, the NSCN-K and the NSCN-IM accused each other of tribalism and both factions self-justified their splitting away as an attempt to root out tribalism from the Naga Movement. While the exact catalyst that led to this split remains somewhat conjectural there are indications that ‘tribalism’ may have been a corollary rather than a prime cause of the NSCN breakup.17 Yet, to both national workers and the wider Naga audience the discourse of tribalism was the most readily available (and understandable) cause. Thence (and in line with Pierce’s analysis of corruption), while tribalism is no doubt central to the innerworking of the Naga Movement (and Naga society more widely), talk about tribalism is central to it as well. What emerges from this is that the pervasive nature of tribalism itself in parts depends on the societal discourse reproducing and critiquing it. Tribalism, then, cannot be overcome until we recognize both its ‘real’ occurrence and its status as a political artifice and performative.

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What If the Naga Nation Is Not Ancient Or Uniform? In the history of Naga nationalism, the Naga Club’s petition to the Simon Commission (cited in the introduction) in which its members pleaded that ‘Nagas should not be trust to the mercy of other people’, but be left ‘alone as in ancient times’ remains a building block of the ‘modern Naga political project’ (Kikon 2005: 2833). Not debated, or discussed openly, however, was what a return to ‘ancient times’ would entail, or who the Nagas were before colonialism. This altered with the publication in 2000 of what probably goes as the most controversial write-up on the Naga by a Naga: The Bedrock of Naga Society. S.C. Jamir, its author, then Nagaland’s Chief Minister, and a known critic, if not of Naga nationalism, certainly of the Naga Movement—and the resistance and violence perpetuated in its name— asked: ‘Did we have an independent political existence immediately before the British rule or even during the British days? Were we really an Independent nation?’ Jamir’s answer: The stark and inescapable truth is that neither did we have a definite and unified political structure nor did we exist as a nation. We were actually a group of heterogeneous, primitive and diverse tribes living in far-flung villages that had very little in common and negligible contact with each other… In these circumstances, the question of a unified ‘Naga nation’ did not arise. (Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee 2000: 1)

What was controversial about this statement was that it constructed the Naga nation as nascent, thus undermining the Naga grievance that the British had wilfully fractured and shattered coterminous and ancient Naga lands, homes, and belonging through boundaries made in Britain. It postulated that a generic Naga identity had not been the pretext, but the cumulative outcome of a modern Naga political project concocted and circulated by a small circle of Naga elite. Naga undergrounds immediately condemned S.C. Jamir as a reactionary and a traitor, and planned yet another ambush on his life (he had already survived several, in contrast to some of his bodyguards), while the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF), a commanding pan-Naga body, sought to placate its rage by collecting copies to lit a bonfire with them (Daniel 2004: 69). The Naga

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nation, it was reiterated far and wide, was perennial and historically immutable, as ancient as the proverbial time-immemorial. Despite the upheaval and rage the booklet inspired, in the light of existing historical scholarship S.C. Jamir’s reading of Naga history almost bordered on plagiarism. In fact, a large amount of ink and debate still goes to historicizing and explaining the rise of Naga political consciousness, and in tracking the historical antecedents and catalysts of the movement for Naga Independence, creating an expansionist body of scholarship that is at once so contested and so unimaginative, and predictable. Invariably, such reconstructions commence with the colonial archive, and retell and reiterate, for instance, Woodthorpe’s (1882: 47) observation, cited above, that the term Naga ‘is quite foreign to an unrecognized by the Naga themselves’, Robinson’s (1841) remark that ‘they know themselves by the designation of their respective tribes only, and not by any name common to all races’, or Hutton’s (1926: xv) statement that it is ‘exceedingly difficult to propound any test by which a Naga tribe can be distinguished from other Assam and Burma tribes which are not Nagas’. It is despite such vintage observations that in recent years it remains remarkably possible to present as novel and revelatory claims that ‘the Naga nation is not “given” in nature; instead it is continually being constructed’ (Nag 2013: 5). What this literature tirelessly showcases is how a generic Naga identity and nationalism is historically forged, as a response and reaction to colonialism, promoted by Nagas participation in both World Wars, articulated against the perceived ‘Indian occupation’, the cumulative effect of mass conversions to Christianity, or enacted through the witticism and charisma of Phizo, and in the upshot thus invented, constructing, and imagined (for example, Baruah 2003a; Franke 2009; Joshi 2013; Nag 2013; Wettstein 2012), making one wonder what kind of modern nation is not historically contingent and imagined, or where we may be able to find such a historically immutable nation? Rather than concluding with, important analytical avenues emerge, as I have tried to illustrate, by premising that the Naga, akin to all but decaying identities, is a nation continually in-the-making, a modern political project on the move, then progressing, then faltering, and always an ‘evolving concept that is difficult to pin down’ (Longkumer 2010: 206). Such a premise, rather than novel or even noteworthy, only

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follows local demotic discourses that differentiate strongly between tribes, clans, and villages, and take serious the occasional antipathies that reproduce such differences. It also merely recognizes the differential mythic narratives of origin and migration, the different languages and cultural expressions every few miles, the blood-soaked histories of raids and retaliations within, and the continuing acts and sentiments of tribalism that inform the intra-Naga politics of belonging and difference. Thence, if Sanjib Baruah (2003a) propagates the ‘confronting of Naga constructionism’ as the only way out of the ethnic politics and violence that permeate the Indo-Naga conflict, this well overlooks that evaluations of difference and disjunction are, and have always been, intrinsic to stories Nagas tell about themselves. Crucially, however, as Baumann (1996) explained us, demotic articulations may persist quite independently from a dominant discourse or ideology—in this instance the deliberate and discursive production of a unified, ancient Naga identity by Naga nationalists—which may, nay, must persist for official, instrumental, and political purposes.18 Why S.C. Jamir’s statement drew such disapproval, then, is not necessarily because his historical reconstruction was inaccurate, but because as a prominent public leader he spilled into the public sphere what many thought belonged to what we might call the private realm of ‘historical intimacy’—a somewhat skewed adaptation of Michael Herzfeld’s (1997) ‘cultural intimacy’—or aspects that are locally known but considered a source of political discomfiture and therefore best left out of the public arena in favour of a more instrumental, more promising political sociality. The problem therefore appears less of praxis and more of theory. Even though theories of nationalism have long freed itself from the dangerous depths of primoridalism and complicated Ernest Gellner’s (1983: 121) argument pertaining ‘the nationalist imperative of the congruency of political unit and culture’, political and layman understandings of nationalism remain crucially hinged on the notion that to qualify as a nation today, and to have political aspirations counted as legitimate, one must be able to account for a perennial, historically immutable, culturally homogenous, and territorially delimited identity. Relevant research on Naga nationalist politics, then, lies not merely in recurrent efforts to deconstruct narratives of a Naga collective history, culture, and unified nation (although this, too, merits some of

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the scholarship it abundantly receives) but in better understanding the political potential and purposes of these narratives as articulated and advocated by Naga underground groups. The challenge for ethnographic analysis is to sort out what happens in the gap between this political rhetoric and everyday social bonds and relations, and towards which this chapter has made an attempt.

Notes 1. This speech is reproduced digitally. Please see http://www.neuenhofer.de/ guenter/nagaland/phizo.html. Accessed on 14 July 2014. 2. About Phizo, Horam (1988: 45) wrote thus: ‘He was referred to as a “Moses of his people” and it was he who spelt out loud and clear what was in the heart of many Nagas, namely an independent nation. It was he who gave expression to the unexpressed desire of the Nagas and continued to be their spokesperson even in his [self-imposed] exile [Phizo left the Naga Hills in 1956 and arrived in England in 1960, where he died in 1990]. He completely dominated the rapid developments during the decolonization of the Naga territory.’ 3. Nagas’ participation in international organizations and platforms that promote the rights of indigenous peoples is also controversial within India given the government’s official stance that, as the result of long and complex patterns of migration, it is impossible to single out a category of indigenous people in India, and that, in any case, policies of affirmative action already offers protection and privileges to vulnerable groups within the Indian society. For a critique of the usage of the term ‘indigenous people’ in India see Béteille (1998) and Roy-Burman (1996). 4. A folktale, told among a number of Naga tribes, tells that Nagas once had a script that was preserved on an animal hide, but that, one day, this hide was eaten by a dog, causing Nagas to fall back from a literate to a non-literate society. This idea of a ‘lost script’ also exists among the Zeme Naga; ‘in different Zeme versions, the script was either eaten by a dog, lost in a flood, or burned during a massive fire’ (Longkumer 2017: 132). 5. Arguing against the grain of popular genealogical discourses as they flourish across the tribal belt of India’s Northeast, Burling (2007) recently and provocatively, advanced an altogether different approach. Burling compares the question ‘where did this or that tribe come from?’ with the question ‘where did the French come from?’ The French today, he explains, are the

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6.

7.

8.

9.

progeny of settlers who arrived from multiple directions, including from Rome, Scandinavia, Germany, and England, and so at different points in history. It was only in present-day France that these groups amalgamated into what is now known as the French culture, language, and gene pool. Put differently, French ethnicity and nationalism have its origins in where French is located today, not in a far-flung place of origin from where the French people and culture migrated to their present homeland. This logic, if transposed, to the Nagas (as Burling does for the Garo), would postulate that the Ao, Lotha, Angami, or any other Naga tribe, emerged and developed as distinctive cultural and linguistic communities not before arriving (coming from different directions) in their present-day homelands, but roughly there where they reside today. The spelling of clan-names varies between Chang villages and at times also within a single village. Alternative spellings include Ung, Kangcho, Hongang, and Lomo, among several others. By choosing the spelling in this book, I followed what I felt is the majority view in Noksen, but in doing so I make no judgment on which spelling is more historically or phonetically correct. For a broader discussion in clan relations within and between villages see Wouters (2017a). In a state initiated process of ‘delegating development’, each Naga village was made to assemble a Village Development Board whose members are responsible for the designing, implementing, and also auditing of development projects, under the supervision of area wise BDOs. I will return to the VDB and BDO in more detail in Chapters 3 and 5. If the Greek had city states, Namo writes, in Nagaland every village is a small republic’ (cited in Singh 2004: 14), or ‘the ancient Naga possessed [a] political spirit like the people of Ancient Greece’ (Singh 2004: 13). Unlike Greek city states that engaged in extensive trade, the Naga village, however, has been described as a ‘distinct economic unit’ (Horam 1992: 60), one that ‘grew in isolation’ (Bareh 2001: 115). The biting of noses and ears was more than just a ‘saying’ or a ‘metaphor’ but invoked a fighting technique remembered—and now joked about—by Phugwumi elders who spoke of this past ‘custom’ as unique to the Phugwumi of not so long ago. They, however, did not see it as reflective of their hot-headed, aggressive nature the way people outside the village spoke about it. Phugwumi elders reasoned that ‘biting’ was a sign of restraint reserved for fights and scuffles with fellow villagers, as while certainly painful, and disfiguring in its effects, it was nevertheless non-lethal. This was contrary to a fight with a non-villager when the intention, in the past, was usually to kill. At the time of my fieldwork,

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10.

11.

12.

13.

in the shadows of naga insurgency two Phugwumi elders particularly remembered the force teeth can have as both had a portion of an earlobe missing. Bitten off, indeed, in a dispute long ago. Captain Butler, cited in R.G. Woodthorpe ([1876]), ‘Report of the Survey Operations in the Naga Hills 1875–1876.’ Published online by Digital Himalaya. Available at http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/ naga/record/r87256.html. Accessed on 30 March 2017. The Angami, for instance, became known for their hospitality, frugality, geniality, and bouts of ‘deep melancholy’ (Hutton 1921a: 39). Of the Sema Naga, Hutton (1921b: 26) wrote: ‘In his good characteristics he is to some extent the Irishman of the Naga tribes, generous, hospitable, and frequently improvident (in which he differs markedly from the canny Lhota)’. J.P. Mills (1922: 19) in turn offered a comparative analysis of fidelity between Naga tribes: ‘The Lhota husband does not imitate the habitual unfaithfulness of the Ao, nor does he, like the Sema, boast of his immoralities and decorate the grave of a deceased Don Juan with a tally of his liaisons’. The term ‘tribal entrepreneurs’, here, is an adapted version of the term ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’, as it has been used variously in scholarship especially on Africa and Latin America (for example, DeHart 2010). In arguing so, I take a cue from a long flourishing body of historical research on the formation of castes and that shows how the colonial regime increasingly felt the need to classify, chart, and categorize Indians into distinct and hierarchically linked social groups, and, while not inventing, certainly promoted a caste paradigm of social life (Dirks 2001; Inden 1990). These colonial constructions of tribes and communities remained after the British withdrew. ‘Contemporary anthropology’, Philippe Ramirez (2014: 5) writes for India’s Northeast, ‘relies strongly on the categories provided by colonial depictions’. Such categories, based on a set of labeled and distinct tribes and ethnic groups, are however everywhere complicated by ethnography which, Ramirez (2007: 91) documents, shows fundamental local disassociations between ethnic labels, languages, social patterns, and cultural features. Ramirez (2014: xix) writes: ‘On the field, the objects of my observations have been all sorts of limits and anomalies, especially those pertaining to the assumed correspondence between societies, cultures and ethnicities. This involved, for instance, people claiming to belong to group A but speaking a language commonly associated with group B, or following social rules assumed to be typical of group C.’ This observation applies equally to Nagas (see Wouters 2017a), but is outside the scope and purpose of this chapter.

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14. Not just in ‘military organization’ was the ‘tribe’ reconstituted by the NNC, but also in terms of administration and governance. The Naga National Council manifesto reads: ‘Each area or territory inhabited by the communities of a tribe shall be constituted into a federated Unit to be called a Region and each of the regions shall be given autonomy to the extent of management of local affairs and administration’ (cited in Nuh 2002: 77). 15. A.Z. Phizo, while not the founder of the NNC was seen as its main ideologue, was an Angami, while the declaration of Naga Independence made in 1947 ensued in Khonoma, an Angami village. 16. Such attempts towards reconciling rivalling factions strongly revolve around Christian discourses and ethos. In an official communiqué, the Forum for Naga Reconciliation explained: ‘Reconciliation means the birthing of a new community with God and one another. Whoever believes in reconciliation begins to be concerned for the divided Nagas. To demonstrate and to practice our freedom through reconciliation in such a time means to preserve the long breath of hope between “we” and “they”, “pre-suppositions” and “facts”, “personal interest” and “collective well-being”, “superiority” and “servant leadership”, and between “rigid dogmatism” and “realism”. Nagas must consciously accept where we are today and this requires honesty on the part of everyone. We can be made free through reconciliation. This is FNR’s hope for a divided house. We believe, in the new Nagahood which is liberated through reconciliation’ (cited in Morung Express 2015c). On the FNR also see Manchanda and Bose (2011: 53–4). 17. While most ascribe the split to ‘inter-tribal rivalry’ (Panwar 2017: 244–5), others explain it as the result of ‘intense differences between Khaplang, Muivah and Swu [its then collective leadership] (Goswami 2017: 4), an assassination attempt by one of the leaders on another (Franke 2009: 137), or as ‘personal clashes in the name of tribes’ (Aye 2000: 33). Again others argue that ‘The Intelligence Agents of India are alleged to be behind the cause of the split of the NSCN in 1988’ (Vashum 2005: 100), or that the split was ‘linked to the inability of the then vice chairman of NSCN, Sagwan Sankai Khaplang, to follow the strict discipline of the Christian life and give up the use of alcohol and narcotics’ ( Joshi 2013: 179). RoyBurman (2008: 151), in turn, ascribed the split towards disagreements in ‘the approach of the groups towards India. The Khaplang faction was then believed to refuse any parley with India unlike NSCN-IM’. In several of these explanations, none of which stands confirmed, tribalism seemingly plays second fiddle, or emerged as a consequence rather than necessarily a cause of the split.

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18. In an inverse of Baumann’s (1996) ethnography on Southall, London, where official ethnic categories present groups as insulated and distinct in ways local cross-cutting relations and identification defy, among the Naga it is the demotic discourse that emphasizes difference while the dominant narrative often, though not always, presents a unified Naga category.

3

Ceasefire as Conflict

Factions, Taxes, and National Workers

A

n opaque fog hangs heavy over the hills. It obstructs our view as Nebo and I skirt paddy fields as we trudge a small jungle trail on our way to the Block Development Office (BDO), located in an offshoot of Phugwumi. The Block Development Office, or simply ‘development office’ as villagers call it, is the most localized office of the Department of Rural Development and through it is channeled most development schemes, policies, and projects from both the centre and state governments to Naga villages. A 30-minute walk brings us to the development office, whose substantial inflow of development funds notwithstanding is a ramshackle building of decaying wood, moss overgrown walls, and corroded tin sheets set into a small compound. ‘He is not here. He holds office in his quarter’, a staff member replies to our query about the whereabouts of the Block Development Officer, the person in charge of development locally and who I hope to meet

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0003

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that morning. ‘You can go to his quarter. It is just a little up the road. But have tea first.’ The staff member speaking is Atho, who hails from Phugwumi and who I know well. As we sit down, our conversation steers towards the latest development schemes that have arrived. ‘Ever since the ceasefire, Delhi is very good to us’, Atho remarks. ‘These days so much development money is coming in. It is just that everything gets messed up once it reaches here.’ During previous conversations, Atho lamented the levels of corruption, mismanagement, and collections by Naga underground groups that often made his duty of ‘managing development’ a near impossible task. It made Atho at times detest his job. But then, with a wife and four children to look after tendering his resignation was never an option. Our conversation is soon interrupted by the ringing of Atho’s phone. He recognizes the number and sighs. ‘The FGN’, he says after the call ends. ‘They are on their way.’ ‘For what purpose are they coming?’, I ask, deliberately naïve. It is, after all, widely known that development offices have become a prime source of ‘rebel revenue’, especially after the ceasefire. ‘Taxes’, Atho replies. ‘Why else would they come? They received information that a new installment of the MGNREGA [Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act] has been deposited in our office’s account and they now want their share.’1 ‘But how would they know’, I follow up. Atho shrugs. ‘God knows. They must be having their informants high up. It is funny but sometimes they know more about our office budgets than we do.’ After a brief silence, Atho continues: ‘It is difficult. How can we ever bring proper development to this area if underground groups keep slicing large parts from our budgets? This year alone we gave money to four different groups, all active in this area. Please finish your tea. It is better you leave before they arrive.’ When we leave the office, a few minutes later, and set out towards the government quarter occupied by the BDO (or Development Officer), three men approach us from the opposite direction. ‘It must be them’, Nebo says. They wear brown, wide-brimmed hats, a feature I come to recognize as characteristic of many Naga national workers. When we cross ways they greet us in Chokri, asking, in polite local fashion, whether we have eaten. When we confirm that we have, and they confirm the same, we both head on. ‘They must be having a revolver on them’, Nebo remarks after we move out of earshot.

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‘According to the ceasefire regulations they can move around freely but unarmed, but many still carry weapons.’ Intermittent factional feuds are one reason for national workers to move around armed. As we walk on, we pass a grave stone whose inscription reads: ‘In loving memory of Mr. Kuvetso Kezo s/o Sachi Kezo. First member in Chakhesang region to join the NSCN-IM … A true and dedicated national worker. Died on 3rd October 2007.’ Kuvetso was killed. Not in a standoff with the Indian Army, but in an ambush laid by a rivalling Naga underground group. Such inter-factional feuds were widely evaluated to be on the rise after the ceasefire, and which made the locally commanding Naga Students’ Federation (NSF), during the course of my fieldwork, issue a statement that called upon all ‘Naga underground factions to shun the path of fratricidal killings’. It went on: ‘National workers who kill, murder, intimidate and extort their own people are not qualified to be called as nationalists …’ But the risk of a factional encounter is hardly the only reason national workers carry guns. Nebo explains: ‘Sometimes they use guns to intimidate and threaten those who refuse to pay taxes to them.’ In the past, Nebo served as the Secretary of Phugwumi’s Village Development Board (VDB), and during his tenure he regularly dealt with national workers of different factions, episodes he occasionally spoke about. They would call on his house, often unannounced, and insist on a percentage of the village development budget in cash. The amounts they demanded often proved negotiable, but even as Nebo usually succeeded in lowering the ‘donation’ (as, in a semiotic exercise, national workers insist on calling this payment), there was always the fear of not cooperating. After all, national workers carried guns, and past experiences taught Nebo and others that they did not hesitate to use these on fellow Nagas. ‘If we ignore them anything can happen to us’, Nebo once told me. The problem, however, was paperwork. ‘We cannot record their taxes in our VDB audit reports. The government will not accept that. But still, the money is no longer there. We had to be creative in covering it up on paper’ (Chapter 5). Akin to most villagers, Nebo observed a change of heart and motivation among national workers after the ceasefire: When I was growing up, my parents told us to pray for the Naga Movement. I remember my uncle telling me that Naga guerrillas are so

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in the shadows of naga insurgency powerful that they can jump from one hilltop to the next. Those days, we almost worshipped them. My parents also gave them the food and money we could part with. Most in our village did. But after the ceasefire many national workers became proud and rude, and they now want to live easy lives. I have long stopped praying for them, and we no longer feel good about giving them money. They always say the money is meant for the Naga cause, but you should see the big houses some national workers built for themselves in Kohima and Dimapur. From where did they get this money?

The development officer invites us inside. ‘I heard you came looking for me the other day’, he says by way of greeting. ‘You are staying in Phugwumi, isn’t? In whose house do you live?’, he inquires as he leads us into his bedroom cum office. He nods approvingly as I answer his query. ‘I know him’, the officer says about Athe. ‘Once I promised him a road leading up to his house so that his son’s car can reach there. His son is a good friend of mine. But he never followed up on on it.’ ‘Some issue with land, I think’, I reply. Athe told me about the promised road several times. He had wanted it but a neighbour had refused to allow the road to cross over his land. The officer shakes his head. ‘Land. Always a problem around here. Without providing land, how can villagers expect development?’ The often intricate relationship between land and development is meant to be a central theme of my research, and I gladly seize the opportunity to solicit the officer’s views.2 But in this case, too, the ringing of a phone cuts our conversation short. ‘Try to negotiate it down’, I overhear the development officer say. ‘You have my permission to settle this.’ ‘National workers’, the officer sighs after putting the phone down. It was Atho on the line. ‘They are an even bigger hurdle to development than land issues. But perhaps Nebo can tell you more on that informally.’ The officer glances at Nebo, who nods. That evening I call on Atho in his house in Phugwumi, and from him I hear the complete story of what had transpired in his office that day. The Federal Government of Nagaland had demanded a substantial sum. Negotiations followed, and in the process Atho phoned the development officer for clearance. Things, however, turned tense when two national workers of the rivalling NSCN-IM entered the office’s compound. Their superiors, too, had obtained information about the fresh MGNREGA installment. Unlike the FGN cadres, however, they had

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not given prior notice about their visitation. Violent clashes between the two groups had taken place in the area in the recent past, and for a brief and tense moment the rivaling cadres came face to face. However, the situation was defused by the NSCN-IM national workers offering to wait in the office’s compound until the FGN cadres completed their ‘work’. ‘How much did you give the FGN?’, I ask. Atho portrays no qualms in answering. ‘40,000 rupees’, he says. ‘They wanted more than that, but I convinced them that this was the maximum our office could part with this time. After all we need to get at least some development done to report to Kohima and Delhi. What will the Centre think otherwise?’ In his experience of negotiating with underground groups, Atho finds most FGN cadres comparatively considerate. ‘Most of them are fellow Chakhesangs’, he explains. ‘They belong to this area, we speak the same language, and we know them and their relatives personally. Because of this they do not become aggressive or threaten the safety of our families.’ But if Atho’s dealings with the FGN are mediated by social bonds this is not usually the case with the NSCN-IM, whose cadre base, even if diverse, is predominantly made up of Tangkhul Nagas from neighbouring Manipur. In the past there has been intertribal tension between the Chakhesang and Tangkhul tribes (more in the section titled ‘An interlude: Joining the NSCN-IM in an NNC stronghold’), and the NSCN-IM had locally earned a reputation of being ‘rough’ and ‘difficult’ to deal with. ‘How much did you give the NSCN-IM?’, I inquire further. Atho heaves a sigh. ‘We had a long and tough negotiation but in the end we settled on 60,000 rupees. They are more powerful today than the FGN and if we offer them the same amount they will feel insulted.’ It all frustrates Atho: Earlier the Naga Movement was united. People fought as one. Many from our village also joined the Naga Army. Some even died for the cause. But today there are many leadership problems and tribalism, and this has resulted into so many factions. There is no understanding between them, and each faction wants money. Dealing with them is not easy. We have to be both bold and polite. If we don’t show them our sympathy they can turn very stiff and aggressive, and if that happens we have to pay whatever they ask for.

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‘And sometimes it is not just money’, Atho continues. They ask us to allocate them state contracts and schemes. Poultry and dairy farms, the building of footsteps and retaining walls, and even the construction of some roads now goes through their hands. They don’t put the contract in their own name but they are really the ones in charge. Of course, they hardly care about the project and most of the time they simply cash the budget, doing nothing, but still insist we sign their completion certificates.3

‘The situation has become very bad’, Atho concludes. Earlier we were scared of the Indian Army. They could be real cruel. Whenever we would see them approaching we would try to hide, never sure of what might happen. But after the ceasefire, we are sometimes afraid more of national workers, who are our own people. Sometimes I  think it would be better for this ceasefire to end so that the undergrounds have to go back to the jungle. That will serve them well.

The selves, individual biographies, and social lifeworlds of several generations of Naga men and women have now been shaped by the violence, volatilities, and politics of insurgency, counterinsurgency, and a ceasefire that remains fragile. However, the competing discourses, political rhetoric, and standpoints that emerge from the Indo-Naga conflict belong to, and are manipulated by, Naga militant leaders and Indian politicians, army officers, and negotiators. These categories are prone to articulate and defend political, legalistic, and ideological positions that at times seem far removed from the everyday lives of ordinary Naga villagers. This chapter gives voice to ordinary villagers’ experiences, views, and concerns vis-à-vis the long lingering Naga Movement, and particularly evaluates the post-ceasefire practices and patterns they speak about. I perceive the 1997 Indo-Naga ceasefire (which after multiple extension agreements was extended ‘indefinitely’ in 2007) as a momentous change that altered the dynamics of the political conflict. But while a ceasefire is usually associated with the cessation of violence and political stasis, as enabling political negotiations, and therefore a precursor of peace, I approach the Indo-Naga ceasefire as a continuation of conflict and contestation by other forms and means. The 1997 ceasefire, I will

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show, did not result in a period of relatively unproblematic stasis, but assumed a social and political life of its own that became as complex and contentious as previous armed conflict. What the ceasefire replaced locally, in Gramscian (1971) terms, was a ‘war of movement’ with a ‘war of position’. The return of (most) Indian military and paramilitary troops to their barracks—in a landscape which in spite of the ceasefire remains densely militarized—enabled the NSCN-IM to redirect its resources from jungle warfare to emboldening its parallel government (dubbed the Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim [GPRN]), exerting governance, dispensing justice, and systematizing and expanding their territorial control and regimes of taxation. In exerting governance, the NSCN-IM labels the activities of its national workers as being those of ‘state officials’, its administrative wings as ‘departments’ and ‘ministries’ (for example, the Ministry of Public Information, Ministry of Chaplee Affairs [Finance], and Home Ministry), its mediators in local disputes as ‘judges’, and justifies the taxes and collections it levies as the legitimate prerogative of its status as a Naga government.4 These practices and discourses predate the ceasefire, but it was in the post-ceasefire period that the NSCN-IM successfully amplified its ‘appearance’ as a state. In 2010, this made the NSCN-IM’s then President, the now late Isak Swu, declare: ‘Great improvement has been made in the functioning of the Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim during this period of ceasefire both at the centre and the region’ (Swu 2010). The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah was not the only Naga underground group that capitalized on the ceasefire to strengthen and spread its parallel government and governance. This was the ambition of all Naga underground groups. What reignited, in this process, was a pre-existent and enormous struggle fought out within the wider Indo-Naga conflict and between Naga underground groups over historical legitimacy, ideological differences, and territorial (and tribal and taxation) domination. Naga factionalism emerged long before the onset of the ceasefire, but the post-ceasefire era witnessed the further fragmentation of the Naga Movement, and this combined with the inflation of fratricidal strife and killings meant the continuation of political violence within the ceasefire, although no longer with the Indian Army as its main focal point. Occasional (and contested) statistics about

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post-ceasefire conflict related deaths in Naga inhabited areas indicate that while casualties on part of India’s security forces saw a steep decline, this was not significantly so for deaths amongst Naga rebels, which remained high as the result of factional feuds (Singh 2008). The 1997 ceasefire, in short, did not disrupt political disorder and violence, but provided an alternative arena for armed conflict. As parallel governments and governance emboldened, what further complicated the ceasefire was the emergence of lucrative, if illegal, networks of, what is variously called in the literature on conflict and governance, ‘diffuse authority’ (Suykens 2010), ‘joint-extraction regimes’ (Snyder 2006), and ‘durable disorder’ (Baruah 2007). Establishing the Indian state—of which Nagaland state structures became a part—as an invading and colonizing force Naga national workers formally reject its legitimacy to govern and propagate its ultimate replacement by an Independent Naga state. In actual practice, however, national workers, rather than resisting the state tooth and nail, operate in conjunction with the existing state framework and lay claim on its development resources. State officers, I will illustrate below, at times connive with underground actors by using the latter’s authoritative regimes of taxation to conceal their own private cuts and commissions. The ceasefire, then, came to provide both national workers and state functionaries with opportunities to secure material gains in ways enabled by, and dependent on, the continuity of political disorder. But while such mutually beneficial interlinkages complicate simplistic readings that portray the conflict as between Naga rebels and the state, the very possibility of such crisscrossing networks nevertheless hinge crucially on the deliberate and discursive construction of the state and underground as distinct and discrete entities, a process I will theorize in the following pages as the ‘underground effect’. The existence of these networks now and then befuddle and anger Naga villagers, who, after the ceasefire, increasingly came to perceive of national workers as people pursuing pecuniary motives rather than selflessly advancing the Naga cause. For many villagers, the doctrine of Naga Independence still holds. At the same time, however, their evaluation of the Naga Movement, in its post-ceasefire forms and factions, belie the received wisdom that the Naga Movement is, or is any longer, a people’s movement against the Indian state. Classic literature on resistance and

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guerrilla movements see the unconditional and undying support and loyalty of rural populations as the backbone of any popular struggle. In this view, villagers provide the bodies ready to endure, suffer, and sacrifice in the pursuit of a political ideal, as well as a willing source of food, shelter, monies, and recruits. Many Naga villages and villagers, indeed, suffered and sacrificed greatly for the Naga cause, and received the brunt of Indian armed forces for doing so (Iralu 2000). Much, however, has changed since Phizo successfully mobilized a Naga guerrilla army that fought Indian armed troops to a standstill in the 1950s and 60s, and during which they received active support from (the vast majority of ) Naga villages. The post-ceasefire coming ‘overground’ of national workers inspired new aspirations among them, and after prolonged and unstable ‘junglelives’ they now desired houses of their own, stable income to look after their families, and levels of standing and authority in public life. Soon, their personal ambitions inflated, and what became victimized, in their passing from ‘jungle’ to ‘public’ lives, to the eyes of Naga villagers, was an earlier and straightforward separation between the ‘righteous’ and ‘evil’ with national workers generally reckoned at the side of the righteous. Before long, the distinction between political commitment and greed started to appear increasingly muddled. In discussing the Naga Movement, and the way it changed over time, Phugwumi and Noksen villagers often drew unfavorable contrasts between the perceived selfless motivations of first generation(s) of Naga guerrillas and the more selfseeking, pecuniary, and partisan motivations and attitudes they discerned amongst present-day national workers, and who they often blamed for the fragmentation and moral degeneration of the Naga Movement. Two caveats before proceeding. First, the Indo-Naga conflict is especially protracted, multi-layered, and complex. A single treatise cannot hope to do justice to the Naga Movement’s genesis, evolution, and still unfolding chapters. The pages that follow contain certain historical insights, ethnographic snapshots, and recollections by village elders, but I do nowhere claim to fully and coherently depict the Naga struggle. Second, by zooming in on some of the ‘darker’ sides of the Naga Movement, I might be found guilty of discounting the deeper rationalities, sacrifices made, and lingering sentiments that both gave birth and sustained the Naga Movement over so many years. I have no such

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intentions. However, by choosing my analytical vantages I do respond to my ethnography and during which a plethora of encounters, comments, personal narratives, and remarks by villagers in Phugwumi and Noksen steered me into the directions I follow in the remainder of this chapter. To situate the Naga Movement, and to discuss how it unfolded and changed over time, the next section offers the personal narrative of Athe, stitched together over many conversations, often after dinner and in front of a smoldering kitchen fire.

Athe’s Story Like numerous villagers, Athe joined the Naga Movement in the mid1950s. It was around the time the Constitution of the FGN was drawn up and adopted (including the near modular phrases and expressions of ‘we, the people … solemnly … sacred trust of God … popular sovereignty … democracy, equality, justice, liberty and fraternity … hereby adopt …’), and when at least two army divisions and 34 battalions of the Assam Rifles ascended the hills to suppress the Naga Movement (Sundar 2011: 49). It was also around the time the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958) was legislated into existence to assist the army into accomplishing this, so introducing ‘dark’ legislation that produced the exceptionalism, structural violence, and military impunity that transformed the Naga highlands into a landscape of violence and misery (McDuie-Ra 2009; Kikon 2009b; see Chapter 4). As a Naga guerilla, and with his physique in its prime, Athe endured the wave of violence that engulfed the Naga highlands, and in doing so risked his life and limbs, suffered deprivations, and committed lethal acts in the name of Naga defence, dignity, and, above all, freedom. ‘We understood Naga Independence as our birthright. We were not Indians in the past and we did not want to became Indians in the future’, Athe said. ‘I often wondered why India wanted our hills so badly that they should send their army to get it. So many died. On both sides they died. Till today, I do not understand.’ While recruited as a foot soldier, Athe quickly rose to the rank of ‘Captain’ and later, briefly, to that of ‘Major’. In 1963, after six years of life in the Naga Army, and for various reasons, Athe retired from active involvement and came ‘overground’. To situate Athe becoming a Naga guerrilla we need to first back-track some years. Then in his early twenties (roughly midway the twentieth

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century) Athe travelled down to the Assam plains where he joined the Assam police force. His father had died prematurely, leaving his mother struggling to make ends meet. A salaried job, he thought, would enable him to support his mother and siblings. After serving for two years, Athe applied for leave to visit his village. Seeing his mother’s deteriorating health, he resolved not to return to Assam, and subsequently ignored multiple summon letters, which, as his absence prolonged, came to include threats of arrest for desertion. But neither was Athe arrested nor did he return to Assam. Instead, he started a road-side restaurant in Kohima as well as briefly tried his hands on state-contracts, including the construction of a rough road. In 1956, he joined the Naga Army. While Athe felt strongly towards Naga Independence, and during his sojourn in Assam had experienced first-hand the many differences between upland Nagas and peoples of the plains, his decision to join the Naga Army was not of his own making. Athe recalled: The first time they [NNC cadres] came to my house and asked me to join the Naga Army, I expressed my inability as I had to take care of my ailing mother. I told them that I would help them in any other way I could, but that I could not join them. When they came for a second time, a few months later, I again managed to refuse. But then they made it compulsory for any Naga with past military or police training to join. Since I had been trained in firing guns while in the Assam Police, I could refuse no longer.

Most recruits, back then, joined the Naga Army in response to patriotic calls, or perhaps because in that atmosphere at that time it seemed the right thing to do. Athe’s case, one of active conscription, was not exceptional, however. In its quest for recruits, and with the conflict rapidly deteriorating, the NNC ‘demanded’ one able-bodied man from every 10 households in each Naga village, and village elders and leaders were made responsible to oversee that this assigned quota was met. As an incentive, the NNC ruled that any household that offered a recruit would be exempted from contributing food, clothes, monies, and weapons to the Naga Army. This inspired some families to make pragmatic decisions. ‘I came from a poor family’, an NNC veteran in Phugwumi recalled. ‘We did not have any money or enough paddy to give away so my parents told me to join the NNC instead.’

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At a personal level, Athe’s recruitment had wide ramifications. Athe was born and brought up not in Phugwumi but in a neighbouring village, one whose populace (at least initially) refused to support the NNC. ‘We Nagas can’t even produce our own matchsticks. How can we ever survive independently’, Athe recalled the village elders arguing. The village subsequently allowed the enactment of village defence guards on its soil (Chapter 2). ‘You are not Nagas’, Athe remembered how people from surrounding villages mocked the villagers, and the shame such remarks had elicited in him. Now part of the Naga Army, Athe noticed how his fellow villagers increasingly turned hostile towards him: When I came for occasional visits after dark, neighbours, if they saw me, would tell me to go away, saying that my presence would attract the Indian Army. Of course, those days the Indian Army could be real cruel in villages, especially when they suspected its people of hiding or aiding NNC members, but their remarks hurt me. Some in the village even spoke of killing me.

Saddened and frustrated, Athe approached elders in Phugwumi, who readily offered to have him and his siblings, and they were subsequently adopted into different village clans. In spite of half a century having gone by since coming ‘overground’, Athe vividly remembered the years he spent in the jungle fighting for Naga Independence. He often spoke about it as a time of hardship and suffering, of death, despair, and deprivation. He particularly remembered the days gone by without food, the hunger growing worse and worse, making him munch on a small stone to try and trick his brain into thinking he was eating. Then, during winters, there was the cold, the freezing, biting nights he spent lying on sodden soil, or leaning against the mud wall of a paddy field, trying to close his eyes without even a blanket for cover. During his spell in the Naga Army, Athe engaged in a number of battles, encounters, and ambushes. It was during one such battle that he converted to Christianity. With bullets and shells blasting around him, and with his party seemingly surrounded by the Indian Army, Athe prayed for the first time, promising to turn himself into a Christian was he to see the dawn of another day. Athe thus became a Christian.5 ‘Our tactic was always the same’, Athe explained as I asked him about

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the mode of warfare they adopted. ‘Shoot, run, and then regroup at a pre-decided place. That was our only option. Most of our rifles were British leftovers. They were heavy and bad, some even worse. We had to reload them after every shot we fired.’ ‘I do not know for sure how many soldiers I killed’, Athe reflected one evening, his expression solemn. ‘But I pray God will forgive me.’ Even as stories of adversity and privation dominated Athe’s memory, his reflections occasionally assumed a more nostalgic character as he spoke of the camaraderie between cadres, the conviction that they were fighting the ‘good fight’, and the respect and support they received in most Naga villages. This did not mean that every villager was a Naga insurgent, but that, back then, almost every household had or knew someone who was part of the NNC, and, more broadly, that most villagers felt sympathetic to the Naga cause. ‘Farmers would come and meet us in the jungle, taking grave risks to provide us with information about army movements. This saved many lives.’ Villagers also prepared them meals. Most villages had a so-called women’s-group whose members collected rice, meat, and vegetables from village households and cooked it whenever they received information that a consignment of Naga guerrillas was close by and hungry. ‘If the situation was safe’, Athe continued his narration, ‘we would walk into the village and eat there. But when the Indian Army was near, the villagers would wait until nightfall and then smuggle the food to us in the jungle.’ ‘In helping us, villagers took many risks’, Athe emphasized. ‘But they supported us. They, too, wanted Naga Independence.’ In what seemed to be a test of fate, it was amidst the conflict raging that Athe got married in Phugwumi. Not knowing how long the struggle would continue, his family decided that his marriage could be delayed no longer. They managed to convey him a message, instructing him to arrive in the village on the day they had set for his wedding. Athe arrived in time, skirting an Indian army patrol on his way, and a small ceremony took place. Somehow, however, the army captain in charge of the hill range received information that a marriage involving an underground cadre had ensued in Phugwumi. It infuriated him. Athe recalled: ‘The captain drove straight to Phugwumi and threatened to have the entire village burned down unless the villagers would hand me over. But by that time I had already left the village.’ The army captain did not set fire to the

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village. He did, however, announce a curfew, not allowing any villager to attend to their fields. ‘From Chakhabama’ [where the nearest army camp was located]’, Athe continued, ‘they now and then fired mortars into our fields to make sure no farmer dared to go there’. It was this curfew which, in important parts, led to Athe’s decision to come overground. The curfew went on and on. As a result, Naga dal could not be harvested and went wasted. The thatch necessary to repair houses could also not be collected in time. Everyone was suffering because of me. The next time I slipped into the village, I told my wife that I would come overground. She tried to dissuade me. She told me that those who come overground were branded as ‘weaker than women’ and looked down upon. She did not want people to say this and that about me later. But I had made up my mind. Six years I had spent fighting for Naga Independence. It was enough for me.

When I would ask Athe his views on the Naga Movement today, his answers were usually solemn. ‘Much has changed’, he would stress. ‘We cannot compare the Naga Movement today with the Naga Movement in my time. Nowadays Nagas are fighting Nagas, not the Indian Army. There are so many factions, so many leaders, and so many disagreements. How can we ever hope to achieve anything if we stand divided amongst ourselves?’ Athe continued: ‘When I served in the NNC, we were ready to suffer, even die for Naga Independence. But getting killed by an Indian bullet is one thing. To be killed by a Naga bullet is nothing less than a disgrace.’ What Athe invoked here was the violent factionalism, and which made each national worker today not only a ‘soldier’ against India but also a pawn in a violent intra-Naga struggle. The exact reason behind the disintegration of the Naga Movement Athe found hard to pinpoint. Successful divide and rule tactics by the Indian Government was certainly one, as was the divisive force of tribalism, but what particularly saddened Athe was the changing behaviour and motivations he had observed among the present-day generation of national workers. He explained: Most of them joined the movement only after the ceasefire. They have not fought one battle in their lives. They are weak and will not even be able to survive in the jungle for a single night. And yet, they behave as though

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they understand everything. Then, too, many national workers today are only after money. They do not want to sacrifice but earn. That’s the problem. They want easy lives.

The term ‘easy lives’ was one frequently used by both Phugwumi and Noksen villagers to describe the perceived aspirations of present-day national workers. After a brief silence, Athe continued: ‘I still support Naga Independence, but if the situation will turn bad again [implying the possibility of the ceasefire abrogating], villagers may no longer help them [national workers] in the way they helped us in my time.’ Any popular uprising, especially protracted ones, contains both biographies of individual cadres, their actions, experiences, thoughts and motivations (of which Athe’s story makes one), and more collective narrations of the struggle made up of political rhetoric and speeches, manifestos and ideologies, and official communications. These two genres need not always tell the same story, but taken together they produce a multilayered and multi-actor plot of which each tread tells a story of its own. With over six decades of Naga insurgency, a period peppered with violent spells, ceasefires that broke, treaties that misfired, and the rise of factionalism, the Naga Movement has come to inhabit many chapters, complications, and conspiracies, and of which any singular narrative is at once partial and subjective. Having said this, Athe’s personal narrative, his recollections and reflections, lead us to a number of broader meditations on the ways in which the Naga Movement evolved and changed over the past decades, as well as to the rise of resentment and frustrations—or a ‘sense of confusion and helplessness’ as Vashum (2005: 118) diagnoses this—that prevails among many ordinary Naga men and women about the present unfolding of the Naga Movement. The next sections illustrate this by focusing on the rise of factionalism and the authoritative regimes of taxation put in place by rivalling Naga underground groups.

The Breach of a Resolution One morning I witnessed Athe lashing out against Sekho, a Phugwumi youth in his early twenties who spoke in favour of a certain NSCN

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faction. ‘We Chakhesangs are NNC people’, he admonished him. ‘The  NNC is the mother of the Naga Movement. It gave birth to it. How can you go against your own mother? This faction, that faction, is it not shameful?’ Athe’s retort took place in front of a small village shop that displayed, on its counter, small chocolates and candies for children and betel nuts wrapped into leaves for their parents. Sekho only nodded. It was impolite to talk back to elders. Athe accepted that, after the 1975 Shillong Accord—a still contested, and long defunct, surrender treaty signed by NNC representatives6— the authority of the NNC has corroded. It had since split into several factions while most of the cadres that stayed with the original NNC and FGN were now disarmed and ageing. He also accepted that with the dwindling of the NNC came the rise of the NSCN, which now superseded the NNC in power and influence. Athe nevertheless insisted that it was in the NNC, and not in the NSCN-IM or any other NSCN faction, that the historical legitimacy of the Naga struggle was vested. In support of this view, Athe invoked the 1951 plebiscite as having given the NNC the legitimacy to represent the Naga argument for Independence. Athe’s reasoning is disagreed with by the NSCN-IM which at the time of its establishment insisted that by signing the Shillong Accord, even if under duress, the NNC had relinquished, once and for all, its legitimacy to represent Nagas politically. In a statement issued in the 1980s, the (then still undivided) NSCN stated: ‘Countrymen, your sovereignty is no more in the danger of the Shillong Accord … by the unfailing God’s power, it is securely in the hand of the National Socialist Council’ (cited in Horam 1988: 304). When the Naga Movement took off in the 1950s, the NNC was the sole political body that represented the Naga claim for Independence. Phizo had successfully steered ethnic and political mobilization across the Naga highlands, and in a landmark gathering at Lakhuti village in 1955 Naga leaders and cadres sanctified their loyalty to the NNC and the Naga cause in a resolution that read thus: Any person or persons who in order to destroy or undermine the integrity and the well-being of Nagaland, and who for this purpose act, abet or set up organisations against, or oppose the political, administrative and traditional institutions of the Nation [represented through the NNC], or an attempt to do so, whether with or without the aid of

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another country or countries, shall be deemed to have committed treason. (Morung Express 2015d)

If Nagas were to stand up against newly Independent and mighty India, political unity and unanimity within the Naga ‘ethnie’ (Smith 1995) was deemed essential by the NNC. At village levels, too, both recruits and ‘ordinary’ villagers were made to pledge oaths of loyalty. A Phugwumi elder recalled: One day Phizo came to our village. He spoke about socialism, the Naga nation, and that we had been an independent people since timeimmemorial. I did not understand all what he said that time, but we of course supported that our land, cattle, and possessions should remain only ours. Phizo explained that the Indians, if we would not resist them, would count our land and cattle and make us pay taxes over them, and that we would so lose our freedom. We decided to support Phizo and the NNC, the whole of Phugwumi decided so. They then asked us to drink water and pledge: ‘If ever I go against the NNC let this water turn into poison and let me and my family be cursed’.

Each of the NNC veterans I spoke with in Phugwumi and Noksen recalled such and similar oath-taking ceremonies. Among Nagas, oath-taking drew on longstanding cultural and moral proclivities that associated oaths with right, truth, and justice. But few dared to speak falsehoods when placed under oath because, Hutton (1921a: 144) wrote, ‘a false oath is held to entail death or at least misfortune as a result of it’. Crucially, an oath was not just consecrated on the life and well-being of its taker, but also one the bodies of close relatives. ‘Questions of fact,’ Hutton continued, are usually decided by an oath, and an oath, at any rate if the lives of others are made responsible for its truth as well as the life of the swearer, is usually accepted by either party, and is usually, provided always that it embraces a fairly large number of lives, say those of a kindred, evidence that the swearer and the others whose lives are offered believe in the truth of their case. (1921a: 144)

However, what emerged in defiance of both the Lakhuti resolution and the traditional sanctity of the Naga oath was a consortium of rivalling

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Naga underground groups and their respective parallel governments, known by a confusing (and sometimes near identical) collection of initials—NSCN-IM, NSCN-K, NSCN-KK, NSCN-U, NSCN-R, NNC-A, NNC-N/A, GPRN, FGN-A, FGN-N/A, and so on—and which, to the eyes of villagers, seemed to be endlessly engaged in rivalries over legitimacy and domination. Phugwumi and Noksen villagers themselves at times found it difficult to sum up and differentiate all the Naga factions. What they did know however, and rarely failed to emphasize, was that the breach of unity within the Naga Movement, a unity sworn under oath, indicated the Naga Movement’s downfall, reducing it to a factionalism that was dissolute and perverse. ‘Nothing good ever comes from a broken oath,’ Athe surmised this sentiment succinctly. Literature on rebel infighting, mostly designed in political science hubs, often ascribe the break-up of rebel movements to the powerful influence of ideological differences. Others relate factionalism to state repression and theorize the absence or presence of ‘institutional equilibrium internal to the movement’ preceding state aggression as explanatory for whether, in the face of state violence, a rebel movement remains united or fragments into factions (McLauchlin and Pearlman 2012: 42). Again others emphasize the economics of insurgency. In this view, insurgency groups are ‘predatory organizations’ (Beardsley and McQuinn 2009) whose cadres privilege ‘economic endowments’ over ‘social endowments’ (Weinstein 2007) and ‘greed’ over ‘grievances’ (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). Paul Collier (1999) argues that, rebel actors are best approached as rational, calculating, and self-interested individuals, rather than Che-Guevara style guerillas devoted to a political cause and justice.7 Where rebel actors can accrue private economic gains, Keen (1998: 24) agrees, this tends to ‘weaken lines of command within military organizations, making it difficult to instill discipline,’ thence creating the conditions for factionalism to emerge. None of these postulates, however, can adequately or fully explain the descent of Naga nationalism into factionalism. Even as different Naga factions now articulate different political agendas, when seen in a broader political mirror, their ideologies and aspirations are closer than they might appear. The theory of state-repression, too, won’t do, as what must be accounted for locally is that Naga factionalism

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amplified—both in numbers of factions and intensity of factional feuds—in times, not of state violence, but of ceasefire (with the important exception of the NSCN splitting into the NSCN-K and NSCN-IM in the late 1980s). And while the pursuing of pecuniary benefits, or what Prakash (2008: 941) dubs, rivalries over ‘extortion rights’ amongst Naga factions, is undoubtedly a factor that divides, this may also be a consequence, rather than a prime cause, of Naga factionalism. To trace and place factionalism within the Naga Movement at least two tendencies must be accounted for. First, the 1997 ceasefire, as well as the first Indo-Naga ceasefire (1964–72) and the lull of violence in the aftermath of the 1975 Shillong Accord proved to be periods particularly prone for splits within the Naga Movement. Secondly, most Naga factions, as noted in Chapter 2, broadly align with pre-existing tribal divisions.8 Approaches I find more useful to understand Naga factionalism are Staniland’s (2012) coinage of ‘social-institutional theory of insurgent cohesion’ and Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) classic ‘segmentary lineage theory’. It is ‘the structure of the preexisting social networks upon which an armed group is built’, writes Staniland (2012: 142), which ‘determines the organizational integration or fragmentation of the group’. Put differently, it is the knowledge of how the Naga Movement was initially constructed, taking account of its social base, that offers insights into its current fragmentation. If, as I argued, the Naga nation is best understood as a tribal confederacy, it is little wonder that preexistent tribal divisions and loyalties became ‘the greatest factor of rivalry’ (Shimray 2005: 152) and the ‘main source of tension and instability’ (Horam 1988: 21) within the Naga Movement. ‘For whatever else Phizo may be remembered’, Horam (cited in Steyn 2002: xii–ix) writes, ‘no one can deny his genius in welding the Nagas, a people divided by tribal and clan rivalries, into a people united by the fire of nationalism’. But while this ‘fire’ of Naga nationalism was initially fanned by a common enemy and purpose, as well as by an existential threat with state violence spreading from one Naga village and tribe to the next, these flames of unity dwindled in the absence of state violence during times of ceasefire. It is here that an adaptation of Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) notions of ‘segmentation’, ‘complementary opposition’, and ‘structural relativity’ come into play.

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Evans-Pritchard understood tribal societies as segmented in their set-up and functioning. They were constitutive of social and affective subgroups that fissured and fused according to political circumstances. In such a scenario, unity emerged in ‘complementary opposition’, that is when subgroups—in our case disparate Naga clans, villages, and tribes—encountered a common, external threat or, alternatively, when they sought to expand their political sway, and for which a coming together was politically imperative. The Naga nation, similarly, can be read as a political machine propelled for purposes of both self-defence and self-determination. The pan-Naga political sociality thus created, however, was never absolute or stable, but remained relative to the political situation at hand. Or to adopt Sahlins’ (1961: 333) apt phrase, it ‘cannot stand alone but only stand “against”’. When the Indian Army withdrew (or at least scaled down operations), as happened in times of ceasefire, the composite parts of the Naga nation withdrew in their more primal association of tribe, and focused on strengthening its status and standing in relation to other tribes, leaving the Naga nation for what it was, a ‘semblance’ (Horam 1988: 24). Evans-Pritchard’s scheme of tribal political organization is somewhat crude and generic, and certainly does not account for all the intricacies, inner logics, and indeterminacies of Naga factionalism. His theorizing, however, remains useful to think along with to capture the continuous oscillation between Naga unity and fragmentation. It helps to explain both the correlation between factions and tribes and why periods of ceasefire, rather than confrontation, often (though not always) made particularly conducive grounds for factions and factionalism to emerge and multiply. Fragments of this logic appear in the following interlude, which discusses the entrance of the NSCN-IM in the Chakhesang area during the 1990s.

An Interlude: Joining the NSCN-IM in an NNC Stronghold Meet Puzo, an NSCN-IM cadre hailing from Phugwumi, once arrested by the Indian Army, once tortured—‘they treated me like a wild animal, kicking me as though I was a football. Number 1 and number 2; I did it all in my pants. But I never confessed. I never told them I belonged to the NSCN-IM. After six days I was released’.

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Puzo joined the NSCN-IM in the early 1990s, and was amongst the first in the Chakhesang region, which had long been an NNC stronghold, to do so. It was in Imphal, Manipur’s state capital, where Puzo had gone to pursue a diploma course in pastoral training, that he got his hands on two NSCN Publications: Manifesto and Polarisation. To Puzo, the NSCN’s approach towards Naga Independence seemed that of a divine mission, much akin to the Biblical concept of mission he was being trained in. ‘I felt the NSCN-IM was in my line.’ In Phugwumi, Puzo was raised in an ‘NNC household’ and several of his relatives had fought in the NNC’s Naga Army. While studying in Imphal, Puzo, however, concluded that the NNC was not going to bring Nagas any closer to Independence, and he came to see those villagers who supported the NNC as clinging to old convictions while the IndoNaga conflict had changed and moved on. By the time Puzo completed this two-year course, his sympathy towards the NSCN-IM had grown into membership. Upon returning to Phugwumi, Puzo initially felt the need to keep his political allegiance secret. ‘The Chakhesang area was known as an NNC stronghold. Some of the most violent clashes that took place between Naga and Indian armies happened in these hills’, he told me one day as he pointed into the distance. He continued: ‘The NSCN-IM carried a very bad name here. Villagers did not want to hear about any underground group except the NNC. Instead of saying “NSCN-IM” they referred to them as communists, which they associated with the devil.’ In other parts of Nagalim, by the early 1990s, the NSCN-IM was gaining rapid ground, and from its initial base across the Myanmar border it gradually supplanted the NNC as the underground group most powerful. ‘Among the Chakhesang too there was speculation that the NSCN-IM had entered its area’, Puzo recalled. ‘But no one dared to publicly admit membership.’ Puzo himself feared the consequences would villagers find out about this NSCN-IM membership: gossip, hatred, ex-communication, or even worse? One day, in Phugwumi, Puzo nevertheless decided to ‘come out’. In the village there were two men who regularly travelled to Dimapur and other places. They said it was for business, but I suspected them of being NSCN-IM cadres. Later I learned that they had suspected me of

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the same. One evening we happened to sit together, and I took a risk by revealing my membership. But when I did, they did the same. That made three of us in Phugwumi. It made us feel more confident, and from that moment, we slowly started telling others.

As Puzo anticipated, most in Phugwumi rejected his affiliation with the NSCN-IM. Even as he defended his support to them as based on ideological and political convictions, most villagers adopted a different reasoning. They impressed upon Puzo that the Chakhesang tribe belonged to the NNC. Most Phugwumi villagers associated the spread of the NSCN-IM not with the post Shillong Accord reinvigoration of Naga nationalism (the way Puzo saw it) but with the expansion of the Tangkhul Nagas’ sphere of power and influence, and of which they were suspicious.9 But while Puzo’s membership was rejected, no action was taken against him: ‘We all belong to the same village. We are like family. So even if others in the village rejected my arguments in private, they never opposed me in public.’ Puzo and his friends’ now more public membership of the NSCN-IM, however, had consequences for Phugwumi’s village chairperson, who, one night, was kidnapped by the FGN and taken to a jungle hide-out. The (then) village chairperson recalled the incident: They [FGN leaders] were angry that some village boys were spreading the message of the NSCN-IM, and accused me of tolerating their actions within the village. They warned me that if more villagers would join the NSCN-IM, they would label the entire Phugwumi as an enemy village. They also threatened to attack our village. But I denied any wrong-doing. Yes, I was the village chairperson but that did not mean I could control all what other villagers did. After three days they released me.

Meanwhile Puzo was combining a job as village-level worker for the Pfutsero pastoral centre with that of a NSCN-IM ‘mobilizer’. His official title as ‘pastoral worker’ and a job-description that entailed regular travel throughout the Chakhesang area provided the perfect cover for his NSCN-IM activities. In each Chakhesang village he visited, he tried to read the ‘political mood’ and spoke about the NSCN-IM if an opportunity offered itself. ‘It was hard,’ Puzo recalled.

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Most village elders were hostile towards the NSCN-IM and so I avoided speaking to them about it. But I found many youths strongly in favour of Naga Independence as well as disillusioned with the NNC and FGN. So I focused my attention on them. This was well before the ceasefire. I tried to meet village youth secretly, usually after dark, and tell them about the NSCN-IM’s vision and build individual relations with them.

While slow at first, over time Puzo and several other early NSCN-IM cadres succeeded in creating a Chakhesang base for the NSCN-IM, and even as NNC sentiments remained strong, it became a base strong enough to extend the NSCN-IM’s parallel government into the region. Then came the quit notice issued against the Tangkhul tribe. In 1995, a Chakhesang NNC general was assassinated at the hands of the NSCN-IM. In retaliation, the Chakhesang Public Organization (CPO) told all Tangkhul Nagas, who they equated with the NSCN-IM, to leave Chakhesang territory immediately. By this time, Puzo himself was in hiding in the Tangkhul area. The Indian Army had recently found out about his activities, raided his house in Phugwumi, and seized his documents. No sooner, pictures of him had appeared at military checkpoints, making it no longer safe for him to stay. He fled, and did so to the Tangkhul area, considered the home base of the NSCN-IM. The quit notice served by the Chakhesang Public Organization manifested itself as a tribal-divide, and now residing in the Tangkhul area, Puzo, as a Chakhesang, feared for his safety. His initial apprehension proved unnecessary: ‘People treated me like their own son. When villagers saw that my pot of rice was getting empty, they would come and fill it. If there were no vegetables in my house they would bring some, and if they caught an animal during hunting, some meat would be brought to me.’ The quit notice, while strictly enforced at first, was gradually relaxed, and after the signing of the ceasefire Puzo returned to Phugwumi, even as, during my fieldwork, he spent most of his time at Camp Hebron near Dimapur. From the position of village mobilizer, Puzo ascended, in subsequent years, through the ranks of the NSCN-IM and became an officer of standing in the GPRN. In our conversations, Puzo expressed both optimism and apprehension about the Naga Movement. He was optimistic about the progress of the peace negotiations and anticipated a political settlement sooner rather than later. What worried him, however, was

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the rising tide of violent factionalism and the entrance of, what he called, ‘anti-social elements’ in all underground groups. He had witnessed how many post-ceasefire recruits were not ‘pure’ in their ideology and had become privy to abusing the Naga cause to accrue private benefits.10 ‘Their understanding of the Naga cause is different’, Puzo lamented. ‘They have not suffered the way we did.’ Puzo identified the lucrative prospect of levying taxes as a factor explaining the post-ceasefire flowering of underground factions, several of which, he insisted, had emerged out of pecuniary motivations rather than out of ideological convictions. ‘Still, I do not want to blame them’, Puzo explained. ‘Whenever I happen to come across cadres from opposing camps I challenge them: “why don’t you do better than us? After all we are fighting for the same cause.”’ Puzo was nevertheless upfront in defining the NSCN-IM as the rightful heir of the Naga cause: Nagas need to know who is who, and what is what. It is clear that the NSCN-IM is now negotiating a political settlement. Other factions might have signed separate ceasefires but its leaders are not engaged in any formal negotiations. It is only through the NSCN-IM that a political solution can be reached.

What Puzo envisaged was, what he called (as did NSCN-IM leaders), the ‘home-coming’ of cadres belonging to the various factions that had broken away from the NSCN, and this accompanied by a process of reconciliation aimed at creating a unified Naga front. But this, Puzo conceded, was unlikely to happen soon: ‘Divisions are deep. Much blood has been shed. The healing of these wounds will take time.’ While few in Phugwumi thought highly of Puzo’s political convictions and contested the legitimacy of the NSCN-IM, they agreed that the reconciliation and unification of opposing factions was the only way forward. A few years prior to my fieldwork, Phugwumi had hosted a reconciliation meeting for which local leaders of rivalling underground factions had been invited. The then village chairperson gave the opening speech: When our parents gave the thumb print [in reference to the Naga plebiscite and subsequent oaths of loyalty], we as children expected something. Similarly, when parents go to the fields, their children will expect them

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to bring something, be it vegetables or fruits. But after all these decades waiting for it, factions have formed within our National Movement and Nagas started killing each other. Have you left those ideals at the time of the thumb print? Where have you left your thumbs?

That day, the former village chairperson recalled, the underground leaders present in the meeting expressed sorrow and pledged their willingness for reconciliation. Nothing, however, had come from it: ‘See today. The same factionalism and killing is happening’, he concluded. In commenting on current divisions within the Naga Movement, most in Phugwumi (as well as in Noksen) were upfront in their condemnation and called it ‘shameful’ that Nagas fighting the same cause should have separate factions. In broad strokes, their judgement was: ‘As long as Nagas are divided there won’t be any political solution. Why can’t we do away with all these divisions amongst ourselves and get on with our struggle in unity?’ It was a proposition most underground leaders endorsed in their public speeches, and had been the objective behind a post-ceasefire reconciliation movement headed by the FNR. But, in the end, and to the detriment of most villagers, it seemed that no-one did or could rise above factional and tribal divides indefinitely.

From ‘Donations’ to ‘Taxations’ and the Phenomenon of ‘Post-Ceasefire Recruits’ In a local initiative to preserve the Chokri language, a modest phrase book was compiled and distributed across Chokri speaking villages, including Phugwumi. The few columns containing Chorki words, with their translation in English, included: Kemŭ Khrü (forced collection), Kemŭ thedjǒsa (forced tax), kedȫpö (extort), nyimucho (extortion), nyimuchomaâ (extortionist). Most of these are not ancient Chokri words but invented to give voice to contemporary experiences and perceptions of villagers, and which included the notion that erstwhile ‘gifts’ and ‘donations’ to the Naga Movement increasingly looked like ‘forced taxes’ and ‘extortions’ collected, not by self-sacrificing national workers, but by self-seeking ‘extortionists’. To discuss this experienced shift, and regimes of underground taxations more widely, I start this

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section with an ethnographic encounter in a tea stall in the small administrative hub of Pfutsero. ‘Do not look directly’, Vekuto says. ‘The man sitting behind you belongs to the NSCN-IM. He is a big shot among them, and in charge of all taxation in this area.’ When I glance over my shoulder, a little later, I see the national worker has come for the same purpose as we had, eating momos. ‘Nobody likes him very much around here’, Vekuto continues, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘He walks around with a revolver hidden under his shirt and makes phone calls to VDB secretaries and council chairpersons to collect taxes, as though he is the king of Pfutsero.’ Just a few days earlier I happened to be in the house of Phugwumi’s village chairperson when he received a ‘tax-call’ from a Naga faction. The conversation proceeded in English. ‘We have already given you this year’, the chairperson argued. ‘All our VDB money has been spent’, his next response went. ‘Call me again after a few months’, the call ended. The village chairperson had succeeded in warding off this underground tax. But this was not how it usually went, and the chairperson confided that the village paid annual lump sums to each Naga group operating in the area. The tally was made up of ‘house-tax’ and ‘army-ration tax’, which were fixed amounts and extracted according to the number of village households, added to by a (usually negotiable) percentage of development monies that arrived in the village. Meanwhile, inside the tea stall, Vekuto falls quiet. The national worker appears at our table. ‘I heard you are staying in Phugwumi, doing some research?’, he asks me. ‘Good’, he mumbles as I confirm what he already knew. ‘We need people to tell our story. You must tell the outside world about our freedom struggle.’ Not knowing how to react, I  only nod. ‘Just words’, Vekuto comments after the national worker settles his bill and leaves. ‘I heard he recently bought a large plot of land in Dimapur. Before he joined the NSCN-IM he did not have a proper job. In any case, he joined them only after the ceasefire. I am sure he bought the land from the taxes we pay him. Everyone knows he pockets at least half of what he collects.’ While such claims are hard, if not impossible, to verify, Vekuto’s remark expressed two concerns I commonly encountered in my conversations with Phugwumi and Noksen villagers. First, the majority of the rank-and-file of Naga factions were

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now made up of ‘post-ceasefire recruits’ whose motivations for joining the struggle villagers doubted, and, secondly, the suspicion that national workers increasingly collected taxes not for the benefit of the Naga cause, but for their own private enrichment.11 While figures on such post-ceasefire recruits are hard to come by, and ever contested, it is estimated that during the ceasefire the NSCN-IM expanded its cadre strength from less than a thousand to roughly fivethousand (Panwar 2017: 248). Other factions similarly expanded their cadre-base after the ceasefire, thus suggesting that the vast majority of national workers today were recruited after the ceasefire. Without the existential and embodied experiences of guerrilla-life, both the understanding and commitment of post-ceasefire joinees, villagers observed, deviated from those who had been part of the movement before the ceasefire, and who had often suffered and sacrificed greatly as they took on Indian military and paramilitary troops. In Inside Rebellion, Weinstein (2007) usefully distinguishes between ‘high-commitment’ and ‘low-commitment’ cadres. He compares the former to ‘investors’ because they are dedicated to a cause and ready to suffer for the promise of future political rewards. When rebellion is risky, and short-term gains unlikely, Weinstein (2007: 9) writes, ‘rebel groups tend to attract only the most committed investors’, resulting in an ‘activist rebellion’. ‘Low-commitment cadres’, to the contrary, are akin to ‘consumers’ and engage in rebellion to pursue short-term gains. They join a rebel movement when risks are comparatively lower, and immediate and personal rewards can be accrued. The entrance of ‘consumers’ into a movement, Weinstein (2007: 10) explains, can transform an ‘activist rebellion’ into an ‘opportunistic’ one. Transposed to Naga insurgency, it was the 1997 ceasefire that saw the entry of ‘low-commitment cadres’, and which altered the set-up and ‘behaviour’ of Naga underground groups, seemingly transforming them from ‘investors’ into ‘consumers’. These changing motivations villagers observed in national workers inspired struggles to resist the paying of underground taxes. I witnessed this a few months later in Noksen town, where teachers of the government high school refused to pay a percentage of their monthly salary to a particular Naga faction. Their refusal came in the wake of a resolution adopted by the commanding Eastern Naga Student’s Federation (ENSF) which stated that, of all government employees,

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teachers should not be taxed by any underground group. Teachers, the ENSF emphasized, were the custodians of the next generation and should therefore be freed from the mental and financial agony that came with fulfilling monetary demands of Naga factions. Asang, a teacher, told me how the school principal had received a letter from an NSCN faction demanding roughly a quarter of all the teachers’ salaries of that month. The letter instructed the principal to insert the money in an envelope and to have it delivered to the organization’s post-ceasefire offices in Tuensang town, an arduous six hours journey away. Asang, and the other teachers, had heeded to such demands in the past, but now armoured with the ENSF resolution, they resolved to ignore the letter. When I caught up with Asang again a few days later, I learned that the principal had received a follow-up letter. This time the language had been more threatening. ‘We wrote them back’, Asang said, ‘to inform them that we are not paying’. A few days later, national workers showed up in the school compound. I was not present, but was informed about the event that evening by Asang: Three of them came. Luckily the person in charge was himself a Chang, so we could speak in our own language. At first he insisted on the salary-tax and explained that they needed the money for the Naga  cause. But from our side, we insisted on following the ENSF resolution. The discussion was long, but in the end he said: ‘Ok. If you do not want to pay this time we will not feel bad towards you. But at least you should pay for our journey up and down here.’ To this we agreed, and we paid them 5000 rupees.

‘The problem’, Asang continued: Is that while they call it donation, they fix the amount beforehand. This is not a donation but imposition. Shopkeepers around here face the same problem. Every time national workers arrive in the town they demand 300 rupees from each shop as donation. But how can a donation ever be fixed? If the underground really need some money for a specific purpose, and if they can explain that purpose properly, we should consider them. After all, they are our own people. But most national workers these days are not serious. They think about themselves, not about the Naga cause.

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Compare the laments variously articulated by Atho, Nebo, Vekuto, and Asang with the following epitaph found on a gravestone in Phugwumi: In loving memory of Mr Verhiyo Puro s/o Posuyo. Born in 1896 he represented Chakhesang tribe in Naga wrestling during British rule. He had donated a barn of paddy to NNC. He had seven sons and left for his heavenly abode on 21 April 1992.

In the few lines an epitaph allows for, it was Verhiyo Puro’s donation of a barn of rice to the NNC that was celebrated as his legacy. Clearly something has changed. This is not to say that when the Naga Movement first began, donations to the NNC were always done voluntarily. While Naga guerrillas depended, for their daily sustenance, ‘mostly on public contributions’, the NNC also ‘collected house-tax, so-called because every family had to pay this’ (Horam 1988: 72). What has altered, then, is perhaps not solely the manner in which underground taxes are collected, but the perceived destination of these monies. Capturing a wide sentiment, Ao (2002) writes: ‘It is reported that many Naga underground people are now enjoying the most luxurious life in urban areas [after they] returned from the jungle’. Or as Bendangjungshi (2011: 68) formulates this: ‘In the name of Naga sovereignty, they use better cars, buy better houses, and live in better conditions.’ But if taxes by Naga factions increased after the 1997 ceasefire, as most insist they had, this must also be understood in relation to that ceasefire, particularly its impact on financial sources available to Naga underground groups. The journalist Bertil Lintner, who spent several months in an NSCN camp in western Burma in the late 1980s, recounted the story of an NSCN cadre called Zekope, who had been assigned to rob a bank in Dimapur: Zekope told the NSCN captain he would most likely lose his nerve at the crucial moment inside the bank, where both of them were going to be armed with pistols. ‘Have no fear’, the captain told Zekope. ‘Have faith in Jesus and it will be all right!’ ‘Jesus? How can you mention His name in connection with a bank robbery where you’re going to steal money and possibly even kill people?’ Zekope had asked, somewhat

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taken aback. ‘The national cause is more important than that. We’ll just take the money and give it back to our people’s struggle. Jesus surely supports that’, came the reply from the captain. With or without the assistance of Jesus, the robbery went off as planned … reliev[ing] the bank of 1.5 million rupees. (Lintner 2011: 111–12).

If the religious undertones of this conversation would merit an explanatory chapter of its own, crucial here is the substantial amount that was secured, and the past possibility for Naga undergrounds—albeit always a risky one—to obtain finances from sources outside the Naga populace. Such ceased to be a possibility after the ceasefire, and which necessitated Naga underground groups to increase their taxing of the Naga populace. Underground functionaries themselves are not secretive about the regimes of taxation they enforce, and in an official communiqué the NSCN-IM clarified: Nagas pay taxes to show loyalty to the NSCN authority and legitimacy, to sustain our movements and achieve Naga political solution through peace process, mobilizing of support and solidarity across the world, to feed and supply basic requirements for thousands of standing NSCN cadres and to protect the rights of the Naga people and her territory occupied and divided by India and Burma. (E-Pao 2013)

The NSCN-IM, and other Naga factions, admit that there have been incidences of undue, double, and inflated taxations collected by some ‘unscrupulous’ cadres. Local dailies occasionally carry ‘termination notices’ of cadres, published there by Naga factions, usually on account of ‘anti-national behaviour’, which is widely understood as a gloss for a national worker’s greed and financial misconduct. But these, underground spokespersons insist, are just that: incidences, not part of a structural pattern. Without collecting taxes, they invariably conclude, it would be impossible to further the Naga cause.

The Underground Effect The Block Development Officer, cited in this chapter’s opening vignette, ascribed the perpetual failure of development locally to the pressures

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put on development budgets by multiple Naga underground groups. In this view, underground taxes lowered development budgets and of which villagers bore the brunt. But this is only part of the story. The Development Office itself was locally known as a breeding ground of corruption, and villagers regularly spoke about the cuts and commissions taken by its officers and engineers. Oftentimes the Development Officer himself was singled out as villagers suspected him of privately apportioning development funds officially designated for Phugwumi, and for using the argument of underground taxes as a cover for his own corrupt actions. Villagers referred to him as a ‘rich man’, and those who had seen the three-story mansion he had built for himself in Kohima commented, only half-jokingly, that it was not him, but the villagers who had paid for its construction. What further added to the suspicion were reports telling that his brother was preparing to contest the upcoming state assembly elections. Contesting elections, everyone knew, required large amounts of monies, and rumour had it that the Development Officer was financing his brother’s bid. In private, Phugwumi’s VDB secretary confided how he always had to sign for budgets the VDB never received in full. Whenever he inquired about missing funds, the Development Officer blamed it on the taxes his office had paid to multiple Naga factions. These taxes, the Development Officer then explained, had to be deducted from village development funds as well as concealed in official paperwork (hence his request to the VDB secretary to sign for higher budgets than he received in reality). ‘In Delhi everything is about paper’, the Development Officer once explained me. ‘I am sure Delhi knows that undergrounds are seizing development funds in Nagaland, but as long as the paperwork is in order there are no questions. This is my continuous headache, to make sure that the paperwork is in order.’ But while Phugwumi’s VDB secretary empathized with the Development Officer’s predicament, he was sure that the Development Officer himself was appropriating large sums. In Nagaland’s bureaucratic setup more widely, the post of Block Development Officer (BDO) was sometimes referred to as ‘low rank, high income’. Within the administrative hierarchy, the position of BDO was of modest rank, yet perhaps no other post offered as lucrative possibilities for (illegal) side-incomes. So lucrative was the post that a former Chairperson of the

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Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) confided to me how he had received requests from senior state functionaries to be temporarily demoted to the position of Block Development Officer. Crucially here is that for the Development Officer the possibility of privately appropriating development funds was enabled by, and dependent on, the image of Naga underground groups as predatory and ruthless outfits whose monetary demands systematically and substantially curtailed state development budgets. This is what the officer, in several meetings, never failed to emphasize; development was failing, he insisted, because of the pecuniary desires of national workers, thus not because of corruption within the Development Office’s own rank-and-file. However, any depiction of innocent villagers being wronged by selfish officers would certainly be an oversimplification as VDB members themselves were known to ‘earn’ well out of ‘development works’ (Chapter 5). And if the VDB secretary systematically signed for budgets he did not receive in full, the Development Officer, in turn, complained about the lack of sincerity on part of VDBs and lamented how he was regularly ‘pressured’ to sign off faulty audits and issue completion certification for village development projects that had not, or only partially, been carried out. It is not unlikely that this ‘chain of signatures’, as I came to think of it, extended further upwards with the BDO himself signing for budgets different than his office received, so helping to conceal both underground taxes and personal cuts made at higher levels, and whose senior officers, in return, offered an uncritical look at the implementation of projects and schemes carried out under the Development Officer’s jurisdiction. Several points emerge from the ethnography on the BDO variously discussed in this chapter. First, while Naga underground groups formally oppose Indian state structures, including the Development Office, they have turned the state and its development resources into a prime source of ‘rebel revenue’.12 This, in itself, is not a recent trend. As early as the 1960s, Charles Pawsey, the last serving British District Commissioner of the Naga Hills district, observed how ‘The underground really are supported by the Government of India. The enormous sums spent on the civil administration meant a surplus of cash in the villages. No rich contractor is going to refuse a polite request for help if an underground leader is backed by an escort of armed guerrillas’ (cited in Steyn 2002: 137). There nevertheless exists a clear perception that such ‘rebel cuts’

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were systematized and increased, and steeply at that, after the 1997 ceasefire. Second, the authoritative presence of rivalling Naga factions enabled state officers to conceal their own private cuts from development funds. As the exact amount of underground taxes proved negotiable, it was not difficult for any officer to inflate the amount of underground deductions in his conversations with villagers. Thirdly, these ‘unholy networks’ contest any clear boundary between state functionaries and national workers.13 The existence of such networks, however, remains conditional to the appearance that such a boundary nevertheless exists. The officer’s arduous attempt to conceal underground taxes in official paperwork, fearing that the Centre would otherwise curb the inflow of development monies, secured the continued access to such funds by Naga factions. Vice-versa, the officer’s emphasizing, in his conversations with villagers, his helplessness regarding underground taxes helped to conceal his own private cuts, which remained conditional to the continued presence of Naga factions in the area. At the face of it, this suggests that Naga nationalism grew into a cottage industry that offers a steady income to a variety of actors. There is a wider theoretical assertion to be made here, however. While state functionaries and national workers systematically stress their mutual antagonism and publicly doubt each other’s legitimacy and activities, my ethnography suggests that their appearance as two opposed and discrete entities are in reality cut through by mutually beneficial networks that flourish between them. Deliberate and discursive attempts to nevertheless maintain the image of a neat boundary, and thus of national workers and state functionaries as discrete and distinct entities, may be theorized as the ‘underground effect’, an adaptation of Mitchell’s (1991) coinage of ‘state effect’. Probing the boundary between state and society, Mitchell argued that where such a clear-cut distinction appears to exist, this ‘must be taken not as the boundary between two discrete entities, but as a line drawn internally within the network of institutional mechanisms through which a social and political order is maintained’ (1991: 78). To illustrate this, Mitchell points to the covert collusion between the US government and private oil corporations, with exclusive rights to Saudi oil, for reasons of political influence, foreign policy, and profits.14 Thus, while the boundary of the state ‘never marks a real exterior’ (1991: 90),

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the state’s public appearance of existing above and separate from society, Mitchell concludes, ‘is itself a mechanism that generated resources of power’. Adapting Mitchell’s argument, I posit that the appearance of a clear and antagonistic boundary between Nagaland state functionaries and national workers, one carefully maintained through circulating discourses in which both entities defame and delegitimize the other, even while illusory in view of actual practices, is neither meaningless nor powerless. What this at once enables and conceals are lucrative networks in which state officers and national workers connect and connive. Pointing to a dark spot in studies on political conflict, Chabal and Daloz (1999: xix) explain such mutually beneficial, if illegal, networks as part of the political instrumentalism of disorder and conflict. Political disorder, they argue, ‘should not be constructed, as it normally is in classic political analyses, merely as a state of dereliction. It should also be seen as a condition which offers opportunities for those who know how to play that system’. It is here, at the point where state functionaries and national workers collude and profit, that it becomes pertinent to ask whether a final Indo-Naga political settlement, one that would dissolve political disorder, may not be resented (or even thwarted) by those for whom the continuity of political conflict offers lucrative possibilities?

The Underground as Vocation Those who achieve distinctions in their examinations become top scientists. Those who pass in Second Division become bureaucrats and rule over the scientists. Those who get Third Division turn into politicians and rule over the scientists and the bureaucrats. Finally those who fail their exams or are school drop-outs join the Underground and rule over the scientists, bureaucrats, and politicians. —A local joke

This local pun expresses a critique about the motivations of national workers, especially those of post-ceasefire recruits. It brings us to the final reflection that joining the rank-and-file of the Naga underground increasingly presented itself as a viable career path, one tempted by the real possibility of carving out a decent living (especially for those without education and prospects, according to the joke). Bendangjungshi (2011: 70)

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indeed observes how ‘school dropouts and drug addicts also join the nationalist movement as a last resort, as a way to make a living’. As the ceasefire entered into its third decade there has emerged an entire generation of post-ceasefire recruits; they now staff and represent civil and military wings, command authority, and influence the current course of the Naga Movement. They, however, do so without the experience of life as a jungle guerrilla with its deprivations, suffering, and fear. Such past experiences, life-histories of NNC veterans suggest, weaved themselves into their everyday lives, became embodied, as well as deeply and emotionally attached them to the Naga cause, even after they came ‘overground’. It is the absence of such embodied experiences amongst post-ceasefire recruits that deviates their understanding of the Naga cause from that of the now ageing (and dying) leadership of most Naga factions. And this, for many Phugwumi and Noksen villagers, is where the apprehension lies. Scholarship suggests that people often become insurgents for reasons other than political and ideological convictions. They may be coerced (Stoll 1993), driven by self-interest and greed (Collier and Hoeffler 2004), or guided by ‘relations of intimacy’ with existing rebels (Shah 2013). Here I emphasize how, especially after the ceasefire, motivations of national workers to join the struggle were also guided by the mundane task of carving out a living for themselves and their families. Take Azo, a Phugwumi villager, in his early forties, married, and the father of three children. While his family lived in Phugwumi, Azo spent most of his time in a camp of the NSCN-K. While he had been part of the underground for over a decade, he had joined the NSCN-K only recently, after first ‘defecting’ from the NSCN-IM. Villagers, at times, mocked his  underground cross-carpeting and called him ‘politically unstable’. Azo, however, offered a more basic explanation that led him to switch his underground affiliation: When I was in the NSCN-IM army we used to get a monthly stipend, and which I sent to my wife to look after our children. But suddenly and for several months I was not given any money. I asked my commandant about it, but he only said that there was some financial problem. Some months later I was again given some money, but the amount was too little. It was hardly enough to even pay for my children’s school fees. I knew someone inside the NSCN-K. He was

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also a Chakhesang. When I discussed my problems with him, he told me that the NSCN-K was regular in disbursing salaries to its soldiers, and that the money was sufficient. I approached the NSCN-K, and they were ready to take me in. So I resigned from the NSCN-IM. I had to think about my family.

Azo’s case may not be characteristic of the motivations of all national workers, which differ greatly, but his reasoning indicates that motivations to join the Naga struggle, as well as factional affiliations, may be driven by rather mundane, but significant, concerns (Azo’s need to look after his family), more than it is determined by either ideology or inexcusable greed. As part of the military wing, Azo had never been involved in collecting taxes, and by no standards could he and his family be described a well-off. In his case, it had been the failure of ‘NSCN-IM accounting’, to evenly distribute the taxes it collected to its cadres, that had impelled his change in factional affiliation. While Azo supported the Naga cause, and expressed his hope that the peace negotiations would result in ‘something good’, for him his position as national worker was first and foremost a ‘vocation’ (in fact, he had applied for various government jobs before joining the Naga Movement), a way to support his family. In a famous treatise, Weber traced the historical emergence of the profession of politicians by distinguishing two ways of making politics one’s vocation; either one lives ‘for’ politics or ‘off ’ politics. Those who live ‘for’ politics, Weber argued, make ‘politics his life, in an internal sense’ and ‘nourishes his inner balance and self-feeling by the consciousness that his life has meaning in the service of a “cause”’. Those who live ‘off ’ politics, to the contrary, perceive ‘politics as a permanent source of income’, which besides a regular salary can include ‘profits, tips, as well as bribes’ (1965: 5; emphases in original). This argument transposed to the motivations of Naga national workers captures a widely articulated concern in Phugwumi and Noksen, which is a skewing of national workers living ‘off ’ rather than ‘for’ the Naga cause.

Ceasefire as Conflict Through the ethnographic analysis of post-ceasefire patterns and practices, this chapter suggested that the 1997 ceasefire significantly altered the internal dynamics of the Indo-Naga ceasefire. To explore

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these changes I focused on the experiences and views of Phugwumi and Noksen villagers, and particularly on the ways they evaluate and speak about the Naga Movement in its current forms and factions. The term ‘ceasefire’, as noted, conjures up a readymade set of definitions—it is seen as a stoppage of war and violence, the suspension of hostile actions, a reprieve for villagers caught in the crossfire of armed conflict, a stage of conflict resolution, and an agreement that enables peace negotiations. It did not take me long into my fieldwork to realize that such definitions of ‘ceasefire’ were far removed from everyday realities in Naga villages. The ceasefire I encountered ethnographically was a contested arena of complex social and economic networks, moral judgments, and struggles over power and domination. What emerged, post-ceasefire, were exceedingly complex sets of relations between rivalling Naga factions, national workers and state functionaries (including politicians, Chapter 7), and national workers and Naga villagers. These relations were regularly shaped, and given meaning to, in terms of preexisting affinities and loyalties of village and tribe, and which evidences that adequate understandings of the Naga Movement must entail a critical engagement with structures and sentiments of kinship and social bonds, which proves a great deal more revealing analytically than a focus on, say, political theory and ideology. Although recent scholarship offers us a more comprehensive sense of the complexities within the Naga Movement, these often historical and political treatises have been slow to catch up with the complex social networks, processes, actions, and wider phenomena to be explained. This chapter attempted to breathe ethnographic life into these discussions, and, in doing so, illustrated that the 1997 ceasefire, rather than a period of stasis, reconciliation, and the absence of violence, manifested itself as a complex and contentious social reality that witnessed the continuation of conflict. Phugwumi and Noksen villagers were often sceptical about the postceasefire unfolding of the Naga Movement. They told me stories that were condemnatory both of the violent factionalism and the perceived degenerating character of national workers, especially of post-ceasefire recruits. This was contradicted with the supposedly more selfless and ‘pure’ motivations of earlier generations of Naga guerrillas. My fieldnotes show that villagers were often explicit in linking the deterioration and disintegration of the Naga Movement with the arrival of the ceasefire.

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Not that there had been no problems of factionalism and self-indulgent cadres before the ceasefire, as there certainly had been, but the common impression was that the ceasefire had injected new venom into the Naga Movement, and that this venom was now spreading through its veins. To be sure, Nagaland is far from an eerie place with Naga factions lurking behind bushes and bamboo groves waiting for opportunities to ambush their rivals, or a place where national workers continuously scavenge the local populace for personal benefits. Most people I spoke to however felt deeply about the ways the Naga Movement was evolving. Even as most villagers were realistic in recognizing that complete Naga Independence appeared increasingly unlikely, and were trying to settle into living within India’s fold, what village elders and particularly those with NNC biographies found even harder to swallow was to see the Naga Movement they had variously suffered and sacrificed for dissipate and degenerate into warring factions, ‘vested interests’, and as an apparent pretext for the pursuing of pecuniary desires. Seen more broadly, the consequences of the Indo-Naga ceasefire may illustrate that any ceasefire, but certainly protracted ones, between an insurgent and state entity over time works to the advantage of the latter, if only because the state possesses two things insurgent groups usually do not: patience and near inexhaustible resources. The absence of violent conflict, even without a political settlement, enabled the Indian state to expand its administrative and development apparatuses in the area, and to increasingly tie Naga livelihoods to existing state structures and the political status quo. State allocations during periods of conflict and ceasefire, as the next chapter argues, can therefore be a highly political act. However, the longer the ceasefire prolonged, Naga factions found it harder to prevent disillusionment amongst villagers, as well as restlessness, indiscipline, and conflict in its own rank-and-file. And while the Indian state draws systematic revenues and taxes throughout its territory, and which is lawful, rivalling Naga factions must rely on extractive regimes of taxation over the Naga populace, but ever so at the risk of causing resentment. On the dilemma of ‘rebel taxes’, Weinstein (2007: 44) writes: ‘Leaders want to extract what they need from non-combatants in order to sustain their movement, but they must try to avoid extracting so much that civilians become alienated and defect to the opposition’.

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Read thus, the 1997 Indo-Naga ceasefire, rather than merely setting the stage for a political solution, also manifested itself as a politically loaded stand-off, one that saw the continuation of conflict by other forms and means.

Notes 1. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has been dubbed the world’s largest social welfare and public works scheme. Enacted in 2005, it aims to guarantee a minimum of 100 days of unskilled wage employment to those rural, adult citizens living below the poverty line (and which, by a stroke of pen, included all Phugwumi villagers) on such labour-intensive projects as water harvesting, the construction of agri-link roads, and the digging of ponds). On the vision, design, implementation, and intricacies of this rural employment scheme see Reetika Khera’s (2011) The Battle for Employment Guarantee. 2. The relationship between Naga villagers and their land is variously detailed in terms of ‘stewardship’ and ‘reciprocal co-dependency’ (Vamuzo 2012: 9), as ‘the core of culture’, ‘origin of ethnic identity’ (Varah 2013: 249), and ‘symbol of identity’ (Longchar 1996: 22), as based on a ‘triune concept of God-Land-People’ (Imsong 2011: 14), and, in general, shaped by ‘a deep sense of supernatural, spiritual and ancestral attachment’ ( Jamir 2015: 108). What is emphasized too is that whereas in places across the country ‘all land belongs to the government’, in Nagaland ‘land belongs to landowners and the community’ (Imkongmeren 2015: 61), a traditional arrangement safeguarded by Article 371A to the Constitution (Chapter 4). In fact, the history of post-statehood governance in Nagaland can be read as a history of tussles between the state government, which requires land to effectuate development, and Naga landowners who hesitate to give up even a square inch of their land. 3. In terms of state contracts, the development office signing the completion certificate is a necessary prerequisite for the holder of the contract to receive the final installment of the allocated project budget. 4. Besides levying taxes, the NSCN, and its parallel government (GPRN), took upon itself several other functions and prerogatives of government. It, for instance, resolved to keep a check on the quality of education in private schools, which have popped up in large numbers. It has directed all private institutions to register themselves with the organization and has endorsed a set of guidelines they should follow. These include issues ranging from teacher–student ratio and the composition of the teaching

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staff to the size and number of rooms a student hostel ought to have. The GPRN also added four days to the list of school holidays: the outfit’s Raising Day ( January 31), Agony Day—a day of sadness to remember all those who have sacrificed their lives (September 27), Naga Republic Day (March 21), and Naga Independence Day (August 14) (Telegraph 2007). Their increased social vigilantism, too, shows their emboldened law-making capacity. Their actions have ranged from launching anti-liquor drives and cracking down on the surfing of pornographic websites to instructing shopkeepers to install electronic balances to protect customers from being cheated. State officials habitually condemn these acts of lawmaking and publicly emphasize that NSCN diktats are illegal and are not to be followed by citizens. Most Nagas, however, do oblige and over recent years the NSCN has firmly positioned itself with in the existing system of governance. It has consequently been transformed into a stakeholder the government needs to reckon with if it wants any project or policy to succeed. 5. Athe’s conversion to Christianity at the height of the Indo-Naga conflict was part of a wider revival movement that erupted in places across the Naga highlands during the time. From the vantage of the Sumi Naga, Angelova (2017: 30) writes: ‘The revival spread spontaneously and quickly among all Naga areas in the late 1950s, and it was during this revival that many Sumi committed themselves to Christ. These later conversions were undoubtedly the result of the spiritual fervour of these times, but they can also be seen as a political statement of resistance to the oppression of the Indian nation-state, especially since the Naga nationalist movement was increasingly being conceptualized in Baptist Christian terms.’ 6. This accord was signed in Shillong by the Government of India and a few representatives of the NNC. It was preceded by heightened counter-insurgency operations by the Indian Army, and which significantly reduced the strength and sway of the NNC’s Naga Army. The Shillong Accord stated that the Naga underground ‘of their own volition’ and ‘without condition’ accepted the Constitution of India. It further detailed that they would deposit all the arms in their possession and that they would formulate, within reasonable time, ‘other issues for discussion for final settlement’. The Shillong Accord, Vashum (2005: 94) writes, was a ‘great blow to the Naga national movement’. Soon, however, the Shillong Accord was rejected by several Naga underground leaders, who called it a ‘sell-out’ and insisted it had been signed by Naga representatives under duress. While the Government of India anticipated that the Shillong Accord had ended Naga insurgency, in reality, Vashum

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

continues, ‘the Naga Movement was soon reorganized quite against the calculation of the Government of India’. Over time, the Shillong Accord fragmented the NNC and FGN into so-called ‘Accordists’ (those who accepted the Shillong Accord) and ‘Non-Accordists’ (those who rejected the Shillong Accord). On the Shillong Accord, and other attempted treaties more widely, Vibha Joshi (2013: 170) writes: ‘The literature [on the Indo-Naga conflict] is full of details of various rounds of negotiations, the signing of accords, and programs. Most such accords have succeeded only in dividing the Naga, creating suspicion, and causing the assassination of moderate Naga by their radical comrades’. Collier and Hoeffler (2004) favour ‘greed’ over ‘grievances’ in explaining the feasibility and durability of rebellions generally. They maintain that rebels, or at least their leaders, are rational economic actors who are pursuing pecuniary objectives, but which are deliberately clothed in a discourse of grievances. The latter is more ‘functional externally’, but also more ‘satisfying personally’ and ‘rebel leaders may readily be persuaded by their own propaganda’ (Collier 1999: 1). While the deficiencies of rational choice theory and the violence of abstraction loom large in such assumptions, Collier and Hoeffler (2004: 588) quite rightly emphasize that ‘the opportunity for rebellion is the availability of finance’. To illustrate, the NNC is popularly linked with the Angami and Chakhesang tribes, the FGN with the Khiamniungan Naga, the NSCN-IM with the Tangkhul tribe, the NSCN-K with the Konyak Nagas as well as Naga tribes residing across the Myanmar border, the NSCN-U with the Sumi Nagas, and so on. Each faction, to be sure, nevertheless has cadres spawning a large number of Naga tribes. This was not the first time that the involvement of the Tangkhul tribe in the Naga Movement was subjected to mistrust and inter-tribal hostility. In the 1960s, when Tangkhul cadres joined the NNC in large numbers, ‘they were not welcomed by the few Naga tribes for fear that they would monopolize Naga leadership and the best jobs’. Horam (1988: 27), a Tangkhul himself, continued: ‘The extent of anti-Tangkhul propaganda by fellow Nagas was difficult to understand by all non-Nagas.’ On this, Chasie (2005: 57) writes: ‘Factional rivalry also resulted, in certain cases, in the signing up of criminal elements, whose ideals could not have been as lofty as their predecessors, and, sometimes, leading to the break-down in the chains of command.’ Generating revenues is ostensibly the prime objective of collecting taxes. However, the implementation of a regime of taxation over the length and breadth of an area which Naga underground groups claim is theirs but

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which does not appear as unitary in any officially endorsed map might also serve them in adding flesh to the bones of their territorial claims. Similarly, the taxation of movement, in which passing trucks, buses and private cars are routinely stopped by Naga national workers and are obliged to pay tolls in order to proceed, is more than just a source of income: it is also part of a discursive process through which a de facto Naga map is brought into existence. 12. In his posthumously published diaries the rural activist Sanjoy Ghose narrates how the NSCN/GPRN has ‘neatly superimposed themselves on the institutions of state to make their tax collection very efficient’ (Ghose 1998: 176). The situation in neighbouring Manipur is no different; Rammohan (2010), an Indian Police Officer, admits that the major underground groups, the NSCN among them, have well-oiled finance wings, including computerized records with up-to-date information on the receipts of development grants in different Government departments. Chief engineers are forced to award certain development contracts to underground cadres, which then siphon off large amounts. 13. In rural Jharkhand, and in the context of Maoist insurgency, Alpa Shah also observed how state, insurgent groups, and development connect in complex ways, although in ways somewhat different to the Naga uplands. Shah (2006) theorizes the contest between Maoist cadres, state functionaries, and the rural elite in terms of control over the ‘market of protection’. The expansion of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Jharkhand, Shah argues, was intimately linked to the practice of rewarding dedicated comrades with access to state resources. To that end, Maoists pressured local state officials to grant highly competitive and lucrative development contracts to them. As the rural elite, including former politicians, also claimed access to the informal economy of the state and issued threats to the local state officials, the latter had to call on the Maoists for protection and for safeguarding their own illegal cuts from the projects (Shah 2006: 306). State functionaries in rural Jharkhand (akin to those in Nagaland) may thus in practice undermine the state through their mutually beneficial yet illegal alliances with influential members of the MCC. This dialectic may also give rise to a regime of joint extraction through which certain benefits are ensured for both the state and the underground. This is argued by Suykens (2010) in his ethnographic study on the trade in Tendu leaves, which are used to make beedi cigarettes and which forms an important source of income for tribals in North Telangana. The Maoists, Suykens argues, have inserted themselves as an additional layer of governance in the production and

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trade of these leaves. The state provides the infrastructure and the legal framework, yet the Maoists intervene at different points in the commodity chain, both to increase tribal welfare and to earn revenue. 14. When the Saudi government insisted that their royalty payments from a private consortium of US oil corporations (ARAMCO) be increased from an initial 12% to 50% of the profits, The US government, through a legal loophole, Mitchell explains, used US tax monies to finance these ‘royalty payments’ to a ‘repressive’ but ‘pro-American regime.’ They did so with the clear foreign policy imperative of maintaining influence and control in the region, and for which the treasuries of private oil corporations became the ‘covert’, non-political channel. ARAMCO, in turn, by expecting the US government to protect its profits by paying the increased royalty payments, similarly made use of the US government to secure its exclusive rights to Saudi oil. In the upshot, this arrangement not just defies images of state and society as separate domains but shows that institutional mechanisms between them are part of existing political and power structures (Mitchell 1991: 78).

4

Seeing the State

Violence, ‘Seduction’, and Neo-Tribal Developmentalism

‘D

o they want to have an outlandish name? Nagaland is outlandish’, a Member of Parliament (MP) objects on the floor of the Lok Sabha.1 ‘I do not clearly understand the meaning of the word ‘Nagaland’, another MP agrees. ‘It may be named Naga State or Naga Pradesh. Nagaland is somewhat bigger.’ ‘It is true’, Jawaharlal Nehru concedes, ‘but that word was accepted because of the strong desire of Naga leaders to have it’. It is the year 1960 when Nehru addresses Parliament about the bill that would see the enactment of Nagaland as India’s sixteenth and (then) smallest state. ‘Mr. Speaker, Sir’, Nehru begins his address. ‘I have on many previous occasions referred in this house to the problem of Nagas.’ Nehru’s subsequent reconstruction of the ‘Naga problem’ is lengthy and detailed and he reminds the House that a ‘hostile section’ of Nagas wants ‘to carve out an independent Naga territory entirely separate from India’, but that this is ‘a demand no government in India could ever agree to’.

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0004

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Nehru’s address was not the first time the Nagas are discussed in Parliament. On 30 July 1947, Jaipal Singh, who after captaining the Indian hockey team to Olympic Gold in 1928 turned to politics, reported thus: Some very unhappy developments have since been brewing in the Naga Hills … I myself have been receiving on an average a telegram per day, the latest telegram becoming more confounded than the previous one. Each one seems to go one step further into the wilderness … The Nagas have been misguided by certain persons into thinking that, with the withdrawal of British authority, the country would go back to them … It seems the Nagas have been misguided more and more as days [sic] have been going along into the belief that the Naga Hills belong to them and that they were not part of India ever and further. That as soon as the Dominion of India came into existence, the Naga Hills would be the exclusive property of the Nagas.2

Continuing his address, Nehru recalls the clashes, confrontations, and casualties that ensued as Indian and Naga armies collided head-on, admitting that ‘the story of the last five or six years has been a sad and depressing one’. There now, however, is a promising political development as some Naga leaders have come together as the Naga People’s Convention (NPC) with the aim of negotiating a middle path out of the violence. The middle path proposed by the NPC is ‘the constitution of a separate state within the Indian Union to be known as Nagaland, under the Ministry of External Affairs’. It is a demand Nehru is willing to endorse: ‘We sincerely hope that the new arrangement will result in the rapid restoration of normal conditions in the area.’ Nehru’s plea, however, initially fails to persuade the House. Besides the state’s proposed nomenclature, another issue emerges, and turns thorny. One MP objects: It has been reported in the Press that the affairs of the Nagaland, by convention, will be looked after by the Ministry of External Affairs. We want to know why this special provision by convention is being established so that this new State in the Union will be looked after not by the Ministry of Home Affairs, but by the Ministry of External Affairs. We are rather concerned about this new procedure that is being evolved.

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The anguish, clearly, is whether this arrangement could be interpreted as a concession to the Naga demand for Independence, and thence would connote a compromise on India’s sovereignty. Nehru seeks to explain: The North East Frontier Agency region has been directly connected with the External Affairs Ministry … it was considered rather a special region requiring special treatment … a special service was started which was quite a different service from the other services … In these services people were taken on special aptitude, special toughness to live in isolation and away from the normal amenities of life and all that … And, when in 1957 this Convention of people expressed a wish that they should be one unit, they expressed also the wish that the External Affairs Ministry should be in charge … I am not justifying it. I am merely stating the historical background of it.

Nehru’s historical justification still fails to convince, and yet another MP claims the floor: ‘We want to understand whether as a result of this agreement, a 16th State is going to be born in the Indian Union, or there is something different. Again, wherein does the External Affairs Ministry come in if it is the 16th state?’3 Nehru responds: ‘This state will be the 16th State, as honourable Member says, subject to certain provisional agreements … It will function without, I hope, that complicated structure of administration which the other States require’. As often, in those days, Nehru manages to contain his critics, and gets the bill approved. On 1 December 1963, India’s President and noted philosopher Dr S. Radhakrishnan flies to Kohima to inaugurate the new state of Nagaland. The following are excerpts from his speech: Friends, I have great pleasure in inaugurating the new state of Nagaland. It takes an honoured place today as the Sixteenth State of the Indian Union … [our] attempts to secure you the fullest freedom to manage your own affairs have culminated in the creation of Nagaland State. The rule of law and government by the consent of the governed are the essence of democracy. Government must be the custodian of the general welfare of its people and not of any special interest. The Government must capture the hearts and minds of the people. The administrators must exercise the human, the healing touch in their relations with the people and should not deprive the Naga of their innocent joys, their songs and dances, their feasts and festivals which are not repugnant to our moral sense …4

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The resources of Nagaland, limited as they are, will have to be developed to the fullest extent and yet there may be need for Central assistance for purposes of development and administration. I am sure this assistance will be available for the Naga people in full measure … May I also express the hope that, now that the wishes of the Nagas have been fully met, normal conditions will rapidly return to the State, and those who are still unreconciled will come forward to participate in the development of Nagaland. Understanding and friendship help to build a society where hatred and violence tend to disrupt. Let us avoid the latter and adopt the former. On this auspicious day I make an appeal to all Naga people: let all past rancour and misunderstanding be forgotten and let a new chapter of progress, prosperity and goodwill be written on the page which opens today. I once again say that a bright future awaits the brave people of Nagaland. (cited in Sharma and Sharma 2006: 253)

The making of Nagaland state, apropos Dr Radhakrishnan’s inaugural speech, did add a new page to Nagas’ modern history, and drastically changed both Naga lifeworlds and livelihoods. It did not close the book on Naga insurgency, however. The Naga National Council immediately rejected the new state’s legitimacy to govern, reiterated its stance for Independence, and stepped up its armed resistance (Dev 1988: 9). ‘All those wishfully expecting the collapse of the Underground after the granting of statehood’, Horam (1988: 12) reflected, ‘found themselves to be wrong … On the contrary there was an ever greater explosion of Naga nationalist sentiment’.5 Naga insurgency continued. As did counterinsurgency. As did the unfolding of Nagaland apparatuses of governance and development. This chapter and the next examine how protracted political conflict shaped the ways ordinary Naga men and women came to ‘see’ the Indian postcolonial state, and of which Nagaland state was interpreted as a Centre-controlled extension. For most Nagas, the past six decades were marked by a dual relation to the state. On the one hand, they experienced the coercive, repressive powers of the state, its prerogative to arbitrate over life and death, and which resulted into many thousands Nagas being killed, unaccountable numbers injured and maimed, and many more uprooted from their families and everyday social lives. On

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the other hand, after the enactment of Nagaland, the postcolonial state manifested itself as a source of largesse and offered livelihood to many. These historical experiences muddled distinctions between the state as a benevolent provider and protector, and that of a dispenser of bodily violence, between the state as a lucrative resource and a reservoir of public resentment. The way Naga villagers engage and ‘see’ the postcolonial state, I argue, is mediated by this historical ambiguity. Relatedly there is the issue of the locally contested legitimacy of Nagaland state. For many of my Naga friends and interlocutors Nagaland state was made up of liminal institutions, situated at the threshold between their previously deeply contested creations and present-day uncertain futures. What severely complicates local governance and development, Nagaland’s (then) Development Commissioner, reflected, is that Nagaland state is ‘viewed to be a temporary arrangement, pending a final political settlement’ ( Jamir 2002: 3); a half-way house whose architects and residents differ about the design of its final construction. Even as for villagers in Phugwumi and Noksen the state was generally perceived as a source of lucrative resources (jobs, state contracts, development schemes and subsidies), a site of social and political struggle over access to these resources (tribe-wise reservations, the demand for Frontier Nagaland [Chapter 6], and elections [Chapter 7]), and a source of personal symbolic capital (government employment or otherwise accessing state resources comes with considerable status and standing locally), it was also commonly seen as a power imposed from the outside and as clearly set apart from the Naga society over which it came to preside, as though an entity to profit from rather than belong to. From its inception, Nagaland state coexisted and functioned alongside, not just Naga factions, but also tribal apex bodies which assert their own influence and jurisdiction, then in line with state offices and officers, then in opposition to them. Each tribal apex body claims to be the representative voice of their tribe, and their resolutions and decrees command tribal loyalty (Chapter 2). But instead of them accepting Nagaland state as a higher and encompassing entity, tribal bodies have, on various occasions, an in an apparent inverse of ‘normal’ power hierarchies, (temporarily) banned the state, padlocked government offices, and instructed state functionaries to stay away, usually to protest new legislation or policies adjudged as adverse. Naga tribal bodies ‘banning’

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the state is one amongst several consequences that developed from the complex, often fraught, relationship that exists between Naga citizens and the postcolonial state. The next chapter applies moral economy perspectives to understand another consequence of this disconnect, which is Nagaland’s widely noted, and deeply entrenched, ‘crisis of corruption’. This chapter, in a way, builds the framework for this discussion. My wider view, pursued throughout this and the next chapter, is that there exists a distinct and specific link between Nagas’ historical experiences of the postcolonial state and current subjectivities, moral judgments, and contested loyalties.6 In a very different historical and ethnographic context, Didier Fassin (2008: 316) calls ‘embodiment of the past’ the ways in which ‘individual trajectories and collective histories are transcribed into individual and collective bodies, in terms of affects and emotions, disease and comfort, mourning and pleasure’. The past of a people, or its experience of history, in other words, reveal itself in present dispositions and structures of sentiments. Fassin formulates this argument in the backdrop of racial discrimination, the AIDS epidemic, and lasting inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa. Governance and development in Nagaland, I argue, is similarly complicated by an ‘embodiment of the past’ formed out of escalating state violence, dense militarization, and conflict-induced misery. For most Naga villagers, Indian army operations, patrols, and forced relocations (or ‘village grouping’ [Sundar 2011]), were the sites and experiences through which the postcolonial state first produced itself. It was the army officer and his soldiers that became the agents of state, and their sticks, rifle-butts, army boots, aggressive phalluses, and bullets the principles of justice and order. And if in other parts of the country, state actions were subject to legislation, in the Naga highlands new legislation, called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) (more in the section titled ‘Embodied Experiences of State Violence’), was promulgated to abolish existing laws and conventions, downgrading Nagas from ‘citizens’ into ‘subjects’ (Mamdani 1996). ‘The Indian security forces began operations in a way that could very well be termed as a reign of terror’, S.C. Jamir (2016: 121–2) recalled, then continued: Their operation was marked by arrest, killing and torture. There was absolutely no set pattern or general rule behind such atrocity, it was

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wanton and indiscriminate action by the army. The burning of houses and granaries into ashes had become rampant. Added to these extreme measures, the remaining un-burned villages were grouped and barricaded, and people were herded into these specific areas, more like concentration camps than anything else.

Nagaland state itself was a product of violence; its making ‘was preceded by unprecedented violence and misery associated with the mass-based political movement’ ( Jamir 2002: 4). By the time Nagaland state was enacted, Nagas’ experiences made them perceive of the postcolonial state as a repository of violence and despair, as an invading and ruthless force from which there was nothing truly to gain, only oppression and misery to reap. These embodied experiences of state violence, including sentiments of loss, revenge, and resentment became part of a wider dilemma about how to run the new state, and to what end. Added to this was the continuation of Naga insurgency. ‘The movement of the VIP’s [of state] has to be escorted’, Lutra (1974: 16) observed in the violent aftermath of Nagaland statehood. He continued: ‘The security forces continue with their patrolling to ensure that the hostile elements do not indulge in any build-up of their armed strength; also frequent ambushes and sharp skirmishes take place between the two sides’. It was at this juncture, in the combined quest of dissuading Naga insurgents and fostering the local legitimacy of the new state that Centre-driven largesse was added to equation. ‘Simultaneously [with counter-insurgency]’, Lutra added, ‘development work is being rapidly extended in all directions’. This post-statehood extension of development, ‘in all directions,’ was as sudden as it was substantial, and instantly elevated Nagaland into the highest recipient of ‘per capita expenditure of federal funds for any state in India’ (Means 1971: 1016). Such state largesse continued in subsequent decades with development allocations ‘much higher than the national average’ (S.C. Jamir in Ao 1993: 176). Quite abruptly, the coercive landscape created by counterinsurgency became glossed by parallel policies of state generosity and benevolence. In what follows I first discuss Nagas’ experiences of past state violence, as they are remembered and retold in Noksen and Phugwumi. Memory, of course, is not a scientific description of the past, and the

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slippage between history and memory draws considerable scholarship and debate (Cubitt 2007). Yet, in the absence of impartial documentation on the violence that transpired in the Naga uplands it is retelling through memory that remains a prime source for its social reconstruction. I approach these memories not as individual biographies (even as they are), but as structuring an emergent narrative of popular experiences of the postcolonial state. In doing so, I hope to show that there are numerous ways in which the life and conditions of Naga villagers were remade by state violence, and how these intimate, often life altering, experiences of past violence shape contemporary state-society relations. Next, I engage the post-statehood politics of development and state largesse, which I theorize as signifying a paradigmatic shift in which an initial (and unsuccessful) policy of military ‘coercion’ was supplemented by a policy of ‘seduction,’ as I propose to call the deliberate and political usage of state largesse by the Centre in a concerted attempt to expand state institutions and ‘nationalize’ contested space (Baruah 2003b). I borrow this conceptual distinction between ‘coercion’ and ‘seduction’ from Ferguson and Whitehead’s (2000: 7) analysis of the historical expansion of states into ‘tribal zones’. Tactics of coercion, they explained, involved military force and threats, while ‘seduction’ included ‘gifts, trade opportunities, and pledges of political support’. Both approaches nevertheless served the same political purpose of pacifying and incorporating recalcitrant populations into existing state structures. In most cases, expanding states oscillated between these tactical alternatives, making them ‘occur in some kind of blend or mix’. It was a similar mixture, a blend of punitive and rewarding measures that characterized the postcolonial state’s entrance in and enclosure off the Naga highlands. What this produced, in the upshot, was a complex (often confusing) set of historical experiences Nagas came to embody of state apparatuses, ranging between bare violence and generous state monies, loss and largesse, death and donations, humiliations and handouts, deprivation and development. It is out of this debris of contradictions that arose the many and powerful complexities of Nagas’ understandings and evaluations of the postcolonial state. The next section first discusses, in some more detail, the contested origins and legitimacy of Nagaland state.

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The Making of Nagaland State Influenced by Verrier Elwin’s views on tribal lifeworlds, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his foreword to Elwin’s A Philosophy for NEFA (1959), that tribal communities in India’s Northeast ‘should develop along the lines of their own genius and [that] we should avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way their own traditional arts and culture’. It was in parts a follow-up on this philosophy, but primarily as a projected political compromise in relation to the Naga demand for Independence, that Nehru assented not only to the enactment of Nagaland state, but also to the crafting of Article 371A to the Constitution, which reads: Notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, no Act of parliament in respect of religious or social practices of the Nagas, Naga customary law and procedure, administration of civil and criminal justice involving decisions according to Naga customary law, ownership and transfer of land and its resources, shall apply to the State of Nagaland unless the Legislative Assembly of Nagaland by a resolution so decides.

This combination of Nagaland statehood and Article 371A made J.H. Hutton, then no longer a colonial officer in the Naga Hills but a Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University, declare: ‘It seems to me that by the formation of the state of Nagaland, protected as it is by clauses in the constitution of India, the Nagas have in fact got more than might have been expected or even desired – complete internal home rule financed by the Indian Government; indeed they have won their war’ (cited in Steyn 2002: 118). In another commentary, Hutton nevertheless cautioned: The bitterness which has been engendered by the army occupation is perhaps one of the major obstacles in obtaining a settlement [with the NNC] … The Indian Army naturally unable to cope with extremely mobile guerrillas took to burning villages and destroying crops, no doubt behaving in many cases with great brutality. Such acts, Hutton concluded had made matters between Nagas and the Indian state ‘infinitely worse’ and ‘the bitterness which has been engendered by the army occupation is perhaps one of the major obstacles in obtaining a settlement’. (cited in Longchari 2016: 230–231).7

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‘It is still a baffling proposition as to how a tiny district—the district of the Naga Hills of Assam province at first became a Naga Hills-Tuensang Area and then a full-fledged state’, S.C. Jamir (2016: 96), who himself was part of the NPC, reflected. Notwithstanding Jamir’s bafflement, in modern Naga political history few, if any, events remain as controversial and contested as the creation of Nagaland state. Even as the NPC celebrated it as a political achievement, its enactment was mourned by the NNC as contravening their claim for Naga Independence. Such different political positions found themselves remapped unto the poststatehood democratic domain. The Nagaland Nationalist Organization (NNO), the political party that swept the first post-statehood elections in 1964, emphasized, in its manifesto, that the ‘achievement of the Statehood was a triumph of the people’s will’ (cited in Jimomi 2009: 49). Its political adversary, the United Democratic Front (UDF) disagreed: ‘People of no other state in India have made sacrifices like the Naga, so much so that the state of Nagaland is not considered by the Nagas as a gift, but as a state created for a price dearly paid; a sacrifice of over ten thousands lives’ (cited in Nibedon 1978: 282).8 The United Democratic Front won the 1974 state elections. Once in elected office, however, its government was soon dismissed by the Centre which imposed Presidential rule, alleging that the UDF was ‘indirectly encouraging the secessionist activities of the Federal Government of Nagaland’ (Horam 1988: 149). But I am getting ahead of myself. When Nagaland state was brokered into existence, A.Z. Phizo was unequivocal in his judgment of the NPC: ‘They are traitors. Every one of them. They have betrayed us [the NNC] and dishonoured the martyrs who died for our cause’ (cited in Steyn 2002: 118).9 Thence, while Delhi praised NPC members as ‘moderate’ and ‘progressive’ Nagas (Dev 1988: 14), the NNC characterized them as ‘reactionaries’, ‘traitors’, and ‘stooges of the Indian Government’, accusing them of ushering in the new state for their purely personal and pecuniary benefits and so ‘against the will of the people’ (Nuh 1986: 128). Naga pastors, within the NNC, meanwhile invoked the Bible to criticize Nagaland’s creation: It was recalled that, while Moses (symbolizing the rebel leaders) was away in the mountains receiving the Ten Commandments at the hands of the Lord, the Israelites, weary of the privations of the wilderness, went astray and created and worshipped the Golden Calf (of a State within the

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Indian Union). Everyone who had a Bible could read, in Exodus XXXII, what happened then! (Elwin 1961: 67)

On their part, NPC members did not consider themselves as ‘traitors’ but as ‘peace-makers’. Of their motivations, Hokishe Sema (1986: 94), Nagaland’s third Chief Minister, wrote that they were ‘deeply pained’ by the ‘growing grim violence’ and ‘sought to achieve a satisfactory solution to the Naga problems through peaceful negotiation’. Another Naga intellectual, V.K. Nuh (2002: 76), similarly framed the NPC origins and actions: There was a time when the Naga political struggle turned into a nightmare of killing, torturing houses and granaries, which went from bad to worse. It became a concern of every sane person in Nagaland to see a solution. Therefore and burning of, a few leaders came together and formed the Naga People’s Convention in 1957.

It took another two conventions, in 1958 and 1959, for its members to agree on the memorandum and modalities that would result in statehood. From the vantage of the Centre, the making of Nagaland state was accepted ‘out of political necessity’ ( Jamir 2002: 4). ‘While a state is usually a result of an informed and inclusive political and social contract between people’, Longchari (2016: 232) critiques, ‘“Nagaland State” was formed through an Agreement as part of the broader counterinsurgency policy to fracture the Naga Movement’. This political imperative surpassed economic and fiscal considerations, and from the very beginning Nagaland was ‘not economically viable’ ( Jamir 2002: 4). Sanjib Baruah (2003b) sees in this disconnect between economic viability and political autonomy a wider process of ‘cosmetic federalism’ institutionalized across India’s Northeast. In the decades following India’s Independence, India’s Northeast became territorially and political fragmented through the creation of several smaller states, further complicated, in its governance, by a host of autonomous ethnic and district councils, or ‘states within states’. This political fragmentation, Baruah (2003: 937) argues, formulates a strategic response to the multiple tribal and ethnic insurgencies that threaten the disintegration of the region, and is steered towards creating ‘stakeholders in the pan-Indian dispensation’. The measures of political autonomy that result from this, however, remain ‘cosmetic’ because these new states (and councils) are financially

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dependent on largesse from the Centre and have their internal politics closely monitored, and occasionally intervened in, by Delhi’s Home Ministry (Baruah 2003: 915).10 At the time of my fieldwork, five decades of statehood on, Naga underground groups continue to formally reject the legitimacy of Nagaland state, ridicule Naga politicians and bureaucrats as ‘puppets’ controlled from Delhi, and, on the whole, perceive current state structures as liminal and temporary, to be ultimately replaced by a Naga state. But if this disputed legitimacy of Nagaland state complicated its functioning from the beginning, the next section shows how Naga villagers’ social memories and narratives of state violence also shape their relation to and perceptions of the nature of the postcolonial state.

Embodied Experiences of State Violence ‘Some villages, to which underground leaders belonged, were severely punished’, writes Temsula Ao in her collection of stories titled These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone. She continues: The houses were ransacked by the security forces, the grain in their barns was burnt and the people themselves were herded into camps away from the village and kept in virtual imprisonment inside areas fenced in by bamboo stockades. This form of group incarceration was the infamous ‘grouping’ of villages which Nagas hated and dreaded even more than bullets. Numerous stories proliferated of women being molested by the security forces and the obstinate ones who refused to give information being severely beaten; not only that, sometimes they would be hung upside down and subjected to unspeakable tortures like chilli powder being rammed into their extremities.

Published in 2006, this collection of stories evokes the violence, brutality, and misery of the war in the Naga uplands. These stories, though presented as fiction, overlap with many of the memories of state violence Phugwumi and Noksen villagers occasionally shared with me, often solemnly, always painfully.11 More broadly, they recall the experiences of Naga villagers whose lives from the mid-1950s to the present—in various forms and intensities—have been convulsed by insurgency and counter-insurgency. The scale of violence, misery, social and cultural

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dislocation, loss of family, personal suffering, and the fracturing of lives and social bonds often impede comprehension. As one Naga villager told Nandini Sundar (2011: 55): ‘You just can’t imagine how horrible life was. I can’t even put it in words. You have to be there to know it all.’ Or as Temsula Ao (2006: x) reflects in the preface of her book: ‘For the victims the trauma goes beyond the realm of just the physical maiming of loss of life—their humanity is assaulted and violated, and the onslaught leaves the survivors scarred both in mind and soul’. Before proceeding, it must be acknowledged that as the Indo-Naga conflict protracted the designation ‘victim’ became increasingly complicated. Most accounts present the Indo-Naga conflict as a struggle between two sides, and highlight the killings and violence perpetuated by Indian troops on both Naga guerrillas and villagers, in the process essentializing Nagas as the victims of violence. While this is justified as a broad narrative, a more nuanced account of the conflict, as presented in the previous chapter, reveals a more complicated history that includes factional violence, communal outbursts, and Nagas slaying Nagas. These latter stories of violence and suffering, however, remain often ‘silenced’ in the historical and political treatises and rhetoric that emerge from the conflict. While casualties at the hands of Indian security forces are publically recalled and mourned, and the dead elevated to the status of martyrs in annual Naga Independence and Republic Day speeches held by underground leaders,12 silence mostly surrounds the experiences of victims and surviving relatives of intra-Naga violence. In a very different context, Burnet (2012: 112) calls ‘amplified silence’ the ‘action of silencing’ those ‘individual, familial and communal experiences of violence’ that do not fit the accepted political and national narrative. Such silences, Burnet insists, ‘limit the possibilities for reconciliation’. It is perhaps therefore that, in an attempt to foster reconciliation, the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), in 2012, called upon rivalling Naga underground groups and cadres to publicly confess their ‘sinful silence and deeply regrettable history of implicit and complicit involvement [in violence] leading to deepening divisions and suspicions’ (cited in Longchari 2016: 321). This is an important discussion, but one that requires a different research and writing compared to the prime focus of this chapter. Violence first erupted in the mid-1950s, and the subsequent militarization of the landscape ‘ravaged Nagaland on unprecedented scale’

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(Yonuo 1974: 221). This characterization of the violence as ‘unprecedented’ is telling given, first, that blood-feuds, reciprocal head-cutting, and ethics of revenge had long been intrinsic to the Naga ‘habitus’, and, secondly, because barely a decade earlier Kohima had been reduced to ruins and rubble and many Naga villages depleted of its resources as the result of Allied and Japanese forces battling over Kohima, a clash which has been chronicled as amongst the most violent, most destructive battles fought during the Second World War (Swinson 1956). But if ‘unprecedented’ indicates the scale of violence, how does one write about the experience of state violence, especially given the inability of victims themselves to sometimes find words to describe their traumas (‘you have to be there to know it all’). How, then, does one write about violence without descending into morbid facts, figures, and clichés? Words as agony, misery, suffering, torment, trauma or pain; can they ever communicate the bare experience of violence? And equally pertinent; can those of us lucky enough to have never experienced physical cruelty possibly imagine the torment and trauma of violence through the act of hearing and reading about it? These are questions I struggled with as I wrote and rewrote this section. Perhaps the easiest way to engage these questions would be to circumvent them through restating what others have written about the state violence enacted on Naga bodies. I could, for instance, reproduce the horrific tales of killing, torture, rape, the burning of villages and granaries, and the desecration of churches as documented by Kaka Iralu in The Naga Saga (2000). I could also cite the press-releases and occasional papers on state-violence published by the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), or explain the disturbing legalities and workings of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which locally separates law from justice (Kikon 2009b).13 Or perhaps I could simply suffice by emphasizing Misra’s (2000: 55) conclusion that ‘the record of Indian security forces in the matter of human rights in Nagaland is decidedly a negative one,’ leaving the implications of this observation for the reader to imagine. This, however, is not the path I have chosen. In what follows I focus not on verifiable histories of past violence, but on their social afterlives; on the ways memories and narratives of state violence become socially sedimented, at once embodied and emplaced locally. Even as history and

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memory can diverge, ‘there is no sense,’ Fassin (2008: 316) argues, ‘in opposing history to memory as truth to error, or even as objectification to subjectivity. Memory of the past belongs to the history of the present’. Instead, Fassin writes, ‘it may be heuristic to think the relation between past and present as continuous and ambiguous, to apprehend memory as a living link between past and present’ (2008: 315). As such, memory is also a political question. What to remember and retell, and what to forget or relegate to the recesses of memory are, as anthropology teaches, crucial to nationalism and nation-building. An embodied past marked by violence, however, seems particularly hard to disremember. Moreover, and to an extent, it is the remembering and retelling of violence and misery inflicted by military and paramilitary troops that irrigates a Naga national consciousness of historical suffering and reinvigorates sentiments of Naga nationalism. Nordstrom (2004: 224–6) writes: ‘Violence is not only enacted in the present—the immediacy of the act of harm—but violence has a tomorrow … it reconfigures its victims and the social milieu that hosts them.’ Not a phenomenon bound in time and space, violence ‘cast ripples that reconfigure lives in the most dramatic of ways, affecting constructs of identity in the present, the hopes and potentialities of the future, and even the renditions of the past’ (Nordstrom and Robben 1995:  5). Veena Das (2007: 1), in her extensive scholarship on communal violence, similarly demonstrates how experiences of violence ‘attaches itself with its tentacles into everyday life’ where it ‘is folded into ongoing relationships’, including, as is our focus here, the relationship between Naga citizens and the postcolonial state. Experiences of violence, suffering and loss are very personal and intimate ones. However, the moment a person narrates his or her experiences, they become social facts, and if such narratives—each unique, but each also part of a wider pattern—are narrated by many they turn into a collective consciousness. While the 1997 ceasefire led to a drastic reduction of state violence (more in the section titled ‘ceasefire uncertainties’), it is through narrating the experiences of particular violence that, among Nagas, a shared social memory of national suffering and community is constructed, passed onto the current ‘ceasefire generation’, and which positions the Naga in opposition to the perceived ‘Other’, the Indian state and its armed forces.14 Violence and community, Pandey

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(2004: 3–4) argues, ‘constitute one another’; ‘in the history of any society, narratives of particular experiences of violence go towards making the “community”’. Among Nagas today, narratives and memories of violence, indeed, have turned an evocative part of the articulation of the Naga nation. This is not to argue that all Naga villagers who experienced state violence wish to talk about this. Some argue that whatever happened in the past is either ‘unspeakable’ or best forgotten, and reason along the lines that there is no point in burdening the current post-ceasefire generation about their past suffering, as such experiences have little direct bearing on their everyday lives and aspirations. Most villagers however do speak about it. They tell that from the mid-1950s onward several waves of violence rolled over Phugwumi and Noksen (and most Naga villages); that days and lifeworlds were shattered, houses and granaries burnt, lives uprooted, cattle killed or set loose, and social realities transformed forever. In recalling the violence, Phugwumi and Noksen villagers usually refer to specific incidents that have taken place; a particular killing, arrest, shoot-out, beating, a collective fine, the burning of houses, or a prolonged curfew that prevented them from cultivating their fields. They also speak about particular army officers, whose names they have not forgotten, and demeanor, temper, and acts they remember, usually for the worse. What follows therefore is not a linear account of state violence, but a bundle of short narrations, remarks, and memories as told by villagers, more or less adapted straight from my fieldwork notes. ‘I remember the stamping sound of army boots on the soil. Black, heavy boots. They hurt badly when they kicked me with it,’ Chongsen, a Noksen elder, recalls. When the Naga Movement began several Noksen villagers joined the NNC’s Naga Army, and this had made the entire village ‘suspicious’ to the eyes of the Indian Army, which regularly patrolled the village. ‘Twice the army set fire to this sector,’ Yapla remembers, ‘They wanted to punish us for supporting the NNC. My house too was burned down. All our possessions were lost’. Others in Noksen talk about the experience of being herded, ‘like animals’, into an open compound, the elderly, women, and children not exempted. ‘They asked us questions about the whereabouts of NNC members. When we did not know the answer they beat us. From morning till evening we had to stay. We were not allowed to have our food or even go for toilet.’

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‘We wanted to fight man to man’, an NNC veteran tells me one evening. ‘But the Indian Army went after our loved ones. When they found out which house in the village belonged to my family, they broke the roof and told my wife that they would kill her if I did not surrender.’ Surrendering he did: ‘I want Naga Independence, but not at the cost of my wife’s life’. The event most vividly remembered and talked about in Phugwumi was the villagers’ conscription for the construction of two spiked bamboo walls all-around the village. Bringing in the bamboo from the forest, cutting, sharpening, and connecting them; it had taken the villagers’ weeks of forced labour. The army wanted the wall to severe supply links they suspected existed between Phugwumi and Naga fighters scurrying in the jungle below. Once the bamboo wall was in place, entry and exit became restricted to a single village gate staffed by soldiers around the clock and whose prerogative it became to decide who was, and who was not, allowed to leave the village for purposes of cultivation. When the Naga Army was thought to be nearby, the village was sealed off completely with no villager being allowed to pass through the gate for several days, sometimes longer. Soon agricultural outputs declined, introducing, for the first time in the villagers’ memory, acute scarcity in the village. Cattle and pigs bred within the village emancipated quickly, even died, as grasses and fodder could no longer be brought in. Even stories were no longer told: ‘Before the army erected a camp next to our village, elders and youth would often gather in compounds to tell stories and talk’, a Phugwumi elder explains. ‘But the army did not allow us to gather in groups. From that hilltop [pointing his finger to an elevated spot in the landscape] they were studying our movements with binoculars and large flashlights. If they would see us gather they would take immediate action.’ Living in such an encampment came with numerous volatilities and vulnerabilities. Another village elder recalls the following incident: ‘Why are you returning so late from the jungle?’ The soldiers at the gate kept on repeating this question to me. Since we had not been allowed to go to our fields for several days because of a curfew, I had tried to finish as much work as possible that day. As a result, I arrived back at the village gate a little after dark. The soldiers accused me of having met the NNC in the jungle. When I denied they beat me with their fists on my ear and my chest. I have become nearly deaf early on in life. I know it is because of that day’s beating.

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Akin to social memory in Noksen, many in Phugwumi speak about being herded into compounds: Once all the villagers had gathered, they ripped of the shirts of the men. If their back was neat and clean they were arrested for being part of the NNC because those who worked in the fields usually worked without shirts and therefore dirt and sunburn would be visible on their backs. They also arrested those who did not look them into the eyes, saying, ‘you can’t face us so you must be NNC’. Those who were arrested returned in a terrible shape. They would not speak of what had happened. But we know it must have been terrible.

A name villagers often mention, in relation to experiences of violence, is that of a certain Captain Sharma. They remember him as especially brutal and violent, of having beaten up several villagers, and savagely at that. In an act of hidden resistance, the Phugwumi villagers had collectively prayed for divine intervention. The prayer, as it was narrated to me, proceeded along the following lines: ‘If Captain Sharma is a good man please bestow blessings upon him. However, if he is a bad man please give him punishment.’ Soon after this mass prayer, Captain Sharma’s vehicle, in which he was travelling with his family, slipped off the road, killing his wife and daughter on the spot. ‘Only God knows’, a village elder replied when I ask him whether he thinks this accident was the result of the villagers’ prayer. My field-diaries contain many more memories and narratives of state violence, but I confine this discussion to one more instance. ‘When I was growing up, our neighbour, who was also my uncle, joined the NNC,’ Razukhrü tells me. ‘The army found out about him. They would call on our house often, then in the morning, then in the afternoon, then in the middle of the night. Each time they questioned my father, asking him whether my uncle had come to the village. My father and uncle had agreed that each time my father would give the same answer: “yes, he came to our village the other day, but he left soon after”. If my father would have denied my uncle’s coming, even if he had not visited for weeks or months, the army would not have believed him, beaten him, or worse’.

Telling what the army wanted to know, even if not true, it was one of the many twisted ways in which villagers sought to protect themselves from state violence.

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The character of state violence, the misery and suffering afflicted, was, as noted, ‘unprecedented’ ( Jamir 2002: 4), and what this caused was an extraordinarily fractured relationship, lingering resentment, and deep animosity between the postcolonial state and Naga villagers. Ursula Bower, who, during the colonial era had worked among the Zeme Naga, anticipated such lingering sentiments early on when, in the 1960s, she commented on the escalating state violence: Another item in the sum, and a grimly weighty one, is the hate and distrust of India which is growing in the long-memoried Nagas. Matters are currently at such a pitch that things will probably bedevil Indo-Naga relations for the next two or three centuries, as the doings of Cromwellian generals in Ireland bore unexpected and bitter fruit in World War II.15

The postcolonial Indian state is of course not a monolithic entity, and as it expanded its authority over the Naga uplands not all of its apparatuses were primarily disciplinary and retaliatory in its actions. But certainly before the making of Nagaland state, for most Naga villagers the form and character of the postcolonial state equated the actions of India’s military and paramilitary forces, and in prodding villagers’ understanding and views of the postcolonial state, it were memories of violence that dominated our conversations. Such experiences made many Naga men and women to ‘see’ the postcolonial state with suspicion, fear, and resentment. Such structures and sentiments are not usually directed at Nagaland state apparatuses, which are mostly staffed by fellow Nagas, but which they also know is merely the facade, or ‘mask’ (Abrams 1988) behind which the ‘real’ powers of the deep postcolonial state exist and on whose behest the armed forces operate, the AFSPA is kept in place, and the landscape remains densely militarized.

Ceasefire Uncertainties ‘Finish your rice or else I call the Indian Army to arrest you!’, Athe’s daughter-in-law reprimands her daughter. Atone, eight years old, is throwing a tantrum. She is twisting and turning on her small stool, smearing some of the rice on her cheeks and refusing to touch the pieces of pork-fat on her plate. Her mother’s threat of informing the Indian

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Army, while obviously a joke, makes her cry. Despite her young age, Atone has already learned to associate the Indian Army with ‘punishment’ and ‘danger’. This is not because of actual experiences early on in Atone’s life. She, after all, is a child of the ceasefire. But it is based on the reproving and resentful remarks her father, grandfather, and other relatives make whenever an army vehicle passes by the village, which, in spite of the ceasefire, happens with notable frequency. This reprimand made to Atone is part of the many small and bigger ways in which a consciousness of social suffering at the hands of the ‘violent other’ is transmitted from one Naga generation to the next. The 1997 ceasefire drastically reduced state violence. For Naga villagers the post-ceasefire state is generally engaged with as a lucrative resource, the accessing of which comes with social prestige. At the same time, however, Nagaland remains heavily militarized, which not only reminds villagers about the possibility of violence re-emerging, but also inspires the retelling of past experiences of state violence. Amongst village youth—most of whose lives are not personally touched by direct violence—there exists a clear cultivated sense that the state’s current role as a ‘benefactor’ is not inherently stable, but could give way to its earlier manifestations as a force that could be coercive and cruel. During the first years of the ceasefire, an army camp continued to exist at Phugwumi’s outskirts, and which made Phugwumi villagers and Indian soldiers interact on an almost daily basis. With the guns silent, such interactions were devoid of open hostilities and violence, but nevertheless were permeated by unequal power hierarchies, occasional fear and suspicion, and lingering resentments. The following two examples, narrated by Athe, illustrate this. The army camp was close to the school where my daughter was teaching. To reach the school, she had to pass by the camp. The commandant got some feeling for her, and often, in the evening, he would come to my house. He would address me politely as ‘Sir’ and sit down. I had no choice but to serve him tea and sometimes food. It made me feel uneasy. I had seen the brutality the army was capable of. But what could I do? Once, I had to go to Kohima and my wife and daughter were alone in the house. That evening the Army commandant came. Later my wife told me how terrified she had been that night, fearing that in my absence he would try something on our daughter.

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A soldier had taken away a large amount of my firewood that I had cut nicely into pieces and left in the jungle to collect it later. It made me angry and I went straight up to the army camp and told the commandant that I am a poor man and that if you take away my firewood then how will I survive? The commandant asked me to enter the camp and gave me some eggs. Then he told me: ‘I know who you are. I know your past. I know you were in the NNC. Tell me, how many soldiers did you kill?’ His question took me by surprise. I told him not to talk about those things anymore and walked out of the camp. My firewood I did not get back.

Even as the ceasefire prolonged and saturated, Noksen and Phugwumi villagers knew that the conflict’s potential re-emergence in ever more violent forms always remained just behind the scene of the Indo-Naga negotiations. ‘Ceasefire or no ceasefire. Anything can spark the army into action, and then anything can happen,’ as Nebo once articulated the lingering threat of violence. That ‘anything can happen’ was made evidently clear to the Phugwumi villagers in an incident that took place a few years before I commenced my fieldwork, an which Nebo—one of its main protagonists—narrated to me. One day around twenty fully uniformed and armed national workers appeared in front of my house. The faction they belonged to was not part of the ceasefire. They had come to our village to meet one of their leaders, who was our villager, but they had found him not to be around. They asked me to serve them tea. When they left I asked them whether they were going to stay in our village for the night. They would not, they said. This was a lie. But that I found out only later. Early the next morning our village chairperson called me to come to his house immediately because there was a ‘situation’. He did not tell me anything else, just ‘situation.’ When I left my house I saw that the Indian Army was everywhere in the village. As I walked up, three soldiers pointed their guns at me. ‘Where did you change your clothes?’, one of them asked me angrily. At first, I did not know what he meant but then I realised that he was accusing me of being part of the underground group that had come to our village the previous day. Somehow they army had found out about it. I knew the army commandant personally because in those days I was part of the VDB. The army looked upon us as village leaders and they tried to be on friendly terms. Several times the commandant had

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invited me and other leaders to their camp for dinner and drinks. But this time he was very angry. He asked me whether the underground had visited my house. I denied. But he kept repeating the same question and shouted: ‘Don’t lie! I know everything. They came to your house at 11.30 in the morning yesterday’. I was taken aback by this information because it was true. But since I had already denied, I could not change my position anymore as they would have beaten me for lying to them. So I continued to deny. Then I learned that the national workers had stayed overnight in our village, dividing themselves over different houses. Now, the army wanted to punish those who had hosted them. But everyone in the village denied having seen them. After several hours the army left our village. The next day the army commandant called the village chairperson and me to his camp in Pfutsero. Again he asked many questions. I only gave him useless replies. He said that he was disappointed with me: ‘We [the Army] constructed a large community building in your village for your development and welfare. We spent a lot of money and did all the work for you. We helped you. We worked together, and now you are lying to me. This is not how you should behave’. But I just kept quiet. A few months later I happened to meet the commandant at the State Bank of India in Pfutsero. He was in civil dress. He patted me on my shoulder and said: ‘You are very brave. I knew the national workers had come to your house. All the facts were with me. Still you kept denying.’ Now, whenever we see each other we smile.

There are a number of things to note about this incident, but what I wish to highlight here is the commandant’s invocation of the army’s postceasefire ‘help’ and ‘generosity’ bestowed on the Phugwumi villagers in terms of development, and the cooperation and loyalty he had expected (but not received) from the villagers in return. This brings us to the next section which, more broadly, discusses how after Nagaland statehood the Centre-led policy of ‘military coercion’ became supplemented by the offering of state largesse in a concerted attempt to dissuade Naga villagers away from the politics of insurgency.

Development as Seduction To say that post-statehood development has not been an unmitigated success story in Nagaland would be an understatement of the corruption

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and misgovernance reported all across (Chapter 5). Nagaland today lags behind on various development indices, as compared to Indian national averages. This, however, as noted in this chapter’s introduction, is not due to any monetary neglect from the Centre, which instead allocated disproportionate amounts of development funds to Nagaland. This influx of state largesse has been variously noted by historians and commentators on Nagaland; Nibedon (1978: 201) refers to it as the sudden ‘overflow of cash and funds’, Singh (2004: 85) captures it as a ‘floodgate of money from the government of India’, Nuh (1986: 128) as ‘money is poured on us’, while Sanyu (1992: 269) talks about the arrival of ‘material inducement in terms of crores of rupees’. This raises several questions. Why, from the mid-1960s onward, did Nagaland state receive development budgets that are well above the national average—especially given that Nagaland, while lagging behind on various development indices, does not figure amongst India’s poorest regions? If not to counter extreme poverty, what justified, on part of the Centre, the exaggerated development budgets channeled to the state? Why, after decades of failed development and corruption (Chapter 5), does Nagaland remain the uncritical recipient of such largesse? And what, in its final evaluation, do all these development schemes and budgets effectuate locally, besides failing to significantly improve the overall material welfare of Naga villagers? Most official and technocratic readings of this post-statehood scenario explain that Nagaland state became a focal point of Centre-led development because its citizens are marginalized. First, they are marginalized because they reside in a region that has not benefitted proportionally from India’s economic growth. They are also marginalized because its populace belongs to the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category and is generally believed to be ‘by nature’ backward. Moreover, they are triply marginalized because as a ‘residual fallout of colonial politics and administration’ (Phanjoubam 2009: 159), Nagaland and the wider Northeastern region became a ‘remote land’ overnight as partition cut it off from the rest of India except for a narrow corridor between Nepal and Bangladesh. ‘The trauma of partition in 1947’, a government report (2008: 1) reads, ‘took the [Northeastern] region backwards by at least a quarter of a century’. But while each of these readings can be supported by facts and figures, this section offers an alternative interpretation and suggests that the

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state largesse bestowed upon Nagaland must also be read as a political act and artifice. In this view, the state largesse bequeathed on Nagaland was a politically motivated process designed to dissuade Naga leaders, and later also villagers, from the politics of Naga insurgency by tying their livelihoods to existing state structures and the political status quo.16 If so, the improving of material welfare in Naga villages, even if a welcome side effect, was neither the main objective of state largesse nor the criteria for evaluating development’s successes and failures. To grasp this political process I draw on James Ferguson’s (1990) seminal work that approaches development as a deceptive ‘anti-politics machine’. Ferguson’s main thesis is simple and controversial and holds that apparatuses of planned development reconfigure what are quintessentially ‘political questions on land, resources, job, or wages as technical “problems” responsive to the technical “development” intervention’ (1990: 27). A corollary of this argument goes that irrespective of whether a development initiative fails or succeeds, the entrance of development institutions and projects end up enhancing the state’s political dominance and control of the target area and its populace. Planned development, including government functions and services, Ferguson (1994: 253) showed in the context of Lesotho, ‘are never simply “services” provided by a “government” whose purpose is to serve, but must also be understood as “services” which serve to govern’. Development initiatives so operate as an ‘anti-politics machine’ to expand a state’s reach and control in a region. This realization makes both the idea and practice of state-led development a deeply political undertaking. However, whereas for Ferguson the increased levels of state control that result from ‘development’ could well be an unintended ‘side-effect’ and ‘not necessarily the consequence of any kind of conspiracy’ (Ferguson 1994: 275), it is the argument of ‘political conspiracy’, so to speak, that I emphasize to explain why Nagaland, and not any other Indian state, became the highest recipient of Central development funds. It was the domain of development, I pose, through which the political subjugation of Nagas was achieved, in ways military coercion had failed.17 ‘Ultimately,’ Longchari (2016: 236–42) writes, ‘India through “Nagaland State” has wrested more control over the lives of the people … through appeasing and co-opting an amenable section of

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Naga political society’. It is this political process that I call the ‘policy of seduction’.18 In arguing so, I align with Baruah’s (2003b: 916–7) reading of ‘developmentalism’ in neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh. In the context of China’s territorial claims deep into Arunachal Pradesh, and with memories of India’s defeat during the 1962 Indo-China war still fresh, developmentalism, Baruah writes, became a ‘national security driven process’ geared towards increasing the state’s penetration and control in this area, both through co-opting local elites and the extension of the physical infrastructure of state. Unlike in uncontested national spaces, Baruah (2003b: 921) explains, where routine practices of government (for example, taxes, voting, and public order) ‘reproduce the consent of the governed’ in politically contested (and previously lightly administrated areas) such as Arunachal Pradesh (as well as Nagaland), the active penetration and visibility of postcolonial state institutions was deemed ‘necessary to reinforce among the people of the region the sense that they are part of a pan-Indian national community’. Development, in Arunachal Pradesh, then, was exerted ‘in the pursuit of the goal of nationalizing space’ (Baruah 2003b: 917). Unlike the case of Arunachal Pradesh, where ‘nationalizing space’ was embarked upon to counterweigh the external threat posed by China, in Nagaland ‘developmentalism’ was used to co-opt and corrode the perceived ‘internal threat’ of Naga insurgency. After Nagaland’s enactment, writes Udayon Misra (2000: 54), ‘the Centre started pumping in massive sums of money in a clear effort to wean away sections of the Naga people from the politics of insurgency.’19 This sustained development attention was not driven by The Will to Improve, as Tania Li (2007) captures relentless development regimes that claim improving living conditions of populations as their goal, but a political process aimed at enclosing and penetrating the Naga highlands. Gradually, the new state and its resources came to encapsulate the lives and social imagination of increasing numbers of Nagas, although often so in ambiguous ways. This political intent behind state largesse has not escaped Naga critics. The throwing of money, Nuh (1986: 128) reflects, ‘really worked among the Nagas’. L. Ao (2002: 2) agrees: ‘It is true to note, “it is easier to win over the minds of the Nagas with Indian currency than with bullets” as commented by Indian policy makers who have tested this

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method and found it perfectly working on contemporary Naga society.’ Horam (1988: 245) added: ‘Some Indian officers even go on to remark with clicking their tongues triumphantly like: “Nagas are divided, they have been bought by us with money and wine”’. What emerged after Nagaland statehood, and as a result of the policy of ‘seduction’, was a form of secessionism; a kind of secession in which an initially relatively small (but quickly expanding) section of Naga politicians and bureaucrats separated themselves from the wider Naga society and became immensely wealthy by positioning themselves against Naga insurgency and in favour of the new political status quo of Nagaland state. The first stakeholders of state largesse were post-statehood Naga politicians. When Charles Pawsey, visited Nagaland in 1965, just two years into statehood, he expressed his disgust witnessing Kohima-based politicians ‘live like fighting cocks, smoke Player cigarettes, and consume vast qualities of spirits’. While the NNC demanded the rolling back of Nagaland state structures, ‘it is unlikely’, Pawsey predicted (rightly so), that Naga politicians ‘will willingly renounce the sweets of office’ (cited in Steyn 2002: 137). In the aftermath of statehood, the FGN, too, lambasted ‘the conduct of a few Naga mercenary politicians who are thriving at the nursery of India and have carnivorous appetites’ (cited in Nuh 2002: 99). It was the old trade of self-interest, allegedly pursued by Naga politicians, which, after Nagaland statehood, complicated the Naga political landscape. Incidental statements that emerge from Delhi subscribe to this reading of development as ‘seduction’, and occasionally invoke its fallouts. A former Union Minister admitted that public expenditure in Nagaland, and other conflict-ridden areas in India’s Northeast, has become part of the problem: ‘We are using corruption as a mode of cohesion, and we are not able to completely recognize its dimensions.’ State resources, Ramesh (2005: 2–3) continues, are not utilized for development but function to ‘ensure cohesiveness of this society with the rest of India through a series of interlocutors who happen to be politicians, expatriate contractors, extortionists, anybody but people working to deliver benefits to the people for whom these expenditures are intended’. Read thus, post-statehood Naga politicians and bureaucrats became corrupt not just because of their debauchery and decadence, but also because the  post-statehood system and policies made corruption easy and

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profitable. The next chapter discusses some of the unrecognized dimensions of this policy of ‘procuring patriotism’. The next section, however, first examines another manifestation of the policy of seduction, namely the disproportionate numbers of Naga government employees in the state machinery.

Government Employment as Rehabilitation Manuals on government employment instruct that officers and staff should be recruited based on their merit and motivation, the possession of particular skill sets, their loyalty and commitment to the state, and that appointments be made against existing vacancies created on the basis of rational-legal need assessments. One look at the staffing of the civil services in Nagaland topples all this. In government departments and offices across the state people are regularly appointed through ‘back-doors’ and bribery. Time and again, Nagaland newspapers report about ‘bogus employment’, ‘proxy jobs’, ‘fraud selection procedures’, and ‘excess appointments’. That objective need-assessments are readily abandoned in the allocation of government jobs soon became evident to me in Phugwumi and Noksen where I met forest guards posted to areas without forests, typists in offices without computers, cooks in offices without kitchen, malaria offices in places where no malaria ever occurrs, and countless peons and chowkidars only superficially associated with government offices. I will deal with some of the politics of government employment and the pilfering of state resources in chapters five and seven. Here I highlight the statistical given that Nagaland is not only the country’s highest recipient of central government funds, but also possesses ‘India’s highest ratio of government servants to the population’ (Nagaland Post 2016d), and which can be interpreted as another component of the post-statehood policy of ‘seduction’. When Nagaland was enacted only few Nagas were in government service. Those Nagas part of the colonial administration, and whose jobs were initially transferred to Assam’s civil administration after Independence, had been made to resign by the NNC during the 1950s on the ground that no Naga should serve the postcolonial Indian government. All of this changed, and drastically at that, with the arrival of Nagaland statehood, after which large numbers of Nagas became

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inducted into the civil administration, often so in disregard of existing vacancies. Salaries were directly paid by the Centre, which took it ‘upon itself to provide everything, including employment’ ( Jamir 2002: 4). Not a few of those inducted into Nagaland government service were former Naga guerrillas, Athe included, who was offered a government job in ‘reward’ for his coming ‘overground’. This became part of a larger post-statehood pattern in which government employment was offered as ‘rehabilitation’ for those who agreed to leave the Naga Movement. To explore this, let us visit the house of a retired Chang politician, who was a Nagaland Minister during the first decade of statehood. ‘When I became MLA, the situation was very bad in the Chang area,’ Cholen begins as I ask him to reflect on his time in state politics. ‘Many had joined the NNC and the Indian Army was carrying out operations against each and every Chang village.’ Cholen then explains that, after statehood, the Centre expected Naga politicians to do their part in convincing Naga guerrillas to come ‘overground’, and that offering them ‘rehabilitation’ in terms of government employment and state benefits was adopted as the prime method. Cholen narrates: When I became MLA, I approached all the underground cadres in the Chang region. Many of them I knew personally. Some had been my classmates. I told them: ‘Look, I have become an MLA now. I want to bring peace and development to our Chang people. But if you are here, there will certainly be trouble. You cannot survive in the jungle for long. You are bound to come to villages. But whichever village you stay, the Army will blame the villagers for hosting and feeding you, and Army operations will follow. At that time you will not be a silent spectator, but seek revenge. Many problems will follow from this. We have already been given statehood. The best thing for you to do is to surrender and live in peace’.

To facilitate their surrender, Cholen, in his capacity as a state Minister, offered them government employment and state benefits. I told them: ‘those of you who can read and write I will give you whichever government service you like. You tell me the department, and I will have you appointed there’. Many of them agreed and gave up arms. During my time, I inducted a large number of underground cadres into the government and made them teachers, peons, chowkidars, linemen, and officers

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in the Public Works and Public Health Departments. Those undergrounds who were uneducated I could not give government service. But I rehabilitated them in other ways. Some of them I gave money and rice, others a plot of land in Tuensang town. In this way, many underground cadres came overground during my time.

Several theorists have pointed out that, in crude terms, the rationale of counter-insurgency relies on ‘cost-benefit’ reasoning (Sundar 2012). If during the 1950s and early 1960s the Centre attempted to increase the ‘costs’ for Naga villagers to join the Movement—increasing the chances for a Naga cadre to be captured, seeing one’s house and granary burned, one’s village regrouped, or be tortured and killed—Cholen’s offering of secure and stable government employment to ‘seduce’ Naga undergrounds in giving up arms communicated a new approach that sought to augment the ‘benefits’ of not being associated with Naga insurgency. In using his political position to offer government employment, Cholen was no exception, and over the past decades a large number (though statistics on this appear non-existent) of Naga guerrillas were ‘rehabilitated’ as Nagaland government employees with the type and seniority of the job offered contingent on the national worker’s level of education, the type and number of arms he surrendered with him, and his position in the rank-and-file of the Naga Movement. While such surrender-cum-rehabilitation schemes are often negotiated individually, they were occasionally concluded en masse. When the Revolutionary Government of Nagaland (RGN) surrendered in 1973 (Chapter 2), roughly 1500 of its cadres were inducted into the Border Security Forces in Nagaland and subsequently lived their lives on government salaries. Its commandant, Scato Swu, in turn, was rewarded with a Presidential nomination into the Raja Sabha. Over the years, significant numbers of NSCN cadres have been similarly ‘rehabilitated’. Several of the soldiers of the Naga Reserve Battalion that was dispatched to Phugwumi to oversee the smooth conduct of polling (Chapter 7) told me about their ‘previous lives’ in the NSCN-IM’s Naga Army, but from which they had, for various reasons, resigned, after which they were inducted into the Naga Reserve Battalion. This policy and practice of rehabilitating national workers by offering them state employment may not be the only reason for Nagaland’s ‘huge overloaded government structure’ ( Jamir 2002: 4).

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However, Nagaland’s status as possessing the country’s highest ratio of government employees (and its impact on contemporary governance, especially in view of the ‘split loyalties’ of most rehabilitated cadres) cannot be understood without reference to the policy of ‘seduction’ meant to tempt Naga guerrillas away from the politics of insurgency and ‘tie’ them to the political status quo. The Naga National Council, on its part, initially tried to resist such policies, at times applying force to ensure Naga civil servants resign from their posts. However, as the Indo-Naga conflict protracted, and with no livelihood opportunities to offer Naga villagers, the NNC, and later the NSCN, gradually accepted that Nagaland state and the policy of ‘seduction’ had divided Nagas politically into two—the people of the new state and the people supporting Naga Independence—although the boundaries between them always had (and has) very many crossings. Over time, Naga underground groups discontinued its earlier practice of condemning those Nagas who joined the offices of Nagaland state. At the same time, the NSCN-IM emphasizes the ‘temporality’ of current state structures and government jobs, stating, in the words of its (then) President: If, recognising the Indian Constitution, you work in the Government offices, I will not call you ‘traitors’. I only will say—learn the work as much as you can so that in future you can serve our own national Government. We know, for a living you have to work, but don’t be greedy or indulge in luxury when the period will commence for the last struggle which is not far away; we hope, wherever you are you will fight from there. (cited in Maitra 1991: 131)

The Rise of ‘Neo-Tribal Developmentalism’ Understanding the relationship between Naga citizens and the postcolonial state, of which Nagaland state structures are part, requires a critical appreciation of how embodied experiences of a painful and ambiguous past shapes how Naga men and women ‘see’ the state. In this chapter, I attempted to spell out some of these historical experiences Nagas have of the state, emphasizing how Nagas ambivalent relationship with the state and its development resources must be situated in the history of the present.

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I end this chapter with a final observation and reflection, which is the post-statehood rise of sharp material inequalities and emergent ‘elitism’ in Naga society. What makes this societal conversion to an apparent class-society particularly noteworthy are past and still popular characterizations of Nagas as egalitarian, allegedly not because they traditionally lacked material possessions but based on cherished and age-old principles that promoted communitarianism, complimentary co-existence (Bendangjungshi 2012: 124; Biswas and Suklabaidya 2008: 184; Thong 2014: 158), and collectivism over individualism (Sema 1986: 10). This Naga egalitarianism, the absence of marked class-divisions, and a moral economy steered by relational principles of community welfare received abundant praise from colonial officers, and was invoked by Phizo, and his NNC, to brand Naga otherness and set it apart from an Indian society that was constituted hierarchically (see Dumont 1980). Phizo wrote thus: In our country land belongs to the people as private property, and every family possesses land…. Every family is a landlord; but, there is no landlordism in Nagaland…. It is needless to say, we love to retain our Naga age-old culture of classless society as we are.

Or in the words of T. Sakhrie: ‘We are all equals … we have no caste distinctions, no high or low class of people’ (cited in Horam 1988: 64–5). In a recent restatement of such an identity economy, Kaka Iralu (2002: 13) distinguished between the ‘Naga’ and ‘Indian economy’, arguing that despite India’s vast wealth there remain ‘millions of pathetic homeless and landless Indians’. While Naga society might be poorer materially, the first Naga beggar is yet to be born as every Naga family ‘has a house to stay in and a plot of land to procure their basic needs’. This is because, Iralu explains, a strong cultivated sense of community and kinship networks that safeguards basic existence for all Nagas. Such projections of communitarian Naga villages, while not wrong as a broad principle, are no doubt somewhat exaggerated, and at times ill-fit the existence of clan-hierarchies, gender inequalities, and hereditary chieftainship among some Naga communities.20 And even if rough egalitarianism did prevail in the deep past, the social and economic structures that supported it already experienced drastic change during colonial rule and the associated emergence of an educated class. Those

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Nagas who first received education, mostly in mission schools, and became employed in colonial offices, more often than not alienated themselves from their own community and ‘tended to consider themselves in a class of their own, with superior knowledge and achievement’ (Thong 2012: 901).21 In spite of such historical complications, images of Naga egalitarianism portray a remarkable resilience in postcolonial scholarship on Naga pasts. Vashum (2005: 14), for instance, writes: ‘They [the Naga] are basically classless and casteless but egalitarian in structure … Some kind of communism was prevalent and this makes some people feel that the Nagas had a proto mode of socialism’. Lanunungsang Ao (2002: 5) agrees, insisting that ‘Naga society was classless … [and that] equality was the base of social relations’ (2002: 5). Singh (2004: 16), in turn, emphasizes the ‘non-existence of bourgeois nature of the property system’ given that ‘the ancient Nagas’ wants were limited and [that] they were self-satisfied’, while a senior Naga government officer once explained me how ‘class distinctions have no place in our Naga society. We Nagas are egalitarian by blood’. This idea personified itself one day when I was introduced to a person by the name ‘Egalitarian’; it was the name her parents had chosen for her. Against such readings, even a cursory analysis of contemporary Naga society suggests that much has changed, and reveals the existence of sharp, and still rising, social and economic disparities, the visible presence of a Naga tribal elite, and, on the whole, a disposition towards accumulation. This new Naga elite exploits new opportunities to expand their wealth, often to the disadvantage of their less-positioned clan and village members, by buying up swathes of land, starting new businesses, and constructing large mansions in Nagaland’s urban centers, especially in the Dimapur plains where a certain ward has already been popularly renamed as ‘Beverly Hills’.

An Interlude: A Culturalist Thesis In not a few Phugwumi houses today barns (khi) store paddy that is rotting and smell musky. Rats, mice, and other small lives gnaw through the plaited bamboo and daily siphon off grains. It hardly worries the owners. Most of the paddy was old, brought in several harvests ago.

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‘This paddy is not for eating, only for storing’, a Phugwumi farmer tells me as he guides me through the granary attached to his kitchen, and which stores at least a dozen barns filled to the brim. ‘This one’, he says as he gently placed his hand on a particular barn, ‘the paddy inside is fourteen years old’. In the set-up of contemporary economic life in Phugwumi, to own paddy gone bad—to possess more than can possibly be eaten—communicated wealth and prosperity, and drew societal admiration. This disposition towards accumulation, and the rise in village social hierarchy this effectuated, expresses a marked disjuncture with economic principles and moralities of the village past. In the erstwhile moral economy of the village ‘excess paddy’ produced by farmers—seen as a reflection of their personal skills, strength, and success in agriculture— was not permitted to rot, even less so was paddy gone bad worthy of self-praise, admiration, and social ascendancy. Instead, the purpose of accruing paddy was to redistribute it as part of an elaborate and ritualized social institution known in anthropological annals as the Naga feast of merit (called zhotho müza in Phugwumi), a practice that was long common to most (though not all) Naga tribes until it was discouraged by mostly Welsh and American missionaries. As a culturalist thesis, one that remains partial and patchy, I suggest that the disappearance of the Naga feast of merit provides the cultural undergrowth for the wider societal shift from an economy that was considerably communitarian and reliant on morals of redistribution to a present-day economy of accumulation. Researching the Nagas in the 1930s, Fürer-Haimendorf (1939: 19) witnessed ‘hundreds and thousands of megalithic monuments’ with each of them erected to commemorate the ‘fame and generosity’ of a particular feast-giver in whose name the megalith had been pulled (see Figure 4.1). On further inquiry, he found that, among Nagas, one’s social status and standing did not rely on the accumulation of wealth, but that social ascendancy could be achieved through a person dispensing his wealth by becoming a feast-giver. For this, however, a single feast would hardly do the trick, and in the course of his life an ambitious villager was expected to provide a series of feasts. These feasts were ritually sanctioned with each of them allowing the feast-giver a further display that symbolized his rise in social hierarchy. In Phugwumi, the symbolic index of social

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Figure 4.1 Megaliths erected in honour of a feast-giver in Phugwumi Source: Author.

stratification would start with a feast-giver’s right to wear a specifically embroidered shawl, followed by the permission to decorate his house with X-shaped boards and carvings, to ultimately large monoliths being erected in his name. Put differently, by performing the feast of merit a villager absolved material wealth but accumulated material symbols. On a tour through the (then) Eastern Angami area, Fürer-Haimendorf (1939: 9) stumbled onto a large open compound with houses on two sides: ‘Cross barge-boards rose from the gambles of one of the houses, like the enormous antlers of some proud stag. Proud, too, must have been the owner of these wooden horns, for they showed that he had given several of those expensive Feasts of Merit whereby the Naga rises in social prestige and in the esteem of his neighbour.’ In Phugwumi, a complete series involved nine feasts, after which a row of nine monoliths would have been erected in the feast-giver’s honour, a lifelong exercise that required such grandiose expenditure that only three villagers are remembered to have ever accomplished this. In fact, most villagers would never find themselves in the position to throw

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a single feast, and instead depended on the village wealthy to, now and then, enable them to lavish on meat and rice-beer. Fürer-Haimendorf (1939: 47) explained further: ‘The wealth of the ambitious was employed to provide food and enjoyment for the less prosperous members of the community, for at a Feast of Merit there was meat, rice and rice-beer for every man, woman and child in the village’. Seen as a historical social institution, the feast of merit seemingly invoked contradictory principles, combining tendencies of economic redistribution and social differentiation, of both socialism and snobbery, but crucially it vested social eminence in a person’s ability to act as a generous provider, not in mere accruing (Wouters 2015). The feast of merit was amongst the first sacrifices foreign missionaries demanded from new Naga converts, interpreting these feasts as an ostentatious wastage of wealth and its free-flowing rice beer as inducing immoralities of sorts. Its abolishment had wide ramifications. J.P. Mills (1935: 134) observed: ‘a great number of very fine embroidery patterns and carvings design owe their existence entirely to this system of Feast of Merit and will continue to exist only as long as the system does’. He then lamented: ‘one has only to stroll through a Christian village. There may be many rich men with granaries bursting with rice, but not a fine cloth or carving you will see’. Besides the decline of elegant embroideries and fine carvings, for ordinary villagers the withering of feasts of merit also punctuated a core aspect of a moral economy that occasionally benefitted and entertained them. In Phugwumi some village elders vividly recall, and sometimes feel nostalgic to, the feasts of merit they witnessed in their youths. But while a number of houses continue to flaunt meticulously carved wooden walls and cross barge boards distinctive of the house of a feast-giver’s family, these decorations are of no recent manufacture. After the majority of villagers took to Christianity from the late 1950s onward, feasts of merit saw a steep decline in Phugwumi, then died out completely.22 While now extinct, as a traditional social institution the feast of merit offers a vantage into the principles, practices, and expectations that informed social differentiation and a village moral economy. To be sure, the decision for the village wealthy to throw feasts was hardly optional but was morally expected from them. The Naga feast of merit, then, was not a confined social phenomenon, but communicative of old values

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of munificence that provided a moral frame for the constitution of economic and social life. Perhaps, then, it is in the abolition of feasts of merit—both as a practice and communitarian value—that we find answers to today’s barns of rotten, musky paddy in Phugwumi and, more broadly, to the shift from ‘redistribution’ to ‘accumulation’ as a core axis to measure and define social hierarchy. *** While I hold that this cultural thesis carries some explanatory purchase, especially in terms of the moral undergrowth of the current social transformation, more significantly, I argue, Naga society’s nascent breakdown into classes emerged in response to conditions put in place by the post-statehood policy of ‘seduction’. If so, the rise of Naga elitism was first created, then nourished by external conditions, more than it was an organic emergence from within. In a series of publications, Elizabeth Rata (2002, 2004, 2010, 2011) explored what she terms ‘neo-tribal capitalism’ among the Maori tribe in New Zealand. Erstwhile egalitarians, Rata shows how the local infusion of global capital led to the transformation of the traditional and communal Maori mode of production, emerging regimes of accumulation, and the breakdown of the Maori society in competing classes. If Naga society seemingly witnessed a similar societal transformation, this was, however, not primarily due to the infusion of global capital—prolonged political upheaval and uncertainty, instead, has long kept corporations and investments at bay—but the result of, what we may call, ‘neo-tribal developmentalism’ resulting from the purposeful and political influx of state largesse to confront Naga insurgency and to nationalize Naga space. While this massive influx of state resources has been widely noted, its consequences on material, economic, and moral life has escaped in-depth scholarly scrutiny. An exception is the Naga historian Visier Sanyu. When Nagaland state was created, governance, Sanyu (1996: 145) writes, ‘did not run that smoothly’ and to stabilize things ‘many temptations were offered to the newly created state under various developmental programmes.’ In this process, it was accountability that soon became sacrificed at the altar of national security. Sanyu (2013: 441–2), in a later work, elaborates on the material consequences of these ‘many temptations’ offered. What it led to, he argues, was the ‘formation of

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a nouveau rich class … and an uneven social structure’. The ‘immense funds’ sent to Nagaland to ‘pacify’ the society, Sanyu continues, made for ‘frequently floating easy money’, as there was ‘no accountability for these funds’. This had ‘grave repercussions’ as those Naga politicians, bureaucrats, and public leaders handling these monies ‘became corrupt as they succumbed to the temptation of quick wealth’. Sanyu concludes: ‘[The] increasing flow of money into the state has disturbed the rhythm of the Naga tribal production. This led to the intense social stratification based on material strength which was completely absent prior to this’ (2013: 441–2). What Sanyu diagnoses in hindsight, the (then undivided) NSCN saw everywhere unfolding when it first happened. It cautioned Naga society against the ‘temptations’ offered by the state, and condemned the emergence of an elite class, which they framed as the Naga ‘exploiting class’. In a heady mixture of revolutionary speech and Mao style Marxism, the NSCN decried: The pouring in of Indian capital in our country, for political reasons, has shattered the Naga people into a society of wild money. Its accumulation in the hands of the reactionary traitors and the rich has accelerated the process of exploitation and suppression of the people. The appropriation of the vast means of production, distribution and exchange and other means of profit-making by this exploiting class and by the Indian parasites has drawn a distinct line between them and the people. (cited in Horam 1988: 317)

In addition to material consequences, the policy of ‘seduction’ also causes ‘moral damage’ (Steyn 2002: 160) across Naga society. FürerHaimendorf (1976: 255–6), on returning to the Konyak area in 1970 (nearly four decades after carrying out his fieldwork there) observed how the ‘massive injection of public funds by the Central Government’ was widely experienced as morally degenerative in its consequences. One Konyak told him: They [villagers] used to be honest and reliable and are now dishonest. They had discipline and now have none—nobody obeys the village leaders any more. Many men are now drinking heavily, not only rice-beer, but distilled liquor brought from Assam. For work on the road they had to

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be paid Rs 15 or even Rs 20 a day, otherwise they were not prepared to work at all [such daily wages, Fürer-Haimendorf qualified, ‘were indeed surprising for in 1970 even in Delhi or Calcutta the daily wage of an unskilled labourer was not more than Rs. 5’).

I return to this local association between ‘development’, ‘drinking’, and ‘dishonesty’ in the next chapter. Here I emphasize that the post-statehood policy of ‘seduction’ created the historical conditions for a ‘transition from a tribal organization to a class based society’ (Sanyu 2013: 441), instigating a process of ‘neo-tribal developmentalism’. But more than that, it also created the conditions that made Naga society ‘hopelessly corrupt’ (Sanyu 2013: 441). The next chapter discusses ethnographically and in more detail Nagaland’s apparent ‘crisis of corruption’.

Notes 1. This and following quotes (unless indicated otherwise) are taken from the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly of India held on the 30th of July 1947 as have been made available on: http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/ debates/vol4p13.htm. Accessed on 11 March 2015. 2. This quote is taken from: http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/ vol4p13.htm. Accessed on 21 October 2015. 3. Nagaland state was to function under the Ministry of External Affairs until 1972, when it was transferred to the Ministry of Home Affairs; a move which by Naga Nationalists was seen as a set-back to their demand for Independence. 4. During Nagaland’s recent 50 years of statehood celebration, which was attended by the then President of India Pranab Mukherjee, the latter remembered the audience of parts of Dr Radhakrishnan’s inaugural speech, including the preceding paragraph. In reading it out, however, President Mukherjee stopped short after ‘their feasts and festivals’, thus omitting the phrase ‘which are not repugnant to our moral sense’. While the reason for omitting these words cannot be known for sure, it is likely that many Nagas would have taken serious offence. This deletion might also indicate a broadening of India’s official multiculturalism and the realization that what might strike as ‘morally repugnant’ to one community might be perfectly ‘morally sound’ to another. 5. ‘The formation of Nagaland state,’ Roy-Burman (2008: 151) writes, ‘did not bring about a significant change in the mind set of the Nagas. By and

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large they refused to accept the Indian Constitution and kept on fighting for their independence. But the government of India refused to accept this and treated it as a law and order problem’. 6. In talking about the Indian postcolonial state I am not arguing in the general, but in terms of its historical manifestations in the Naga uplands. While postcolonial theorists have now provided a complex and culturalizt critique of universalistic and normative models to understand and theorize the development of the Indian state (for example, Chatterjee 1986, 2004; Kaviraj 1984; Nandy 2002), this body of literature, while important, seemingly insists on a supposedly homogenous frame of the Indian state, so underplaying that there exist further, and more localized, manifestations of the Indian state that may be as distinct from any generalized ‘Indian model’ as the ‘Indian model’ is supposedly distinct from ‘Western models’. India’s postcolonial state, then, is a multifarious entity, that assumes different characters in different places within the country. If, as Jonathan Spencer (2007: 104) argues, ‘there is something especially absurd in treating all variants of the postcolonial state, from the crumbling polities of Central Africa to the antiseptic authoritarianism of Singapore as essential the same,’ is it is equally absurd to treat India’s postcolonial state as a singular entity that operates the same in, say, metropolitan cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, the contested edges of Kashmir, the sweltering heartlands of Madhya Pradesh, and the tribal uplands of India’s Northeast. 7. Hutton’s stance towards Naga Independence seemingly fluctuated over time. In his report to the Simon Commission in 1929 (Chapter 1) he wrote that Nagas, as well as other hill tribes, ‘will suffer very serious detriment by being tied up to the politically more advanced plains district while the latter will suffer in the future by being joined with people of an irreconcilable culture in an unnatural union which can ultimately only entail discomfort for both parties’ (cited in Aosenba 2001: 23). Later in life, as a professor of Anthropology, Hutton grew increasingly irate with Phizo and the Naga claim for Independence. In 1966, during a press conference in London regarding the Indo-Naga conflict, and where A.Z. Phizo was present, he is reported to have described his former ‘subjects’ as ‘headhunters’, ‘who if left to themselves would return to the state of savagery in which the British had found them’. He subsequently suggested the Indian Government to ‘offer a thumping reward to anyone bringing in the head of a rebel’, then saying: ‘In that way this independence nonsense will soon be brought to an end’ (cited in Steyn 2002: 142). 8. The United Democratic Front’s view was endorsed by Rustomji (1971: 86), an officer of the Central Government posted in Nagaland, who wrote:

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

‘It was not until ten years later [after the first outpourings of violence] that the Naga Hills were granted Central Administration after the embitterment of prolonged military operations. By then, the gift had lost its grace, and the feeling among the Nagas was that they had won their new status through their own doggedness in the field rather than from any sympathetic or enlightened approach on the part of the Government and people of India.’ Horam (1988: 181), in turn, wrote: ‘Nagaland statehood, unlike the other States of India, was attained after much bloodshed and loss of many lives during violent activities over many years. No other State, save Mizoram, which much later followed the pattern of Naga insurgency, resorted to taking up of arms in order to achieve Statehood. States like Meghalaya, Manipur, Punjab, Haryana, and others, fought and won their Statehood through constitutional means. Therefore, if all that the Nagas wanted was statehood within the Indian Union, they could have avoided all this loss of lives, time and materials.’ In the aftermath of Nagaland statehood, the NNC formally declared, as Vibha Joshi (2013: 171) notes, that ‘“a Naga who undertook oath of allegiance to the Indian Constitution clearly betray[s] Naga nation” and “cannot serve the interest of Nagaland.” It asserts that it is the Naga people who occupy Nagaland and that India cannot resolve the conflict through the creation of an administrative entity with no basis in history.’ All Northeastern states held (and most continue to hold) the status of a ‘special category state’, which entails that they receive preferential treatment in terms of central grants and loans. Amongst other benefits, this status means that the Centre bears 90 per cent of state expenditures in terms of grants, as opposed to 70 per cent for ‘general states’. Asojiini Kashena (2017: 58) notices the same intensity with which victims of violence in the region, in her case resulting from the Naga-Kuki ethnic violence in the 1990s, recall past experiences of violence. She writes: ‘These stories were narrated to me about 20 years after the events had taken place. What nevertheless struck me was the vividness in which they were told. I was astonished by how memories could seemingly just flow from the past into the present.’ The post-ceasefire public celebration of Naga Independence and Republic Days, which in style and manner is similar to India’s Independence and Republic Days with speeches, dances, and a military parade, is a deeply symbolic event, which can be understood as part of the post-ceasefire replacement of a ‘war of movement’ with that of a ‘war of position’ (Gramsci 1971). The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is a controversial decree, with antecedents in British colonial rule, and which – ostensibly to aide

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counter-insurgency – commissions any soldier to shoot at any Naga on the mere grounds of suspicion, and so with impunity. ‘The very foundation of the force of the AFSPA as a legitimate power,’ Kikon (2009b: 275) writes, ‘is based on authorizing violence as legitimate violence’. The AFSPA is not exclusive to Nagaland, but applied to other conflict-ridden parts of India’s Northeast and the country more widely. Kikon explains how the AFSPA ‘marks the Northeast as a “disturbed area” and its people as “suspicious”’ and that ‘these categories continuously reproduce each other, so that the area inhabited by suspicious persons will evidently become a disturbed area, and those inhabiting a disturbed are fall under suspicion’ (2009b: 272). At the time of writing, and despite the ceasefire, the AFSPA remains in force across Naga inhabited areas within India. 14. Scholarship on the relation between memory, narratives, and actual events is extensive. ‘Memory is not a simple, unmediated reproduction of the past’, Argenti and Schramm (2010: 2) argue, ‘but rather a selective re-creation that is dependent for its meaning on the remembering individual or community’s contemporary social context, beliefs, and aspirations’. Hirsch and Steward (2005: 262) distinguish between history and ‘historicity’ with the latter describing ‘a human situation in flow, where versions of the past and future (of persons, collectives or things) assume present form in relation to events, political needs, available cultural forms and emotional dispositions’. The historicity of events, as expressed through memory and narratives, then, ‘is a moving target depending on the demands of the present’ (Hirsch and Stewart 2005: 262). Writing this does in no way undermine the historical accuracy of Naga memories of state violence, but recognizes the presence of positionality, subjectivities, and multiplicities, and that memories can function as politically interested ‘texts’. 15. Letter by Ursula Bower. Derived from Digital Himalaya (http://himalaya. socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/naga/record/r86277.html). Accessed on 10 April 2016. 16. The relationship between ‘development’ and ‘conflict’ is a complicated one in Nagaland, and other conflict-ridden regions in India’s Northeast. The NorthEast India Vision 2020 report points out that for establishing peace and security the ‘only long-run solution is rapid economic progress’ (Government of India 2008: 289). In the next paragraph it is written, however, that ‘unless there is permanent peace, no development efforts will ever bear any fruit’ (Government of India 2008: 289). If correct, India’s North-East would be incarcerated in a vicious circle in which underdevelopment and insurgency are continuously feeding into each other and in which any development intervention would be, by definition, futile. The belief that the lack of economic growth and insurgency are functionally related is widespread

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

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in the region. In the words of Baruah: ‘it would probably be hard to find a more diehard group of economic determinists than Indian bureaucrats and politicians engaged with the Northeast’ (Baruah 2007: 77). One local narration tells how General Thimaya, then Commander-inChief of the Indian Army expressed the difficulties of fighting the Naga to Jawaharlal Nehru and reportedly requested a free hand to ‘finish the Nagas’. As Nehru refused to give his consent for increased, and even more ferocious, military operations, General Thimaya proposed, as an alternative strategy to subdue the Naga, ‘to throw money to the people’ (Nuh 1986: 128). Even as Nagas continue to pay taxes to underground factions, and many still feel sympathetic to the Naga cause, Manchanda and Bose (2011: 52) similarly observed how ‘50 years of the Nagaland state has produced a crowd of stakeholders in the system—involved in electoral politics, the bureaucracy, suppliers and contractors integrated with state and central economy and the burgeoning “education industry”. The mystique and awe of a distant fighting force sacrificing all for a sovereign, integrated “Nagaland”, is giving way to the banal reality of elections determining politics.’ By the 1970s, Hazarika (2011: 241) argues, the Central Government ‘had fully developed its strategy against the Nagas … one prong of the strategy was to pour in huge amounts of money to soften up the Nagas so that, as one Home Ministry Official at Delhi said, “they will become too comfortable to fight in the jungle again”’. Longchari (2016: 236), in turn, concludes unequivocally: ‘The Indian State has poured money through these imposed [state] structures that corrupts the Naga society so that people will become complacent about their political struggle.’ Or as Kumar (2005: 99) writes: ‘The social structure of Naga society was not uniform. It differed from tribe to tribe. There was strict stratification in some cases and egalitarian social structure among some others.’ Thong (2012: 901) explains further: ‘Education enabled them to pursue non-traditional means of livelihood, causing disinterest in and detachment from participatory cultural practices such as festivals, rituals, ceremonies and other social activities. Thus, a tendency towards individualism and personal achievement at the expense of alienation from the community and culture, previously unthinkable, became an acceptable norm.’ Except perhaps, somewhat paradoxically, on Christmas Day when a Christianized version—that is a feast of merit without rice beer—is invariably organized for the congregation by a wealthy villager, usually a politician, contractor, or a high-ranking government officer, and who, in return for his generosity, is offered a shawl, and is collectively prayed for during the church service.

5 Corruption and the Moral Economy of  State Resources

M

eet Vekho, a resident of Kohima but whose genealogy traces to Phugwumi. If inquired about his occupation, Vekho introduces himself as a ‘social worker’, which, in his case, means he runs political errands for an MLA, under whose tutelage he presides over a range of development schemes, subsidies, and supplyworks. The cuts and commissions he invariably secures built him a house in Kohima, secured education for his children, and paid for an upscale vehicle. ‘A man of means and ways’, as Vekho was once described to me by a Phugwumi villager who knew him well. One day Vekho offers to take me along to a government office where he has a budget sanction letter for a sanitation project to fetch and a prospective development undertaking to discuss. As we drive Kohima’s cramped roads, Vekho explains his current ‘development business’: The United Nations now wants everyone in the world to have access to proper toilets. India is lagging behind in achieving this. It told the UN In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0005

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it needs another five years to bring toilets to all corners of the country. The Centre now allocates large sums of money to the states to make this happen. Nagaland too is receiving large budgets for this. Nowadays, I am busy with that.

After a brief silence, Vekho adds in jest: ‘I am making my money out of toilets these days’. Inside the office, and after collecting the sanction letter, Vekho signals me to follow him upstairs, and into another office. It belongs to one of the department’s most senior bureaucrats. On seeing us in the doorway, the officer, wearing a brown semi-formal blazer with black patches on the elbows, lifts himself slightly from his cushioned desk-chair, smiles hesitantly and points towards two chairs for us to sit. After introducing me as a friend researching Naga culture, and the officer nods approvingly (‘lot’s of culture around here’, he comments), Vekho wastes little time in bringing up the development project he wants to carry out, and for which he needs the officer’s help. ‘It will be in my own village this time’, Vekho explains, and outlines his plan of establishing an apple plantation. The climate is perfect and the soil fertile, he explains. ‘The apples will be as tasty as those from Kashmir, but cheaper, and we will market them both inside and outside the state.’ The officer smiles, shifts his eyes to me, and asks whether I have tasted Kashmiri apples. ‘I have already spoken with my villagers about it’, Vekho continues. ‘They support the idea and we agreed that this time not less than 40% of the budget should be spend on the actual project. I want to make this a success.’ Vekho then tells the officer that he wants to apply for funds from the North-Eastern Council (NEC),1 and that his project proposal is nearly complete. All that he needs now to make it official is the seal and signature from a government department. It was for this that Vekho called on the officer. The officer nods in understanding. ‘Just last week we had a meeting on such requests in our office’, he begins his reply after thinking for a moment. Nowadays we receive proposals to be forwarded to the NEC from all corners of the state. Most of them we duly sign. But after that there is silence. The budgets are not sanctioned through our department, and in the end we get nothing. I am ready to endorse your proposal but only if you assure that the budget will be channeled through my office.

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Vekho agrees. He needs the signature at all cost. ‘I am planning to go up to Shillong next week to visit the NEC. I will call on you before that’, Vekho concludes, ending our meeting. Back in his vehicle, Vekho opens the envelope that contains the sanction letter for his sanitation project. ‘It should have been more’, he sighs disappointedly after tallying the amounts mentioned under various headings. ‘Must have been some extra cuts from above.’ The language of ‘corruption’ mired into the above conversations was too obvious to miss. For instance, Vekho’s resolve to have not less than 40 per cent spend on the project meant that there was still 60 per cent that could be pilfered at various levels, including government offices, the villagers, and, of course, his own private cuts. The officer’s insistence on having the project budget channeled through his office, in turn, provided him and his colleagues an opportunity to secure a profit. Often such ‘office cuts’ were justified, as I learned later, as ‘office expenses’, but which, everyone knew, was an euphemism for officers’ side incomes. Finally, Vekho’s remark that something must have happened to his sanitation project form ‘above’ implied that this project had already been ‘touched’ by one or multiple senior bureaucrats or politicians, with all of them deducting a percentage. At the time of this ethnographer encounter, I was still relatively fresh into my fieldwork and had met Vekho only on a few previous occasions. I did therefore not dare to inquire deeper into the intricacies of the sanitation project, the NEC proposal, or into his wider dealings with development, fearing that doing so might strain our relationship. However, over the course of my fieldwork Vekho and I met regularly, both in Phugwumi, where most of his relatives lived, and in his Kohima residence. One evening, as we sat down for dinner, I finally felt confident to ask his views about development and corruption. I quote his answer at some length. Look, when I was growing up, Delhi only sent us bullets and problems. So many Jawans came into our lands, raping our women, beating our elders, and killing many. Those days Nagaland was like an open-air prison. Many bad things happened. In my village the Indian Army also did terrible things. You can talk with the elders. They will have many stories to tell you, terrible stories. I personally remember how one day the army told us to assemble in the school compound. The one just below the house you are living in.

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All villagers were there. This was before the ceasefire. I must have been in my teens. The army captain was fuming and accused the entire village of supporting the Naga underground. As nobody confessed or spoke up, he took some boys from the crowd and hung them upside down from a tree. Then he beat them with sticks, so savagely that they lost consciousness. They did this in front of everybody’s eyes, but we could do nothing against it. They would have shot us had we reacted. I still feel angry thinking about that day. But nowadays Delhi’s attitude towards Nagas has changed. They no longer send us bullets but monies. A lot of money. In Delhi they think the more money they give us the more we will start feeling Indian. They think we do not understand their strategies. But we Nagas are cunning in our own way. We simply take the money from them. In any case, it is high time for India to compensate us for making our life horrible for so long. But accepting this money does not make us feel any more Indian. The only thing it has done is to make Nagaland the most corrupted state of India. Everyone is corrupt; politicians, bureaucrats, police, and even our villagers. They are all running after easy money nowadays. See what is happening to our Village Development Board [more in the section titled ‘Imitating the state.’]. But who cares? This is only Indian money. Deep down, we Nagas still want our Independence.’

It was this conversation that first made me question conventional definitions of corruption to understand what was happening in Nagaland. However, simply concluding that Vekho was pilfering state monies as a form of self-claimed compensation or repatriation for historical injustice and state violence would overlook the complex and multi-layered social networks in which, I will illustrate, such ‘corrupt’ practices unfold locally. Yet, his reasoning nevertheless suggests that Nagaland’s ostensive ‘crisis of corruption’ must be situated in Nagas’ historical experiences of the postcolonial state and evaluated in relation to conditions created by the policy of ‘seduction’, as discussed in the previous chapter. After several decades of statehood and uncountable development initiatives and budgets, not only was Naga insurgency continuing, but it became widely recognized that Nagaland state was making a mockery of the very idea of the state as acting on behalf of its citizens, as an entity above partial, personal, and tribal interests (Chapter 6), the guarantor of all-round development, and staffed by loyal and diligent civil servants operating in a Weberian mould towards the common good.

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Instead, Nagaland earned a reputation for governmental disarray, failing development, and vast networks of corruption. ‘Corruption’, the editor of a Nagaland daily told me, ‘has become a culture’, one that pervades at all levels, nooks, and niches of the state machinery. Scholars and commentators on Nagaland similarly depict corruption as a ‘way of life’ (Sanyu 2013: 144) locally, and variously illustrate how ‘the looting of government offices by politicians, bureaucrats, and sometimes in connivance with freedom fighters [Chapter 3] goes unabated’ (Ezung 2012: 1). For some, this makes Nagaland ‘the symbol of corruption’ (Maitra 2011: 48), a ‘whirlpool of rampant corruption’ (Shimray 2007: 115), even the very ‘paradise of corruption’ (Faizal cited in Shimray 2005: 239). Insurgency apart, Nagaland’s governor exhorted, Nagas ‘must realize’ that the ‘worst enemy’ of local development has been all-pervasive ‘corruption’.‘Nagaland is rich,’ the Governor added, but because of corruption ‘the people are poor’ (cited in Nagaland Post 2016b). The message communicated seems clear; in Nagaland corruption is not the exception, but the very norm of government and governance. It does not just exist, but thrives. But how exactly might we understand and theorize this routine, almost banal, everyday corruption? How do Naga villagers understand and talk about these ‘corrupt’ practices? And how does corruption gets embedded within local social bonds and kinship? What moral reasoning, moreover, do ‘corrupt’ actors themselves adopt to explain and legitimize their actions? And, more broadly, what does Nagaland’s ‘crisis of corruption’ tell us about the relationship between Naga citizens and the state? This chapter invites its reader to reflect on these questions through a set of ethnographic excursions in both Phugwumi and Noksen. To an economist or a policymaker much of what I describe in this chapter—the use of inferior materials to construct a classroom, members of the VDB ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ development, and widespread absenteeism in local government offices—will appear like textbook examples of corrupt acts and mis-governance. I will argue here, however, that Phugwumi and Noksen villagers own sense of engagement with the state and its resources reject any such straightforward conclusions. To them, the pilfering of state resources is not in all cases ‘corruption’, inexcusable, or immoral.2 In their dealings with the state, many Nagas are guided by, what Didier Fassin (2007: xix) calls, an ‘economy of resentment, whereby the past constitutes an inexhaustible reservoir of

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painful memory’ (Chapter 4) and through which people like Vekho can self-legitimize, certainly to an extent, the private appropriation of state monies. Throughout my fieldwork I found that those villagers known to have done ‘well’ out of their access to state and development monies were referred to as ‘smart’ and ‘successful’, much more often than their actions were criticized as immoral. Needless to say, though, in Nagaland, just as elsewhere in India, there existed constant tension and contestation over access to state resources, and those who failed in this sometimes termed those who succeeded as ‘corrupt’. However, the same people who might use the word ‘corruption’ to accuse others often either failed to recognize their own ‘corrupt’ actions or found ways to justify these.3 Most villagers, indeed, found no double standards in occasionally condemning the corruption deeply entrenched in the functioning of the everyday state, while simultaneously striving to gain lucrative access to the state. Based on a survey, Ezung (2012: 2) found that ‘94% [of his Naga] respondents viewed a government job as the most preferred job in the state and 96% [of his] respondents preferred the department that provided an opportunity to earn side-incomes [through cuts, commissions, and other “corrupt” practices]’. Ezung concludes: ‘The social status of those working in a department that earns extra cash is high and acknowledged’. The approach I am starting to eke out here diverges fundamentally from technocratic and legalistic definitions of corruption, as upheld by the Worldbank, International Monetary Fund, Transparency International, and most national governments, in which corruption is broadly defined as the abuse of public office and resources for personal economic gain. In these circles, debates on corruption routinely merge into what is called, in India, The Pathology of Corruption (Gill 1998). Oftentimes commentators allude to an organic analogy which—revamping an old structural-functionalist paradigm—compares corrupt activities to bodily abnormalities that corrode the structure and functioning of organs and bodily systems, causing diseases that then symbolize the breakdown of social institutions and processes: ‘corruption is bleeding our people dry’, as a prominent Indian politician framed it (The Hindu 2013). In this organic and medical metaphor, corrupt actors represent the worms and germs that must be localized and expelled for the social body to advance and prosper. What advocates of such views promote is the adoption of

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more stringent anti-corruption laws, their no-nonsense enforcement, and the establishment of independent investigative agencies with undisputed access to all desks and transactions of state.4 Corruption here conjures images of both illegality and immorality, and seen as impeding local development and material welfare at the greedy hands of dishonest and selfish individuals who let themselves be led by purely pecuniary motives (Shah 2009: 295–6). It is precisely this approach that is problematic in Nagaland. If, indeed, the pilfering of state resources is devoid of any morality, this would make Nagaland, given its vast corruption, a place peopled by mostly greedy, selfish, and immoral individuals, characteristics of what Banfield (1958) once infamously described as The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. That widespread corruption evidences that Nagas are fundamentally immoral in character is an argument no self-respecting ethnographer would be willing to argue or defend. As anthropology advanced, Banfield’s (1958) treatise itself became seen less as evidence of a ‘backward society’ than of a ‘backward sociologist’ (Muraskin 1974) caged too much in his own moral philosophy to critically appreciate the moral visions and particularistic sociality that shaped the lives of his rural Italian hosts and interlocutors. More promising analytically is David Parkin’s acute observation that moral principles are most clearly discernible in their transgressions (cited in Shore 2005: 32). What must be explained in Nagaland, then, is the existence of a complex moral economy and reasoning that does not condemn all pilfering of state as corrupt and immoral, but regularly praises those able to secure private gains out of their dealings with the state. As I will show, for those villagers with lucrative access to state resources to not share some of their personal profits to the church or towards the general flow of village life, or not now and then indulging their friends with liquor, or other indulgences, was considered to be more morally depraved and selfish than the act of securing private gains out of the ‘public good’. Not recognizing such modes of moral reasoning and expectations would seriously hinder our understanding of ‘corruption’ and mis-governance locally.

The Moral Economy of State Resources In the pages that follow, I avoid any a priori moral assumptions and judgments about what represents corruption, and what corruption means,

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in favour of views that recognize, firstly, that meanings of corruption are context specific and therefore ‘multifaceted and polyvalent’ (Pierce 2016: 5) and, secondly, that in local discourses illegality does not always equate immorality.5 Fine-grained ethnographies have variously shown, Italo Pardo (2004: 2) surmises, spatial and temporal variation in ‘the perceptions of corruptness and in the interpretation of the legitimacy of corrupt acts’, thence making it imperative to study corruption ‘contextually and diachronically’. To approach corruption in Nagaland, I engage an emergent strand of scholarship, popularized by Alpa Shah (2008; 2009; 2010), that studies the narrativization of corruption, or the ways ordinary men and women talk about corruption. In a seminal ethnography, Akhil Gupta (1995) showed how, in India, discourses and narratives of corruption are central to the ways in which the state itself is discursively constructed and imagined by ordinary people. This is an important insight. Shah (2009: 296), however, rightly argued that this logic also operates in its reverse as ‘understandings of the state are crucial to narratives and practices of corruption’. Shah analyses, what she calls, the ‘informal economy of the state’, and describes the moralities of ‘corrupt’ practices that take place within it. To understand corruption, Shah (2008: 117) insists, ‘We need to understand how people talk about such practices in their own terms as economic action is underpinned by moral reasoning, situated within a particular normative context’. It is by ignoring the historical context and politics of place in which ‘corrupt’ actions unfold that global discourses on corruption, Naveeda Khan (2015: 287) points out, ‘leeches the word of its many nuances that may resonate with people’s myriad experiences [and evaluations] of it.’6 To move beyond such universalistic and normative definitions and situate corruption in its historical and political context seems especially relevant for Nagaland. Diagnosing the corruption and mis-governance all across, Nagaland’s Development Commissioner ascribed this to a ‘lack of sense of belonging in the government by the people’ and lamented the ‘very debilitating’ effect this had on the state’s development ( Jamir 2002: 3–4). Manchanda and Bose (2011: 58) observed similarly: ‘In the last five decades, especially after the creation of the Nagaland state, the government has made every effort to reach out and penetrate to the lowest levels possible, but loyalty to the Indian state proves tenuous and fragile.’ This chapter takes seriously

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such diagnostics, and argues towards recognizing the dyadic relation— and herein lies this chapter’s main focus—between Naga’s particularistic historical experiences of the postcolonial state and the moral reasoning Naga villagers adopt towards the state, its development resources, and their pilfering. I concur with Dolly Kikon (2015a: 75) that ‘the relationship between Naga citizens and the Indian state [of which Nagaland state is part] have been profoundly shaped by the long conflict’ and that the conflict implicated ‘everyday practices of ethics, morality, and solidarity’. If most development initiatives in Nagaland fail, Kikon explains, it is because they remain detached from the armed conflict and the decades-long militarization of the hills. To be sure, this chapter is not meant as an expose on corruption in Nagaland. Journalists and some academics have already written about it. It also does not seek to somehow justify or romanticize local corruption, or to ignore the real affliction, inequality, and dysfunctional governance corruption causes, especially for the village poor for whom accessing the state often remains a distant dream. Most Nagas also agree that corruption is responsible for the state’s overall underdevelopment and many feel resentful towards the ostentatious display of wealth by Naga political and bureaucratic elites (see ‘neo-tribal developmentalism’, Chapter 4). There is indeed something deeply disturbing about seeing a small section of Naga society using the state for gross personal enrichment. However, as I will show, there seems to be less agreement in Naga villages on what precisely constitutes corruption, and who should be condemned as selfish and corrupt. What this chapter attempts, in good anthropological fashion, is an ethnographic and emphatic exploration of some ‘corrupt’ practices as they unfold at village levels. By concentrating on village-levels, I do not focus on the much more sizeable forms of corruption that reportedly take place within the higher echelons of Nagaland state, of whose forms and practices I only have anecdotal ethnography. However, even if ‘corrupt’ practices in villages are comparatively smaller in scale— seemingly almost innocuous compared to the vast personal enrichment people at the top are widely thought to engage in (Misra 2000: 54)— the ethnographic study of the inner logic, moral evaluations, and social networks of ‘corrupt’ practices at village levels, I argue, lead us to a number of further insights into the complex relationship between

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Naga citizens and the state, and in the ways development resources are understood, imagined, and engaged with locally.

Constructing a New Classroom When I went to see Hopong in Noksen town, I found him busy inspecting the plastering done by two Assamese masons (or self-proclaimed Assamese as Hopong suspected them to be from Bangladesh and illegally selling their labour in India) he had employed to help construct the two room extension to the local Government High School. The contract had been commissioned to Hopong by the Public Works Department (PWD) after a recommendation by the local MLA, in whose support Hopong had rallied during the last elections. In his mid-thirties, married, the father of two young children, and struggling to make a living, Hopong saw the construction project as a real opportunity to guarantee his family’s livelihood for the next few years. Hopong had told me about the contract with much enthusiasm a few months earlier. The budget was roughly 7.5 lakh, a substantial sum, and of which Hopong was confident he would at least ‘save’ half. When Hopong first told me about his intended cut, I had expressed my confusion. ‘Has not the government fixed the budget based on estimated costs?’ Hopong had smiled at my obvious innocence, explaining: It will all depend on how I manage things. I will hire workers from Assam. They are willing to work against low rates. In any case, most Nagas don’t have either the interest or skills to perform manual labour. Among labourers for hire in Assam, I will search for Bangladeshis. Since they are in India illegally, they are willing to work for lower wages still.

The hiring of labourers from Assam and beyond to work on development projects was a common practice both in Noksen and Phugwumi (and, I suspect, in villages across Nagaland). Village Development Boards often hired such workers for prolonged periods of time, housed them in cramped sheds in the village, and assigned them labour on projects designed and financed under the nation-wide employment assurance scheme (MGNREGA). Doing so was technically illegal as this scheme was meant to offer employment to poor villagers. The reason behind this local subversion was at least threefold. The first was financial: labourers

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from Assam (but especially from Bangladesh) were ready to work for lower wages than the rates fixed by the employment scheme. In project audit reports it was nevertheless entered that the labour had been carried out by villagers against the fixed wages, thus allowing VDB members to appropriate the difference.7 The second consideration was ‘managerial’; compared to Naga labourers, workers from the plains were perceived to be more hardworking, more docile, and, on the whole, easier to control and placate. ‘Villagers expect we give them lunch and even liquor after every development work, but outside labourers have no such demands’, a Phugwumi VDB member explained to me. Thirdly, ‘outside’ labourers possessed skills such as masonry and carpentry which most Nagas did not. ‘Nagas cannot work with iron rods’, Phugwumi VDB secretary explained when I asked him why no villager was working on an ambitious watchtower that was being erected in the village. ‘Moreover, this is low status work. Our villagers won’t want to do it.’ But let us return to Noksen. ‘Will hiring Bangladeshi labourers save you half of the project budget?’, I had followed up. Hopong had conceded that it would not. But, so I learned, there were other ways through which he could curb his expenditures: The biggest cut I will make from the purchase of construction materials. I will use wood from my family’s farm for the window panes, door, and frames. In this way I will avoid the expenses of buying and transporting wood from elsewhere. As for the cement, sand, iron rods, and tin sheets, there are many different qualities and rates available in the market. I will opt for the cheaper ones. And again, buying in Assam is cheaper.

‘Is it not illegal to use second-rate material?’, I asked. According to Hopong it was not. All contractors did so, he had justified, and even as the government had provided him with a blueprint of how the new building should look like nowhere had the minimum quantity and quality of the building materials been specified. ‘But certainly the building won’t be of good quality then’, I remarked. ‘Will the government not come and verify your work?’ ‘Government officers are only interested in securing their own profits. It is like that in Nagaland’, Hopong had replied. ‘As long as they get their share none of them will take the trouble of travelling to Noksen to inspect my work.’ Local state officials, Hopong knew, as did most villagers, pursued their own interests, and generally

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did not bother inspecting works done on the ground. ‘Even if a state officer visits’, Hopong had added, ‘he would come with an expectation to be given some extra money, not to objectively verify my work.’ ‘How about the school itself?’, I had persisted, in what, in hindsight, I now realize was turning into a rather insensitive interrogation from my end. ‘Most certainly, they will not be happy with a second-rate building?’ When it needs repairs later they can submit a proposal for additional funds. The government has enough money. Moreover, I don’t think the school will use the new rooms. Since there is no place inside the school compound, I will have to build it at some distance. And in any case, the school already has sufficient classrooms.’

‘Then why did the government give you the contract in the first place?’, I asked, reacting to Hopong’s last point. ‘The school did not ask for it. My MLA arranged it for me. I helped him during the last election and now he is helping me in return. Since I don’t hold a government job, a contract is the only way I can get some money from the government.’ I then learned that Hopong had tried to obtain a state contract for many years, filing applications in a host of government departments. But as government contracts were known to be lucrative, they were widely sought after and hard to obtain. Moreover, they usually needed the kind of political backing which, until recently, Hopong did not possess. However, when during the election campaign, the candidate he supported offered him a sum of money in reward, he had refused to accept it and instead had requested the politician to arrange him a state contract if he would win the election. The politician had not just agreed, but had kept to his promise. There was frenzied politics involved in the allocation of these state contracts; aspiring contractors vied for them and sought the help of an MLA or an MP to support their applications. Especially when budgets were not earmarked for a particular constituency, competition could become especially heated with multiple MLAs recommending their loyalists. State functionaries themselves, too, often had their chosen candidates, and while they often had to budge to the whims of politicians, they had devised their own ways of influencing the selection process and institutionalized a system in which they had to be given a percentage for files to progress. Hopong, for instance, had to promise a senior officer in

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the PWD a weighty 20 per cent of his net profit in return for the officer securing the smooth movement of his application and payments, making sure that his file would not remain struck on a desk, and to prevent the contract from being allocated to another contractor at the last moment. The news of Hopong’s success in acquiring a state contract had soon spread in Noksen town and village. Most expressed their happiness for him. ‘He will now have enough money to take care of his family properly.’ Others openly wondered how much he would be able to earn out of the construction, and suspected the amount to be substantial. And if some felt envious towards Hopong’s success, they too had to concede that he had played his cards well. Those close to Hopong and his family, and with previous experience in contracting, came forward with advice, suggesting ways through which Hopong could increase his cuts. They suggested him to readjust the cement mixture, and somewhat decrease the size of the rooms versus the official measurements. Successes and failures in handling state contracts, it seemed, were locally evaluated in the terms of the cuts that were secured, certainly more than in the quality of the work that was carried out. However, at the verge of completing the two classrooms, Hopong confessed the various setbacks he had faced in the process. While he was still anticipating a profit, as he had indeed managed to complete the building with roughly half of the designated budget, what he (as a still inexperienced contractor) had not foreseen were the many commissions, gifts, and donations he had been expected to make. It had begun in the PWD, where, in addition to the promise of giving 20 per cent of his profit to a senior officer, 7 per cent of his budget had been withheld for ‘office expenses’. But if Hopong could still accept these as the necessary fees for acquiring a state contract, the biggest financial setback had come from Naga underground groups. Four of them, all operating in the Noksen area, had dispatched him a letter laying claim over 5 per cent of the commissioned amount. The letters, which Hopong showed me, specified that it was a ‘donation’ meant for the Naga cause. Hopong, however, was sceptical about this, and mocked that the private pockets of national workers seemed to be growing deeper each year: Ever since the ceasefire, national workers only seem to be interested in collecting taxes. I am not saying that all national workers are after money, but many are. The problem is that the top leaders are not able to control

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their cadres’ behaviour in places as remote as ours. If national workers want to have money, let them demand it directly from the government. They should not harass a small contractor like me.

Hopong felt adamant about paying them: ‘How can I ever make a profit if I have to give them five percent of my budget each?’ As Hopong happened to have acquaintances in the different factions, he planned to approach them with the request to exempt his contract from being taxed (Later I learned that while he had not fully succeeded in this, he had been able to negotiate the demand down). There were other payments to be made still. An experienced contractor (who was also a relative) advised him to ‘gift’ some money to the Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) in return for him signing the completion certificate, which Hopong needed to claim the final instalment of the budget. Even if the SDO would not ask for such a gift, Hopong was told that it was ‘customary to offer him some’. Finally, Hopong was expected to donate 10 per cent of his profits to the local church. It was a spiritual and moral obligation he could not escape from without inviting criticism of being greedy, selfish, and wavering in his Christian faith, but an amount he was able to somewhat mitigate by instead of cash offering new furniture to the church office, and which he was able to manufacture at a discounted rate. Despite these unforeseen payments, Hopong tried to stay positive. ‘I learned some important lessons from this experience’, he reflected. ‘I will apply for another and bigger contract next time, and if I get it I now know how to do better out of it.’

Imitating the State From Hopong’s state contract, this and the following section zoom in on the materialities and moralities of the participatory development mandate in rural Nagaland, as manifested in the form and functioning of VDBs. Following consensus in scholarly and policy circles that decentralization and community participation makes governance more accountable, effectuates development, and reduces corruption, the early 1980s in Nagaland saw the delegation of development initiatives and their monitoring from the faltering lower rungs of the bureaucracy to freshly enacted village-wise development boards.8 Henceforward VDB

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members, chosen ‘bottom-up’ from within village communities, were expected to identify and select development projects suitable to the village, oversee their implementation (with funds dispatched from the Department of Rural Development channelled through local BDOs), ensure community participation, transparency, and the maintenance of accounts, muster rolls, and beneficiary records. However, in the complex world of development, as David Mosse (2004) and others taught us, policy and practice readily diverge, and across Nagaland VDBs and village development soon assumed lives of their own. In what follows we travel from Noksen back to Phugwumi to examine some of the unintended social, material, and moral consequences of this participatory development mandate. It is very early in the morning. Winter has been slowly crawling into Phugwumi and the air is beginning to bite. Tsüyo, in whose house I just enter, sits in front of the kitchen fire on which a mixture of left-over rice and jungle shrubs is being prepared to feed the pig he is fattening for Christmas just below his house. Tsüyo is a village gaonbura and has his characteristic red shawl, originally a symbol of allegiance to British rule, wrapped tightly around his ageing body.9 ‘Come as soon as you wake up’, Tsüyo told me the previous day as I asked for some of his time to sit down and talk. ‘The mind is still fresh then. The later in the day, the more muddled it becomes.’ As a gaonbura for many years, Tsüyo is a village leader, and is often vocal and outspoken in village meetings. ‘Please tell me about post-statehood development in the village’, I ask him. ‘Tell me about what has changed in the village. And about what you think about these changes? Has statehood brought development and prosperity to Phugwumi?’ Tsüyo nods, sips from his morning tea and gestures me to do the same. ‘No doubt, statehood brought many developments with it’, he begins. The first development was water-pipes. This benefitted us greatly. It especially helped our women, who no longer had to spend hours a day fetching water from here and there. Then the school was extended, the road widened and blacktopped, and the BDO Office established. With the BDO Office came many schemes and subsidies. Nowadays there is a subsidy for nearly everything; to irrigate our fields, to purchase a powertiller, to repair our roofs, to start a piggery or a vegetable farm. Because of this our villagers now think in terms of subsidies.

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But while Tsüyo agrees that these changes have improved material welfare, what he emphasizes in our conversation, more than once, is the social harms, immoralities, and selfishness ‘development’ produces. ‘Development has made us both richer and poorer’, he reflects philosophically. ‘We have more possessions now and life is easier, but because of development monies villagers are no longer honest and cooperative. This has made us poorer.’ Tsüyo especially worries about Phugwumi’s youth: Before statehood we had never heard about unemployment. If a person did not work we would call him lazy, and nobody wanted to be known as lazy. Now, suddenly, our village youth talk of themselves as jobless. They do nothing all day, and roam here and there on the pretension of seeking a job. But not just any job. They expect government employment, and if they do not succeed in getting this, they want development projects to earn easy money.’

I had already observed how ‘development’ and ‘easy monies’, that is monies that come without the toil and sweat of agriculture, are often used synonymously in Phugwumi, and that many aspired to lay their hands on some ‘easy money’. As our conversation continues, I ask Tsüyo about the VDB, which, after all, controls most development budgets in the village. ‘When the system of VDB was first introduced we were told that from now on we villagers would decide about development. Back then, we thought this was a good idea. But now, the VDB is just imitating the state.’ I ask Tsüyo what he means with this. ‘VDB members have seen how Nagaland state works and they are now applying the same methods. They are not sincere in their work, not informing the villagers about projects and budgets that arrive, hiring outside and cheap labour rather than employing villagers, and eating most of the money. It has become a  village version of Nagaland state.’ ‘The problem’, Tsüyo continues, ‘is that the Centre is sending too much development to Nagaland. The amount our village receives is too large. They should send budgets little by little, not lakhs and crores of rupees each year. Such amounts crazy the minds of our VDB members.’ It had not taken me long into my fieldwork to realize how membership to and the functioning of the VDB were deeply divisive issues in the village. Critics, mostly elders, lamented how its six full-time

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members (and their many helpers and associates) grossly misappropriated village development budgets. They pointed towards the new houses its members built themselves towards the end of their threeyear tenures, the cars they drove, and how this deepened the wedge of inequality inside the village. Other common plaints were the fact that non-Naga ‘outsiders’ were hired as cheap labour, the paucity of women in development enterprises (so, the chairwoman of Phugwumi’s Women Society lamented), and a regret felt by the older generation about the degenerating quality of social life, and of which they held ‘development’ accountable. The institution of VDB, and village development more widely, had injected new difficulties, divisions, and desires into the village community, and made villagers compete over access and control of development monies in unprecedented ways. Most in the village agreed that community development, in fact, had not strengthened the community, but weakened it. After the initial scholarly excitement about decentralization and community development, or Putting the Last First (Chambers 1983) in the 1980s, scholarship also became more sensitive towards such local corollaries of participatory development. It became recognized how projects and funds played into preexistent local power relations and divisions within communities, and how ‘key members of “village communities” can be accomplices to, or prime agents, of local networks of corruption’ (Véron et al. 2006: 1924). Quite suddenly, there emerged accounts of greedy headmen and self-seeking village leaders, clientelist networks that extended into villages, development funds creating and aggravating local conflicts, women being debarred from exercising influence, and the rise of village inequalities.10 Some critics now doubt the entire participatory development mandate altogether and insist that the more decentralization and ‘community targeting’ of governance and development, the higher the chances of ‘capture of these programs by local elites’ (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2000: 135; Widmalm 2008), and that decentralized development leads to ‘decentralized corruption’ (Véron et al. 2006). Context obviously matters, but rather than a successful panacea of governance, it is now increasingly acknowledged that the decentralization of development comes with new dilemmas and new problems. One such dilemma, in Phugwumi, was to agree on what amounts and percentages VDB members could privately appropriate without it

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amounting to ‘selfishness’ and ‘corruption’. Except for the VDB secretary, who received a modest monthly stipend, VDB members were expected to perform their duties voluntarily, as a part-time service to the village community. In actual practice, however, development works became the prime vocation of VDB members during their tenures, and, like everyone else in the village, they needed money to look after their families. Views on this were many, but everyone in Phugwumi agreed that VDB members (or anyone else with privileged access to development monies) should be permitted to secure material gains from it. ‘Nobody is like Jesus Christ,’ Athe commented on the activities of VDB members. Here the invocation of Jesus Christ invoked principles of selflessness, sincerity, and self-sacrifice, values considered worth emulating but impossible to always live up to in reality. In a similar vein, villagers accepted that it was unreasonable to expect VDB members to be completely selfless and honest in their dealings with development. A former Village Chairman went further: If our villagers eat development monies I don’t want to call this simply corruption. Education has come late to our village. Still, some of our villagers [including, no doubt, the former chairperson himself ] managed to rise up and become rich. So, we should also say it is their talent to be able to profit from the government. May God excuse them from this.

But if ‘doing well’ out of development was, to an extent, expected and morally condoned, what Phugwumi elders found inexcusable was the falling apart of the village community and the rise of immoralities associated with the influx of development monies. To them, the materialities of development and morality carried an inverse relation. This was to the extent that in most of my conversations with them I found a strong ‘anti-development’ sentiment crop up with remarkable frequency. This was not because they were opposed to blacktopped roads, footpaths, retaining walls, piped water, uninterrupted power supply, or better sanitation, but because the infusion of large development funds negatively impacted the values of ‘community’ and complimentary co-existence they cherished. Elders were often explicit about this and expressed that development had made villagers ‘bad’ and ‘selfish’, causing younger generations to be ‘weak’ and ‘indolent’, and ‘ruining village

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life.’ Athe, for one, lamented a diminishing capacity among younger generations to work: Before the arrival of statehood, we had to work hard. There were no government offices, development, and no power tillers to plough our fields. But still, we managed to bring in large harvests. Today, our youth are lazy and can no longer work. It is because of all the development projects, which gives them money without much work. Whereas earlier we could finish harvesting one field with six persons in one day, today we need at least double the amount of manpower to complete the same work.11

There was a clear generational divide in such judgments of the social and moral corollaries of village development. Contrary to the worries and criticisms of village elders, Phugwumi’s youth perceived the domain of development as a possible escape from the hardships of agriculture, as offering opportunities for quick material gains. They often spend considerable time beseeching development projects and budgets, and, more broadly, in exploring ways and means to access the state. As such, development in Phugwumi made for a contested moral terrain in which ‘village development’ had become a dirty word for some, connotative of manifold depravities, but an object of intense desire for others, especially for young men in search of economic stability and social status. In what follows, I focus more closely on the intricacies of village development, of which moral judgments were now and then expressed in an idiom of ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ development.

The (Im)moralities of the ‘Eating’ and ‘Drinking’ of Development ‘Look at his belly’, Khriesa remarked in jest, pointing to a former VDB member, whose belly protruded through his shirt. ‘Before he started dealing with development he was slim like us. Now, see what has happened. All our village development must be stacked into his stomach.’ In Phugwumi, having one’s belly bulging out (or ‘being healthy’) was interpreted as the result of an affluent lifestyle and worthy of praise. What Khriesa’s comment suggested was a direct linkage between the former VDB member’s personal prosperity and his previously privileged access to development monies, whose influx into the village had witnessed

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another sharp rise after the 1997 ceasefire. Everyone present in the room, where a bottle of adulterated rum was being shared, laughed, including the ex-VDB member himself. ‘What to do’, he responded, also in jest. ‘I don’t hold any government job. I might never get such an opportunity again.’ Khriesa’s remark, to be sure, was not meant as an admonishment, but part of the little jokes and teasing that came with a few glasses of rum among friends. In any case, only few villagers were foolhardy enough to insist that those dealing with development should not do well out of it. This conversation must be situated within the particular audience it ensued. All those present in the room shared being young, educated, unemployed, and generally bored, while dreaming of ways to rise up in the economic and social hierarchy of the village. The domain of village development offered this possibility. Just prior to my fieldwork, however, their chances of becoming part of the VDB, which they saw as the zenith of village development, had been thwarted by a Village Council decree dictating that, henceforward, membership was reserved for villagers above the age of forty. This resolution had instantly barred village youth, who, (the mostly aged) council members insisted, lacked the sincerity and maturity to deal with development funds. In the political ethos of the village past, wisdom, acumen, and foresight had long been associated with ageing (Chapter 7), and it was the perceived deficiency of these qualities among village youth that, village council members reasoned, made them unsuitable to handle development budgets adequately. In an attempt to redeem village youth, Tsüyo, and other village seniors, often used the expression ‘dignity of labour’ during meetings and functions to motive youth to look beyond government jobs and development monies, and to impress upon them the virtues of ‘hard’ and ‘honest’ labour, for instance through cultivating paddy, vegetables, or rearing pigs and cattle. These, village elders insisted, remained crucial activities, but which the younger generations had started to look down upon in favour of often meaningless pursuits for development monies. The Village Council resolution was deeply resented by Phugwumi’s youth, who called it discrimination, and in their defence cited examples of MLAs, MPs, even Union Ministers who had risen to glory before the age of 40. They questioned: ‘How is it that at our age we are eligible to become politicians, even ministers, but in this village we must wait until we are forty before we can become a VDB member?’ But while

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VDB membership was now ruled out, there still existed—for them— opportunities to participate in VDB activities, to bid for VDB funding to finance events and projects, or to apply for state contracts. It was, however, not just prospects of personal profit that drew Phugwumi’s mostly ‘educated unemployed’ to the domain of village development. Those with access and control over substantial development funds witnessed a rise in their personal symbolic capital, were admired as ‘smart’, and, if still unmarried, became elevated to eligible bachelors, and these, by themselves, constituted motivational forces. Another factor, which must not be underplayed, was that VDB membership, or otherwise engaging with village development, offered spaces for personal indulgence, prime among these the freedom to purposefully move around nearby towns for reasons of ‘development’ and the intake of liquor. During my stay in the village, a major source of debate was the VDB’s decision to procure a ‘VDB vehicle’—arguing that, as the bringers of development, they had to frequently move around, and could not always depend on taxis and public transport. Often, after sundown, villagers saw the VDB vehicle leaving the village in the direction of a nearby administrative hub, known for its illegal drinking dens, and which raised suspicion among them about the purpose of the vehicle and the activities of VDB members. As a moral critique to the activities of VDB members and village development Phugwumi elders sometimes adopted the idiom, not of ‘eating’, but of ‘drinking’ development.12 I recall accompanying Athe, one morning, on a visit to Phugwumi’s health centre. His over 80 years old left knee was giving him more and more trouble. He needed an injection. On the path leading to the clinic we crossed ways with a VDB member. He was leaning against the VDB vehicle, waiting for another member to show up. They were going to Pfutsero, he said to us by way of greeting. ‘VDB duty’, he added. Athe, like most villagers, suspected that these frequent trips to Pfutsero, or nearby Chakhabama (and further away Kohima) often ended up in drinking dens where village development funds were squandered on beers, rums, whiskies, and chicken. ‘Please bring me a good bottle of rum when you come back’, Athe replied. Of course, Athe did not want any liquor. Ever since he had converted to Christianity, decades ago, he had given up on rice-beer. The VDB member knew this, and realising that he was being mocked returned a reluctant smile.

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With liquor both illegal (the result of Nagaland’s status as a dry state) and deemed sinful by local pastors, the association that was made between the VDB, village development, and liquor formulated a moral critique. To be sure, this was not just a metaphor, and villagers at times wondered whether it was that only drunks could become VDB members or that development budgets carried the ‘dark’ and ‘devilish’ powers to turn even the most upright villager into a heavy drinker. Particularly the wives of VDB members found themselves at the receiving end of this experienced correlation. One of them expressed her frustration thus: Before he joined the VDB, my husband was a good man. But doing development has made him drink daily, and he no longer helps in the household. I don’t know whether he makes any money or not, but in any case he does not give me single rupee. He also refuses to work in the fields, saying that he is too busy with doing development. I am just praying for his VDB tenure to end soon.

This association between development and liquor transcended the sixmember VDB. Ordinary villagers, although particularly village youths, expected VDB members to occasionally indulge them with drinks. On several occasions, as I joined village youth to labour on a VDB project (for which they earned a daily wage), the VDB served midday rum and whiskey. This was not out of their generosity (and certainly did not benefit the pace of work), but villagers demanded this little indulgence from them. On other occasions, as I joined VDB members and their youthful entourage to ‘watch development’, for instance to see a mammoth machine drilling the soil in search for another water source, a bottle of liquor was usually not far off, and shared with all those present. ‘I came for this only’, Sekho, a friend, said, as he took his first sip from a glass filled with dark-coloured rum while we sat on a slightly elevated hillock watching the Global Tubes Company, staffed by non-Naga labourers, drilling the soil. This expectation, on part of not a few villagers, to be served liquor while carrying out (or watching) development projects was however never part of a day’s work in the paddy fields, while cutting firewood in the jungle, or any other task that was part of mundane village life. In fact, any villager known to squander his income reaped from his fields on liquor was condemned as both immoral and irresponsible. These were acts no self-respecting villager was expected to indulge in.

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It took me a rather long time to make sense of this apparent distinction between development monies and those generated locally, predominantly through agriculture. But as my fieldwork prolonged, I came to realize that this differential evaluation corresponded to a conceptual and moral distinction that was made between ‘development’, or what was sometimes called ‘Indian monies’, and locally generated ‘Naga monies’. What separated these were not the currency notes (in both cases they involved the same rupee notes) but their perceived different origins and moral character. Money acquired through development projects was seen as ‘external’ and ‘easy’; it was perceived as ‘external’ because it came from Delhi and channeled through a state entity whose character and legitimacy the villagers doubted, and it was ‘easy’ because it was gained without the hardship that came with ‘Naga work’ such as cultivating fields, selling firewood, and raising cattle.13 In a complex (and internally contested) moral economy, the pocketing of ‘Indian monies’ was expected, even drew levels of admiration, certainly more than it triggered outright accusations and moral condemnation of ‘corruption’. It was this distinction that also influenced the sort of expenditures seen as morally permissible, and which included, in the case of Indian monies, occasional splurges on liquor.14 But let us return to the idiom of ‘eating development’. While most agreed that those dealing with development should ‘eat’ some of its funds, this was not to turn into an infinite feast, and several village voices argued that VDB members were eating a little too much. This was a contentious issue in the village, but in the end the majority seemingly came down with a solution: to relentlessly beseech VDB members for the funding of manifold village events and common causes.15 ‘These days, all villagers ask me for money,’ Phugwumi’s VDB secretary told me, one afternoon, as we sat down in his kitchen for tea. He explained: Student and youth organizations, church bodies, village societies, wrestling clubs, all of them expect us to fund their activities. See, that khel-wise football tournament that took place the other week. The youth society insisted we finance it. We spent several lakhs on it. We had to buy them outfits and boots, and of course food for everyone. There are so many functions in our village nowadays, tournaments, outings, jubilees. Small or big, villagers expect us to help them organize. Soon, our annual audit is coming up. It worries me. Officially we can’t spend money on

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these things. The Block Development Officer doesn’t allow this. But what can I do? I can’t possible refuse these requests. The budget just goes.

The VDB secretary had good reasons to be worried about the annual VDB audit, which was a compulsory exercise and required a stamp of approval from the BDO for the influx of development monies to continue. These audits also offered village elders an opportunity to air their grievances, or even reject the audit. In the past, village elders had forced the then sitting VDB to provide 3,000 rupees to each village household as a ‘Christmas gift’, in compensation for the excess, they adjudged, its members had eaten. A few days prior to the annual VDB audit, a Phugwumi elder told me: If they [the VDB] can use 50% of the monies provided to the village for development, it is quite alright to us. With that amount they can do some good things for the village. But nowadays they don’t manage even 25%. Too much they keep for themselves and spent on drinking. See the road they blacktopped below my house. They proposed to blacktop one kilometre but in the end they only managed half of it.

What this criticism reveals, among others, is a local distinction made between ‘official budget’—which was the total amount sanctioned to the VDB—and the amount ‘socially sanctioned’ by the village community, which equated roughly half of the total tally. During the time of audit, indeed, no villager insisted on complete transparency, or on seeing and matching all bills, receipts, and accounts. This, they knew, was folly. It was folly not just because they agreed that VDB members should be permitted to secure reasonable cuts and commissions, but also because of the (formally disallowed) VDB funding for village events and functions. In addition, and crucially, there were the taxations and ‘donations’ that had to be paid to multiple Naga factions. Akin to Hopong’s contract, VDB budgets were subject to underground taxes, and if previously these taxes were collected from all households in the village individually, at the time of fieldwork these payments were transacted in bulk and taken out of VDB budgets (Chapter 3). This saved local household budgets, even as it necessitated further ‘creative accounting’ during VDB audits to conceal these payments. In the upshot, it was the ‘grey’ or ‘twilight’ zone between the ‘official’ and ‘social sanctions’ of development budgets

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that provided both the pool and veil, not just for VDB members’ personal appropriations of development funds, but also for the financing of village social life and underground taxes.

The Kinship of ‘Communitisation’ No treatise on development in Nagaland is complete without discussing the state’s unique policy and project of ‘communitisation’, which is a modality of governance that is neither public nor private but presided over by village communities. Communitisation is considered unique locally because it was invented in Nagaland, at the behest of R.S. Pandey, then Nagaland’s Chief Secretary. In 2002 the Communitisation of Public Institutions Act was passed by the Nagaland Assembly. This new legislation directed the decentralization of selected government functions and assets—most significantly in the fields of education, health, water, and electricity—to village committees with the objective of improving the delivery of public utilities. After arriving in Nagaland, it did not take Pandey long to observe how ‘a sense of despondency in the society and the governance system was clearly evident’; ‘Nothing can happen here’; ‘things will never improve’ were some of the general feelings amongst the people. Although the feeling was most intensely associated with the common people, it was not exclusive to them. Even the civil society leadership and the government officers were in its grip. A deep sense of cynicism was evident. The option was to drift along with the current or to think of a change [of ] process. (Pandey 2010: 1–2)

Pandey diagnosed a pervasive malfunctioning of the government, whose record of delivering public services he described as ‘indeed pitiful’ and ‘abysmally poor’ (2010: 3). Things had to change, Pandey concluded, and drastically at that. He ruled out complete privatization, seen as the opposite of government, given that ‘profit motive would take precedence over social service’ (2010: 12). Instead, Pandey proposed communitisation, which, as a vision, ‘is about the user community [Naga villagers], the real stakeholders taking charge of the institutions and services set up by the Government and turning them around. It involves empowerment,

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delegation, decentralization, building capacity, and much more, all rolled into one’ (2010: ix). For Pandey (2010: 21), communitisation revolves around three ‘T’s’; to Trust and Train the Community and the Transfer of power and resources to them. In concrete terms, Nagaland villages were to constitute a number of committees, such as village health, education, water, and electricity committees headed by selected chairpersons, each of which would then adjudicate over associated government functions and resources. The purchase of stationeries, medicines, electric wires, water pipes, the construction of classrooms, the upgrading of health facilities; all of these, and more, became the responsibilities of empowered village committees.16 In a further act of delegation, even the salaries of government employees stationed in villages (for example, teachers, doctors, nurses, linemen) were routed through designated bank accounts in the name of communitisation committees. In a bid to counteract widespread local absenteeism the government instructed these committees to deduct percentages of any employee’s salary when found absent, irregular, or unsatisfactory in carrying out his or her duties.17 Unlike Nagaland state functionaries, many of whom had proven to be self-seeking, villagers, once empowered, were expected to privilege the common good of their own villages over subsidiary interests and motivations. Communitisation, as such, was anticipated to reduce corruption, eradicate absenteeism, and minimize malgovernance. While, as a policy, communitisation could be interpreted as an admittance of state weakness, of Nagaland state’s failure to act as a guarantor and provider of the common good, more importantly, Pandey (2010: 23) argued, communitisation builds upon rich social capital characteristic of the prototypical Naga ‘village republic’. ‘The state of Nagaland’, he wrote, ‘is blessed with admirable community bonds reflecting dense and rich social capital, available in amazing abundance in Naga villages’. Traditionally, he explained, these villages functioned ‘like a republic in themselves’, were typically ‘self-contained’ and while ‘inter-village clashes were common’, ‘intra-village ones’, according to Pandey, took place ‘rarely so’. Pandey (2010: 22) continued: The cohesion, or, in other words, the rich density of the social capital, within the villages is of ancient vintage, continuing through generations. Connections and bonds among the people belong to a tribe which covers

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several villages also exist, but the cohesiveness is stronger in a village then in a tribe as a whole … The manner in which the village community conducts its affairs in times of sorrow or mirth, adversity or merriment, is reflective of its genius and to an observer from the outside is remarkably fascinating.

It was this density of social capital, the cohesiveness, and the overall genius of the Naga village that was envisaged as an organic solution to Nagaland’s crisis of corruption and governance. The remainder of this section resumes our ethnographic focus to show how, in actual practice, communitisation often fails to achieve set objectives. It fails not because of an absence of village cohesion, but it fails, I argue, precisely because of kinship relations and strong social bonds, which invoke loyalties that readily supersede villagers’ commitment to the state and its policy of communitisation. I will show how it were cross-cutting social bonds that prevented village committees from the stringent, detached, and rational monitoring of local government offices and employees they were expected to perform under communitisation. Phugwumi’s health centre is housed in a spacious and neatly plastered building situated a little off the main village. In its vicinity, a handful of quarters were built for doctors and nurses to reside during their tenures in Phugwumi. At the time of fieldwork, however, all quarters were locked with sturdy padlocks, its walls overgrown with moulds and shrubs, its wood decaying, and most of its windows broken. None of them, I learned, had ever been occupied. The doctor, a fellow Chakhesang Naga from a village further away, preferred his house in Kohima over the rural scenes of Phugwumi, and visited the village only intermittently. If before communitisation there was little the villagers could have done about his absenteeism, this changed after the communitisation of the health centre. However, this did not result in the doctor’s daily presence in the clinic. What communitisation changed, first and foremost, was the authority the doctor had to negotiate his absenteeism with. The doctor therefore called upon the chairperson of the health committee to plead his case. According to the chairperson, whom I interviewed, the doctor had reasoned along the following lines: My family lives in Kohima. My children go to school there. I can’t travel up and down from Kohima every day. It is simply too far. And it will not

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be good for my family if I would have to live separately from them. In any case, the nurses are there to take care of patients, and if anything serious happens patients need to come to Kohima anyway as we can’t carry out operations in the village.

The doctor had also played the ‘tribal card’, asking the chairperson to ‘understand his situation’ as they were both Chakhesangs. Phugwumi’s health committee had heeded to his request. ‘He is from our own tribe. We speak the same language. We need to understand his situation also’, as the chairperson justified his decision. It was subsequently agreed that the doctor would attend to his duties in Phugwumi once a week, without the health committee deducting his salary. In return for this lenience, the doctor offered a monthly ‘donation’ to the health committee. In the case of the village nurses, none occupied a quarter because nearly all of them hailed from Phugwumi itself. While most of them had initially been posted to other parts of the state, through various means—including the pulling of ‘political strings’—they had over time managed to secure transfers to Phugwumi, whose comforts and close social bonds they preferred over postings away. In the village, they had their own ancestral houses to live in, or had joined the extended families of their husbands as social norms prescribed. Despite the nurses’ close proximity to the health centre, both in terms of the minimal distance they needed to cover, and in terms of social bonds as their patients were simultaneously neighbours and clan and village members, most nurses were irregular in attending to their duties. Many days no nurses were to be found around the clinic, while those who did report for duty usually stayed in the clinic only briefly. Villagers knew this, and anticipated on the nurses’ absence by calling, in cases of sickness or injury, not on the clinic but on the private residence of one of the nurses (who, it must be said, were ever ready to diagnose and treat patients in their homes). Most nurses kept a stock of medicines at home, as well as basic medical instruments to diagnose a patient. When someone nevertheless needed to visit the clinic, for instance to have him or herself examined more thoroughly or to receive an injection, the patient would make sure to first call around to inquire whether any of the nurses meant to attend that day. Going to the clinic unannounced was seen as foolhardy.

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Some in Phugwumi voiced their disappointment with the postcommunitisation absenteeism in the clinic, and were critical about the health committee for not enforcing the doctor and nurses’ presence. They, after all, now possessed the authority to enforce regular office hours. Most villagers I spoke to about this offered a more nuanced understanding of this predicament, however. ‘The problem with communitisation is that most government employees here are our own villagers’, Chikhu, a member of Phugwumi’s Village Council, said. He explained: Nurses have many other duties besides their jobs. They need to do household chores and tend to their fields. Most nurses are also mothers and need to look after their children and parents-in-law. They are our own family and clan-members; how can we force them to forsake their duties as wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law, and be regular in the clinic? That would be quite wrong on our part.

A similar cross-cutting of kinship bonds also prevented the education committee from ‘punishing’ absentee teachers, most of who belonged to Phugwumi and regularly privileged calls from their fields over the sound of the school bell. The only teacher who hardly ever missed a day’s work was Mr Gupta, who hailed from faraway West Bengal and had resided in Phugwumi for many years. The villagers appreciated his dedication, but explained his punctuality and commitment to his teaching so: as an outsider, he did not own land and unlike local teachers there was no reason for him to forfeit his teaching obligations. ‘The government tells us to deduct the salary from those teachers who are irregular’, a member of the education committee told me. ‘But would that not be shameful on our part to do? Will not their families suffer because of that? We can ask them indirectly to be serious in their work. But nothing more than that.’18 At times such cross-cutting social bonds assumed more complex forms. Chikhu explained: Look, the members of the village Health and Education committees too have families and relatives, and some of them work in government departments. Now, if a committee decides to deduct the salary of a nurse or teacher, surely his or her family but also relatives and clan members will feel bad. Then, if they know that a relative of a health or education committee member works in a local government office, they will take revenge by forcing the concerned committee to deduct his or her salary. In this

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way, communitisation, if we enforce it, will only cause conflict and resentment. In the end, we are all related in the village. The Government can’t expect us to control and punish one another.

Here, the ‘failure’ of village committees to stop absenteeism was not based on considerations of private gain on part of its members, but the result of the thickly entangled social fabric of village life. When it comes to corrupt practices, amongst which absenteeism may be counted, Pardo (2004: 5) observes how ‘monetary aspects may play secondfiddle, or it may be overruled by other motivations’. The committees’ motivation, in this case, was the maintenance and nourishing of village social bonds and cohesion, which was seen as both more immediate and imperative than enforcing ‘good governance’ through strict and impartial monitoring. Rather than an ‘indigenous solution’—the way envisaged by Pandey—communitisation thence provided village-level government employees with the social leverage to not carry out their duties strictly. It prevented village committees from enforcing punitive measures as doing so would likely upset social relations and invite local divisions and disagreements. Such loyalties of kinship and social bonds well exceeded the villagers’ commitment to the state and its policies, making the policy of communitisation, even if well intended, complex and flawed in its implementation.

Concluding Reflections: Towards a Moral Economy of State Resources The previous chapter argued that through a Centre-led policy of ‘seduction’, as a counter-insurgency measure, Naga livelihoods were increasingly tied to the political status quo. It divided Naga society, more clearly than before, into ‘overground’ and ‘underground’ segments (although any strict separation between them, as argued in Chapter 3, is illusionary). The economic survival of increasing numbers of Nagas now relies directly or indirectly on existing state structures. Saying so, however, remains different from asserting that most Nagas now strongly identify with the Indian state, and the larger idea of India. As a long-term corollary of protracted conflict, past experiences of bodily violence, and the contested legitimacy of Nagaland state, local state-society relations

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are particularly complex and ambiguous. In this chapter I used the study of corruption as a vantage to examine the inner workings of state-led development and to explore the perspectives, views, and moral reasoning Naga villagers adopt as they engage with the state and its generous development resources. This chapter’s ethnography reveals a number of points. First, while some in Noksen and Phugwumi were clearly dismayed about the scale of village-level corruption, only few opined that those engaged in development works or state contracts should not derive material gains out of it. In the case of Hopong, relatives with past experience in handling state contracts came forward with advice on how he could enlarge his personal profits. Thence, if ‘audit societies’ (Power 1999) and ‘audit culture’ (Shore 2009; Strathern 2000) are thought to be everywhere on the rise, and a host of national and international organizations promote ‘good governance’, the implicit moral consent granted by villagers for those presiding over development budgets to siphon off private cuts seems at least problematic. It challenges, for one, the popular notion that ‘the public’ is here, there, and everywhere the passive and defenceless victim of corrupt practices by local elites and state functionaries. However, rather than conjuring this as further evidence of how deeply ingrained corruption has become in Nagaland, this must also make us reconsider the meaning and understanding of the state as a benevolent and impartial provider of the ‘common good’ in a place where the legitimacy of the state is contested and peoples’ historical experiences of the postcolonial state are punctuated by violence and ambiguity. Second, Hopong, Phugwumi VDB members, and communitisation committees did not feel socially or morally compelled to carry out projects or follow policies in ways officially instructed. In the case of Hopong particularly, it is also imperative to consider the long and arduous road he had traversed to finally obtain the state contract he had long desired. For him, the contract was first and foremost a reward he had duly earned by actively campaigning on behalf of the sitting MLA. That the contract was first and foremost a ‘gift’ to Hopong was evident from the observation that the school in Noksen town already possessed sufficient classrooms. When I visited the town again, six months after Hopong had finished the building, it came therefore as no surprise that the new classroom had not been put to use.

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Third, the categorical distinction made between ‘Indian’ and ‘Naga monies’ evokes an old anthropological antinomy of a dual economy, not in terms of Boeke’s (1953) theorizing of the coexistence of traditional and modern sectors in colonial economies, nor in the sense of Polanyi’s (1944) distinction between economic substantivism and formalism, but based on a conceptual and moral division between state, or ‘Indian monies’—which are seen as fast cash, morally dubious in character, and ‘external’, as belonging to nobody in particular and therefore the property of whoever is able to lay their hands on them—and ‘Naga monies’ generated internally through (mostly) agriculture, and which carries a more conservative quality. This distinction seems equally pertinent in neighbouring, and conflict-ridden, Manipur where a former Governor lamented how ‘the loot of Indian money is [seen as] legitimate business by the people at large’ (Marwah 2009: 151). Fourth, and in continuation of Chapter 3, the realm of village development and the ‘misuse’ of its funds cannot be understood without reference to the authoritative tax regimes maintained by Naga underground groups. Both Hopong’s contract and Phugwumi’s VDB were taxed by rivalling Naga factions, and this both reduced village development budgets and complicated audits. Fifth, my conversations with Vekho (in this chapter’s opening vignette), as well as occasional remarks made to me during my fieldwork, suggests that many Nagas are aware of the political motivations that lie behind the large sums of development monies allocated to them. This was also the opinion of a Central Government bureaucrat deputed to Nagaland, where he observed how ‘the young Naga generation consider the generous funds under various heads a ploy to make them lose their spirits of Independence’ (Maitra 2011: 163). In Phugwumi, this point was forcefully made, one Sunday, from the pulpit of the Baptist church. A ‘guest-pastor’ had been invited who, leaving the scriptures aside, admonished the villagers for their increasing greed and selfishness. In a sermon that revealed his sympathies to the Naga Movement, he reminded the congregation that ‘Nagas could not be defeated by the Indian Army, no matter how many battalions and soldiers were sent into the hills’. The pastor then continued: After realizing that Nagas could not be defeated militarily, the Centre decided to throw money on us. A lot of money. We stood strong in the

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face of violence, but see what money has done to us? It made us lose our dignity, our honesty, and spoiled our youth. Today we are running after the state. We have become weak, dependent, and an eyesore before God. Naga Independence is our birthright, but we allowed India to buy it from us with money.

The pastor, I was told, was known for his outspokenness, but his sermon inspired a good deal of conversation in the village. ‘He is right’, Athe said that evening. ‘It is not bullets, but monies that defeated our Naga Movement. Perhaps we should be grateful that those Naga fighters who sacrificed their lives for Independence are no longer around to see what the Naga struggle has come to.’ Sixth, the ethnography from Nagaland adds another angle to a wider debate that concentrates on the question of why decades of state-led development across India failed to uplift many of the poor, marginalized and vulnerable sections of the society. In an important book, Akhil Gupta (2012), drawing on Agamben’s ‘bare life’, Foucualt’s ‘bio-politics’, and Herzfeld’s insight that bureaucracy produces indifference, frames state-society relations across rural India as ‘structural violence’. Everyday bureaucratic procedures and norms, Gupta argues, work to depoliticize poverty and premature death amongst vulnerable segments of Indian society. While bureaucratic corruption may partially explain the failure of development, for Gupta this failure must be understood, first and foremost, as an inherent outcome of bureaucratic arbitrariness and expediency that results from a structural detachment (or violence) between the modus operandi of state bureaucracies and the everyday realities of the poor. This chapter, however, showed that, in Nagaland, development fails not just because of a failing bureaucracy—many of whose development duties have, in any case, been delegated to Naga villages—but because of a, to reiterate Jamir’s (2002: 3–4) observation, ‘a lack of sense of belonging by the people in the government’, revealing itself in an ‘economy of resentment’ (Fassin 2007) and a wider moral economy of the state and its resources that locally legitimizes (at least to an extent) the private appropriation of state resources officially designated for the public good. Seventh, the absence of moral commitment towards the state and its resources does not preclude the existence of other sets of moral obligations on part of state beneficiaries. These included the funding

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of ‘social life’ villagers expect from Phugwumi’s VDB members and the nourishing of social bonds over the strict adherence to principles of ‘good governance’ by communitisation committees. Such moral obligations perhaps show themselves most vividly in religious obligations. Had Hopong forfeited on donating a part of his profit to the local church the general absence of moral denunciation over his private cuts would have quickly waned. This relationship between ‘corrupt practices’ and Christianity was everywhere present in Nagaland, and both popular discourses and articles in newspapers regularly reported handsome donations made by Naga bureaucrats, politicians, and contractors towards the construction of new church buildings, missionary activities in places near and far, or towards covering tuition fees for Naga theology students. To illustrate further, a state functionary narrated to me his recent visit to the Philippines to attend a seminar organized by the Asian Pacific Baptist Federation (APBF), and which he had paid for, he frankly admitted, through office budgets he had been able to ‘save up’. While ideas of the ‘public good’, and the state as its provider, were ambiguous at best, for most Nagas the ‘Christian good’ remained a fundamental value. Finally, while there is much talk about the ‘crisis of corruption’, as it is experienced and condemned in places across India, the case of rural Nagaland shows that the promised nation-wide combat against corruption through the adoption of more stringent anti-corruption laws might well disappoint, certainly so in Nagaland. This legalistic approach, if anything, entails ‘a premature closure on the question how to define “corruption”’ (Shore and Haller 2005: 3). Locally, as this chapter variously showed, definitions of corruption are partial, and often contradictory, while the pilfering of state resources is not just an issue of law, but must be situated in relation to Nagas’ embodied experiences of state violence, the continuity of Naga insurgency, and the ambiguities of a now long-standing policy of ‘seduction’. Out of this has grown a particularistic moral economy of the state that does not automatically condemn all private capturing of state resources as ‘corrupt’ and ‘immoral’. If laws can be changed, tightened, or altered overnight, moral judgments, lingering resentments, and contested loyalties are a great deal harder to change. Until and unless such happens Nagaland’s ‘crisis of corruption’ seems unlikely to abate.

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Notes 1. The North-Eastern Council is a nodal agency for development in the Northeast with its headquarters in Shillong, and entrusted with planning, executing, and monitoring social and economic development schemes across North-East India. 2. In most places I use ‘corruption’ with quotation marks in order to emphasize that ‘corruption’ as a straightforward and legal category diverges from local understandings and judgments Naga villagers adopt towards the pilfering of state resources. 3. This is not an original argument. In her treatise on everyday corruption across India, Veena Das (2015: 323) notices the ‘simultaneous banalisation and condemnation of corruption’. She writes: ‘The same people who are vocal about the decline of the moral fibre of the nation [through practices of corruption] in one register of speech either fail to notice their own actions or find support for these actions in another set of norms, say that of kinship and community norms.’ 4. A prime example of this stance, in India, was the indefinite fast resorted to by the Gandhian Anna Hazara in 2011 in an attempt to pressurize the Indian Government into accepting the Jan Lokpal Bill, or the citizens’ ombudsman bill, which would see the creation of an independent body to investigate corruption cases. 5. My understanding of corruption, and the gap that may be exist between immorality and illegality, is largely shaped by the writings of Olivier de Sardan (1999, 2005), Akhil Gupta (1995), Italo Pardo (2004), Willem Van Schendel (2005b), Alpa Shah (2008, 2009, 2010), and Steven Pierce (2016). 6. For rural Jharkhand, Shah (2010: 78) showed how the Adivasi Munda elite could self-legitimize their private appropriation of state resources ‘through a moral discourse which showed a general lack of commitment to the state as it manifests itself locally’. This lack of moral obligation was the cumulative result, Shah explains, from Mundas’ historical experiences of the colonial and postcolonial state as an oppressive force that collaborates with locally high and dominant castes at the material and cultural expense of Adivasis. To move away ‘from the idea of corruption as somehow pathological’, argues Shah (2008: 129), we need ‘understand people’s moral reasoning about actions that some would consider corrupt in their own terms,’ and grasp, as she argues in a later article, ‘localised nuances of morality and legitimacy attached to these practices’ (2009: 310). 7. I must qualify here that there existed a lack of information among villagers about this scheme. They were also not given the job-cards on which they

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8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

had to fill out how many days they had worked (to be counter-signed by the VDB secretary). Instead, these cards were kept in a box in the VDB office. ‘Many of our villagers are illiterate’, the VDB Secretary explained when I inquired about this. ‘It is easier if we fill up the cards for them, receive the money in bulk, and then manage it from here.’ Several in the village suspected that it was through the employment scheme that VDB members were able to appropriate large amounts, but even as they criticized this, they also argued that the scheme was not suitable to Nagas, most of whom portrayed little inclination in selling their labour against a daily wage. Based on the existence of traditional customary bodies, and by virtue of Article 371A of the Constitution which offers Nagaland an exceptional status within the Indian Union, Nagaland was exempted from the 73rd Amendment of the Indian Constitution, which directed state governments to organize village panchayats and endow them with the authority and powers to provide essential services and facilities to village communities, and, more broadly, function as decentralized units of self-government. Inspired by Gandhi’s vision of Gram Swaraj (village self-governance). This was meant to counter India’s then highly centralized functioning of state apparatuses. Nagaland’s VDB system may be read as a locally tailored manifestation of this governance principle. Gaonbura, or village elder/leader, is a colonial legacy in which the British administration identified and appointed particular villagers who then served as an extension of colonial rule and were responsible, among others, to collect house-taxes. This institution was retained in the postcolony, and gaonburas today are part of village councils. For a damming critique of ‘community governance’, in the background of capitalist transformations, in India’s Northeast see Beppe Karlsson’s (2011) Unruly Hills: A Political Ecology of India’s Northeast. Karlsson shows, among others, how the community ownership of land and its resources in Meghalaya did not prevent the privatization and commoditization of forests and natural resources by local elites, and the environmental degradation and dispossession this causes. In some way, of course, this was precisely what the Centre’s policy of ‘seduction’ hoped to achieve; ‘to soften up the Nagas’ (Hazarika 2011: 241). This idiom of ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ development, to refer to ‘corrupt’ practices, is not exclusive to Nagaland. Writing on states in Sub-Saharan Africa, Bayart (1993: 235) refers to this (and more) as the ‘politics of the belly’ and identified a ‘rush for spoils [of state] in which all actors—rich and poor—participate’. In the context of Ghana, Hasty (2005: 275)

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13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

in the shadows of naga insurgency similarly observed how ‘Consuming the goods of the state is likened to eating voraciously and consequently becoming literally and figuratively fat.’ In a different ethnographic setting, but where the legitimacy of the state was similarly contested, Shah (2009: 302) noticed that cuts from state contracts were generally perceived as ‘second order money’ because their accrual ‘was thought to involve illegal activity’. Despite this illegality, appropriating monies formally designed for the public good, Shah explains, was nevertheless seen as licit because of a ‘local moral discourse’ that portrayed a ‘lack of commitment to the state’. This moral distinction made in Phugwumi between ‘Naga’ and ‘development’ or ‘Indian’ monies offers a localized nuance of Nagaland’s crisis of corruption. The application of this observation travels much wider than Phugwumi alone. ‘All this is Indian money’, a Nagaland Chief Minister once commented on the widespread corruption across his state. ‘We don’t pay taxes here ... so whatever is being done with the money is only benefitting some Nagas, it is not taking money away from them. It is only Indian money that is being used’ (cited in Hazarika 2011: 241). For rural Jharkhand, Shah (2010: 78) noted how monies obtained through appropriating sums from state contracts, and in a context of ‘rising conflict over contractorship’ were purified through ‘a new politics of redistribution whereby contractors of block development projects had to contribute to the betterment of the village’, for instance by helping to build a temple. ‘This was a moral argument,’ Shah concluded, ‘that no contractor could contest’. Membership of communitisation committees was open to those villagers who did not hold a government job, as this was seen as possibly leading to conflicting interests. The concept and implementation of the new communitisation policy in Nagaland was lauded widely, and Pandey was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration as well as the United Nations Public Service Award. In parts because of absenteeism among teachers, many in Phugwumi preferred to send their children to the village’s private school, which had earned a better reputation in terms of the quality of education offered in comparison to the school funded by the government.

6

The State as a Resource

The Quest for ‘Frontier Nagaland’

H

oot, hoot, hoot! Chingmak honks the horn of his vehicle as he  approaches the towering Ao Baptist Church in Mokokchung town, where he had asked me to wait for him. Mokokchung town, the Ao Naga headquarters, initially grew around a British outpost formally established there in 1889 on top of—what became unimaginatively dubbed—the District Commissioner’s (DC) Hill. Over time, the town first expanded downwards, then sideways, and today makes a sprawling urban settlement; congested, short of water, but with a lingering charm. Mokokchung is also the main gateway into eastern Nagaland, the erstwhile land of the so-called ‘free’, ‘wild’, and ‘unadministrated’ Nagas, historically left outside the direct pale of British rule. ‘Sure you want to come to Noksen?’, asks Chingmak from the window of his car. ‘This time of year most villagers sleep in their jhum

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0006

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fields. They return to the village only for Wednesday and Sunday church services. You will hardly find anyone around.’1 As he speaks, he opens the dashboard and fishes out of it a small packet of betel nuts and folded leaves, selects and unfolds one, spreads the slaked lime from the leaf’s centre to its edges with his thumb, wraps a betel nut into the leaf, and stacks the whole packet into the left side of his mouth, causing his cheek to bulge. ‘Moreover, the electricity transformer has blasted again. There has been no power for the last two weeks’, Chingmak adds, after which he splatters a reddish wave of betel saliva onto the street. ‘I am sure’, I  respond as I nestle myself in the passenger seat. Chingmak grins at my resolve. Besides the power supply, what had broken down too was the single public vehicle that plies between Noksen town—a small administrative hub built on land donated by Noksen village situated on a hill opposite the town—and Mokokchung. The driver, a notorious drunkard, lacks the money to have it repaired, and as a result Noksen town and village are largely closed off. For several days I had waited in a Mokokchung guesthouse for one of the few privately owned vehicles in Noksen to come to Mokokchung town, and with Chingmak now making the round trip (to drop his son to College and purchase some wares), I am all too eager to travel with him to Noksen and start my fieldwork. This was my second trip to Noksen and eastern Nagaland. My first trip, several months earlier, was to request research permissions and to explore the mundane practicalities of staying in the village. I had met Chingmak during my first trip. It was impossible not to. His wooden house with its characteristic large bamboo veranda that overlooked the hills was a landmark, situated in the middle of Noksen town. Chingmak himself was a local strongman, well built, better educated than most, and the son of the headman of a nearby village. He had stood for elections in the past, and though his bid had gone unsuccessful, he enjoyed significant political clout and was a trusted aide of the constituency’s sitting MLA. ‘The Minister always listens to what I have to say. He needs me to secure votes’, as Chingmak himself defines his sway in the area. I also came to know Chingmak as a deeply passionate believer in the movement for Frontier Nagaland, a political demand that would see the bifurcation of Nagaland.2

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‘Welcome to the land of the backward people’, Chingmak remarks lightheartedly as we eave the Mokokchung area behind and enter Tuensang district. Steering the wheel with one hand, he uses the other to prepare himself another indulgence of betel nut. ‘I can’t drive without chewing’, he explains. ‘It’s a bad habit. Better abstain from those in the village. It will ruin your entire mouth.’ Compared to the Chakhesang area, the landscape here is steeper, the ridges sharper, and the hills around us stripped bare by slash-and-burn cultivation. ‘See the condition of the road’, Chingmak says as we enter deeper into Tuensang district. ‘It was blacktopped just last year. The contract was not given to an eastern Naga but to a rich Angami contractor from Kohima. He applied the tarmac as thin as lipstick. It washed away with the first rains.’ The road, indeed, has quickly narrowed, and although officially a highway, for long stretches it looks more like a dirt track, cracked and potholed, and lined with shrubs that encroach unto the little tarmac that is still there. ‘It is like that with most development projects in eastern Nagaland’, Chingmak continues while skillfully steering his vehicle around the deepest potholes. ‘Most public works are given to wealthy western Naga contractors, who then do scrappy jobs and pocket most of the budget, leaving us eastern Nagas without development.’ Soon our conversation turns into a monologue. ‘Eastern Nagas are lagging behind in every way’, Chingmak explains, then continues: We were not administrated by the British, missionaries did not reach our areas, no schools were established, and no development took place. But instead of helping us develop, we have been exploited by western Nagas ever since our areas [the erstwhile Tuensang Frontier Division and the Naga Hills district] were joined together to make Nagaland State. By now, we should have been at par with them, but they keep all development budgets to themselves. They do not want us to develop. We have understood their behaviour. For eastern Nagas, separate statehood is now the only solution left.

According to Chingmak, the early entrance of administration and education among western Naga tribes today reveals itself in latter’s disproportionate political, economic, and social powers, and which allows them to appropriate most Nagaland government jobs and to subvert state policies, bureaucratic procedures, and the implementation of

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Figure 6.1 Frontier Nagaland banner hung on the facade of a shop in Noksen Town Source: Author.

development schemes to advance their own interests. In so doing, they deprive eastern Nagas of access to state resources. Chingmak’s narrative is matched by billboards and banners erected alongside the road (see Figure 6.1). They read: ‘We want Frontier Nagaland’, ‘We want freedom from exploitation’, and the near obligatory ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’. The billboards are planted there by the Eastern Naga People’s Organization (ENPO), an apex body that represents six tribes— Chang, Konyak, Sangtam, Phom, Yimchunger, and Khiamniungan, spread across four districts. The Eastern Naga People’s Organization is the vanguard of the Frontier Nagaland movement. ‘For decades, gross injustice has been done to the people of these four districts by the successive [Nagaland] governments,’ the ENPO justified the (formal) launch of the statehood demand in 2011. The statement continued: Of the eleven districts in Nagaland, these four backward districts have almost half of the state’s population. But despite that, they continue

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to remain extremely underdeveloped. Our demand for the creation of Frontier Nagaland is based on historical facts. This is something like going back to the earlier arrangement when the entire area was under the erstwhile Tuensang Frontier Division of NEFA. (cited in Assam Tribune 2012).

In the following months, whenever we met, Chingmak would often bring up the topic of Frontier Nagaland. ‘If we get our own state, our people will be in charge of development. Things will be better then,’ Chingmak is sure. While he admits that statehood is unlikely to end corruption or near automatically usher in material welfare for everybody, Chingmak nevertheless reasons that, after statehood, eastern Nagas would become the sole beneficiaries of state resources. ‘See’, he says on another occasion as we sit on his bamboo veranda, ‘western and eastern Nagas are brothers. That’s why we propose to keep the name “Nagaland” as part of our new state. But how can we live in the same house if one brother steals from the other?’ ‘But it is going to be a long struggle’, Chingmak sighs. ‘Getting a new state is not easy. Until there is blood and dead bodies, Delhi will not take our demand seriously. But how can we kill our Naga brothers?’ Chingmak’s final remark, that without a spell of violence, the spilling of blood, slain bodies on the streets, there is little hope of Frontier Nagaland converting from a political imaginary into a new state is at once disquieting and a perceptive reading of the history and politics of India’s federal structuring and restructuring. In recent decades, in all cardinal directions of the country, communities have come to commit themselves so deeply to statehood demands that people risk limbs and life for it. The prevalence and persistence of these demands, as they inundate India’s ‘political marketplace’, Louise Tillin (2013: 1) writes, reflect the ‘generative and regenerative qualities of Indian democracy, as well as its frustrations’. They make an agitated contest, fought out in places across the country, over the ownership of and access to the state, ‘whose resources make it a real prize’ and whose democratic politics ‘has kept most people in the game for this prize’ (Khilnani 1997: 195). But while statehood demands are both numerous and volatile, successes remain few and far between. Those that succeeded were often preceded by protracted, at times decades long, struggles that variously included mass-agitations, violence, vandalism, stone-pelting, aggressive

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ultimatums, curfews, hunger strikes, railway blockades, slayings and self-immolations, thus suggesting a dyadic relationship between violence and dead bodies, and the enactment of new states ever since India deviated from its initial post-Independence stance of structuring states first and foremost along linguistic lines.3 The enactment of Nagaland state made the first such deviation, and, as noted in Chapter 4, was preceded by agonizing violence. Statehood demands fall within the realm of legal possibilities as the Indian Constitution allows for federal restructuring and the formation of new states and territories, even as it does not specify which circumstances and conditions do, and which do not, justify statehood claims. Going by the history of India’s federalism, Paul Brass (1974: 17–18) conjured four ‘Golden Rules’ that add legitimacy to statehood demands; they must be ‘non-secessionist’, ‘non-religious’, summon ‘broad popular support’, and when they envisage the fragmentation of a multi-lingual state ‘must have support from different linguistic groups.’ Tillin (2013: 11) proposes another typology to capture when, where, and why federal restructuring takes place. She distinguishes four broad considerations that guide territorial reorganization; (1) sociological, based on the recognition of distinct territorial identities, (2) political economy, the alignment of borders with resource-rich territories, (3) administrative convenience, to improve the quality of governance, and (4) electoral interests on part of the ruling coalition at the Centre. The demand for Frontier Nagaland meets some of the criteria and conditions outlined by Brass and Tillin, but falters on other. It certainly falters on Brass’ fourth condition as western Nagas, I will show, both reject and resent the statehood claim. Regardless of whether statehood claims are considered legitimate, they are ever emotive struggles, compel long-term commitment, and not infrequently become sources of contentious politics and violence. Given such volatilities, the protracted political struggle required, the likely violence, the inevitable victims, what, then, made eastern Nagas nevertheless want to join the long queue of statehood demands in India? This question leads to several related queries and conundrums. Was not Nagaland state created as a Naga tribal homeland, as an upland space where Naga tribes could live peaceful and protected lives? If so, what went wrong? What are the historical and social factors that bind the

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six eastern Naga tribes into jointly claiming statehood? And how does the Frontier Nagaland demand sit within the wider Naga Movement? Does the statehood claim not negate the very essence of what Naga nationalism stands for, and what many Nagas have variously suffered and sacrificed for? This chapter engages these questions through a set of sociohistorical and ethnographic explorations. I will show how the demand for Frontier Nagaland, while tracing back to the colonial era, implies that the creation and subsequent functioning of Nagaland state produced new constellations of power, new fault-lines, and new axes of differentiation with eastern Nagas today lamenting—what they experience as—the dominating and exploitative influence of western Naga tribes, whom they accuse of preventing eastern Nagas from receiving their development dues. The statehood demand, even as it draws popular support, is however subject to political and tribal complexities (and controversies) on which I will reflect as this chapter proceeds. A caveat before proceeding. The movement for Frontier Nagaland remains, relatively speaking, in its infancy. As a popular movement it is much younger compared to demands for, say, Gorkhaland and Bodoland, or for that matter to the decades-long struggle supporters of the Telangana Movement endured before their demand for a separate state was fulfilled in 2014. As such, the movement for Frontier Nagaland is still evolving, and this chapter should therefore be read as an early analysis of this statehood demand, its complexities, intricacies, and indeterminacies.

Talking and Praying Statehood in Noksen As I began my fieldwork in Noksen, I soon found that the statehood demand was not merely ‘elite politics’, but inspired a good deal of hopeful conversation in the village. Discussions on Frontier Nagaland were mired into many of the conversations farmers held while trotting arduous hours up and down their jhum fields, when spending nights in makeshift bamboo and thatched huts away from the village, an as they visited the line of shops in Noksen town. It also frequently cropped up in my interviews with them, even if the gist of my questions seemed at times far removed from the politics of statehood. For instance, when

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discussing lycanthropy—a transcendental condition in which a man is possessed by a tiger’s soul, as reported across the Naga uplands (Hutton 1920, 1931; Mills 1926: 248; Ovesen 1983; Sutter 2008)—with a Noksen ‘tigerman’ I was offered a lengthy narration about an annual ‘tiger cabinet meeting’ held on a hilltop in the Phom Naga area and attended by senior ‘ENPO tigermen’ (in their tiger manifestations). During this meeting, I was told, rituals are conducted that predict the year’s elements, the quantity and quality of the harvest, and whether misfortunes would befall the eastern Nagas. Upon probing why no western Naga tigermen were part of this conclave, Noksen’s tigerman shrugged, then said: ‘Western Nagas might be having their own tigermen cabinet’. Clearly the idea of Frontier Nagaland had transcended the mundane domain of the ‘the political’. The statehood demand also infused local Christian discourses and prayer. During my fieldwork, church congregations in both Noksen town and village regularly prayed and fasted for the wisdom and perseverance of ENPO leaders in ‘bringing statehood’. ‘Not only my church’, the pastor of Noksen Town Baptist Church explained, ‘all churches in eastern Nagaland pray and fast for statehood. We are asking God to end our suppression by western Nagas and to show us the way to Frontier Nagaland’. If in its struggle for Independence, the NCC, as early as 1956, directed that ‘God ought to be included in every practical field of Nagas’, popularized the slogan ‘Nagaland for Christ’, and decreed that ‘as many pastors as possible should be appointed to prepare the war affairs’ (cited in Elwin 1961: 63), it seems at least paradoxical that an opposite political demand, one that advocates the further political branching of Naga lands, is today permeated by similar Christian invocations and prayers. With Naga nationalists praying and fasting for Naga Independence and territorial integration, the NSCN-IM claiming divine provenance, and advocates of Frontier Nagaland invoking the same divine backing for their statehood demand, the statehood claim is not just a worldly contest but invokes competing claims over God’s politico-territorial inklings. In talking and praying statehood, most Noksen villagers had internalized the ENPO’s official stance, and explained that the absence of development amongst them was not merely neglect, but that their progress was deliberately thwarted by western Naga politicians, bureaucrats,

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contractors, and engineers, who they sometimes described as cunning, conceited, and greedy. The dismal condition of local roads was often invoked as illustrative.4 Villagers knew that the government allocated substantial sums for road construction and repairing, and that these contracts were given to contractors based in Kohima and Dimapur. But  since the condition of the road was deteriorating further with each rainy season, and their intermittent journeys to Tuensang and Mokokchung towns grew longer year by year, they concluded that the contractors must be pocketing the budget, instead of working earnestly towards the development of eastern Nagaland. Those Noksen villagers who occasionally travelled to Kohima and Dimapur reinforced such narratives of willful neglect. In western Nagaland, they shared on their returns, villages and towns were developed better, roads potholed less, hospitals and clinics furnished with modern equipment, and schools and colleges staffed by wellqualified teachers. These visible discrepancies made them question why, within the same state, different levels of development could exist. Inevitably, they concluded that Nagaland state was controlled by western Naga politicians, bureaucrats, and engineers whose vision of the common good was constricted to the welfare and progress of their own tribes and territories, and which therefore made Nagaland state incapable of fulfilling its repeated promise of developing eastern Nagaland. But even as development, especially its perceived deficiency thereof, was central to discourses on Frontier Nagaland, the statehood demand travelled deeper than the materiality of the present. The next section discusses the differential historical trajectories eastern and western Nagas have in relation to colonial rule, and which the ENPO emphasizes as the historical backdrop against which the current statehood demand unfolds.

The Land of the Free Nagas In April 1888, the British officer McCabe, escorted by a handful of British military men and a large consignment of Indian sepoys and conscripted Naga coolies, crossed the river Dikhu and entered into the unadministered ‘wilds’, then referred to as the land of the ‘free Nagas’.

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On 25 April, they arrived at Noksen, fought themselves through its sturdy stockades, blasted bullets, and completed the assault by setting fire to the village (Reid 1942: 115). Noksen (then and now) was compactly built, a labyrinth of houses standing roof to roof. Back then, long before central development schemes distributed corrugated tin sheets, roofs were made of thatch, which made the fire spread quickly. Most of Noksen was reduced to smoldering ashes. Neighbouring Litem (spelled in colonial correspondence as Litam) village was similarly burned down. In those days, the burning of villages was a regularly meted out by the British to punish recalcitrant Naga villages, as entries in colonial tour diaries reveal. The burning of Noksen was no different. In the months preceding the assault, Noksen and Litem had jointly raided several Ao Naga villages situated within the parameters of the Naga Hills district, which made their victims de facto British subjects. McCabe’s ‘punitive expedition’ was intended to forever dissuade Noksen, and its allies, from carrying out raids into British administrated areas. Bamboo and thatched houses, however, did not take long to rebuild, certainly not long enough for sentiments of revenge to cool down. By July that same year, Noksen had already regained sufficient strength and—in alliance with Litem and several other nearby villages—raided multiple Ao Naga villages, killing and decapitating scores. The village of ‘Mongsemdi’ was attacked in broad daylight, when most of its ablebodied men were away in the fields. ‘[They] swarmed over the village like ants,’ a survivor told an investigating British officer, ‘and cut down every man, woman, or child who was unable to escape, a few young children who were taken alive excepted. After taking all the heads, they set fire to the village’ (Reid 1942: 115). In the official correspondence that followed the attack, Mokokchung’s then District Commissioner Mr Porteous wrote: The attacks were unquestionably intended as a retaliation for the expedition against Noksen and Litam in April last, undertaken to punish those villages for raids on Susu, Mongsemdi, and Lunkung. As I have now learnt, these villages suffered far more severely than could ever have been intended by my predecessor. Not only were several men killed by the small guard left by Mr. McCabe at Litam while he proceeded to Noksen, but a number, approaching 40, was killed in the jungles round the two villages during Mr. McCabe’s halt, by a rabble of some hundreds

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of friendlies who had followed from Susu, Mongsemdi, Lungkung, Salachu, and other villages in the wake of our force. (Reid 1942: 117).

Noksen’s retaliatory attack, Mr Porteous admitted, had not emerged out of thin air: ‘I had previously so far back as May received news from Mr.  Clark [a missionary stationed among the Ao Nagas] that these villages [Noksen and Litem] were boasting of the vengeance they intended taking.’ He, however, justified his inaction: ‘As no messengers reached me directly, and no demand from assistance came through Mr. Clark … I considered these threats as mere empty bravado’ (Reid 1942: 117). The report concluded: It is small wonder that, after losing so many men in addition to the destruction of their villages and the loss of most of their cattle, either killed or carried off as loot, the men of Noksen and Litam should have sent round the fiery cross, and, with the help of their allies, taken a savage revenge on the villages at whose hands (with our aid) they had suffered so heavy a punishment. (Reid 1942: 118).

In Noksen today, these and other raids and battles form an evocative part of oral history, which elders narrate in succinct detail, even though multiple generations have since passed. ‘The Aos were afraid of us,’ elders emphasize. ‘Our daos [broadswords] and spears were sharp, and our forefathers bold and brave. Whenever a Chang would raise his dao he would never lower it before putting it to use.’ Back then, the Chang were known, in colonial documents, as ‘Mazung’, which was an Ao Naga term that freely translates as ‘bad’ or ‘wicked’ people, a nomenclature the colonial government initially adopted (perhaps ignorant of its meaning). ‘But all of that was in the past,’ Noksen elders invariably concluded their narrations. ‘We are Christians now, and peace-loving.’ When Noksen figured in early colonial reports, often in relation to raids, the village’s name was usually preceded by adjectives like ‘transfrontier’, ‘trans-Dikhu’, ‘unadministrated’, or ‘free’, all communicating Noksen’s position outside the direct ambit of colonial rule. Indeed, until well into the twentieth century, large parts of today’s eastern Nagaland remained marked on British maps with the white of an

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unexplored country. As late as 1933, Fürer-Haimendorf (1939: 125) received a letter from J.P. Mills inviting him for an ‘expedition into unadministrated territory’, bringing him to a country ‘not yet been entered by any white man’. Its inhabitants were spoken of, by British officers, in a vocabulary of wild, savage, warring and uncivilized tribes, seen as practitioners of forms of slavery, head-cutting, and occasional human sacrifices. As such they were compared unfavourably to ‘administered Nagas’, amongst whom such activities, after the creation of the Naga Hills district, had been discontinued by the British. Of the Chang specifically Hutton (1987: iii) wrote: The Chang is one of those Naga tribes which occupy the hinterland, as it were, of the Naga Hills district, stretching back to the high range, which divides Assam from Burma. Only two small Chang villages of mixed population fall far enough west to come within the boundary of the administered district, the bulk of the tribe being situated in the area of loose political control which forms a buffer between the district and the still unknown tribes which occupy the slopes of the high range on both the Assam and Burma sides.

That the Chang, and tribes further east, should fall outside colonial administration was subject to contentious debate within colonial circles. Some officers suggested that a classic ‘civilization mission’ be bestowed on them. Others advised routine punitive and disciplinary expeditions to install in them respect and fear towards the colonial government but without spending resources on administrating them. Again others advocated the complete annexation of eastern Naga lands and their subsequent enclosure into the Naga Hills district. The official, and prevailing view, however, was one of limited interference based on the economic rationale that extending British rule over them would be unproductive and costly. ‘As long as feuds in the tribal [unadministered] areas were restricted to the usual head-hunting raids, a more or less casual affair leading to little loss of life’, Fürer-Haimendorf (1939: 124) observed, ‘the British authorities do not usually interfere’. But even as Noksen, and other Chang villages, remained outside direct colonial rule, and paid no taxes, the political and administrative ordering of the area changed and complicated as the result of the authoritative presence of colonial offices in nearby Mokokchung. In

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fact, one of the fallacies of most historical narratives and occasional scholarship on the formerly ‘free Nagas’ is a tendency to equate their unadministered past with the absence of colonial power and influence in their areas. As early as 1889, barely a year after McCabe’s force torched down Noksen, an administrative report reads: ‘The headmen of Noksen have repeatedly visited Mr. Davis [then Sub-Divisional Officer] at the sub-divisional headquarters at Mokokchang.’ During one such visits Noksen elders solicited Mr Davis’ intervention in a conflict with Litem, the village with which it had only recently allied in attacking Ao Naga villages. The report details: A man of Litam stole from the grave of a man of Noksen the dead man’s dao and cloth. The name of the thief being known, his surrender, or in lieu of him, a large fine, was demanded by Noksen. On this the father of the thief who felt himself disgraced by his son’s conduct, voluntarily offered to give him up. He was accordingly made over to the men of Noksen who forthwith knocked him on the head and threw his body into the jungle. (cited in Assam Administration Report 1889).

Not only Noksen elders presented themselves before the SubDivisional Officer. In the same year: ‘Men of Litam, Yanu, Yarr, Laksotang and even Mazung-Jami [Tuensang village] have all been into Mongsemdi [where a British outpost was enacted], the four first named to express submission, and the last to ask for intervention on the part of Government to put a stop to the fierce khel feuds which prevails in that village’ (Assam Administration Report 1889). Such ‘submissions’ to colonial offices are telling, complicate the usual narrative of ‘free Nagas’, and were gladly accepted by the colonial administration. This practice can be variously interpreted. Should one, perhaps, see in these ostensibly ‘semi-voluntary’ submissions, and occasional requests for British intervention, a defence measure, the result of the superior powers displayed by British-led punitive expeditions which made villages decide it in their best interest to offer submission, even if such was not always explicitly demanded? Or should we also read in these actions the villagers’ agency to appropriate the nearby colonial machinery to their own uses, as offering new avenues for Naga villages, clans, khels, and individuals to settle preexisting struggles and old scores?

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To illustrate, when in 1933 a British punitive force took on the Khiamniungan village of Pangsha, which stood accused of headhunting and slavery, they, along the way, established base in the unadministered Chang village of Chingmei. Its chief, Chingmak, had earlier ‘undertaken the long journey to Mokokchung to make friends with Mills [then District Commissioner]’. Chingmak now offered to act as a ‘mediator in the negotiations with neighbouring villages’ on the way towards Pangsha, a service he reportedly was only ‘too happy to render’ as Chingmei itself had a ‘long-standing feud with the Kalyo Kengyu [Khiamniungan] villages to the east’ (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939: 141). When Pangsha was burned down by the British-led forces, Fürer-Haimendorf observed Chingmak: ‘generally so dignified and calm, I see venting his furious rage on a perfectly innocent rice-basket, slashing it from end to end. In his boldest dreams he had probably never dared to hope that he would one day plunder the almighty Pangsha’ (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939: 166). On the whole, British’s relations with unadministrated villages varied and fluctuated, ranging from ‘submission’ and ‘friendship’ to volatile enmity. Thence, framing the relationships between the colonial administration and ‘free Nagas’ in terms of a single narrative would involve grave oversimplification. Oftentimes, however, the colonial government exerted considerable influence, which shows in the participation of sizeable consignment of Changs in the Naga Labour Corps that was dispatched to France during the First World War. Takam Chang (1988: 2) writes: ‘There is none [in the Chang area] who has not heard of the First World War. During this, it was not only they [the British] who fought, but also smart and able young men from our Eastern lands, who went to take part in the Labour Corps.’ And when Verrier Elwin (1961: 28) visited the Tuensang area in 1947, just before India’s Independence, he noted how: ‘Tuensang was then divided into what were called “controlled” and “un-administered” areas, but how his [Mr Archer, then District Commissioner of Mokokchung) writ did, in practice, extend over the whole area. Local chiefs and headmen, who were called Command Dobashis and paid by the Government, acted on his behalf and reported major incidents which required attention.’ In legal terms, the Tuensang Area was incorporated into British India in 1902 through a decree that was later ratified by the Government of India Act of 1935 which defined the area as a ‘“tribal area” within India’

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(Elwin 1961: 27). This legislation, however, did not translate into actual administration; no outpost was established, and no state resources officially allocated. It was only in 1947 that decisive steps towards enclosing the area were made through the creation of Tuensang town, on land donated by Tuensang village, for the purposes of administration. A year later the Tuensang Administrative Circle was called into being (Prakash 2007: 1922). In 1951, the Tuensang Area was brought under the so-called NEFA, which included large parts of today’s Arunachal Pradesh, and of which it became a Frontier Division. The year 1951 also saw the first Political Officer posted to Tuensang and the opening of administrative outposts in Kiphire, Mon, and Noklak. Tuensang’s status as part of NEFA was to be short-lived however, and in 1957 the area was merged with the Naga Hills district, which then became called the Naga Hills Tuensang Area (NHTA) and which was later upgraded into Nagaland state. It is this merger with the (then) Naga Hills district, and its subsequent inclusion in Nagaland State, the Frontier Nagaland movement now seeks to undo.

An Interlude: Chang Dobashis in Mokokchung—Onglingaku and Imlong Chang During the colonial era, the post of dobashi was created to assist local administration with head-dobashi being the highest administrative post that was bestowed upon Nagas within the colonial administrative hierarchy. Literally, dobashi means ‘two-languages’. Dobashis were therefore interpreters who translated and channeled messages between colonial offices and Naga villages. But if this may conjure images of a low-level clerical job, in actual practice, Naga dobashis ‘enjoyed much more powers and privileges’ (Ketholesie 2015: 1). They often resided in district headquarters and operated not merely as ‘go-betweens’ but as mediators and brokers between Naga villages and colonial offices and officers. Occasionally dobashis also acted on their own in settling disputes, dispensing justice, and enacting new rules, but ever so with the implicit backing of the colonial government.5 In a twist of the dominant historical narrative, two long-serving and influential head dobashis in Mokokchung were not Ao Nagas, but Changs. They were, first, Ongligaku and later Imlong Chang, names

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that continue to reverberate in both Mokokchung and Tuensang districts. Tour diaries and administrative reports from the first half of the twentieth century are replete with references to their activities, and popular history tells that Ongligaku enjoyed such levels of respect and reverence among Ao villagers that they sometimes insisted on carrying him up and down the hills on a makeshift chair when he arrived on official duty. While ultimate authority was vested in colonial officers, Ao  villagers understood that their decisions were oftentimes in line with the judgments and opinions of senior dobashis like Ongligaku and Imlong Chang, and it was to them that they turned. Ongligaku was born in a village inhabited by both Changs and Aos, and which lay within colonial jurisdiction. His ascent in the colonial administration was therefore perhaps less surprising compared to that of Imlong Chang, who was born a ‘free Naga’ deep into Chang territory. Imlong’s father, however, had served in the Naga Labour Corps and so became acquainted with Hutton, who took a liking in him and offered a scholarship to one of his children to study in a mission school. It was this scholarship that first brought Imlong to Mokokchung, where he soon learned to speak both Ao Naga and Assamese. After completing his education, Imlong first became a trader (‘dokanyibou’, or ‘the merchant’, as he became known [Chang 1988: 9]) and the successful owner of a cooperative society. Eventually Imlong was appointed to the position of head dobashi and for long years represented and influenced the colonial administration in the Ao Naga region. Today, he is remembered as ‘one of the pioneers of Mokokchung Town’, and recognized for his service as treasurer of the Mokokchung Ao Baptist Church (Chang 1988: 9). Although Imlong Chang was to reside in Mokokchung for most of his life, and married an Ao Naga woman, he remained closely involved with the Chang Naga, for whom he became a metaphorical ‘salt-mine’ (Chang 1988: 9). It was also largely through his initiatives and efforts that, at the brink of India’s Independence, education and missionaries entered present-day Tuensang, and that the Chang Tribal Committee was established (Chapter 2). The observation that two Chang Nagas (today considered to be ‘backward’), occupied the highest and most coveted non-British administrative post in Mokokchung district, and exerted considerable power and influence over Ao Nagas (now considered to be ‘advanced’) provides

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a remarkable, if anecdotal, counter-narrative to the historical domination of eastern Nagas by western Nagas.

Becoming Backward I open this section with three diagnostic expressions about the social imagination of eastern Nagas. The first two are from J.H. Hutton and Verrier Elwin respectively, and who articulated opposite views on the desirability of bringing ‘free Nagas’ under colonial administration and jurisdiction. The third, from Chingwang Konyak, an eastern Naga politician, links the absence of colonial administration among them to the present demand for Frontier Nagaland. There are still across the frontier happy tribes, which have not yet touched pitch and become civilized like their administered brothers; which pay no house-tax, and do no reluctant coolie work, which know not the seed of conversion and the sword of dissension which missionaries bring, nor have yet been made to eat of that forbidden fruit which drove our first parents into fig-leaves and banishment. The diseases which follow like the jackals in the wake of invasion have not yet touched them … No paternal government forbids them the taking of heads or their fittest to survive, and no profane hand is raised against their customs of primaeval antiquity. (Hutton 1921a: vii–viii) Even after the Naga Hills district had been brought under ordered Government, the wild and rugged tract to the north-east remained. It was populated by martial tribes; there were no communications and no money to build or maintain them; and despite constant urging that it was inconsistent to develop one part of the hills and neglect another, the Supreme Government felt that until there were men and funds available it would be better to leave this territory alone for the time being. (Elwin 1961: 27). It is a process of civilization that administration extends from administrated to un-administrated area … But still there was a vast tract of land between Naga Hills and Burma that was not administered … Today, the problems faced by the people of ENPO areas are that administratively

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we are more than 82 years behind [vis-à-vis the establishment of the Naga Hills district in 1866] and educationally much more behind than the other advanced tribes, namely Aos, Angamis, Lothas, and Semas … On the 1st December 1963, Nagaland state was inaugurated … that time there were hardly any graduate from Tuensang. Even matriculates were very few, so people of present ENPO area could not get into government service … [Till today] they [Eastern Nagas] have a social handicap as they have no tradition of education. (Chingwang Konyak 2012)

Behind each statement lies a particular reading of colonial rule. Hutton, in a bout of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ (Rosaldo 1989: 70), lamented the cultural onslaught colonial administration and missionaries had caused across the Naga Hills district and considered the ‘free Nagas’ fortunate to have been spared such a fate. Elwin, in turn, emphasized the long-term inconsistency of developing one part of the Naga highlands but neglecting another. Agreeing with Elwin, Chingwang Konyak, an early frontrunner of the statehood demand, diagnoses eastern Nagaland’s non-colonial past as responsible for their eventual incorporation into Nagaland state on an unequal footing. It was the historical absence of administration and mission schools, he insists, that made eastern Nagas unable to compete in terms of education and induction into Nagaland’s civil services, so providing the historical conditions for their subsequent domination by western Naga politicians and bureaucrats. Akin to Chingwang Konyak’s thesis, most eastern Nagas today do not congratulate themselves on their prolonged non-state existence, nor do they celebrate the comparatively lesser impact colonial rule had on their cultural traditions. Instead, they locate the roots of their self-proclaimed ‘backwardness’ in their non-colonial history, or, to borrow a phrase from Mary Des Chene (2007), a present condition of ‘non-postcoloniality’. In this section, as well as the next, I discuss how eastern Nagas changed from being perceived as ‘savage’ but ‘free’ and ‘happy’ to their contemporary self-articulation and state-recognition as ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, and ‘deficient’. While not discounting that eastern Nagas lag behind in terms of overall educational attainment and development, I argue that the ENPO pivots on a semantic politics of ‘backwardness’ as the basis for claiming entitlements to employment

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reservations and development allocations, and, more broadly, to frame its demand for statehood. ‘We Changs are backward people’, Topong, a member of Noksen’s Village Council, remarked as we walk a narrow path that branches off the village’s main road. Sunday church service just ended and Topong invited me to his house for tea. ‘See our condition’, he continues. ‘No proper houses and roads, electricity fluctuating always, and no jobs for our youth. The Chakhesang say they are backward [referring to my earlier fieldwork among them, and of which Topong was aware], but in reality they are not so much. We Changs are the real backward people’. During my stay in Noksen, and in eastern Nagaland more widely, my friends and respondents often spoke of themselves as ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, and ‘undeveloped’, and compared themselves unfavorably with western Naga tribes, whom they called ‘advanced’. The Eastern Naga People’s Organization, in its official communications, now presents itself as the apex body of six backward tribes inhabiting four backward districts, and projects as its ultimate objective the redemption of eastern Nagas from their backwardness through the creation of a separate state. In the debate on classifying communities, labels like ‘primitive’, ‘stone-age’, and ‘backward’ should have long gone extinct. But if decades ago scholars agreed that such tags find their genesis in the colonial encounter (Asad 1973), are an ‘invention’ of the western mind (Kuper 1988), and therefore are best understood as imperial myth, no analyst of contemporary Nagaland can afford to ignore the evocative discourse of ‘backwardness’ in the public sphere. But whereas in the past colonizers were the authors of Nagas’ savagery, backwardness, and primitivity; in doing so reasserted their own self-proclaimed supremacy, and for doing so received flak from postcolonial Naga scholars (Thong 2012, 2014), today a host of Naga communities actively author their own ‘backwardness’ and contest, as Topong does, the genuine ‘backwardness’ of other tribes. What must be accounted for, then, is why this narrative of ‘backwardness’, rather than dying out alongside its use in ethnological literature, came to acquire a new lease on life. To start understanding this local infatuation with the discourse of backwardness, as though a trope of identity, we ought to situate this in a wider frame of India’s postcolonial modalities of governance, which,

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if anything, shows that the idea of all citizens being governed, and afforded opportunities, equally is a strange idea indeed. From the 1950s onward, the Central Government has systematically set aside percentages of government jobs and university seats for communities listed as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and (later) Other Backward Classes (OBCs) on account of their historical deprivations and them lagging behind in the path towards development. Initially such reservations hovered around 20 per cent but in the early 1990s these affirmative policies were vastly expanded with 49.5 per cent reservations put in place for so-defined disadvantaged communities. Ever since, to be identified as disadvantaged and backward could profoundly improve one’s educational and professional prospects, resulting in communities across the country vying to be recognized as backward (Shneiderman and Turin 2006). This pan-Indian classification and related reservation policy was of little consequence to Nagaland in view of the state’s entirely tribal demography, however. Without the presence of high or dominant castes (or, for that matter, any caste), or a single community preponderating numerically and at whose hands Naga tribes suffered historical marginalization, as reported elsewhere (Bates and Shah 2014), in Nagaland the competition over government jobs, university seats, and development allocations came to manifest itself as a contest between STs, whose status was given to all Naga communities. If the pan-Indian classification presented STs as collectively marginalized, it is precisely to such a blanket-categorization that some Naga tribes object. What this conceals, their leaders and spokespersons insist, are the differential historical trajectories, power equations, and social inequalities that exist between Naga tribes. At stake in Nagaland, it is argued, is a development discrepancy between historically developed and undeveloped Naga tribes. It was in response to such local concerns that the Nagaland government, in the 1970s, added an extra local layer to the panIndian reservation system by classifying each Nagaland tribe as either ‘forward’ or ‘backward’, offering the latter special quotas in terms of state employment and university admissions. Initially this ‘backward quota’, so-called, was pitched at 25 per cent but soon it was extended to 37 per cent, which became reserved for the six eastern Naga tribes

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in addition to the Chakhesang, Pochury, Zeliang, and a section of Sumi Nagas residing in eastern Nagaland’s Kiphire district. Before long, this now official backward/forward distinction etched itself at the centre of Nagaland’s governance where it became a source of strife, litigation, and contentious politics. Some tribes initially classed as forward have since insisted on their re-classification as backward and the access to quotas this offers. Other tribal apex bodies, meanwhile, argued that some of the tribes listed as backward were not, or no longer, ‘properly’ backward. The Eastern Naga People’s Organization, in turn, reasoned that eastern Naga tribes remained more backward compared to the ‘backward tribes’ of western Nagaland and were therefore deserving of a ‘very backward quota’ within the existing ‘backward quota’. Consequently, the Nagaland reservation policy was fragmented further, and tailored tribe-wise by allocating roughly 4 per cent (based on population figures) of backward quota to each eastern Naga tribe individually, leaving the remainder for ‘backward tribes’ in western Nagaland. Notions of ‘backwardness’, thence came to offer bargaining power in the quest over state appointments and resources, and because of this ‘backwardness’, as a political rhetoric, is unlikely to abate. If through this locally tailored reservation system the idea and idiom of ‘backwardness’ became firmly established as a category of administration, state allocations, and identity and identification, ‘backwardness’ was institutionalized further with the establishment, in 2003, of the Nagaland Department of Underdeveloped Areas (DUDA), which adopted as its vision: ‘to cater to the special needs of the Underdeveloped Areas, aspires to and hopes to improve the condition of the backward areas and accelerate the pace of development, thereby bringing them at par with the result of the State in the near future’ (emphasis mine).6 But if the Nagaland Government envisages backward quotas and DUDA as offering the necessary remedies to bridge eastern Nagaland’s development deficit, the ENPO has come to reject these policies as providing the ultimate solution to eastern Nagas’ ‘backwardness’. In the words of Chingwang Konyak (2012): ‘The reservation in Government jobs alone cannot itself achieve the larger purpose of transforming social attitudes.’ It is to such ‘social attitudes’ allegedly exhibited by western Nagas that the next section turns.

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Postings into the ‘Wild East’ ‘All Nagas are almost primitively simple people,’ Kanwar Singh (1987: 23) reflected about his transfer to Kohima to serve as its Superintendent of Police in the mid-1950s. He continued: ‘The moment you land amongst them, you feel that you have travelled back from the present atomic age to the primitive stage of human life.’ Singh’s narrative exemplifies, what Poddar and Subba (1992) call, ‘home-grown orientalism’ in which postcolonial scholars and administrators adopted and extended the language and stereotypes used by colonial officers (for example, ‘those savages wild’, as Clark [1907: 1] adjudged Nagas or Godden’s [1889:  9] evaluation of them as ‘very low in the scale of civilization’). Colonial images on Nagas, Arkotong Longkumer (2015: 60) writes: continue to shape the current landscape … Since early colonial contact with the British in 1822, images and material culture of the Nagas were collected for scientific and imperial purposes to understand ‘subject races’. Subsequently, these images circulated and produced a caricature of them as ‘primitive’ or as ‘headhunters.’ This would have a lasting impression on how the Nagas are represented.7

While Kanwar Singhs’ remarks, shot through with disdain, would draw ready criticism today, images of Nagas as ‘backward’ and ‘wild’, and their lands as ‘remote’ and ‘far-flung’ show a more subtle yet remarkable resilience in ‘Mainland’ understandings of the Naga uplands.8 These images also accompany the thousands of Nagas who, drawn by India’s new modernity, move to metropolitan cities for purposes of education and employment, and where they are mirrored back by the society as ‘backward’, ‘primitive’, and ‘dangerous’ (Wouters and Subba 2013). They also reveal themselves in that many non-Naga officers resent a posting to Nagaland, which they look upon as a ‘punishment posting’ (even if their transfer entails a promotion in rank) as it—in their eyes— deprives them from the comforts of ‘civilization’. Among Nagas such officers are sometimes ridiculed as ‘suitcase administrators’ or ‘overnight officers’ because of their alleged reluctance to make home their government quarters in their hope—and vivacious string-pulling—of a swift

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transfer away. But if such negative stereotyping by ‘Mainland’ officers, and their perceived reluctance to serve in Nagaland, are grievances locally voiced, this section turns the gaze inward to draw attention to a similar process at work within Naga society. In a press conference, legislators from eastern Nagaland’s Mon district, home to the Konyak Nagas, appealed to the rank-and-file of the state’s civil service to stop viewing their postings to Mon district as a ‘punishment’ but to consider working for ‘backward people’ a ‘privilege and a blessing’. What they lamented was a lack of dedication on part of western Naga officers posted to their district. They also found many of them ‘absent from their posting place for months, neglecting their duty’ (cited in Nagaland Post 2016a). In Noksen, and among the Chang more widely, villagers, too, complain about the absenteeism they notice amongst western Naga officers posted to their area, and resent, to use Chingwang Konyak’s phrase, the particular ‘social attitudes’ some of these officers display towards them. I illustrate this with the persona of  Apok, a western Naga, who, at the verge of his retirement, found himself posted to Noksen town with the assignment to open a local branch of the State Bank of India. ‘Surprised to see you here’, I greeted Apok as we crossed ways in Noksen village. It was midday, the time Apok was usually in his office. ‘There is no electricity in town again’, Apok explained and sighed. ‘The generator is also letting me down again. Not a single transaction I can do.’ The climb from Noksen town to the village made Apok breathe heavily and sweat break out on his forehead. To nevertheless spend his day purposefully, he had decided to walk up to the village to distribute passbooks. During the previous months, Apok had laboured hard to dissuade Noksen villagers from storing their saving inside their homes and to open bank accounts instead. But while he had managed to convince several villagers to do so, those who had opened accounts in his branch subsequently had not bothered about collecting their passbooks. It frustrated Apok: ‘without passbooks how will they operate their accounts?’, he sighed. ‘But what can I do? This is the land of the Chang people. They simply do not understand.’ He then turned to Thungti, my research accomplice, and expecting him to be from elsewhere he inquired (in Nagamese) about his natal village. When Thungti replied he belonged to Noksen village Apok realized that he

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had made a mistake. He had talked lowly about the Chang in front of one. ‘See! Now you know’, Thungti said after Apok had hurried on. ‘This is how western Nagas think about us.’ I had met Apok earlier, and, in private, he was outspoken about his frustrations of being posted to Noksen town. He was senior in his job, he emphasized, ‘but still I was posted to a place as remote as this. How can I even expect my wife to live happily with me here? I told her she’d better stay in our village and wait for my retirement’. What also concerned Apok were the local security arrangements. His bank branch was enclosed by sandbagged gun emplacements, and guarded around the clock by the Naga Armed Police. But it did not offer Apok the security he wanted. ‘This is the wild east’, as he put it. ‘National workers roam freely around here, and carry weapons openly. Anything can happen anytime.’ But most of all it was the ‘backwardness’ (a term Apok invoked freely in our conversations) of the Chang that disturbed him. In a ‘civilization mission’ of his own he daily filled his pockets with sweets to dole out to children, but, he explained, only to those who looked ‘neat and clean’. ‘All children in the town come to me for sweets now,’ he added smilingly. ‘But if they look dirty, I don’t give them any. Instead, I tell them to go home, wash their faces, and then come back to me for a sweet. In this way I am teaching them hygiene.’ Even if perhaps well-intended, it is in such acts and articulations that eastern Nagas discern the attitudes of disdain and ‘superiority’ in western Naga officers that they have come to resent. Akin to Apok, several western Naga officers I spoke to in places across eastern Nagaland variously expressed their discontentment with their postings, which they sometimes described as ‘remote’ and ‘away from civilization’, in ways remarkable similar to Kanwar Singh’s (1987) comments cited above.9 Exceptions however existed. At the time of my fieldwork, Noksen town’s SDO was well respected, and in both the town and village praised for his efficiency, and especially for occupying his government quarter not alone—‘as though a bachelor,’ as villagers commented on those officers who refused to take their families along— but with his pregnant wife and two small children. The Noksen villagers explained the officer’s commitment in terms of kinship. While he was an Ao Naga, as was his wife, his mother was a Chang. ‘Before he first arrived’, a Noksen Dobashi told me, ‘we had already found out about

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this family background. We told him: “since you have Chang blood in your veins we have high expectations of you.”’

Complexities and Tensions within Eastern Nagaland If our story of Frontier Nagaland, so far, is that of six eastern Naga tribes desperate to redeem themselves from ‘underdevelopment’, and the ‘discrimination’ and ‘domination’ they experience at the hands of western Naga tribes, there are other stories to be told. Among these, stories of longstanding animosities and rivalries between eastern Naga tribes. ‘Tribes go headhunting’, a 1990 newspaper headline of India Today read: The raid had all the ingredients of a bloodcurdling horror-film. War-cries resonated in the stillness of the night as the village in Tuensang district inhabited by Chang tribesmen was attacked by the warriors who belonged to the fierce tribe of Konyaks, who made up the backbone of the underground insurgent group: the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN).

The clash was about Tobu town, and about whether it belonged to the Chang or the Konyak tribe. The disagreement was an old one, and anger and resentment long cropped up had come to burst. ‘While most of the Chang men managed to escape into the surrounding forests, the marauders went away with nearly 40 heads as trophies … The very next day, August 18, the Chang men killed three Konyak tribesmen including a policemen in swift reprisal.’ The report concluded: ‘The rivalry of the both tribes is however an old one. And the mutual distrust and hatred is such that for purchasing essential goods or even for medical attention, both tribesmen prefer to skirt each other’s areas and travel much longer distances.’ ‘I was in my early teens when the Tobu clashes happened’, Toshi, a Noksen town resident, recounts. ‘What I remember are the rumours. Heads were hunted, it was said, and that an army of Konyaks were on their way to the Noksen area.’ In preparation for their anticipated arrival, Toshi’s father, a dobashi, had distributed weapons to both Noksen town and village dwellers to ward off a possible attack. His

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mother had taken Toshi, and his siblings, deep into the jungle to hide until the violence would end, as did most mothers and children. ‘But the Konyaks never came. It was only rumour’, Toshi narrates. ‘Later we learned that similar rumours had spread across the Konyak area. They thought the Changs were advancing towards them, bent on revenge. They, too, had armed themselves, prepared to fight.’ That those rumours carried such a force, and that large-scale intertribal warfare that would embroil ordinary villagers was clearly an imaginative possibility, indicates the tensions and territorial politics that exist just beneath the surface of eastern Nagas’ shared grievances and political purpose of Frontier Nagaland. The Chang-Konyak clashes in and around Tobu, of course, had not been rumour. Many died, and many more were displaced, making this conflict go down as the last intertribal headhunting episode among Nagas. It was the Chang-Konyak clashes that made Abou, in whose house I stayed in Noksen, join the NNC, whose secretary (Chang region) he became. When the Naga Movement first took off, many Changs had joined its rank-and-file. In fact, the first commander-in-chief of the Naga Army, Thongti Chang, was a Chang Naga. In the years preceding the Tobu clashes, however, many Changs had come overground. Many Konyak Nagas, to the contrary, had joined the NSCN after its enactment in the early 1980s. If the Konyaks outdid the Changs in the Tobu clashes, as many read the outcome of the conflict, this was largely, Abou narrated, because the Konyaks had the backing of the NSCN. It was with the motivation to restore tribal equanimity within the Naga underground in the region that Abou resolved to join the NNC. While a primary school teacher during the day, at nights he worked tirelessly to recruit Changs into the NNC with the ultimate aim of enacting a regional counterforce against the Konyak presence within the NSCN. In Abou’s reflection and actions after the Tobu clashes we find, once more, an indication of the complex interlinking between often purely local conflicts and contestations and wider tribal and factional divides within the denominator of the Naga Movement. Abou’s activities, however, were to the detriment of his wife, who, fearing the Indian Army would find out about his NNC membership, burned all his correspondence one night and persuaded him to resign.

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But while the Chang-Konyak clashes were certainly the most violent in eastern Nagaland’s recent history, there also simmer other intertribal disputes, disagreements, and tensions. Roughly a year after I left Noksen, an old dispute between the Chang and Yimchunger tribes resurfaced, and quickly turned violent, including physical attacks, abductions, and several killings. ‘The situation is very bad,’ some of my Chang friends told me as I contacted them from afar. ‘It is full-on tribalism,’ one of them described the situation unfolding around him. Eventually a truce was signed, even as the land dispute remained unresolved. Within the Yimchunger fold, meanwhile, lingers another conflict as a section of them, who refer to themselves not as Yimchunger but as Tikhir, wish to be recognized as a distinct tribe, a political claim which is rejected by Yimchunger leaders. This contention traces back several decades. In his memoires, the former state functionary Khekiye Sema (2015: 163) recalls how, during his posting among the Yimchunger in the early 1980s, the ‘annual slug-fest between Yimchungru [sic] and Tikhir was a high tension drama which had claimed several lives over the years of conflict in the past’. Might, then, the statehood demand be a political project driven by ‘negative solidarity’ (Subba 1988) in which common grievances and shared interest work to momentarily transcend intertribal divisions and differences? Might present-day shared experiences of neglect and deprivation give way to intertribal power politics once Frontier Nagaland becomes a political reality? These are questions seldom discussed amidst the animated agitation for Frontier Nagaland. ‘Differences are currently kept below the surface as we need to stand united to make Frontier Nagaland possible,’ one Chang public leader tells me in the private sphere of his Tuensang town residence, after I carefully brought up the topic of intertribal disputes in the area. He continues: No doubt, there lies a long and complicated road ahead. It is difficult to predict what will happen if we have to run our own state. Which tribe will lead? Which ones will follow? These are important questions. It worries me at times. If we are not careful, or if there is no understanding, it will soon be Konyaks against Changs, Changs against Yimchungers, and Yimchungers against Tikhirs, and tribalism everywhere.

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Greater Nagalim versus Smaller Nagaland Amidst the frenzied politics of Naga territory and nation, the agitation for Frontier Nagaland can be read as signifying a contest between political projections of greater Nagalim, the status quo of Nagaland state, and a ‘smaller Nagaland’ envisaged by the ENPO. Not surprisingly, the statehood demand troubled most national workers I now and then spoke with in Phugwumi and elsewhere, who used terms as ‘reactionary’, ‘anti-national’, and ‘opportunistic’ to characterize the statehood demand. ‘Our struggle is for Greater Nagalim, not smaller Nagaland’, as one national worker expressed this sentiment to me. A very similar analysis was offered by a Nagaland Minister: ‘The Naga people—be it the NSCN(IM) or the NSCN(K) and NNC—they all had been fighting for the sovereignty of the Nagas, whereas some group [now] tries to divide the Nagas’ (cited in Kangla Online 2011). Chang national workers, however, offer a more complicated reading of the statehood demand and of its relationship with the broader political aspiration of Naga sovereignty and integration. The afternoon is quiet and humid. Somba and I sit on his veranda in Noksen village, overlooking a sheet with paddy drying. Somba is a national worker of a particular NSCN faction, which he represents locally, and for whose treasury he now and then collects taxes from fellow villagers. That afternoon, we talk about the Naga Movement, the balance of power between factions in the wider Noksen area, and about Somba’s experiences, fears, and hopes as a national worker. I have spoken to Somba on several earlier occasions, and although I heard early on in my fieldwork about his underground membership, it was not until several months of staying in Noksen that I felt sufficiently confident to breach this topic with him. ‘After India got her Independence, when the British left, India should have left us alone. Especially us eastern Nagas as we were known as free Nagas’, Somba says. ‘But if India became free through its Independence from Britain, we free Nagas lost our freedom because of it.’ ‘But things are mixed up now’, Somba continues, his expression solemn. ‘Factions and killings. There is just so much misunderstanding between Nagas nowadays.’ As the afternoon wears on, our conversation becomes more candid, and I ask Somba about his views on the statehood demand. I expect him to reject the statehood demand given how it seemingly punctuates

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the political rationale of the Naga Movement. Somba’s own analysis of Frontier Nagaland is hardly that straightforward and simple, however. ‘As a national worker’, he begins his reply: I must represent my people. Presently the Chang are thinking less about Naga Independence and more about immediate development. To achieve this, the Chang and other eastern Nagas want statehood. I can’t go against my people’s wishes.

‘But does Frontier Nagaland not undermine the Naga Movement? In any case, your own NSCN leaders oppose it, don’t they? How then can you support it?,’ I prod. ‘I did not say I supported it’, Somba corrects my phrasing. Using correct wording was important in discussing volatile political issues. ‘I am only saying that I understand my people’s sentiments. We have been exploited by western Nagas for long. Nobody can deny that.’ ‘Does this mean the Chang will no longer be part of the Naga Movement’, I follow up. Somba shakes his head, indicating that it does not. ‘Naga Independence is not going to come in our generation. India will not allow for it. But if through Frontier Nagaland our people can come up economically, eastern Nagas become a stronger force. If, one day, Nagas will get Independence, we can rejoin the larger Naga family on a level of equality.’ As I walked home later that afternoon I thought about Somba’s reasoning, and about the divergent political and territorial aspirations— sovereignty, integration, bifurcation, and the status quo of Nagaland state10—that are variously voiced across Naga society, and which, despite explanations like Somba’s, seems to complicate, if not impede, any political settlement of the Indo-Naga conflict. Not just underground leaders, western Naga politicians, bureaucrats, public leaders, as well as most western Naga villagers also object to the proposed bifurcation of Nagaland. In Phugwumi, most villagers found the idea of Frontier Nagaland perplexing, as did most western Nagas. At the time of my fieldwork, Noksen village hosted the 22th Chang Gazetted Officers meeting, and whose chief guest was Nagaland’s (then) Chief Secretary, the bureaucrat most senior within the state and who hailed from neighbouring Mokokchung district. Instead of offering the usual platitudes, courtesies, and words of encouragement, as chief guests in Nagaland usually resort to, the Chief Secretary used the platform he

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was given to take on the Frontier Nagaland Movement. I will quote him at some length. I am going to speak from my heart today, and I might say certain things which you [Chang Gazetted Officers] may not like to hear, but in that case please bear with me.… The ENPO is in confusion, because when they submit their representations to the Nagaland Government I observe that 99% of their grievances have to do with development. Such development issues can be solved with proper planning, good leadership and special packages. We Nagas cannot live divided. If we are not united we will fall. That is why this statehood demand hurts me.

He continued: I tell you, Changs are not backward. One of the first wealthy families of Mokokchung was a Chang family [Imlong Chang, discussed above]. He  was richer than all the Aos. We are not evaluating properly. This is not to say there is no gap. Christianity and education in eastern Nagaland arrived later compared to other parts of Nagaland. This gap needs to be closed. It is not a development gap but a historical gap, which can be bridged with sincere effort. The problem, therefore, is a mental state. There is nothing exceptionally less in eastern Nagaland compared to western Nagaland, only a historical gap. You Chang officers need to show leadership to help the government bridge this gap. You cannot rely on your local political leaders. It is them who fail you. Ask them what they have done for your constituencies?

The Chief Secretary then concluded: This statehood claim is nonsense. What will a separate state bring? It will only divide. The Chang and the Ao cannot live separately. We share folklore and so many historical relations. Does this need to be stopped? Some of you might not like to hear this, but as I said in the beginning, I am speaking from my heart today.

But while the Chief Secretary sought to depoliticize the statehood demand, recasting it from the realm of contentious politics to the neutral and technical language of development, he failed to convince most Chang officers present in the meeting. ‘Western Naga officers can speak very sweetly’, one of them told me after the meeting, clearly upset

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about the speech. ‘But history speaks for itself. Five decades have passed since statehood, but we remain underdeveloped. I am serving Nagaland state for now, but soon I hope to be serving Frontier Nagaland.’ *** In the observation that erstwhile nonstate and ‘free’ Nagas today agitate for ownership and access to state structures lies a historical and anthropological counterpoint to the thesis of ‘deliberate and reactive statelessness’ James Scott (2009: x) insisted upland communities in ‘Zomia’ long practiced.11 Rather than evading the state, or resisting Indian state structures, this chapter has shown how eastern Naga tribes today strategically position and define themselves in relation to the state. Them doing so also circumvents Hobsbawn claim that peasants generally pursue the aim of ‘working the [state] system to their minimum disadvantage’ (cited in Scott 1987: 424), as the contemporary struggle is for more state and maximum state benefits. That for eastern Naga tribes the state has etched itself at the centre of social and political imagination, and is looked upon first and foremost as a resource, is also part of a two wider trends observed across South Asia. First, the postcolonial inflation of the state into an object ‘that aspired to infiltrate the everyday lives of Indians, proclaiming itself responsible for everything they could desire’ (Khilnani 1997: 41). Secondly, the observation that ‘People themselves are no longer content to view the state as necessary evil. Increasingly they make demands of it and expect it to act positively to improve their lives’ (Gellner 2013: 3; see also Corbridge et al. 2005; Fuller and Bénéï 2001). Among the Chang Naga, and eastern Nagas more widely, it was the frustration of people’s expectations of what Nagaland state can and should do for them that translated in their desire and demand to have a state of their own. Claims on the state and its resources, especially when they entail political mobilization, are everywhere contentious and fraught with controversies. In this the movement for Frontier Nagaland offers no exception. ‘Frontier Nagaland has become a mixed-up story,’ a former Chang politician sighs as we discuss the politics of the present in his residence. ‘It has made some ENPO leaders very rich.’ According to him, several ENPO frontrunners have been ‘bought’ by the ruling government and elite in Kohima with large and lucrative state contracts,

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luxurious vehicles, and influential political positions in the government. The ex-minister, on his part, evaluates this as shrewd politics played by western Naga politicians to contain and co-opt the Frontier Nagaland Movement. ‘See,’ he explains, ‘when I give you money, then from your mouth it is my voice that speaks. Some ENPO leaders are now individually benefitting from the Nagaland state they first wanted to separate from’. If it is argued that ‘ethnic elites find financial incentives in the creation of new states’ (Bhattacharyya et al. 2017: 149), this criticism suggest that this argument requires broadening as merely agitating for a new state might bring material gains and personal promotions to its leaders. Other commentators see in the demand for Frontier Nagaland not an organic uprising of disadvantaged sections of Naga society, but the deliberate and divisive hand of India’s Intelligence Services. They accuse them of ‘divide and rule’, of successfully instigating a group of eastern Naga politicians and public leaders into framing and raising the statehood demand with the ulterior motive of imploding the larger Naga  Movement. Their reasoning is hardly based on conspiratorial fantasy, but is informed by deeply entrenched tactics applied by the Centre to exacerbate Naga factionalism and divisions. ‘There is a long history’, Manchanda and Bose (2011: 53) write, ‘of the Indian agencies pitting the armed groups against each other. The Naga nationalist leadership are well aware that the Indian state [then quoting Muivah] “by keeping the internal conflict festering, they can avoid dealing with the core issues of sovereignty and Nagalim”’.12 Naga critics now see in the post-ceasefire rise of the Frontier Nagaland movement yet another Centre-led attempt to divide and disintegrate the Naga Movement. Such theories are circulated, discussed, and variously agreed and disagreed with by public leaders I spoke to across Eastern Nagaland. Even so, Noksen villagers view the demand for Frontier Nagaland as legitimate, historically justified, promising a better future, and therefore worth struggling for.

Notes 1. As opposed to western Nagaland where terraced wet-rice cultivation constitutes the main practice of agriculture, among the Chang, and in

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2.

3.

4.

5.

Eastern Nagaland more widely, slash-and-burn agriculture, or jhumming, is mostly practiced, largely because of the area’s steep landscape. Noksen’s jhum cycle is divided over multiple units with each unit being cultivated for two consecutive years, after which the soil is given time to recover. While some units are located relatively near to the village, most of them require prolonged walks down the hills with the distance being such that returning to the village at night becomes rather impossible. Noksen villagers therefore construct rough-and-ready field-huts made of bamboo and thatch, and, during agricultural seasons, most Noksen farmers reside in their field-huts from Monday till Wednesday evening (the Village Council has decreed that everyone needs to be back in the village on Wednesday before dark as a church service is then conducted, even if they do not desire to attend) and from Thursday morning to Saturday evening (again to be able to attend the main weekly church service on Sundays). It might be noted here that earlier ‘eastern Nagas’ referred first and foremost to ‘Burmese Nagas’. In recent years, however, and in parts as a result of the Frontier Nagaland Movement ‘eastern Nagas’, in the popular imagination, have shifted westwards and now describes those Nagas living in the Nagaland districts of Mon, Tuensang, Longleng, and Kiphire. Exceptions are there, however. In India’s Northeast the state of Meghalaya attained statehood peacefully in 1972, after combined efforts of leaders of the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo tribal communities. While in central India, in the year 2000, Chhattisgarh was created, Tillin (2013: 109) writes, despite there being ‘no strong popular statehood movement, nor a strongly mobilized politics of indigeneity connected to the idea of a Chhattisgarh region. Indeed, the state’s creation alongside Jharkhand and Uttarakhand is regarded by many in the region as somewhat of a mystery.’ That said, the idea of Chhattisgarh state was an old one. Tillin explains: ‘Although statehood for Chhattisgarh was proposed as early as 1948, it was competition in the 1990s between the two national parties vying for power in the region – Congress and the BJP – that brought the issue to the fore rather than pressure from social movements’ (2013: 109). One Noksen villager told me: ‘Even when I travel with my eyes closed, I recognize the very moment we cross from Tuensang into Mokokchung district by the amount of bumping and shaking of the vehicle. If the vehicle stops bumping it means we crossed into Mokokchung.’ When the British left, the dobashi system stayed, and dobashis today assist the local administration and staff local courts, where they are seen as ‘custodians of the traditional customs’ (Ketholesie 2015: 2).

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6. Nagaland Department of Underdeveloped Areas (DUDA), available at: http://nlsic.nagaland.gov.in/chapter/under_dev_dept.htm. Accessed on 14 March 2017. 7. This, however, Longkumer illustrates, is not a one-way process, as Nagas themselves may capitalize on such images to carve out a distinct national identity, in the process producing ‘new forms of “authenticity” that do not yield to normative values of what exactly is “traditional” and “modern”’ (Longkumer 2015: 60). Longkumer explains: ‘On the one hand, representing themselves as “exotic” [which seems to have become common gloss for ‘primitive’] attracts tourists … On the other hand, it allows them to shape a distinct Naga national culture which has a larger purchase in this global arena of glorifying indigenous identities’ (Longkumer 2015: 60). 8. Remoteness, Ardener (2007: 214) explained us, is not an objective status, and while it has a position in topographical space, remoteness is ‘defined within a topological space whose features are expressed in a cultural vocabulary’. Even recent depictions of Nagaland as a Forgotten Frontier (Glancey 2011), a BBC (2014) travel writer dubbing Nagas as the ‘last surviving headhunters’, Indian soldiers returning home with ‘stories of “treacherous” rebels hiding in bamboo groves’ (Baruah 2005), and the existing Inner Line Permit ‘Mainland’ Indians require to enter the state further reinforces images of Nagas as fierce and fickle and Nagaland as a distant place hard to access. 9. Adopting a logic of his own, one officer identified a brighter side of his posting in eastern Nagaland, explaining: ‘Among backward tribes my duties occupy only a fraction of my time as people are hardly educated. There are only few petitions, demands, and complications I have to deal with here. I can easily go home [to Dimapur] and spend time with my family without anyone really missing my absence here.’ He contrasted this experience with his previous postings in western Nagaland: ‘There, everyone is running after the government, complaining and demanding. In those places, we hardly get time even to sleep.’ 10. In addition, there has also emerged, of late, a demand for a Naga autonomous district council in Naga dominated territories in Arunachal Pradesh, to be called the Patkai Autonomous Council. A spokesperson for this demand explained: ‘The successive Chief Ministers of Arunachal Pradesh have hardly any knowledge about the people of the Patkai region which has Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts. They neither know the way of life nor do they have any basic knowledge about the topography of the region. Based on these historical reasons, people of the three districts have demanded Patkai Autonomous Council.’ Explaining that their ‘brothers

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in Nagaland’ have their own state with a special Constitutional amendment, the statement went on: ‘We have been left in the lurch to fend for ourselves. We feel dejected because of the lackadaisical attitude of the government towards our grievances’ (Eenadu India 2017). In Manipur, meanwhile, the United Naga Council (UNC), an apex body of Naga communities within the state, has demanded an ‘alternative administrative arrangement’. In a public statement, the UNC asserted: ‘The Alternative Arrangement outside the Government of Manipur must be an institutional authority, with legislative, administrative and financial powers which will administer the Nagas in Manipur directly under the government of India’ (Kangla Online 2012). While each such demands voiced by Naga communities in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur exist in their own right, they jointly complicate the Naga political playing field. 11. To be fair, James Scott qualified that his argument of deliberate statelessness ‘makes no further sense in Southeast Asia for the period after, say, 1950’ (Scott 2009: 11). 12. About the involvement of intelligence agencies in factional divides, Panwar (2017: 250) writes thus: ‘Engaging one faction in talks/fighting while ignoring others is a government’s ploy to divide the Naga nationalists. For instance, the Khaplang faction [NSCN-K] constituted an [allegedly] integral part of government’s efforts in combating the power, influence, and legitimacy of the IM faction during the 1990s. But, this government’s tactic partnership and collaboration with the Khaplang faction apparently ended when the GOI agreed to hold a ceasefire with IM faction in 1997.’

7

Performing Democracy in Nagaland

Polling Day in Phugwumi 07:00 AM. Polling Day. Phugwumi, Nagaland. Villagers throng near the gate that leads towards the Government High School in whose classrooms electronic voting machines have been installed the previous day. The gate is guarded by rifle-clad soldiers who hail from places across India and have been dispatched to the faraway— for them—and remote Naga uplands to ensure the smooth conduct of polling. On receiving a nod from their commandant, two jawans unlock the gate. Polling begins (see Figure 7.1). 07:10 AM. Polling halted. ‘Why are you carrying so many voting slips?’ the commandant snaps at a village elder wrapped in a colorfully embroidered shawl to keep out the February cold. ‘One man, one vote. That’s the rule!’ The commandant scales up his voice, seeing that nearly all voters have multiple slips in hand. His interference meets with loud disapproval. ‘This is our In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0007

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Figure 7.1 Polling day in Phugwumi Source: Author.

village,’ one villager, known for his fortitude, steps out of the queue and protests. ‘Don’t tell us how to play democracy!’ Little could the army commandant know that Phugwumi’s Village Council has endorsed ‘household voting’, a decree that empowers the head of each household to cast the votes of his dependents. ‘Household voting’ is thought to have several advantages. First, it makes it unnecessary for villagers who reside elsewhere, particularly students, to travel home to vote as someone can vote for them. Second, it facilitates the polling of the roughly two thousand bogus or proxy votes the village is proud to possess and in the run up to Polling Day struggled hard to protect from proposed deletions (more in the section titled ‘Protecting the Village Electoral List’). It is also seen as more effective as it shortens queues. In any event, it has long been seen as a man’s duty to represent his family in the political sphere, and it is only in rare instances that members of the same household vote differently as this is understood as showing discord within the family.1

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07:30 AM. Voting still on hold. Tension mounting. Everyone agrees that this election was of a different kind as it is for the first time in Phugwumi that two of its villagers joined the same fray, a political circumstance nearly all villagers lament. In an attempt to prevent intra-village divisions and differences from flaring up, the villagers had tried to select a village ‘consensus candidate’ to whom the village votes and proxies were then to be allotted. Multiple rounds of meetings, however, had not led to a consensus and both politicians had entered the fray, competing for the constituency’s seat with each other and two more candidates from close by villages. 07:45 AM. Both village politicians arrive at the school compound. After a ferocious campaign, which divided the village into political camps, the two village candidates now act in unison. The commandant’s decree of ‘one man, one vote’ risks the polling of the village’s bogus votes, which the Village Council, in the absence of a single consensus candidate, resolved to divide equally over both candidates. As Nagaland constituencies and margins are comparatively small, such additional votes could well mean the difference between winning and losing. The two politicians confront the commandant, telling him, in clear terms, that his jurisdiction was confined to the maintenance of law and order, that he has no business in lecturing the villagers on how democracy works. For a while the commandant stands his ground, drumming up electoral principles to his defence, but with two irate politicians challenging his authority, and the atmosphere around him turning exceeding volatile, he eventually gives in. Household voting is allowed to resume and bogus votes are polled. This chapter examines the ways in which democratic institutions and electoral politics unfold in the shadows of Naga insurgency. My objective is not only to reveal the limitations of liberal political theories of democracy for addressing how Naga villagers understand and ‘perform’ democracy and elections, but also to discuss the interplay between Naga insurgency and democracy, and to demonstrate that Naga villagers possess the agency and cultural imagination to, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy and elections to themselves.

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While for most political and democratic theorists the above ethnographic snapshot connotes the unfamiliar, if not an outright affront to modern democratic ideals, reports and tales from villages across Nagaland indicate that Phugwumi’s way of ‘performing’ democracy hardly constitutes a case of local deviance. However, while inflated electoral lists, ‘household voting’, and the effort (albeit in this case a failed one) to agree on a consensus candidate appear ready fodder for judging Nagaland democracy as dissolute and perverse and for regulating it to the dubious chambers of democratic deficits and electoral ills, as is indeed commonly done (Amer 2014; Dev 2006; Misra 1978; Singh 2004), this chapter seeks to flick the paradigm. It explores what happens to our understanding of what democracy means and is about when we interpret Phugwumi’s engagement with democratic politics and voting not necessarily as deviant and deluded but simply as empirical data based on particularistic historical and cultural inferences and logic in need of explanation, even theorizing. Proposing thus, a central question this chapter asks is what ordinary Naga men and women make of the liberal, procedural democracy they are made to engage with (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1997; Paley 2008)? Naga’s experiences with modern democracy, Chasie (2001: 47) writes, ‘has been complex, difficult, and painful’. It is ‘complex’ because of ‘the disparate nature of the tribes’, ‘difficult’ because of the ‘unresolved Naga Political Issue with simultaneous “insurgency” operating during the entire period’, and ‘painful’ because the post-statehood entrance of formal democratic institutions and competitive elections caught Nagas ‘in a transition from the traditional to modernity’. To engage such complexities I draw on Lucia Michelutti’s (2007: 642) coinage of ‘vernacular democracy’ as the ways in which democratic practices and values ‘have been gradually moulded by folk understandings of “the political” which in turn energize popular politics’. I also take a cue from Jeffrey Witsoe’s (2009: 64) theorizing of ‘territorial democracy’ to capture how democratic politics, in places across South Asia, have become absorbed into often purely local and animated contestations over dominance and subordination.2 Studying democracy and elections ethnographically, moreover, necessitates the ‘analytical openness’ Julia Paley (2008: 3–4) rightly deems crucial ‘to explore how anthropological perspectives might take understandings of democracy in new and unanticipated directions.’

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Such an ‘analytical openness’ readily challenges global democratic theories, which, as Ashis Nandy (2002: 4) notes, ‘provide everyone the right to vote’ but not ‘the right to bring their odd cultural ideas and morality into the public sphere’.3 Stressing the veracity of Nandy’s ‘odd cultural ideas and morality’, not as deviances but as carriers of political modernity, this chapter invites attention away from the constrictive canons and creeds central to most political and democratic theories and instead recognizes democracy’s contingent character and its open-ended ever evolving construction (Paley 2002), its multivalence (Gutmann 2002: xviii), its particularistic moral idioms (Piliavsky 2014a), the longer histories that usually lie behind local political and electoral practices (Witsoe 2013), and the crucial insight that ‘party ideology is more often than not trumped by social relations’ (Holmberg cited in Gellner 2009: 127; Chakrabarty 2008). It does so, however, without fully discounting the authoritative presence of circulating, global discourses and dominant assumptions steadfastly and staunchly propagated by international organizations and national Election Commissions. As the vernacular experience of India’s democracy is now slowly being plotted (Berenschot 2011; Michelutti 2007, 2008; Piliavsky 2014a, 2014b, 2013; Ruud 2003; Witsoe 2013), this so far remains to the exclusion of India’s Northeast. And if this seems only characteristic of the region’s wider scholarly identity as an ‘geography of ignorance’ (Van Schendel 2002), in the contemporary world of Indian democracy this marginal engagement also persists because theories and concepts in vogue to capture South Asian democratic lifeworlds find little or no historical and social roots among Nagaland’s tribal and predominantly Christian populace. Absent, in Nagaland, are politics of caste relations and equations deemed so central elsewhere (Gupta 2005b; Srinivas 1955), age-old and ‘jajmani infused’ patron-client relations scripted afresh unto the democratic playing field (Piliavsky 2014b), or politicians (even entire castes) associating themselves with, or seen as avatars of, particular gods and deities (Michelutti 2004, 2008). Absent, too, are Dalit parties trying to unsettle upper caste dominance as is reported for South India (Gorringe 2011), or the unfolding of a ‘silent revolution’ with lower castes successfully seizing political power across North India (Jaffrelot 2002). These social dynamics are not part of Naga democratic lifeworlds.

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The study of Nagaland’s democratic experiences, its local character, inner logic, substance, and its wider unfolding in the shadows of Naga insurgency, then, offers another entrance into the multiverse of Indian democracy.

The ‘Underground Factor’ Akho, a political aide to the sitting MLA, and I sit in a ramshackle line-hotel midway Kohima and Phugwumi, sipping pegs of adulterated rum line-hotels are known (and resented) for. The owner hails from the plains but is married to a Naga woman, and their children are sometimes compared by the villagers to the liquor sold here: ‘impure’.4 However, Nagaland’s status as a ‘dry state’ combined with the occasional thirst some in the village have for liquor makes the line-hotel a popular, if morally ambiguous, vent. Akho is a party worker by vocation, and entrusted by the local MLA to look after small issues and projects across the constituency, and out of which Akho carves a decent living. His livelihood, however, is dependent on the MLA’s re-election and with Polling Day just a couple of months away Akho finds himself increasingly busy with electoral politicking. Akho and I often ‘talk politics’, and, at a safe distance from Phugwumi’s political frenzy, I am up for another tutorial in local politics. This time the theme is the influence of national workers on election outcomes, or what is locally referred to as the ‘underground factor’. Officially, Naga factions oppose, what they see as, ‘Indian elections imposed on Naga soil’. In fact, it was in its quest for Independence that the NNC successfully boycotted the country’s first general elections in 1952 and 1957 (Ao 2002: 49).5 Nagas’ participation in elections, the NNC reasoned, amounted to them recognizing India’s territorial and political claims over the Naga highlands, and therefore had to be resisted. It was only after the creation of Nagaland state that elections gradually became both regular and participatory (Amer 2014), even as Naga undergrounds sought to prevent villagers from voting, among others through ‘intermittent firing at some of the polling booths’ (Gundevia 1975: 199). Over time, however, national workers’ involvement in local elections moved far beyond formal boycott calls.

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Commentaries on Nagaland democracy regularly discuss the ‘unholy’ allegiances politicians and parties cultivate with Naga underground groups, allegedly for ‘their own [political] survival and selfish gain’ (Ao 2013: 13) by trading monetary donations and impunity in return for national workers’ support in garnishing votes, flexing their muscles if they must (Dev 2006). As such allegiances often assumed distinct links between politicians, parties, and particular Naga factions, the post-statehood democratic arena witnessed the remapping of Naga factionalism unto it. At other times it are national workers who seize the initiative and select and support ‘inefficient candidates who often become their puppets and together they siphon off development funds’ (Ezung 2012: 2). Such political linkages flourish despite Naga politicians and national workers formally rejecting each other’s legitimacy, which makes another dimension of the ‘underground effect’ (Chapter 3). These links are nevertheless well known and make an intricate part of ‘election talk’ as ‘reports of insurgent groups having influenced the outcome of electoral politics have dominated popular discourse in the state’ (Amer 2014: 10). Inside the line-hotel, Akho tops up our glasses. I ask him to explain the ‘underground factor’. Our tutorial begins. ‘In Nagaland, no politician can win his constituency without having understanding with Naga undergrounds operating there.’ Akho emphasizes understanding, which, I learn, means that a politician has cultivated amicable social relations with local underground leaders, usually greased by ‘donations’ and post-electoral promises of providing them privileged access to state resources. In return, national workers abstain from interfering in the electoral process, allowing villagers to deliberate their political choices unperturbed. Such an ‘understanding’ a politician has to cultivate with all Naga factions operating in the constituency, and in achieving this politicians invest considerable energy and resources. The absence of ‘understanding’, Akho explains, makes it nearly impossible for any politician to win elections: ‘The undergrounds have muscle-power and weapons. If they use these to force villagers not to vote for a certain politician there is little chance of him winning.’ Akho speaks from experience. During an earlier election, Akho had campaigned on behalf of the local Congress candidate whose bid was foiled by a Naga faction. He recalls:

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Some Congress leaders in the state had spoken lowly about the NSCN-IM in public, even compared national workers with beggars. As a result the NSCN-IM turned against all Congress candidates. In our constituency, several party vehicles were burned by national workers. They also removed all our party banners and issued warnings to villagers not to vote for the Congress candidate. There was no way we could have won that election.

To gain ‘understanding’ is different from enlisting a Naga faction’s actual and active support. But while underground support has proven, in constituencies across Nagaland, to be ‘effective’, Akho stresses that enlisting national workers for election purposes is also ‘costly’ and ‘risky’. It is effective because national workers possess the power to influence voting-patterns. However, it is ‘costly’ not just because the large donations demanded in return but because it bestows a Naga faction with considerable leverage to influence allocations of state monies once the politician is in office, always backed by the threat of turning against him during the next election. It is also ‘risky’ because the Central Government, represented through its intelligence wings, does not take lightly to such allegiances, which, when revealed, could lead to repolling, disqualification, and even criminal proceedings. In most cases, alliances between politicians and national workers are highly localized, fluctuating form one constituency to the next. While usually guided by instrumental interests, kinship affinities could also foment a bond between a politician and a Naga faction. Of a nearby constituency, Phugwumi villagers seemed to know for sure that the sitting MLA won the previous election not necessarily because he was the most popular politician, but because his wife had relatives high-up in an NSCN faction, which subsequently rallied behind his election bid. When discussing politics with Naga friends and interlocutors in places across Nagaland, I was regularly made privy to such and similar allegiances, and the language of kinship was regularly invoked to explain these. ‘Let’s order some chicken’, Akho suggests. Our bottle of rum is emptying. ‘What will happen this election?’, I ask Akho after he shouts his order towards the kitchen concealed by a curtain evidently long gone unwashed. ‘One never knows’, he replies smilingly. ‘But as for my boss [as Akho refers to his candidate], he has a good understanding with all

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underground groups around here. He knows the leaders well, and even when he is forced to speak out against them in public, they do not take his words otherwise.’ What about the other candidates? Do they have a similar understanding?’, I follow up. Akho shrugs: I am sure they are trying. But, I do not think that the underground will be that active during this election. At least not in our constituency. Last time they overdid it. They not just intimidated the villagers, but also used violence. They succeeded, but villagers did not like their behaviour a bit. Many got angry and frustrated with them, and national workers know this. I don’t think they will openly involve themselves this time.

This is the last political tutorial Akho grants me. In what became a hotly contested election in Phugwumi, Akho was busy day and night visiting households to secure votes, an undertaking understandably more important for him than tending to my curiosity. Even as the ‘underground factor’ was an intricate part of Nagaland elections, in public discourses it was asserted that Nagas needed a political solution, more than they needed fresh elections. In 1998, a year into the ceasefire, this sentiment culminated into a movement that advocated the slogan ‘no election, but solution’ and a call for the deferment of the forthcoming elections. When the Centre refused, Naga civil society organisations and the NSCN-IM called for an election boycott. The National Socialist Council of Nagalim – Isak/Muivah drew up a declaration, which they insisted Naga politicians to sign. It read: The Naga people through their various organizations strongly oppose holding of elections in Naga-inhabited areas. As such I … candidate of … party will not file my nomination paper in the ensuing Lok Sabha/ state assembly elections in view of the ongoing political dialogue between the Government of India and the NSCN (I-M).

All political parties operating in Nagaland heeded to the boycott call. That is, except the Congress Party, which was the state’s ruling government. ‘The NSCN(IM) adopted a very hard-line approach,’ S.C. Jamir (2016: 287), Nagaland’s then Chief Minister recalled the 1998 elections in his memoires. He continued: Yet they had never hoped to meet their nemesis in me.… The Commander-in-Chief and a Colonel of the NSCN(IM) met me in

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one house in Dimapur and at first requested me, then tried to intimidate me. Their point was that the Congress should also boycott the election.… There was no way that I or the Congress would in any way succumb to their demand.… Disappointed with my strong posture, the NSCN(IM) leadership thought to retaliate by sending its cadres to spread over to almost all the districts to prevent filing of nominations and these cadres did what they were instructed to do: resort to all kinds of means beginning from threats to intimidations to arm twisting. (2016: 288–9)

But while Jamir (2016: 288) himself justified his stance by citing the Constitution of India he had sworn allegiance to, several commentators proposed a more ‘political’ reading: ‘For the Jamir Government, nothing could have been more advantageous [than the call for an election boycott by the NSCN-IM). The Nagaland chief minister is widely believed to have the backing of the other major faction of the NSCN led by Khaplang’ (India Today 1998). Jamir’s stance drew widespread criticism locally. ‘We will ignore the state government’, a spokesperson of the Naga People’s Movement for Democracy stated. ‘We have never really recognised it. We are in the process of discussing a solution to the Naga problem with the Centre, and the chances are that if the talks succeed, the government will be dismissed anyway’ (cited India Today 1998). The 1998 elections ensued amidst heavy military security arrangements and, hardly surprisingly, resulted in the Congress Party capturing nearly all of the state’s sixty constituencies, in most of them without facing opposition. The theme ‘no election, but solution’ resurfaced in the run up to the 2013 elections after Nagaland newspapers began to report, and rumours spread, about a possible breakthrough in the political negotiations in Delhi. The breakthrough, it was hinted, would include the metamorphosis of the NSCN-IM into a political party that would head the Nagaland government for a stipulated period—speculations varied from six months, one year, to an entire five year term—after which it would join the election fray. Once again, Naga civil societies appealed for the deferment of the polls. Once again, the Centre refused. ‘Government of India does not seem to be interested in solution’, the Naga Hoho reacted in dismay, ‘but have rather imposed elections in

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Nagaland so as to divide the people further’ (cited in Assam Tribune 2013). In another twist, all of Nagaland’s 60 legislators offered to resign to pave the way for a political settlement, a move that was commented upon as both ‘bold’ and a ‘political gimmick’ (‘What’s the point of them offering to resign just before new elections?’, critics objected). The possibility of an NSCN-IM Interim Government, as part of a political solution, proved to be a rumour, however, and after several weeks of uncertainty it became evident that the 2013 elections would go ahead as scheduled. During the election season reports (involving accusations and counter-accusations, declarations, rejoinders and re-rejoinders) of underground involvement appeared daily in local newspapers, and became deeply interwoven in the popular discourse on the election. In Phugwumi’s constituency, as Akho predicted, Naga factions seemingly refrained from openly involving themselves, even as some national workers could be seen campaigning for political candidates. The remainder of this chapter discusses the ways in which the 2013 state elections unfolded in Phugwumi and situates political rhetoric and events in both the vernacular and the ethnographic longue durée. The locus and ethos of the pre-state Phugwumi polity, which revolved around village and clan loyalties and rivalries, and whose internal deliberations were guided by the normative principle of consensus-making, are to my way of reasoning crucial ingredients to understand contemporary and local conceptions of ‘doing politics’ and of arranging ‘the political’ in rural Nagaland.

Studying Elections in the Ethnographic Longue Durée While voting has been construed as a technique through which democratic knowledge and authority is constructed (Coles 2004), and voter turnouts seen as a sign of people’s faith in the political system of democracy (Lukes 1975), in Phugwumi balloting is better understood as an act ‘after the fact’ (Geertz 1998), comparable to the last Arabian Night preceded by a thousand equally enticing others. It is the substance of these proverbial thousand nights, and many more, that forms the social archaeology of voting decisions in Phugwumi today. Perhaps it is this misconception—that an election constitutes a short, spasmodic event,

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and thus unsuitable for the prolonged investigation characteristic of ethnography—that for long prevented anthropologists from fully endorsing democracy and its elections as a prime field of ethnographic inquiry. Those few anthropologists who did venture beyond the numerical assessments of democracy often ended up interpreting them using the advanced anthropological lexicon of ritual (Abeles 1988; McLeod 1999). Thus an election is seen as a ‘ritual drama’ (Nimmo 1985), as an elaborate rite in the Victor Turner (1969) sense complete with a liminal in-between phase (Herzog 1987) and the fostering of communitas (Banerjee 2011) caused by a temporary flattening of hierarchies as otherwise socially elevated and aloof politicians turn ‘beggars’ for votes. Like a proper ‘ritual of rebellion’ (Gluckman 1954), the election ends with a reaffirmation of the institutional status quo of procedural democracy. For India, too, it is held that through the act of balloting ‘Indians reaffirm the unity of the nation and the investment of power in the rulers by the ruled’ (Hauser and Singer 1986: 942). In the latest edition of this ‘election-as-ritual’ approach, Banerjee (2007, 2011, 2014) emphasizes the festive, almost sacred ethos elections have taken on in places across the subcontinent. People flock to voting booths, Banerjee says, not because they are sufficiently naïve to expect that their welfare will change from one election to the next, as their past experiences tell them that it will not, but because they perceive the act of voting as a sacred expression of citizenship; as a signature of ‘patriotic faith in the idea of India’ (2007: 1560). Banerjee’s interpretation lands in troubled waters in Nagaland where voter turnouts readily pitch over 80 and 90 per cent (Amer 2014), and is so significantly higher than the national average, but whose inhabitants often distance themselves from the idea of India. If not out of patriotic fervour, what then explains, in addition to proxy-voting, the electoral effervescence in Phugwumi and across Nagaland?6 The following ethnographic and historical discussion offers a few initial insights. While democratic politics was initially not a core part of my research, after elections were scheduled it soon etched itself at the very centre of it. This was not only because it attracted my interest (which I must confess it did) but also because politics soon submerged Phugwumi’s entire social landscape. Suddenly, the theme of politics seemed to crop

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up in almost all everyday conversations, whether they were held in the paddy fields, around kitchen-fires at nights, or on the whitewashed steps leading to the village church. Such discussions, however, generally did not involve the party manifestos, political ideologies, or government policies most political theorists would want voters to discuss. Instead they revolved around bonds of kinship, historical narratives, village and clan loyalties, and for some, it should not be denied, about the monetary offers candidates were likely to make in return for their votes. Such ‘political conversations’ often zoomed in on disagreements and grievances gone unaddressed, ranging from land disputes, inter-village differences, incidences of thieving, adultery, and unfulfilled promises, to intravillage clan (and interpersonal) rivalries over local standing and dominance. And while such past episodes remained mostly dormant in ‘ordinary times’ as Polling Day grew closer they became recalled and brooded over aloud. A former Phugwumi politician, for instance, narrated how his candidacy had been hindered by the perceived conduct of some of his relatives during his father’s and grandfather’s times: They were well-built, strong, and excelled in village wrestling. Those days, ‘might’ often meant ‘right’ and they became somewhat domineering in their behaviour and got themselves landed into disputes. Much has changed since, but the villagers remembered this. Many therefore felt reluctant to cast their vote for me. I was held accountable for deeds done long before I was even born.7

He had also expected, but only marginally received, electoral support from one particular clan: In the past, we [the former politician’s clan] acted as their elder brothers. They were small in numbers but we saw to it that they were treated at par with other village clans. We protected them. When I contested, I reminded them about this part of our village history but in the end many of them voted for another candidate.

‘Politics runs very deep in our village’, I was told repeatedly.8 A political agent of one of the candidates explained further: ‘Our villagers don’t vote based just on the present. They also see the past behaviour of the

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ancestors, relatives, and clan-members of the candidates. If there is some problem or controversy there, the candidate will find it difficult to win’. Given this deep social archaeology that influenced local voting decisions, for me as an ‘outsider’ to grasp the villagers’ political reasoning there was no shortcut to first grappling with Phugwumi’s social history in its totality, including how its six clans were said to have come to their present location, when they arrived, and their reputation and standing within the village. How during the precolonial era the village had grown into a monopolistic protection racket, one that raided nearby villages and levied widespread tribute, and how such tributary relations extended into the colonial, and in some cases, the postcolonial era. But also the intricacies, conspiracies, and rivalries internal to Phugwumi, which involved clan struggles, contests over status and standing, and disputes over land and property. It was such narratives, not parties, manifestos, and ideologies that turned into the stuff and substance of local electoral politics.9 To better understand such a remapping of ‘old politics’ unto new political arenas, we might do well to first take a step back. In 1933, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf accompanied J.P. Mills, the then deputy commissioner, on a tour deep into Angami Naga territory, visiting a number of villages, some in the vicinity of Phugwumi. In each village Fürer-Haimendorf watched how ‘hordes of clansman’ (1939: 12) approached J.P. Mills to bring before him their disputes and disagreements. Quarrels mostly concerned ‘land and the succession to property or the claims of a betrayed husband, suing the seducer of his wife, or the damage that one man’s cattle had done to another man’s crops’. All along, Mills ‘very patiently worked through the tangle of accusations and defence, and finally passed judgments’. It befuddled Fürer-Haimendorf: ‘Why is it that the Angamis of those remote villages, whose economy had then not been disrupted by an outside force, were unable to settle disputes among themselves and brought the most trivial quarrels before the Deputy Commissioner?’ The answer was perhaps not the breakdown of tribal jurisdiction Fürer-Haimendorf suggested, but may be sought in the villager’s agency and imagination to appropriate and rework the colonial machinery to their own benefits. Put differently, colonial offices and officers came to provide ordinary Naga villagers with new avenues to work through preexisting divisions and differences, and new ways to

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settle long-standing struggles over clan and village status, standing and sway (see Spencer 2007: 84–7). It is a similar inner logic, I pose, that came to characterize Nagas’ engagement with post-statehood institutions and ideas of procedural democracy. While reasoning in a very different context, Spencer (2007: 84–5) subscribes to the possibility of such a reading when he concludes for rural Sri Lanka: If party politics had not come to the village, the villagers would have had to invent them. Politics had simply provided a new idiom in which villagers could express the kinds of division that had long existed. As such, electoral politics was simply the latest in a line of institutions which villagers had appropriated for their own uses.

In spite of both the longstanding (formal) opposition of Naga underground groups against ‘Indian elections’ and villagers’ reluctance to identify themselves as ‘Indian’, villagers participated enthusiastically because new democratic institutions and practices locally provided, ‘an apparently bounded and structured social arena in which to work through all manners of purely local tensions and differences, while nevertheless seeking more of the good things and social standing that follow from access to the state’ (Spencer 1997: 9). Challenged here, as does the ethnography of Phugwumi, is the conventional view that elections and voter turnouts express ‘the symbolic affirmation of the voters’ acceptance of the political system and their role within it’ (Lukes 1975: 304). Confronted, too, is the fancy that citizens in India cast their ballots as a ritual act of patriotic faith to the idea of India. What emerges as crucial, to the contrary, is to look at how democratic ideas and practices become vernacularized and territorialized. At how pre-existing divisions and struggles over local standing and dominance etched themselves at the very centre of democratic and political imagination, stirring the electoral effervescence in ways it does in Phugwumi.

The Form and Substance of ‘The Political’ in Phugwumi’s Past This section discusses the historical and cultural setting in which democratic practices and principles unfolded and became socially

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enmeshed in Phugwumi. It does so in an attempt to locate, what John and Jean Comaroff (1997: 127) call, a ‘native political anthropology’, one that engages with particularistic histories and vernacular cultures of participatory politics. It is through the ethnographic unpacking of such vernacular political narratives and practices, they argue, that we may arrive at a critical appreciation of local democratic forms and functioning. Earlier in this book I emphasized the role of the prototypical Naga village as a foundational unit of Naga society. Here I trace, in some more detail, the political history of Phugwumi and which, I pose, informs contemporary political reasoning and praxis in the village. ‘In the past Phugwumi behaved very aggressively to its neighbours. Their warriors dominated the entire area’, a Chakhesang government officer told me in his Kohima office. ‘My own village sometimes partnered with Phugwumi, and when a village attacked us Phugwumi warriors would come to our rescue. At times our villagers would also join them in their raids on other villagers.’ Such levels of mutual cooperation and understanding were rare, however. The officer narrated: In the past, Phugwumi villagers were boisterous and proud. Many villages they attacked. In fact, it was because of their pride that Christianity and education took a long time to come to that village. Christianity preached peace, but Phugwumi villagers did not want to hear about peace. Being peace-loving was simply not in their blood. Even in Chakhesang villages much more remote than Phugwumi Christianity arrived decades earlier. That tells you something about the warrior character of Phugwumi.

Even as the characterization of Phugwumi’s past as that of a ‘warrior village’ is no doubt simplistic, the village’s political reputation was nevertheless shaped by a history that stretches back far beyond British colonialism. It was long before the entrance of colonial rule that Phugwumi established itself as a monopolistic protection racket, an overwhelming powerhouse that was known and feared from afar, and levied widespread tribute. To reiterate Butler’s (1855: 208) observation (cited in the introduction), ‘They are dreaded by all around as bloodthirsty people, who think nothing of murder for the sake of plunder’. Among other factors, Phugwumi’s location, perched high on

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a difficult to access hilltop, contributed to its ascend to local supremacy as enemies could be spotted from afar while the steep, rocky slope made for a natural defence wall. Occasional write-ups by Phugwumi villagers themselves, published in village jubilee souvenirs, variously recall this time. One Phugwumi author wrote thus: In the first part of the 19th century, before [the] coming of the British Raj into [the] Naga Hills, [Phugwumi] village was the most populous and strongest village among the neighbouring skies, and had touched its utmost stage particularly in terms of headtaking and raids warfare. At that time all the neighbours on all sides were hostile to the village … [Phugwumi] village had plundered and ruled over almost all the neighbour villages and the subject area of [Phugwumi] village extended even upto some parts of Manipur Country. ([Phugwumi] Baptist Church 1997).

The same booklet venerates the deeds of past Phugwumi warriors, including Yinu, Tsongonyo, Niho, Mushuyi, Musuri, and Huzui. Till today, narratives of past battles, heroic deeds, fearless warriors, and the subduing of other villages remain an essential and proud part of Phugwumi’s repertoire of oral history, even though village pastors and church leaders now argue that this part of the village’s history is best forgotten. Phugwumi’s local supremacy took a blow when, in 1851, it was attacked and subdued by a British-led force, although only so after Phugwumi villagers had openly challenged colonial officers to a fight, not once but twice. A colonial report on the battle pitches the death toll among Phugwumi villagers above 300, and details how most of its houses and granaries were burnt: ‘only about six houses were saved in the centre of the village, in which the [British-led] troops took shelter for the night’ (Butler 1855: 210).10 ‘Thus fell [Phugwumi]’, the report concludes, ‘after one of the most bloody battles ever fought in Assam’ (Butler 1855: 210).11 Whilst the pacification of Phugwumi, and the Naga uplands more widely, meant the discontinuation of inter-village raids and retaliations (or at the minimum stopped their most violent expressions), intervillage antagonisms and rivalries occasionally continued. Phugwumi’s post-statehood history, too, remains peppered with instances in which the village assembled in a protective or

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punitive force, determined to safeguard the village’s honour or to exert revenge in the name of a Phugwumi villager wronged at the hands of a non-villager. Amongst the many incidents that were narrated to me, there was the episode, recalled with gusto by those who participated in it, in which dao-wielding villagers broke into a police station in the nearby administrative hub to try and take a revenge of their own on a person incarcerated there for assaulting a Phugwumi villager. Fortunately, for the accused, he had been transferred to another prison earlier that day. In another incident, a group of villagers invaded a wrestling tournament in Kohima and trashed, in public view, one of its contestants. They had recognized him as having manhandled a Phugwumi villager in Phek town, the administrative headquarters of the district Phugwumi is part of. For weeks, the villagers had stopped every bus and vehicle that had passed along the Phek-Kohima road, which bypasses Phugwumi, to search for the assaulter, but to no avail. Now seeing him participate in a wrestling tournament, they did not lose time in taking the revenge they had been waiting for. During the 2013 elections, moreover, Phugwumi’s youth was instructed to prevent supporters of a particular (non-village) candidate from campaigning inside the village (more in the section titled ‘Protecting the Village Electoral List’), exerting force if needed. And when, after the closing of the polls, rumour spread that a few Phugwumi youths residing in a nearby administrative hub had been attacked with stones, village youth—transcending party lines—acted promptly, organized vehicles, and set off in large numbers to provide protection and exert revenge. Phugwumi’s historical preoccupation with strengthening and defending the village was part of a wider pattern in which the locus of the Naga political was vested in the village (Chapter 2). That said, a singular focus on the locus of ‘the political’ would fail to recognize the pivotal axes of clan (and khel) within. For the Angami Naga, Hutton (1921a: 109) qualified: ‘although the village may be regarded as the unit of the political and religious sides of Angami life, the real unit of the social side is the clan’, and this ‘enduring pattern’ (Fortes 1949) of clan continued, as we will see, to shape understandings of ‘the political’ inside the Naga village during elections. Merely concentrating on the locus of the Naga ‘political’ would also overlook the variety of political

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systems and sentiments operative within different Naga villages. Any characterization of the traditional Naga political ethos must start with acknowledging its heterogeneity. Digging through the Naga colonial archive we find accounts about chiefs and democrats (Jacobs et al. 1990), nobles and commoners (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939; Hutton 1921b), clan elders (Mills 1922), powerful chiefs (Fürer-Haimendorf 1939), the conspicuous absence of chiefs (Hutton 1921a), and, on the whole, a Naga political continuum with hereditary autocracy, if not near dictatorship, and radical democracy at its opposite ends, with (a section of) the Konyak Naga usually associated with the former and the Angami and Chakhesang Nagas as the most obvious example of the latter. Phugwumi’s traditional polity was a polity without permanent leaders, chiefs, aristocrats, or kings. There existed, in days bygone, ritual offices called Kümvo (male) and Imshopüh (female) in Phugwumi, but their powers were limited and by and large constricted to overseeing village festivals, the observance of gennas,12 and agricultural rites.13 More generally, Mills (1926: 28) argued that ‘the commonest system of traditional governance is that there are no real chiefs at all, and the tendency is for the villages to be run by such people as have wealth and influence, and can shout loudly’.14 In Phugwumi no villager was ever prevented from ‘shouting’ opinions and proposing resolutions. However, the sonority and efficacy of one’s voice was conditioned to having an audience, and to be listened to was a privilege that had to be earned through the accumulation of virtue and merit. Social hierarchies existed and mattered. To turn oneself into a feast giver offered one possibility to ascend in the social and political hierarchy, and feast givers were respected as their wealth and generosity revealed their virtue, and their political views demanded attention (on the Naga feast of merit see Chapter 4). Bravery and physical strength, in offering protection and through ritually fertilizing the village by bringing in the ‘soul matter’ (Hutton 1928: 403) of decapitated enemy heads provided another axis of social differentiation, and in times of battle Phugwumi would usually unite behind one or multiple veteran warriors.15 The axes of wealth (and its dispensing through generosity) and bravery also interrelated, and ‘among the Chakhesang, only a warrior had the privilege of standing on the monolith stone when it was being pulled in honour of the couple performing the feast of merit’ (Tinyi 2017: 93).

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But perhaps most importantly, it was the wisdom and acumen associated with the at times rare privilege of ageing that demanded listening ears. ‘Age, among the Nagas’, Horam (1988: 18) writes, ‘has both prestige and power’. In Phugwumi, elders were revered, and their words commanded a respectful audience.16 As a general political norm, their views superseded the voices of younger generations whose opportunism and naiveties had to be kept in check. In the cultural etiquette of the past, village youth, while never silenced, were expected to show deference by acknowledging, before speaking in public, the incomplete understanding and limited knowledge that came with being young and unmarried, the absence of fields and cattle in one’s possession, and their overall still limited experience of the perils and complications of life. Accomplishments in terms of wealth, physical prowess, and especially ageing could result in positions of political prominence and leadership. However, Chasie (2005: 102) writes, ‘Certainly no leader was accepted on a permanent basis. The moment the person starts boasting, his downfall would begin’. On the whole, village authority, where it existed, often remained nominal as resolutions offered by village leaders were ‘obeyed so far only as they accord with the wishes and conveniences of the community’ (Hutton 1921a: 143). With the absence of permanent village chiefs and formal councils, how, then, were decisions ever made? In Phugwumi, practices and principles of consensus-building (Küdzükhoküyi) both governed political life and moral society. Phizo (1951) captured this communitarian and consensual spirit as Mechü medo zotuo, which roughly translates as ‘the binding will of the community’. Or in the words of another early Naga intellectual: ‘We believe in that form of government that permits the rule, not of the majority, but of the people as a whole’ (Sakhrie cited in Nuh 2002: 16).17 This made Hutton (1921a: 142–3) characterize the (Angami) Nagas as a ‘debating society’: ‘disputes, when settled at all, were probably settled by a sort of informal council of elders, who would discuss the matter under dispute with one another, the parties, and the general public at great length, until some sort of agreement was arrived at.’ In Phugwumi, everyone was allowed to raise his voice in public, at any time, on any topic, proposing any resolution, although not, I emphasized, was everyone’s voice given equal weight. The sonority of

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one’s political voice was set by one’s antecedents and achievements, by the merit, virtue and wisdom a person had accumulated over his lifetime. As a result, voices of the youth were lower compared to those of the village elderly. Women, in turn, generally spoke less than men, at least so in public, and while Naga women, in general terms, have been thought of as traditionally empowered compared to women in most parts of India (Elwin 1961: 104), their involvement in political decisionmaking remained, and remains, limited (Amer 2013; Kikon 2002). If, reconstructed thus, what Hutton (1921a) called, the Angami ‘debating society’ may now connote a patriarchal autocracy of the old, brave, and wealthy, it nevertheless was one tested and treasured by many, and based on the cultural and communitarian understanding that it were the village meritorious an elders who had accumulated the necessary merit and maturity to transcend purely personal and clan interests for the protection and welfare of the village at large. It was in this historical texture, one embroidered with rivalling ‘village republics’, normative consensus-making, but also of clan struggles within, into which modern democratic institutions and practices became locally woven and tailored. With Polling Day drawing near, we will discuss two episodes that stood out in Phugwumi. First, the villagers’ desperate (and successful) attempt to protect the village electoral list from a state initiated deletion of ‘bogus votes’ and, secondly, the villagers’ (unsuccessful) attempt to agree on a ‘village consensus candidate’.

Protecting the Village Electoral List Polling Day was still several months away when news seeped into Phugwumi that the government had scrutinized the village’s electoral list and had identified as many as two thousand bogus votes; double entries, names of villagers long deceased, and of persons who no longer resided in the village or had never lived there. The government, it was said, was now preparing to delete these votes and that would instantly cut Phugwumi’s ‘voting strength’ by roughly a third. Inside the constituency, Phugwumi had not been the only village convicted guilty of maintaining an inflated electoral list, but nowhere was the proposed deletion proportionally as high. Phugwumi villagers received the news with anger, even outrage, and it was soon interpreted as a deliberate

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attempt on the village’s historical standing and post-statehood political preponderance. It did not take long for suspicion to befall a senior politician known for his political acumen, who hailed from a village located on an opposite hill range. While a minister in the past, he had been defeated in the previous election, in no small parts because of low votes from Phugwumi. Even fewer in Phugwumi were likely to endorse his candidacy this time, and the politician had therefore resorted to shrewdness, acting in connivance with those bureaucrats allied with him from the days he held office, to enhance his electoral prospects by reducing Phugwumi’s voting power, or so it was suspected in the village. There were other signs pointing towards his involvement. The politician’s proven vote bank, a cluster of three villages including his natal one, had hardly been affected by proposed deletions, which rather than a reflection of the accuracy of their electoral lists was quickly interpreted as part of a large and crafty political scheme being put in place. Moreover, in recent press statements he had come out strongly in support of the elevated democratic principle of ‘one man, one vote’, a sudden political ideal the villagers now understood as him having skillfully prepared the political grounds to unfold his electoral strategy of weakening Phugwumi. Here it must be qualified that what also sets democracy in Nagaland apart from places across India is the size of its constituencies. Nagaland constituencies are small, miniscule compared to India’s larger states, so small that politicians know many of their electors personally.18 Phugwumi, however, is a large village, the largest in the constituency, which counted eight more villages and a modest administrative hub. In 2013, the constituency’s electoral list tallied below 22,000 votes. Of the 22,000 total votes, Phugwumi alone possessed nearly 5,500. This numerical preponderance made Phugwumi center stage during elections as its internal electoral dynamics could well be, and often had been, decisive in the overall election outcome.19 Especially discomforting, for the villagers, was the realization that no non-villager could possibly possess sufficient intimate knowledge of the village to differentiate genuine from bogus votes. An ‘inside-hand’ was suspected, a fellow villager gone against his own people. ‘Lured with money?’, ‘The promise of a government job?’, ‘A lucrative state contract perhaps?’ Guesses were many and hidden accusations soon thickened

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the air. ‘Nobody can defy our village,’ Athe remarked in dismay. ‘This goes far beyond the election. This is affecting our village as a whole.’ The village council, in an emergency meeting, decreed that should the ‘inside hand’ be identified he would face instant excommunication for seven years, a punishment that equalled Phugwumi’s customary sentence for homicide. To be sure, few in the village insisted that the proposed deletions were entirely unfair, as most knew that the Election Commission deemed bogus votes as perverse political practice. What was objected however was that the proposed curbing of the electoral list, rather than an outcome of official, detached, and impartial procedures, appeared a political attempt to downsize the village’s standing and sway. For most, the village’s inflated electoral list was understood as a reflection and remapping of the village’s pre-state hegemonic past. Given that in the modern political arena power and influence were no longer obtained by the might and bravery of village warriors but by numbers of votes, many in Phugwumi thought it was not just justifiable but historically inevitable that they would dominate numerically on the constituency’s electoral list, and for which, in addition to its already large number of inhabitants, the addition of ‘extra votes’ had long been the prime method. If an inflated electoral list and proxy voting—or the voting of ‘dead souls’ as Staveley (1972) called it for ancient Greece and Rome—which along with inventing procedural democracy also first invented its circumvention—is condemned as distorted electoral practice characteristic of a weak state and perverse political parties (Birch 2011: 37), in Phugwumi the casting of such proxies drew on an inner logic of historical relations of inter-village dominance and subordination, a set of relations subsequently recast as the effect of democracy’s vernacular territoriality. Similar sentiments reasserting the ‘village republic’ revealed itself in a colloquial distinction between ‘home’ and ‘escape’ votes. Homegrown democratic theory taught that without solid ‘home support’, or the votes from a contestant’s natal village, it was nearly impossible for any politician to conquer his constituency. ‘Escape votes’, in turn, referred to those votes villagers polled for a candidate of an other village when a fellow villager was also contesting the fray. While ‘escape votes’ were not unusual, they carried a dubious moral quality as it was understood that

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those promising their votes to a non-village candidate must be doing so out of certain material interests, or perhaps had been monetarily induced, thereby privileging their purely personal considerations over those of kin and village loyalties. There certainly also existed an instrumental hinge to both ‘bogus votes’ and the preference for ‘home-votes’, as this would increase the chances of a fellow-villager being elected into the assembly, so becoming in the ‘position’ to help the village by allocation it disproportionate amounts of state resources. Besides promising to punish the ‘inside hand’, Phugwumi’s village council also dispatched a summon letter to the politician, offering him an opportunity to defend himself against the accusations. The summon, however, went unheeded, and when he also ignored a second and a third call letter, the council took it as further evidence of his complicity and proscribed him and his party members from campaigning within the village’s territorial jurisdiction. As no redress could be expected from the politician, council members called on the offices of the Additional District Commissioner in the nearby administrative town and subsequently on the District Commissioner posted in the district headquarters, located on an arduous five-hour drive away. The District Commissioner, however, in his official capacity, had merely lectured Phugwumi’s delegation on the principles and practices of ‘good democracy’ as outlined by India’s Election Commission, and which well justified the deletion of the village’s bogus votes. Phugwumi efforts were further hindered by a rising prominence of a ‘one man, one vote’ slogan popularized by the locally influential Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC),20 and when during a courtesy visit to the village a few weeks later, the District Commissioner publicly defended the ‘one man, one vote’ principle, chances of retaining the bogus votes seemed all the more slim. Seemingly against all odds, the village council persisted in pursuing the matter with the district administration, and in a last ditch effort another delegation took off to the district headquarters. It was during this visit that matters—as they were recounted to me by one of the delegates that evening—took a dramatic turn. As they pleaded their case once more, a state functionary remarked that more bogus names had been identified on Phugwumi’s electoral list and were also being prepared for deletion. On hearing this, some of the delegates burst into anger, a rage fuelled by frustrations cropped up for months. ‘If you [the

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government] continue to harass and insult our village’, one of them had uttered forcefully, ‘how do you expect us to be able to control our village youth?’ Given that during times of conflict, or inter-village tension, village youth, both past and present, quickly converted into village defence forces, the question posed was a rhetorical one, hinting at the possibility of unrest, of violence even. The deeper meaning of the statement was too obvious for the officer, a Naga himself, not to recognize. While still on their return to the village the council chairperson’s mobile phone rang. The call came from the office’s of the district commissioner. In the brief conversation that followed the chairperson was assured that the administration was in no way prejudiced or ill-disposed against Phugwumi and that their grievances would be looked into. Although it was impossible for the administration to rescind all deletions without gambling its authority to govern, the vast majority of them were revoked, making for a small political loss the villagers were now ready to settle for.

The Failed Consensus Candidate If the previous section illustrates the remapping of the ‘village republic’ onto the new democratic arena, this section will focus on the micropolitics within Phugwumi, which revolved strongly around structures, sentiments, and idioms of clan. In our wider body of political ethnography clan-politics is often associated with places in Central Asia, where despite massive state-led campaigns to foster national, civic identities, ‘in all regions of each country, most people strongly identified with their local clan networks, not with ethnic groups, and certainly not with either the democratic opposition or the state’ (Collins 2009: 1). As a social institution, clan is not usually seen as salient to India where identities and loyalties of caste continue to reign: ‘politicians are obsessed with “caste”’, writes Michelutti (2007: 645).21 With castes altogether absent among the tribal and Christian Naga but with clans assuming political significance, Phugwumi, and the Naga more widely, thus provides a contrary case.22 It was the first time for Phugwumi to have two of their own contesting the same fray. What especially worried the villagers was that the two candidates belonged precisely to the two village clans that had long

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disagreed and struggled over standing, dominance, and property within the village.23 It indeed did not take long before Phugwumi’s predicament was talked about as an inter-clan contest, both by voices inside and outside the village. Here the problem was not simply that all fellow clan-members were obliged to vote for the candidate of their clan—after all, bonds of kinship can at times be as divisive as they are uniting—but that there was always a tension between one’s expected loyalty and conformity to one’s clan and more civic or private considerations.24 When it became clear that two villagers aspired to contest the election, most in Phugwumi immediately objected. They feared it would lead to the breakdown of the village community into different groups, causing rivalries and resentments whose effects would be felt until long after the last ballot would be cast. It had been the same problem, years earlier, with the state-wide introduction of VDB. Phugwumi was made to establish a development board whose members were to serve for a set period after which others would take over, and the state proposed balloting as the mode to elect villagers apt to the task. However, the development monies that poured into the village were substantial, and so became opportunities for profitable (albeit illegal) cuts and commissions (Chapter 5), at once elevating the material standing of VDB members. No sooner, VDB membership was widely sought after and VDB elections began to appear like state elections, including heated campaigns, rivalling camps, conflicts, and the social production of resentment. Discordance became such that the Razu Kuhu, Phugwumi’s apex body, intervened and decreed that, henceforward, VDB membership was to be adjudicated through a clan-wise selection system in which, every three years, the elders of each of the six village clans would confer and amongst themselves—based on intraclan deliberation and consensus building—select the most suitable clan-member for the post. To further reduce conflict and open competition within the village, the position of VDB secretary, the post most coveted, was to rotate clan-wise, thence offering each of the six clans equal opportunity in assuming positions of village leadership. What further worried the villagers about the presence of two village candidates was that it would divide the village vote bank (including its proxies), and while it had always been an illusion for the entire village

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to unite behind a single candidate, in a village with as many votes as Phugwumi had, gaining a solid majority of ‘home votes’ would nevertheless put a candidate instantly ahead in the polls. Such village majority support would also provide the candidate with sufficient leverage to claim the total of village proxies, thus further strengthening his position. ‘One minus one is zero’, as one village leader captured Phugwumi’s predicament, implying that were both candidates to contest they would cancel out each other’s prospects. This was considered undesirable in the context of Nagaland’s (somewhat arbitrarily dubbed) politics of patronage and clientelism in which MLAs were invariably expected to privilege their natal clans and villages, and their loyalists especially, in terms of state benefits, and which made it lucrative for a village to have one of their own elected into the assembly. Several theorists have noted how, across India, democratic politics is ‘substantially about access to state resources’ (Prasad 2010: 142), a ‘patronage democracy’ (Chandra 2004) animated by the postcolonial inflation of the Indian state into a ubiquitous entity (Khilnani 1997). While Naga politicians became known—and criticized—for accumulating personal riches, they became equally known and praised for appropriating and redirecting state resources to their respective tribe, village, and clan (usually in that order of priority). Across Nagaland, Jimomi (2009: 399) writes: ‘[a Minister] forget[s] that he is the Minister of Nagaland, and he becomes the Minister of his own constituency, Minister of his own tribe, becomes the Minister of his own clan.’25 Besides material considerations, having two villagers contesting was also undesirable because a Naga village producing an MLA instantly witnessed a rise in its local standing and repute. ‘We have to keep our village together,’ Athe opined. ‘We should not allow two villagers to contest.’ Others added that producing two candidates would cast shame on the village: ‘It will show to the outside world that we are not united.’ Following up on popular opinion, the Razu Kuhu in consultation with the village council, called for a consultative meeting to deliberate the matter. In the mass gathering that followed (although among them only few women were present) and which lasted throughout the day, multifarious opinions and views passed the venue, perspectives often preceded by long and detailed narrations of village and clan histories. ‘Our village was not established just yesterday,’ as it was explained to

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me during the meeting. ‘We can’t discuss today’s politics without first discussing the past.’ As the meeting prolonged, consensus emerged that only one villager should be allowed to contest. It was therefore resolved that the village community was to select a ‘consensus-candidate’ to which all villagers were socially and morally expected to submit their votes (although they could still vote for one of the two non-village candidates if they so desired), as well as bequeathed all the village’s bogus votes. This resolution was declared binding, suggesting that if the particular politician asked to withdraw by village consensus would refuse to obey—as according to India’s Constitution and Election Commission he could of course not be legally barred from declaring his candidacy— it would be interpreted as him disrespecting the will of the village (müthi dzü or müthi külü, which translates as ‘the community’s voice’ or the ‘community’s thought’), a serious transgression that would impede his, and his relatives, future standing and participation in village life. If this resolution to ‘select’ rather than ‘elect’ a candidate goes against the grain of universalistic and normative projections of autonomous voting, in Phugwumi (and among the Naga more widely), the act of individual balloting was subject to a sustained culturalist critique as it was seen as unduly dividing the village into ‘our side’ and ‘their side’, thus challenging the widely noted communitarian ethos of the Naga village (Bendangjungshi 2012: 124; Biswas and Suklabaidya 2008: 184; Thong 2014: 158).26 In fact, in boycotting newly independent India’s first general elections, the Phizo-led NNC rejected not just Nagas’ inclusion into the Indian Union but also communicated the cultural incongruity of political parties and elections in the context of Naga lifeworlds. ‘There is no political party in Nagaland. We don’t need it,’ Phizo (1951) wrote. ‘Nagaland need not imitate or adopt foreign institutions [political parties and elections] in matter of political organisation.’ In Phizo’s view, Nagaland was already democratic by traditional design: ‘[It] is the very spirit of our country.’ The Naga National Council’s manifesto reasserted this political position: ‘In a country like Nagaland, particularly at the present time, party system could never accomplish anything except leading to ruination’ (cited in Horam 1988: 321–2).27 Post-statehood Nagaland politicians came to voice similar culturalist critiques. On the floor of the Nagaland assembly, a minister proposed that Nagaland’s election system be reformed, for the present

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election system went against ‘the Naga way of life’ (cited in Ao 1993: 224).28 A former Nagaland Chief Minister publicly advocated the replacement of the election system by one of selection, which he deemed ‘necessary for a good [Naga] society based on faith in each other and in common values’. He insisted that this would ‘not in any way hamper the power of the state government, rather helps the progress and thereby good government’ (Sema 1986: 171–2).29 Most recently, it was another Nagaland Chief Minister who remarked that ‘election is not suited for Nagas’, then elucidating that ‘selection of leader[s] would best suit Nagas’ (cited in Solo 2011: 67), thus recognizing that ‘the idea of “an elected leader” was not in the scheme of life in the Nagas’ (Solo 2011: 68). Principles of ‘selection’ and ‘consensus-making’ (Küdzükhoküyi), even if endorsed culturally, could nevertheless be a highly contentious process.30 Crucially, however, the essence of achieving consensus was not that everyone must hold the same opinion; the meeting’s outcome, the resolution adopted, or the leader chosen was usually not the one to which the largest numbers of villagers agreed, but the one to which the least numbers vehemently disagreed. As such, it was the tyranny of the majority in its reverse. Achieving village-wise consensus also did not necessarily rely on the equal participation, or equal weight, of all village voices. It was also often not easy, and could entail lengthy discussions, but whereas in certain Marxist circles consensus was seen as a euphemism for ideology, or false consciousness, in Phugwumi consensusbuilding itself constituted the political ideology.31 This principle continues to guide Phugwumi’s realm of customary law. To adjudicate decisions, in village council meetings, the principle of voting is never applied.32 Its chairperson explained: ‘Voting would only lead to more politics, more competition, and more rivalries. And this would not benefit our village.’ Instead, the Council preferred to discuss until an agreement is reached that is acceptable to all its members, even if this made council meetings often a lengthy affair. In instances in which building a consensus proved impossible, the Council preferred to declare an issue as unresolved or pending, which was still preferred over forcing a decision through the divisive practice of voting. On the whole, consensus-making, even if a long-drawn exercise, was regarded as more cohesive as it reified a sense of community, skirted open competition,

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avoided disputes, and thence minimalized the risk of instigating disharmony within the village community. To select a consensus candidate, the Razu Kuhu called for a second meeting. However, for reasons I do not wish to detail here, clanmembers and supporters of both politicians remained firm behind their candidate, citing reason after reason to justify why their candidate, and not the other, should be named Phugwumi’s consensus candidate. The meeting failed to resolve the situation, as did subsequent rounds of talks and attempted negotiations. Worth noting is that in one such meeting it was proposed that elders from a certain clan—say clan C—should act as a mediator between the clans of the rivalling candidates as this would be in accordance with clan C’s historical role as a barrier, bridge, and occasional arbitrator between both the clans. While this proposal did not achieve endorsement, that it was suggested further illustrates the centrality of clan reasoning in the micropolitics of the village. This failed attempt to agree on a consensus candidate frustrated most in Phugwumi, but especially Phugwumi elders who took it as further evidence that the decisive forces of party politics and elections had moved beyond redemption.33 What they lamented was the exaggerated individualism, open contests, and the competitive self-advancement they witnessed in generations younger than theirs, and they blamed the principles of individual and equal voting rights. Athe reflected: ‘Whereas in the past our youth would whisper, and were eager to listen and learn from elders, nowadays they shout and won’t listen. This is why the village could not agree on a consensus candidate.’ It indicated a social transformation Phugwumi elders felt deeply upset about. ‘These days the village is ruled by the youth,’ it was commented often when contemporary problems and issues within the village were discussed. Athe again: Nobody would dare to voice his aspiration to be recognised as a leader in the past. Such a person would be ridiculed as proud, and not listened to. Young people least of all. But see what is happening today; everyone wants to be a leader, even our youths. They just shout, but refuse to think and talk over what is best for the village, instead of what profits them personally. This was not how we used to think earlier.

However, the village’s failure to agree on a consensus candidate did please a small section of villagers. They were the party workers of the

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sitting MLA (during the previous election there had been no candidate from Phugwumi) who belonged to another village. They had withstood the primordial pulls from clan and village and continued to support their candidate who, during his past tenure, had reciprocated their electoral support by brokering them privileged access to the lucrative echelons of state. The sitting MLA now found his actions paying off in their continuing loyalty, even though he had to assure and reassure to continue to provide them such material benefits was he to retain the constituency’s seat. Well aware that was Phugwumi to unite behind a single candidate, the sitting MLA would stand little chance of winning, his party workers had attempted, and with notable success, to sidetrack the village quest for a consensus-candidate by wilfully appropriating elevated principles of democracy to their own uses: ‘Is not the selection of a consensus candidate undemocratic? Can any person not contest if he wants to?’ ‘Should not all villagers decide by themselves whom to cast their vote for?’ Are we not living in a free country?’34 *** Put together the various ethnographic incursions and historical subtexts and what we see emerging is a Naga vernacular political modernity, or a homegrown democratic theory revealing itself. Such cultural readjustment is no doubt fraught with occasional contestations and incongruities—and will continue to evolve—but crucially relies on historical charters and a cultural inner logic of its own, centring, in Phugwumi, around pre-existent notions of the ‘village republic’, clan sentiments and struggles, and the normative rule of consensus-making. Even as Phugwumi elders now lament the apparent corrosion of the village’s communitarian ethos (of which the villagers’ failure to settle on a consensus candidate was seen as emblematic), the ways elections are understood, talked about, and ‘performed’ remain best understood as ‘changing continuities’ (Schulte-Nordholt 2005) or based on preexistent ideas and idioms of politics and ‘the political’. Naga insurgency, as indicated, influences electoral politics locally, and the authoritative presence (and participation) of national workers in the democratic arena both challenges and complicates the form and functioning of democratic institutions. But even as modern democracy and electoral politics, too, unfolded in the shadows of Naga insurgency,

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and became partially eclipsed by it, this, as illustrated here, did not prevent Naga villagers from applying their agency and political imagination to adjust and rework democracy and elections to their own uses and distinctive political lifeworlds. In conclusion, let us return to this chapter’s main question: ‘What does democracy mean and what is it about among Naga villagers?’ Politics, Foucault once said, ‘is the continuation of war by other means’ (cited in Witsoe 2011: 620). Without overstretching the analogy an illustrative linkage may be drawn among the Naga between contemporary democratic politics and prestate episodes of inter-village warfare and intra-clan rivalries. For the Angami Naga (then still including the present-day Chakhesang Naga), Hutton (1921a: 109) observed how in times of inter-village wars and raids deep-seated clan antagonisms would temporarily be suspended and the villagers come together in unison. Such unity, however, was often fragile and in periods of relative peace ‘the village would from time to time break out into riot, while it is incessantly troubled by internal bickering. In almost every dispute between two men of different clans the clansmen on each side appear as partisans and foment the discord’ (1921a: 109). As an intellectual exercise, replace ‘war’ with ‘elections’ and Hutton’s argument seems to stand today with Phugwumi villagers acting in unison to defend itself from the proposed curbing of the village electoral list, which they interpreted as a deliberate and politically motivated attempt on the village’s historical political standing and sway, but with the subsequent breakdown of the village community as the result of (although not necessarily fully determined by) clan competition within. As for the election outcome, the mathematical equation of ‘one minus one is zero’ proved to be correct. On Polling Day the village vote bank, including its bogus votes, was divided between the two candidates, while about 15 per cent of the votes ‘escaped’ the village. As a result, the sitting MLA retained his seat while the two Phugwumi candidates ended in the third and fourth positions respectively.

Notes 1. No woman has ever been elected into the Nagaland Assembly, while village and municipal councils across the hills are, with a few exceptions, all male.

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in the shadows of naga insurgency This is to the consternation of the Naga Mothers Association (NMA), which has recently moved the Supreme Court for reservation of seats in certain local and customary bodies, a proposed change that is resisted by most Naga tribal councils and pan-Naga apex bodies. But while in Witsoe’s ethnographic setting of Bihar, numerically preponderating lower castes saw modern democracy as an opportunity to take on the traditional hegemony of upper castes (cf. Jaffrelot 2002), in the Naga uplands, I pose, such contestations—fought over within a democratic framework—seems especially fragmented and involve struggles between tribes, clans, and villages but also between the state and national workers. Much has been said about the need to decentre the ideas and idioms of, among others, liberal democracy, the subject, and popular sovereignty that largely emerged out of European thought and history, from where they then swelled into universalistic and normative projections (Chakrabarty 2000; Chatterjee 1986). However, the core tenets of liberal democracy – which besides regular trips to the polling booths, free press, universal adult franchise, secret balloting, and an open multiparty system hinges crucially on voters behaving as ‘enchanted individuals’, at once part of society and capable to deliberate and act autonomously from it (Gilmartin 2012) – remain the benchmarks against which existing democracies are evaluated. What such universalistic and normative projections work to impede, however, are understandings of the substance and guiding principles of politics and ‘the political’ locally. Among Nagas, Kikon (2017: 230) writes, a framework of preserving ‘ethnic purity and “culture”’ is invoked to condemn those Nagas marrying with members of another ethnic group. Describing the case of a female Naga informant, named Lulu, who married a man from Assam, and because of which her ancestral home had become an ‘inaccessible place’. Kikon recounts: ‘According to Lulu, by marrying a man from a different ethnic group she had stepped outside the ring of purity. She was not only an impure woman: even worse, she gave birth to children of mixed blood and thus became an outsider’ (2017: 230). In spite of the 1952 election boycott, Horam (1988: 50) recounts: ‘The government went ahead with the election arrangements and the entire election paraphernalia was made ready, electoral rolls were prepared, polling booths were set up, ballot boxes were made and Returning Officers were stationed. Nagas, on the other hand, were indifferent to the goings on and went about their daily work with studied calm and the whole election show proved to be a mockery as a result of an election that never was.’ India’s second general elections, held in 1957, was similarly boycotted by

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

the NNC. This time the boycott was less definite as three aspirant Naga politicians filed their nominations regardless. As there was no contest and very limited polling, the three candidates were elected unopposed in the Assam Assembly. Nagaland regularly pitches among those Indian states with the highest turnout of voters, and during the 2014 general elections even topped the country with a turnout of 87.82 per cent, which is over 20 per cent higher than the national average (Times of India 22 May 2014). In the words of Amer, ‘the causes and factors for such abnormal voter turnout could be understood by the fact that proxy voting is so rampant that it has become the rule rather than the exception’ (Amer 2014: 9). It is here that Yadav (2009) seems ill-informed, or at least so in the context of Nagaland, when stating that ‘if we assume spurious names of those dead, migrated or simply non-existent make up 10 per cent of our electoral rolls, the real turnout figures would be at least five per cent higher [compared to what is given as the national average today].’ With the dead, migrated, and nonexistent ‘voted for’, Nagaland’s voting turnout would decrease drastically if the electoral list matched the actual number of eligible voters. Even more misinformed are national newspaper reports that tend to interpret Nagaland’s high turnout of votes as sufficient proof of Nagas having finally pledged their allegiance to the idea of India. Such genealogical evaluations were pervasive as the candidate himself was widely respected in the village and known and praised for his concern and commitment towards the villagers’ welfare. In private, many villagers admitted that had they voted for him back then, the village would probably have been in a much better shape today. If there is much talk about ‘deepening democracy’ (Heller 2009) in India and elsewhere, the case of Phugwumi shows a differential ‘deepening’ in which voting decisions are often vested in the deep social archeology of village life. This is not to say that party differences were wholly absent or unimportant. They occasionally are marked. Especially when it comes to the tension between regional and national political parties. I do, however, contend that party ideologies are often not a major determinant in explaining voting behaviour in Nagaland. The report continued: ‘So determined and hostile were the enemy [Phugwumi villagers], that several times during the night they attempted to attack the troops, and it was found impossible to procure water for the troops during the night without great risk, the enemy lying in ambush in all directions. Even in the evening, when the Sipahees were on the

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

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in the shadows of naga insurgency alert, and when the mortar was being fired, a cook sitting close to it was wounded by a spear thrown at him’ (Butler 1855: 211). While Phugwumi never fought the British again, many of its villagers did not think twice about defying colonial orders. Note the following fragment of an administrative report written in 1880: ‘On the 5th December the detachment marched to [Phugwumi], a powerful village. The march was a very difficult one … Next morning the village showed contumacy by not furnishing the coolies required. A few rockets and a shell were accordingly fired by Lieutenant Mansel, at the request of the political officer, over, and a little below, the village. This had the desired effect, and the coolies were speedily produced … During the march the coolies, though previously warned, threw down their loads and bolted. Some fifty actually got away, and the remainder were only stopped by being fired on’ (Maitland 1880). Genna connoted taboos, festivals and ritual observances, and generally meant traditional ‘no work days’ (see Joshi 2012: 84–5). Fürer-Haimendorf (1936: 923) wrote: ‘the privileges of a Tevo [Kümvo in Phugwumi] are neither numerous nor important. He works in his fields as any ordinary villager does, and in council his voice has no more weight than that of any other man of equal wealth and moral influence.’ The Kümvo and Imshopüh were thus not chiefs, aristocrats, or headmen, of which, indeed, Phugwumi had none. Mills’ generalization applies to some Naga tribes more than to others, and is less applicable, for instance, to the political substance of most Konyak and Sumi village polities in which forms of hereditary leadership are more pronounced. To be known as a warrior came with responsibilities and privileges, Tinyi (2017: 92) writes: ‘These warriors would guard the village as a full-time duty. When others were busy in the fields, they would be guarding and scouting the area. Each morning before anyone would cross the village gate, they scouted the areas commonly used by the villagers for cultivation or for fetching drinking water. Only after performing this duty, the villagers would usually go out of the village. For this service, that of warriors, each household gave a portion of their harvest to them.’ In line with this reverence for the village ‘old’ today there circulate inventories in the village listing the 20 oldest villagers in descending order, starting with the oldest person alive in the village. In the somewhat romanticized description, Hokishe Sema (1986: 10), a former Nagaland Chief Minister, writes: ‘the collective life took precedence over the individual life. A Naga’s obligation and loyalty was to his family and village and this required a total submission to the village community.’

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18. In comparison, in India’s larger such states as Bihar the average size of a constituency is more than 10 times the size of Nagaland’s, while during Bihar’s 2010 state elections, in 60 out of 243 constituencies the voting margin of the winning candidate was higher than the total number of electors in an average Nagaland constituency. 19. The small size of Nagaland constituencies can be seen as another consequence of Naga insurgency. As argued in Chapter 4, Nagaland was created out of political necessity, and in terms of territory became considerably smaller compared to nearly all Indian states. A former Assam Governor reflected thus: ‘There were many efforts to pacify the Nagas and through concessions in 1963, the state of Nagaland was created. This state was for a population of barely 500,000 – less than the population of many colonies in Delhi and yet all the trappings that go with full statehood, a legislature, a cabinet, Chief-Minister and later even Governor, went with this new status’ (Sinha 2001: 5). In terms of voting behaviour, Nagaland constituencies shrink further still as the unit of voting is usually not the individual, but variously the village, clan, or household (Wouters 2014). In the wake of the 2013 elections in Phugwumi’s constituency, where household-voting was widely in vogue, party-workers predicted that securing the support of roughly 400 to 500 households would suffice to capture the constituency, thus making democratic politics in the periphery of the world’s largest democracy a politics of small numbers. 20. Lamenting the social and political havoc intermittently caused by state elections, and in its self-assigned task to morally and spiritually guide the Nagaland populace, the NBCC—mostly made up of pastors and other church workers—launched a state-wide Clean Election Campaign, which included, among many others, popularizing the principle of ‘one man, one vote’. In its approach to elections, the NBCC, unlike most Nagas, guided itself by universalistic and normative projections of ‘good democracy’. The NBCC had launched similar campaigns during earlier elections but to limited avail. Neither was their 2013 campaign to turn into a big success. 21. Such an obsession with caste goes deeper than mere electoral arithmetic; political rhetoric adopted by the ‘ritually low’ but politically powerful (by virtue of their preponderating numbers) Yadav caste, for instance, ‘portrays “democracy” as a primordial phenomenon passed in the blood from the democratic ancestor-god Krishna to the contemporary Yadavs and describe Yadavs’ political skills as innate’ (Michelutti 2007: 643). 22. Situating caste in the historical longue durée, Guha (2013: 2) emphasized that, besides its religious and ritual associations, castes must also

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24.

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26. 27.

in the shadows of naga insurgency be seen as bounded, corporate lineages vying for territorial dominance and hegemony. Guha frames the caste-system as ‘a highly involuted politicized form of ethnic ranking shaped by the constant exercise of socio-economic power’. Seen thus, the workings of clans and castes may, at least in terms of political economy, not be altogether different, perhaps making the above clan versus caste argument not only a contrasting but also a comparable case. To be sure, in ‘the everyday’ clan relations were cordial in the village and in terms of kinship, bonds, friendships, and neighbours clan affiliations were everywhere transcended. ‘Struggle’ here refers to deeper, historical relations of dominance and subordination as they become invoked and expressed in the village’s political rhetoric in the run up to Polling Day. Kinship bonds could also cut across clans, and in one such case the daughter of a close aide of the sitting MLA happened to have one of the village politicians as her godfather, a social role obtained through a small ritual ceremony when a youth comes of age. Her father, as a result, separated her vote from the household vote and made sure it went to her godfather. The Ao Naga, for instance, are thought of as materially advanced in large parts because one among their own ruled the state as a Chief Minister for nearly two decades, and during his rule bequeathed Mokokchung district with manifold privileges, resources, and opportunities. The Angami Naga are said to be catching up given that, more recently, for two consecutive terms the Chief Minister belonged to them, while eastern Naga tribes partially describe their perceived economic ‘backwardness’ to the feat that no Chief Minister has ever hailed from among them. If the much noted ‘miasma of tribalism’ (Horam 1988: 23) has long been thought of in terms of headhunting feuds, communal antagonisms, linguistic incommensurability, as well as seen as the volatile source of recurrent splits in the Naga national movement, in the new democratic arena tribalism revealed and reproduced itself through tribe-wise competition over discretionary allocations of government jobs and state resources. In Phugwumi, where everyone knew, and implored, everyone else’s actions and loyalties, the principle of ‘secret balloting’ was plainly nonsensical. What could accomplish things, Phizo had insisted, was the continuation of public deliberation and consensus-making. As a case in point, Phizo refrained from introducing himself as a Naga leader, insisting that he was merely their spokesperson. As a spokesperson, he explained, ‘I can only say what my people want and what they have decided … The position of a spokesman and a leader is often confused. Like a pilot, a spokesman shall have to follow direction’ (cited in Nuh 1986: 95).

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28. ‘Traditionally’, writes Chasie (2005: 102), ‘we did not elect our leaders … the notion itself would have been a scandal.’ He explains: ‘When you “go to the people” [as contemporary politicians do and must] you are telling them that you are the best person they could possible have as their leader! This in a [traditional] society where even a majority or consensus nomination, to be part of a delegation, is often refused several times by the persons concerned, pleading that they are unworthy. In traditional society, such arrogance and absence of fear of God could result in immediate beatings and social ostracism.’ 29. What Hokishe Sema envisaged was the adoption of a state-wide selection system. This system would start at village levels with villagers selecting through consensus-making council members based on their capacity, integrity, and accumulated merit and wisdom. Council members would then confer and amongst themselves select area representatives. These, in turn, were to select a Regional Council. Hokishe Sema (1986: 171–2) continued: ‘In Nagaland, even the members of the State Assembly, which is the final level, can be selected by the Regional Councils.’ 30. See Bailey (1969: 149) for a discussion on the normative rule of consensus in traditional Indian villages, and how this became gradually replaced by notions of competition and majority-voting. Snellinger (2009) provides an account of the norm of consensus-making among politically powerful student organisations in Nepal with voting only coming in as a last resort. For a more generalized perspective of consensus making in Ghana and other parts of Africa see Wiredu (1995). 31. Consensus-building, while always the ideal, was not always achieved in practice. And when deliberation broke down, as it did occasionally, decisions were settled by the muscular principle of ‘might is right’. For instance, the Assam Administrative Report of 1890 reads: ‘The Naga Hills was peaceful except for one serious riot at the Angami village of [Phugwumi], in which one man was killed and several wounded.’ And, to be sure, while consensus-making was the norm and rule within Naga villages, it was not so between villages. Until the British pacification of the Naga Hills, raids and rivalries—often manifesting themselves as head-hunting feuds—were reported with some regularity. 32. Members of Phugwumi’s village council were—akin to the village development board—selected clan-wise with the added precondition that each member had to be over 40 years of age (50 years for the council chairperson) in continuation with the cultural conviction that wisdom and maturity comes with ageing.

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33. While Phugwumi failed to preselect a consensus-candidate, several other Naga villages succeeded as ‘a pre-arranged agreement [took] place between village elders and political parties to select the consensus-candidate to be supported by the entire village’ (Longkumer cited in Amer 2014: 10). Naga villages that agree on a consensus-candidate often announce their decision publicly and declare their collective support in local newspapers. Note, for instance, the following two public declarations, made in the wake of the 2013 state elections: As resolved in its General Meeting held, the Nokpu Senso Mongdang [gathering of Nokpu village citizens] hereby declares to support the candidature of … in the forthcoming State General Assembly Election. … Any person found to be defying the decision made by the Nokpu Senso Mongdang shall be dealt with accordingly. Merangkong, another village, declared: Merangkong Senso Mungdang in a general meeting … unanimously resolved to extend full support to the Independent Candidate for the forthcoming legislative assembly election. … Heavy penalty and strict action will be imposed against any citizen of Merangkong who acts against the aforesaid resolution. 34. This appears to be a small instance in support of what Paley (2008: 6) entreats more broadly as ‘the ebb and flow of a [democracy] discourse’, or ‘the outer edges of discourse, the shifting borderline between the instances in which [liberal] democracy discourse is picked up and used [as did the supporters of the sitting MLA] and those in which it is cast aside in favor of other possibilities’, such as deliberating on a consensus-candidate preferred by the rest of the villagers.

Epilogue Life Beyond the Shadows of Naga Insurgency

I

t is long past darkness. Phugwumi is quiet, except for a dog barking nearby. Athe adds a woodblock to the kitchen fire. He has cleaved the wood earlier in the day, much to the distress of Atsa, who reminded him of his age. The flames lit up instantly. Around the elaborated fireplace, pegs hold onto blackened pots, pans, and baskets braided of bamboo, while strips of dried meat dangle from the ceiling. We listen to the news bulletin on the radio. The presenter informs that another round of peace talks is currently underway in Delhi. Speculation is that a form of shared sovereignty is being discussed. ‘My entire life I thought we Nagas would get our Independence one day. But I am not so sure anymore’, Athe says after he switches off the radio. ‘India will never allow Nagas to become Independent. The only possible solution now is for Nagas and Indians to find a way to live together peacefully. More than six decades we have fought. How long more can we struggle?’

In the Shadows of Naga Insurgency: Tribes, State, and Violence in Northeast India. Jelle J.P. Wouters, Oxford University Press (2018). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199485703.003.0008

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As often, Athe and I spend the evening talking. It is winter and we move closer to the fireplace. Athe’s deeply wrinkled face illuminates by the flickering fire, the only light in the room. ‘I am an old man now’, Athe reflects a little later. ‘I did what I had to do in my life. Soon my knees will no longer allow me to roam around the village. But God has been very gracious to me. He protected my life when I was in the Naga Army, and blessed me with children and grandchildren.’ ‘Sometimes I worry about what might happen once a political solution is reached’, Imti says as he adds shoots of fresh bamboo to the pork dish he is preparing on the crude electric stove we use to cook our meals in Japfu hostel [named incidentally after a peak in Nagaland] in Shillong. There is a hostel mess, but the food served is often poorly prepared, and the cook a habitual drunk who sweats profusely while cooking, drops of which, we suspect, lands up in the day’s dal. We prefer to make our own meals, even if our hostel warden formally does not allow this. ‘There is simply too much politics and misunderstanding among Nagas nowadays’, Imti continues. ‘If the settlement is brought by the NSCN-IM other Naga factions may not accept it. Then anything can happen.’ Zuben, sitting on Imti’s neat bed, nods in agreement. ‘Many will call it a Tangkhul solution as the NSCN-IM leadership is dominated by them. Since Tangkhuls reside in Manipur, Nagaland tribes may not be willing to accept their leadership. Tribalism will come in for sure.’ Many of my batch-mates and friends in Shillong were Nagas, and it was our evening ritual to come together in one of our hostel rooms to sit, cook, and talk. Naga politics figured often in our conversations. ‘Whatever form the solution takes, it should recognize that Nagas are not Indians,’ Mayasang opines. ‘Our history, our culture, our food, our looks. It is all so different.’ ‘But there is more to our lives than Naga Independence’, Imti intervenes. ‘What about all those Nagas studying and working in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore? What about us here in Shillong? Suppose we Nagas become Independent, what will be our status here?’ ‘There is a lack of job avenues in our Naga lands’, Alongo joins in. ‘Many Naga youths are unemployed. This creates a lot of social problems. In fact, many youths become national workers only because they can’t find jobs and need money to survive. What we need first is economic self-determination. Until and unless we can survive by ourselves there is no point talking about political self-determination.’ Among Naga scholars at NEHU

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the Naga political debate was wide open. Away from their homelands, there was space in which to discuss and air ideas, to critically weigh the pros and cons of any sort of political solution, and to criticize the Naga Movement and factions in ways, many of them confessed, they felt hesitant to do back home where the public sphere was more stifled, less free. This book includes lengthy ethnographic explorations around themes of identity and the Naga nation, post-ceasefire practices and patterns, state apparatuses, development, moral economies of corruption, and vernacular democratic politics; yet this book is not about any of these themes per se. Instead, I have argued that all of these have become variously entangled in, and complicated by, the Naga ‘insurgency complex’; a social condition in which the consequences and corollaries of long decades of insurgency and counter-insurgency flood the shores of political conflict and inundate all areas of social life. In Phugwumi and Noksen, and among Nagas more widely, it is impossible to make sense of state-society relations, social networks, corruption and moral reasoning, intertribal social and political struggles, or democratic politics and elections without each of these making reference to Naga insurgency. These linkages between armed conflict and social life are neither deterministic nor necessarily always clearcut. Nor yet is local agency and imagination wholly eclipsed by the shadows of Naga insurgency. But while social life among Nagas remain a great deal thicker than coping with violence, volatilities, and political instability alone, the ‘mundane’ world of everyday social relations and realities cannot be quarantined from the social and political specificities of over six decades of Naga insurgency. Instead of systematically reviewing the content and arguments made across the preceding chapters, by way of an epilogue, rather than a conclusion, I end with a brief and open-ended reflection on the possibility of Naga society moving beyond the shadows of insurgency. In the autumn of 2015, the NSCN-IM and the Centre signed a ‘framework agreement’, and even as the details of this agreement are, at the time of writing, yet to be disclosed publically it is said (or certainly hoped) that political negotiations have entered its final, decisive phase. What shape might this settlement take? And what will be the political consequences of it? Complete Naga Independence seems ruled out, but what about the integration of Naga inhabited areas within India? And what about the so-called Burmese or Myanmar Nagas? What will their

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fate be? The National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah, even as it proclaims to represent all Nagas, after all, negotiates only with the Indian government. The conflict over the Naga highlands ranks amongst the oldest, most blood-soaked, and most intractable political disputes in the subcontinent. Over the past decades, the number of people killed reportedly runs into the tens of thousands. Many more lives were shattered. This does not mean that the conflict cannot be resolved. It does, however, mean that any political settlement will likely not be completely to the fulfilment of all the parties and stakeholders involved. The road travelled from the past to the present has been arduous and painful, but multiple political paths and possibilities fork off in the future. For a political path to be agreed upon, however, negotiators must be ready to deviate from their official political positions. All those involved will have to practice political gymnastics to find a way forward. With Naga Independence ruled out, some Naga scholars have begun to argue that there is more to the idea of self-determination than secession and state sovereignty alone. They now perceive of self-determination as a political ‘process that embraces values that surpass concepts such as independence and state sovereignty,’ envisioning a ‘people’s determination that includes the Naga peoples’ right to construct systems that reflect their cultural values, aspirations, and understanding of power relations’ (Longchari 2017: 264).1 To situate and discuss this argument, let us briefly return to the first Indo-Naga ceasefire and the peace talks that took place (but failed) in the mid-1960s. Gundevia (1975: 133), India’s then interlocutor, recalled: ‘All sorts of words like ‘Independence” and “self-determination” and “sovereignty” were bandied around but I often wondered whether the connotation of several of these difficult words was the same in Angami, Ao, and Sema or Lotha.’ To enable legible conversation, Kevilaya, Phizo’s brother, ‘acted as the interpreter from Angami into English and from English into Angami, sentence by sentence from our side of the table to the other and back’ (1975: 133). While Gundevia (1975: 138) evidently spoke with some disdain when he lamented the ‘impossibility of translating high-sounding English words into the relatively less developed languages in the hills’, his remark draws attention to the problematic cultural and historical transitivity of ‘sovereignty’, ‘self-determination’, and

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‘independence’ as universal and modular forms of postcolonial political space and political subjectivity. Our ethnographic and historical record confirms the need to historicize and ‘provincialize’ (Chakrabarty 2007) the modern dogma that territorial sovereignty should be ‘fully, flatly and evenly operative over each square centimeter of a legally demarcated territory’ (Anderson 2006: 19). In earlier political space—in South Asia and beyond— sovereignty was more often ‘galactic’ (Tambiah 1977), ‘theatrical’ (Geertz 1980), ‘monastic’ (Chatterjee 2014), wholly absent (Scott 2009), or partial and overlapping (Misra 2011), while borders, or frontiers, were usually faded, fluctuating and porous, until the gradual usurpation of such vernacular possibilities through the imposition (and local infatuation) of imperial, Westphalian notions of stern sovereignty and territorial exclusivity, reinforced by the ‘European myth’ of Cartesian and cartographic political borders (Leach 1960). Indeed, when the British Raj first expanded its sway into the swamps and highlands of India’s Northeast, they ‘had to first contend with the conditions of overlapping territoriality and sovereignty, which characterized the indigenous polity of the region’ (Misra 2005: 22; Misra 2011). And if British-Naga relations quickly ran amok this was not in the least because of the British policy of ‘pushing the hill tribes up into the hills’ (Karlsson 2011: 70) by declaring as wastelands and tea gardens swathes of lowlands over which upland Nagas exerted notional control, had negotiated rights on, or extracted tribute from (Wouters 2011). Such territorial segregation connoted a colonial disjuncture. More broadly, Edmund Leach (1960: 5) argued: ‘In this region [upland Burma, but also the adjoining hills of Northeast India] the indigenous political systems which existed prior to the colonial expansion were not separated from one another by frontiers in the modern sense and they were not sovereign Nation-States.’ That ‘sovereignty’—both in theory and practice—is particularistic and thence polymorphous can be read into Phizo’s 1951 plebiscite speech. While calling India a ‘sovereign country’, Phizo showcases his own understanding of sovereignty by quickly qualifying that many Indian citizens were nevertheless not living sovereign lives: What is the lot of Indian cultivators? They are mere tenants in their own soil and not the sovereign owners of their own land as in our country.

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Most of the Indians live in rented houses in all the towns and cities though they may appear to the onlookers as ‘big gentlemen’ behaving and speaking very good English like the British.

This Phizo saw as different among Nagas: ‘Land belongs to the people as private property, and every family possess land. We uphold every person as sovereign: men and women alike. Every family is a landlord; but, there is no landlordism in Nagaland … Land being so owned by the people who are in their person sovereign.’ To reiterate what a Phugwumi villager remembered of what Phizo told them on a visit to the village in the early 1950s: ‘the Indians, if we would not resist them, would count our land and cattle and make us pay taxes over them, and that we would so lose our freedom’ (Chapter 3). Analysed thus, it appears that Phizo’s deeper understanding of sovereignty was less about state, courts, and legal documents, and more in terms of ownership over land, cattle and communitarian ethics.2 However, such vernacular conceptualizations ill-fitted the postcolonial political episteme of spatialized nation-states (cf. Biolsi 2005). It is here that Samaddar’s (2009) conjunctions of the emergence of the ‘political subject’—as a reaction to new political theories and praxis brought by colonial rulers and rules—appears illustrative and indicative of the specific political rhetoric and demands forwarded by Phizo and his NNC. It was during colonial rule, Samaddar (2009: 14) writes, that legal reasoning became crucial not just to political argumentation and resistance, but also came to inhibit a ‘cognitive dimension’, and this new political thinking spilled over in the spheres of community and customs. Phizo realized this, and after qualifying that ‘Nagas are not legal minded’ (cited in Nuh 1986: 89), he lamented: ‘Almost every Indian leader is a lawyer, and these learned people, who search for a flaw in legal system or try to produce one when there is none … This is the danger. We already see their tactics’ (Phizo 1951). Thence, even if notions of sovereignty carry a problematic historical and cultural transitivity, in protecting the Naga and envisaging their political future Phizo had little choice but to fare political modernity by making his own the near obligatory and modular categories of ‘nation’ and ‘territorial sovereignty’. Implicitly this was also advised by the Peace Mission which, in its attempt to facilitate the 1964 peace negotiations (Singh 2004: 90–113), urged the NNC to formulate ‘a clear conception and precise picture of what is meant by Independence and sovereignty’

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(cited in Srikanth and Thomas 2005: 66). Any Naga, or indigenous constellation of belonging and self-determination would, as Phizo probably realized, run the risk of legal subversion by the ‘Indian lawyers’ he so feared. As a result, Phizo did not so much advocate a return to ‘ancient times’—as Naga representatives had pleaded to the Simon Commission (Chapter 1)—but socially produced a new Naga political space and imagination, and on purpose. With territory as a kernel of this new political space, Phizo readily portrayed the history of the Nagas as evolving ‘in a compact geographic unit with clearly demarcated boundaries before the advent of the British’ (cited in Nuh 1986: 101), a ‘compactness’ which the British then dissevered. Given that ‘in the national order of things’ (Malki 1992) a nation without a fixed and clearly delineated territory is not considered a nation at all, the NSCN, in framing the Naga territorial encompassment, would later edit away the qualifications ‘arbitrary’ and ‘roughly’ (Baruah 2003a: 322) from the following depiction of the Naga and their land by J.H. Hutton, and promoted it as the historical boundaries of the Naga: The expression Naga is useful as an arbitrary term to denote the tribes living in certain parts of the Assam hills, which may be roughly defined as bounded by the Hukong valley in the north-east, the plains of the Brahmaputra valley to the north-west, of Cachar to the south-west and of the Chindwin to the west. In the south, the Manipur valley roughly marks the point of contact between ‘the Naga’ tribes and the very much more closely interrelated groups of Kuki tribes—Thado, Lushei, Chins, etc. (Hutton 1926 cited in Baruah 2003a: 322).

While political projections of the Naga nation were thus also shaped by the authoritative grammar and vocabulary of political modernity— its benchmarks and modular forms of homogenous nations, fixed territorialities, and absolute sovereignties—paradoxically perhaps it now appears that a possible political settlement may be located by taking seriously the historicity of sovereignty and exploring a return to vernacular, or indigenous, understandings and arrangements of political space, in the process envisioning a new type of political society that is at once traditional and modern. It is towards this end that talks reportedly centre on ‘shared sovereignty’ based on a federation of India and Nagaland, thus

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recognizing both Nagas’ ‘unique history and situation’ (which the Indian Government formally recognized in 2002; in precisely these words) and unavoidable modern relations of political interdependence. Such a ‘special federal relationship’, even if connoting the ‘political exotic’, only conforms, Samaddar (2009: 164) writes, ‘to a historical pattern along which the Indian state had developed in the past, except for the 200  years when the colonial centralized model of military despotism based on continuous physical conquests and annexations developed and subsequently became the sole possessor of the political imagination of the ones colonized’. Such a rethinking of sovereignty is not just intellectually expedient, but has proven politically possible elsewhere in the form of indigenous spaces imagined, struggled over, and achieved by American Indians, and which includes instances of tribal sovereignty within an ancestral homeland, co-management of overlapping territories, supratribal rights, and hybrid indigenous spaces, making Thomas Biolsi (2005: 240) conclude that in the United States, ‘the nation-state, it turns out, is only one among several (perhaps many) political geographies imagined, lived, and even institutionalized under modernity by American Indians’. But regardless of the political nature of the settlement, a crucial question remains whether a final settlement brokered by the NSCN-IM will be accepted as a greater political good by all Naga factions and public, or quickly descends into existing factional and tribal divides and differences. Will it lead to the ‘home-coming’ of cadres to the NSCN-IM, the way Puzo envisaged it (Chapter 3), to any other form of underground unification and reconciliation, or will it inspire further splits and separations? It, after all, does not take large numbers of motivated fighters and weapons to resume armed insurrection. Many Nagas have reservations about the promise of the ‘framework agreement’ as foreboding a political solution that is permanent and inclusive. My ethnography has also shown that there remains an important factional and tribal dimension to the Naga Movement that sometimes gets lost in the projected certainties of the political negotiations (Kikon 2015b). Of course, the Naga Movement is constantly changing, factions may reconcile, the Naga nation may evolve, and ostensibly contradicting political and territorial struggles—the completing claims over Naga sovereignty, political integration, the bifurcation of Nagaland, and the preservation of the

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status quo—smoothened, but at the turn of the 2015 ‘framework agreement’ political, factional, and tribal divisions within Naga society confounded the political playing field. There is also the issue of the profound blurring of the boundaries between national workers, state functionaries, and politicians (Chapters 3 and 7) whose mutually beneficial, if illegal, relations and networks exist (and flourish) subject to prevailing political disorder. One argument of this book has been that perpetual political disarray and the uncertainties of ceasefire do not just make a social condition marked by disruption, disturbances and despair, but offers real and lucrative possibilities to both state and underground functionaries. Will the Block Development Officer, other state functionaries, a contractor like Vekho, and Naga politicians be willing to forsake material and other gains the continuity of political conflict enables them to accrue? That the Indian state cannot deter its own personnel from cultivating illegal relationships with national workers may be judged as a state weakness. More important empirically, however, is the observation that Naga parallel governments do not function as an absolute externality, wholly apart and opposite to the existing state structures they formally reject, but operate within it by turning state resources into rebel revenues. Chapter 3 further illustrated how an increasing number of national workers, particularly post-ceasefire recruits, seemingly no longer live ‘for’ but rather ‘off ’ the Naga cause; for them Naga nationalist politics has turned into a vocation. Will they, after a political settlement, simply return to their villages and paddy fields, or satisfy themselves with the rehabilitation scheme that is likely to be offered as part of a peace deal? Will they accept the instant reduction in interpersonal power hierarchies and standing a political solution will entail for them? These are serious questions that, so far, remain unanswered. What seems unlikely is that a political settlement will put, near mechanically, as though by magic wand, an instant halt to now deeply entrenched post-ceasefire practices and patterns that has a distinct class of benefactors. ‘Apparently’, Manchanda and Bose (2011: 54) write, ‘middle rung leaders of the [Naga] armed wings are proving difficult to hold back. They are most threatened by the success of the peace process as it would put an end to their lucrative “fundraising”’. ‘The habits of war

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[and, I would add, of ceasefire]’, Nordstrom (2004: 141) argues more broadly, ‘die hard’. She continues: They can carry beyond the front lines and into the fragile pulse of peace. If peace starts in the midst of war, aspects of war continue past peace accords to affect the daily life of a society until they are dismantled, habit by habit. Such work is not easy: some have learned in the pursuit of war that power, profit, and militarized control offer irresistible rewards.

In the long run, it is not just a political solution, but the dismantling of the wider Naga ‘insurgency complex’, including the lucrative networks that thrive within it, that will largely determine whether Naga society’s envisaged transition from a conflict to a post-conflict society succeeds or fails. There is also the issue of Nagas’ national integration, which is presently hampered by the ways Nagas are perceived and approached in ‘Mainland’ India where, because of their Mongoloid phenotypes and cultural expressions, they are often nonrecognized and misrecognized, mirrored back by the wider society as foreigners, hailing from such places as Nepal, Thailand, China, or Japan, or as ‘lesser Indians’ rather than as equal citizens. Such stereotypes hurt the sentiments of mostly Naga youths when they travel to Indian metropolitan cities to take up educational and employment opportunities reserved for them under the ST quotas, or to benefit from India’s new modernity by working in shopping malls, call centers, or in the booming retail and hospitality sectors. While, over the past years, many Naga youths have migrated to various parts of the country, and seemingly have grown closer to the idea of India, it is perhaps paradoxical that many Mainlanders appear not yet quite ready to accept Nagas as fully fledged Indian nationals (McDuie-Ra 2012; Wouters and Subba 2013). Finally, there is the issue of Naga society moving beyond the shadows of Naga insurgency. What might happen once the Naga Movement finally dissolves and political normalcy is expected to take over? What sort of society will emerge out of six decades of insurgency and counterinsurgency? How can a society long militarised be rebuild? And what will be the role of the Indian state in this? Chapters 4 and 5 showed that the relationship between ordinary Naga villagers and the postcolonial

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state is a complicated one, shaped not only by Nagas’ history of political resistance to it but also by the state’s methods (both punitive and remunerative) to quell and quash Naga insurgency. While the policy of ‘seduction’ tied many Nagas to the political status quo, the painful and ambiguous experiences Nagas have of the postcolonial state also created the conditions for scarred state-society relations, pervasive corruption, failing development, and deep moral ambivalences towards the nature of the Indian state and the resources it offers. ‘Governance’, Kikon (2005: 77) writes, ‘should be rooted in the political and social history of a place’, which, in the case of the Naga uplands, is a complex and bloodshed history of resistance, state violence, and the dense militarisation of the landscape. In what ways, Kikon asks, ‘can we begin to engage with processes where the role of the state as a perpetrator is transformed into that of a rehabilitator?’ Her answer: It would be a mistake to demand that the Indian government rebuild Naga society to what it was in the 1930s and 1940s before the armed conflict began. When I underline the importance of the state in rehabilitating militarized societies, I am saying that the process of reconstruction of a democratic society, which establishes practices of justice and human rights, must begin by acknowledging that the state has played a fundamental role in legalizing violence and creating a milieu of impunity.3 (Kikon 2005: 77)

This is a pertinent point. However, in a society long saturated in political conflict, violence and brutality was never the perquisite of the security forces alone, no matter the societal devastation and destruction their actions inflicted. What emerged, as variously illustrated, was a sinking morass of political violence, venality, and opportunism that resulted in a marked disconnect between the Naga cause, including popular images of a suppressed people suffering collectively at the hands of an oppressive state, and what actually unfolded in the shadows of Naga insurgency. It is understandable that a marginalized tribal community struggling for political redemption and self-preservation elicits sympathy, especially in the cosmopolitan world of indigenous activism. Such sympathy, however, should not come at the expense of critical reflection on the internal politics, violence, and venality exerted in the name of the Naga struggle. Regardless of where one’s political loyalties lie, it must be recognized that

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Naga everyday lives have been shaped out of the violence and coercion exerted both by the postcolonial state and by those who claim to fight on their behalf. The path to an alternative political future must recognize this complicity of multiple actors in derailing Naga society, recognize how different social groups and tribes’ perceptions and experiences of the conflict differs, and question what has come to pass under the banner of Naga nationalism. It is from the current ‘insurgency complex’; the schisms between a history of resistance and factional and tribal divides, between harrowing state violence and the post-ceasefire degeneration of the Naga Movement, between projections of Naga sovereignty and Nagas’ increasing reliance on the Indian state and its resources, between political rhetoric and ‘real’ everyday experiences of Naga villagers, between existing political arrangements and possible new accords, between traumas of suffering and hopes for a better future, that has emerged a place of endless contestation and conjecture. It makes an unstable, volatile brew that simmers below the apparent conviction that the present Indo-Naga negotiations will finally result in a lasting political settlement. The necessary untangling and reconciliation of these schisms will raise several disturbing questions. Yet engaging these questions is pivotal to even start imagining an alternative political and social future and the emergence of Naga society from the shadows of insurgency. I end with a final reflection. In the Naga situation, and in the context of armed conflict more widely, the idea of the ethnographic present is always somewhat elusive. During the course of my fieldwork political events changed, and things will continue to change after this book goes to press. The themes and subjects I discuss should therefore not be read as fossilized or frozen in the present. ‘What should really matter to an anthropologist-ethnographer’, Valentine Daniel (1996: 12) argues, ‘is not the relative stability of the ethnographic subject but rather the relative stability of the theoretical claims made upon the object of study’. Reflecting on the ‘spuriousness of the “ethnographic present”’ while researching and writing amidst the civil war in Sri Lanka, Daniel (1996: 12–13) continues, ‘I have come to realize the value of periodicism of even the best-theorised descriptions. Even if all they do is continue to serve us period pieces in that they preserve the concerns, values, and prejudices of certain times and places, they will have served us and

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future generations well’. It is in this spirit that I hope this book may survive as a set of reflections on the social lives of ordinary Naga villagers in a particular period of uncertain social and political transitions.

Notes 1. As one Naga respondent told Dolly Kikon (2005: 2834): ‘Right now the shift that is taking place is about the sovereignty of the Nagas as a people. So, the sovereignty has shifted from the state to the people. It is the people who will decide how the system of governance, and how the Naga people will organize themselves. So, even if it means forming a Naga state (as part of the present Indo-Naga political settlement) it may not be a “state” going by the existing definitions of what a state is. It may be a form of state that may emerge out of indigenous values and principles and not so much in terms of its rigidity. For example, doing away with rigid structures and boundaries and more in terms of sovereignty that deals with inter-dependence (sic).’ Kikon (2005: 2836) herself suggests a political settlement ‘whereby Naga people can decide to choose a system of governance.’ She elaborates: ‘Instead of following the existing Indian electoral system of politics, Nagas can work out an association with their indigenous forms of governance thereby bringing all the Naga inhabited areas into one administration.’ 2. In a very different context, Malinowski argued long ago that the comparative study of law cannot take place in terms of ‘central authority, codes, courts and constables’ (1926: 14). In Melanesia, where Malinowski carried out fieldwork, this would miss the point that legal phenomena do not dwell in independent institutions or in self-contained social arrangements. It is diffuse and complex and ‘covers the whole culture and the entire tribal constitution’ (1926: 49). A similar reasoning can be forwarded in terms of Nagas’ understanding of ‘sovereignty’, as not contained in particular political or legal institutions but as reflective of Naga traditional values, political practices and principles, and the wider constitution of the social world. 3. This is also argued by the Naga historian Visier Sanyu: ‘… perhaps more important is, for the Government of India, to acknowledge and apologize for the atrocities and the crimes committed by the Indian army during the words years of the struggle. In order to have a JustPeace there must be some forms of reparations/compensations for these crimes and loss’ (cited in Longchari 2017: 250; emphasis in original).

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Index

Action Committee Against Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) 3 Adivasi Munda elite 200n6 aggressive ultimatums 207–8 Agony Day (September 27) 120n4 Ahom Buranjis 15 Allied Forces 19 American Baptist Mission 17 The Angami Nagas, colonial monograph 21 Angami Naga tribe 20, 23, 58, 121n8, 269, 274n25 Angami Naga village of Khonoma 50 Anthropologists 9, 57, 59, 249 Ao, Lanunungsang 155 The Ao Nagas 21

Ao Naga tribe 20, 23, 36n20, 44–5, 217–19, 274n25 armed conflict causes of 10 ethnographic studies of 8 ramifications of 8 Armed Forces (Indian) 9 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1958 90, 129, 137, 142, 163n13 army-ration tax 54, 106 Arunachal Pradesh 33n6 Nagas 39 nationalizing space in 148 territorial claims by China into 148

316

index

Asian Pacific Baptist Federation (APBF) 199 Asiatic Society, Calcutta 21 Assam 12, 14 authoritative arrival of British in 15, 43 Nagas 39, 74 autonomy within 19 Assam Administrative Report of 1890 275n31 Assam Rifles 90 audit culture 196 societies 196 backwardness, notion of 219–23 backward society 172 backward tribes 221, 223, 236n9 backward sociologist 172 Balfour, Henry 18 Banfera Nagas 15 Bangladesh (earlier East Pakistan) 66, 146, 175–6 Barak Valley 14 Barduria Nagas 15 Baruah, Sanjib 75, 134, 148 The Bedrock of Naga Society (S.C. Jamir) 73 Bharat 7 Biolsi, Thomas 282, 284 BJP 235n3 Block Development Office/Officer (BDO) 81, 180 corruption in 110–11 Bodoland Movement 209 Bodoland Territorial Areas district 33n6 bogus employment 150 bogus or proxy votes 31, 239–40, 258–61, 265, 269

Brahmaputra Valley 14–15, 36n19 Brass, Paul 208 British colonialism/empire 11, 14 British India 7, 12, 41, 216 British social anthropology 20–2 Burma 5, 11–12 Buddhist civilization 39 Burmese Nagas 39, 74, 235n2 Butler, John 17 cadres high-commitment 107 low-commitment 107 camp Hebron 2–3 ceasefire 22–8, 71, 100, 169 between Central Government and NSCN-IM in 1997 2, 9, 185, 246, 258 as conflict 29, 81–119 definition of 117reconciliation 29 uncertainties 138, 142–5 Central Intelligence Bureau 7 Chakhesang Naga tribe 33n7, 46, 63, 85, 121n8, 223 Chakhesang Public Organization (CPO) 26, 103 Chang, Imlong 64, 217–19, 232 Chang Naga tribe 23, 44, 206, 217–18 Chang, Takam 64 Chang Tribal Committee (CTC) 64 Chang Tribal Council 64 Che-Guevara style guerillas 98 Chene, Mary Des 220 Chhattisgarh 235n3 China 6, 148 Chokri speaking villages 105 Christian/Christianity 22, 120n5 Nagas conversion into 17 clan(s) 37n26, 41, 45, 59, 75, 92, 268

index affective realities of 29, 60 ancestors 47 attachments and loyalties 47, 248, 250 deep-seated antagonisms 269 disparate 22 exogamy 47 folktales 47 founders 46 genealogical tracing 47 -hierarchies 154 inter-clan struggles 47, 50, 263 intravillage 250 meetings 49–50 multiple 47 partisan collectivities 66 -politics 262 rivalries 99 set-ups 22 social formations of 38social signifiers of 42 -wise selection system 263, 275n32 Clean Election Campaign 273n20 coercion 131 military 145, 147 Collier, Paul 98 colonial geopolitical objectification 6 colonial monographs, of Nagas 21 colonial rule 65, 154, 163n13, 201n9, 211, 213–14, 220, 253, 282 Communitisation of Public Institutions and Services Act, 2002 55 communitisation project, in Nagaland 190–5, 202n17 community governance 201n10 complementary opposition, notion of 99 conflict-induced cultural chaos 10

317

conflictscapes 9 Congress party 235n3, 246 consensus-building 257, 263, 275n31 consensus-making 248, 258, 266, 268, 274n27, 275n29, n30, n31 consensus candidate 31, 240–1, 258, 262–8, 276n33 contemporary anthropology 78n13 contractor(s) 112, 149, 165n18, n22, 176–9, 199, 202n15, 205, 211 corrective anthropology 22 corruption 30, 44, 82, 111–12, 129, 145–6, 161, 168 decentralized 182 as a mode of cohesion 149 in Nagaland governance 170–1, 199 images of both illegality and immorality 172 immoralities of eating and drinking of VDB 184–90, 201n12 moral economy of state resources 172–5 new classrooms construction, use of corrupt practices 175–9 tribalism as a form of societal 61 Corruption, Nagaland daily 170 cost-benefit reasoning 152 counter-insurgency 2, 5, 9, 27, 53, 55, 86, 120n6, 127, 130, 134–5, 152, 164n13, 195, 279 cultural intimacy 75 culturally scripted life-projects 10 curfews 94, 139–40, 208 Das, Veena 200n3 debating society 257–8 deepening democracy 271n8

318

index

democracy, Indian contemporary world of 242 generative and regenerative qualities of 207 multiverse 243 democratic politics 207, 241, 249, 264, 269, 273n19, 279 development 6, 29, 125, 127–8, 131, 168, 170, 180, 209 accountable 182 allocations 65, 220, 222 business 166 and conflict, relationship between 164n16 decentralization of 182 during decolonization of Naga territory 76n2 immoralities of eating and drinking 184–90 funds 113 monies 171, 181, 183, 263 participatory 179, 182 policies 39 post-statehood politics of 131 projects 48, 112, 205 resources 30, 88 schemes 10 as seduction 145–50 village-wise development boards 179 work 130 diffuse authority 88 Dimapur 4 public rally 4 rise in population 2 territorial locus of Naga underground groups 2 District Commissioner (DC) 203 dobashis system 235n5 definition of 217

in Mokokchung 217–18 Naga 217 roles and duties of 217 durable disorder 88 Eastern Naga People’s Organization (ENPO) 230, 232 apex body of six backward tribes 221 individually benefitting from Nagaland state 234 pivots on semantic politics of backwardness 220–1 problems faced by 219–20 raise statehood demand in 2011 206–7 tigermen 210 eastern Nagas tribe 20, 23–4, 30–1, 44, 205–10, 219–20, 223, 226, 228, 230–1, 233–4, 235n2, 274n25 Eastern Naga Student’s Federation (ENSF) 107–8 East-Pakistan 6 economic endowments 98 economic substantivism 197 economy of resentment 170–1 election(s) 27–9, 31, 128, 133, 175, 177, 240–1, 243, 245–9, 252, 255, 259–61, 263, 265–9 first, boycott by NNC 243, 270n5 Indian elections imposed on Naga soil 31 -as-ritual approach 249 talk 244 Election Commission 260, 265 electoral politicking 243 Elwin, Verrier 43, 132, 216, 219–20, 258 embodiment of the past 129

index escape votes 260–1 excluded areas 17 factional rivalry 121n10 Fassin, Didier 129, 170 Federal Government of Nagaland (Accordist) (FGN-A) 98 Federal Government of Nagaland (Non-Accordist) (FGN-N/A) 98 Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN) 20, 68–9, 82, 84–5, 96, 102, 121n6 federalism cosmetic 134 history of 208 restructuring 207–8 structuring 207 Ferguson, James 147 formalism 197 Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) 71, 79n16, 136 Forward tribes 222–3 Frontier Nagaland movement 204, 206, 217, 227, 229, 231 demands for 208, 219, 234 mixed-up story 233 statehood demand in Noksen village 209–11 Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von 21, 58–9, 156–8, 160–1, 214, 216, 251, 256, 272n13 Gaonbura (or village elder/leader) 201n9 Garo Hills 33n6 Garo tribe 43, 77n5, 235n3 Gellner, David 11, 233, 242 Gellner, Ernest 75 Ghose, Sanjoy 122n12 God-Land-People, concept of 119n2

319

good governance 196 Gorkhaland Movement 209 Government of India Act of 1935 216–17 Government of the People’s Republic of Nagalim (GPRN) 87, 98, 119n4, 122n12 Gram Swaraj (village self-governance) 201n8 greed 89, 98, 110, 115–16, 121n7 grievance(s) 63, 73, 121n7, 189, 225, 228–9, 232, 237n10, 250, 262 guerrilla movements 89 guerrillas, Naga 89–90, 93, 151 Gupta, Akhil 173 Hazara, Anna 200n4 headhunting 16, 18, 22, 64, 216 feuds 274n25, 275n31 intertribal 228 practice of 58 raids 214 tribes go 227 trophies 227 warfare 57–8 Herzfeld, Michael 75 historical intimacy 75 history and historicity, difference between 164n14 homegrown democratic theory 260, 268 home-grown orientalism 224 home votes 261, 264 Horam, Mashangthei 18, 44, 66, 127, 149, 163n8, 257, 270n5 Houngang clan 48 house-tax 16, 54, 106, 109, 201n9, 219 hunger strikes 208

320

index

Hutton, J.H. 21, 50, 57–8, 62, 97, 132, 162n7, 219–20, 255, 257–8

joint-extraction regimes 88 Joshi, Vibha 163n9

imagined community, Nagas as 39 imperialist nostalgia 220 Imphal Valley 14 Indian Army 54, 56, 67, 83, 86–7, 92–4, 100, 103, 120n6, 129, 132, 139–40, 142, 151 Indian Nagas 39 India Today 227 Indo-China war of 1962 148 Indo-Naga ceasefire 1964–72 99 1997 86–9, 119, 143 as conflict 116–19 post-ceasefire recruitments 105–10 Indo-Naga conflict 3, 7–8, 10, 13, 20, 22, 86, 89, 231 protracted the designation victim 136 inflated electoral list 260 insurgency complex 10, 279, 286, 288 Intelligence Agents of India 79n17 inter-clan feuds 50 International Monetary Fund 171 inter-tribal rivalry 79n17 Itania Nagas 15

Kangshou clan 48 Karbi Anglong 33n6 Kashena, Asojiini 163n11 Kelly, Tobias 8–9 Kezo clan 47 Khan, Naveeda 173 Khaplang, Sagwan Sankai 79n17 Khasi Hills 33n6 Khasi tribe 235n3 Khekiye Sema 229 khel 22, 47–8, 50, 53, 57, 59, 61, 188, 215, 255 Khiamniungan Naga tribe 11, 23, 121n8, 206 Kikon, Dolly 33, 73, 90, 137, 164n13, 174, 258, 270n4, 284, 287, 289n1 kinship 66, 117, 170, 226 affinities 245 bonds of 250, 263, 274n24 of communitisation project 190–5 networks 10, 154 obligations 10 Kirata 43 Kohima 16, 23–4, 26, 37n22, 60, 84–5, 91, 111, 126, 137, 143, 166, 168, 186, 192–3, 205, 211, 224, 233, 243, 253, 255 -based politicians 149 battle of 19 Konyak, Chingwang 219–20, 223, 225 Konyak Naga tribe 23, 206, 225, 227–8 Kutcha (or Katcha) Nagas 44

Jaintia Hills 33n6 Jaintia tribe 235n3 Jaktungias Nagas 15 Jamir, S.C. 73–5, 129–30, 133, 198, 246–7 Jan Lokpal Bill (or the citizens’ ombudsman bill) 200n4 jhum fields 203–4 Joboka Nagas 15

Lakhuti 96–7 Lakma Nagas 15

index Leach, Edmund 281 (In the epilogue) The Lhota Nagas, colonial monograph 21, 45 Litam village 212 Lok Sabha 246 Lomou clan 48 Longkumer, Arkotong 224 Longtrok 46 Lotha tribe 20, 23, 37n22, 57 Lowenthal, David 13 Lubkemann, Stephen 9–10 Machiavellian politics 6 Mahatma Gandhi 6 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 82, 84, 119n1, 175 Malauthupia Nagas 15 Manipur 13, 33n6, 85, 122n12 Manipur Nagas 39 Maoist cadres 122n13 Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) 122n13 Maoist insurgency, in Jharkhand 122n13 Maori tribe, New Zealand 159 Marxism 160 mass-agitations 207 material culture, of Nagas 21 memory 130–1, 164n14 Michelutti, Lucia 241 Mills, J.P. 17, 21, 45, 158, 214, 251, 256, 272n14 Ministry of External Affairs 125 Ministry of Home Affairs 125, 135 Mithonia Nagas 15 Mizoram 33n6, 163n8 Mokokchung town, in Nagaland 203–4

321

Mosse, David 180 Mukherjee, Pranab 161n4 Mullik, B.N. 7 Myanmar 5, 11–12, 21 Naga Army 1–2, 25–6, 37n24, 53–4, 56, 68–9, 85, 90–2, 228 Naga Club 7, 18 Naga egalitarianism 155 Naga highlands 131 militarization of 2 visual representation 2 Naga Hills district 12, 32n4, 36n21, 112, 205, 214, 217, 219 created in 1866 16 Inner Line 17 Naga Hills district Tribal Council (NHDTC) 19 Naga Hills Tuensang Area (NHTA) 217 Naga Hoho 11 Naga Independence Day (August 14) 120n4, 136 Naga-Kuki ethnic violence in 1990s 163n11 Naga Labour Corps 18–19, 216, 218 Nagalagoi 43 Nagaland-Assam border 2 Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) 261, 273n20 Nagaland Department of Underdeveloped Areas (DUDA) 223 Nagaland Nagas 39 Nagaland Nationalist Organization (NNO) 133 Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) 112 Nagaland state 33n6

322

index

assembly and non-selection of women 269n1 blessed with admirable community bonds 191 ceasefire uncertainties in 142–5 centre-controlled extension 127 change in Delhi’s attitude towards 169 coexisted and functioned alongside tribal apex bodies 128 contested legitimacy of 128 creation or making of state in 1963 30, 132–5 democracy 241, 244 development and conflict, relationship between 164n16 initiatives in early 1980s 179 as seduction 145–50 eastern 235n2 complexities and tensions within 227–9 side marked on British maps 213–14 exempted from 73rd Amendment of Indian Constitution 201n8 failure to act as a guarantor and provider of common good 191 fieldwork during ceasefire 22–8 governance and development in 129 government employment as rehabilitation 150–3 Inner Line, partial lifting in 2011 22 made up of liminal institutions 128 moral economy of state resources 195–9

Nehru’s address in Parliament and reaction of MPs 124–6 neo-tribal developmentalism, rise of 153–9 non-colonial past 220 pan-Indian reservation system 222 pitches for Indian states with high turnaround voters 271n6 post-statehood politics of development 131 President Mukherjee address during 50 year of statehood celebration 161n4 product of violence 130 reservation policy 223 security forces of India operation in 129–30 state functionaries 191 suitcase administrators or overnight officers posting in 224–5 temporary arrangement 128 tension and contestation over access to state resources 171 terraced wet-rice cultivation practice in western 234n1 as tribal state 60 violence, experience of villagers 135–42 Nagaland’s Village Council Act, 1978 55 Nagalim (or Naga Land) 5, 11–13, 44, 101, 234 Christianity 34n10 greater vs smaller Nagaland 230–3 Naga Mothers Association (NMA) 270n1

index Naga/Nagas agitation for ownership and access to state structures 233 armed struggle 1–2 atrocities on 127 civil societies 13 clan members of villages 47 colonial images on 224 constructionism 75 definition or meaning of 42–5 division by British administration 12 early colonial writings on 22 ethnographic understanding of eastern 20–1 experiences with modern democracy 241 factions/factionalism 87, 98–100, 118 feast of merit (zhotho müza in Phugwumi) practice 156–8, 165n22, 256 historical detour 13–20 homeland 11 identity 40 Independence 1, 12, 14, 19–20, 74, 79n15, 88, 90–5, 101, 103, 118, 133, 136, 140, 153, 162n7, 163n12, 198, 231, 278, 279–80 demand for 30 Gandhi’s support for 34n12 Naga nationalists pray and fasting for 210 post-ceasefire public celebration of 163n12 struggle 5 Indians 7 indigenous discourses 40–1

323

inhabited hills made up of disparate tribes 14 insurgency 5–11, 28–9, 31, 67, 127, 240 impact of 32n2 influence on electoral politics locally 268 reasons for 273n19 integration 35n17 land of free Nagas 211 marked by dual relation to state 127 mass protest in Dimapur 2013 1 migration of 45–6 nationalism 34n10, 73, 99 growth into cottage industry 113 national movement 35n14, 84–5, 88, 117, 151 Athe’s, case study of 90–5 gifts and donations for 105–10 suppression of 37n24 origin of 45–6 participation in international organizations and platforms 76n3 payment of taxes 33n6 political conflict 4 political continuum with hereditary autocracy 256 political history 51–2 political sociology 69 political spectrum 13 politicians criticism against 264 as first stakeholders 149 populace 2 rebels 88 resistance 3 social structure of society 165n20

324

index

sovereignty 5, 109, 230, 284, 288 taxes payment to underground factions 165n18 troops movement in Tuensang and rise of war 7 vernacular political modernity 268 village(s) colonial officers on 57 relations with kingdoms and dynasties 14 republic 51–60 villagers and their land, relationship between 119n2 western Naga tigermen 210 Naga nation (or Naga-ism) definition of 39 rise as Lingua Franca 41 as a tribal confederacy 65–72 Naga National Council (Accordist) (NNC-A) 98 Naga National Council (NonAccordist) (NNC-N/A) 3, 98 Naga nationalism 3–4, 34n10, 42, 50, 65–6, 71, 73, 98–9, 102, 113, 138, 209 Naga nationalists 26, 39–41, 43, 50, 75, 127, 161n3, 210, 234, 237n12 Naga National Movement ceasefire between central government and NSCN-IM 2 fought for independence 1 Phugwumi villagers, individual biographies of 5 Naga People’s Convention (NPC) 69, 125, 133–4 Naga People’s Front (NPF) 36n17 Naga People’s Movement for Democracy 247

Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) 137 Naga Republic Day (March 21) 120n4, 136 Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) 73, 83 The Naga Tribes of Manipur, colonial monograph 21 Naga uplands 2, 16–17, 20, 41, 43, 47, 122n13, 131, 135, 142, 162n6, 210, 224, 238, 254, 270n2 The Naked Nagas, colonial monograph 21 Nandy, Ashis 242 National Naga Council (NNC) 6–7, 19–20, 25, 33n8, 93, 115, 127, 153, 230 demand for rollback of Nagaland state structures 149 differentiate between national and anti-national Naga villages 55–6 linked with Angami and Chakhesang tribes 121n8 manifesto of 265 mother of Naga movement 96 Noksen villagers joined army 139 oath-taking ceremonies 97 regional counterforce against Konyak tribe 228 voluntary donations 109 National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) (NSCN-K) 3, 33n5, 70, 72, 98, 115, 230 National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khole-Kitovi) (NSCN-KK) 3, 33n5, 98 National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Reformation) (NSCN-R) 98

index National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Unification) (NSCN-U) 3, 98 National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) 40, 44, 119n4, 227 establishment of 72 manifesto of 55 rift in 1980s 72 rise and split of 54 National Socialist Council of Nagalim–Isak/Muivah (NSCN-IM) 2–4, 11–12, 33n5, 33n8, 35n16, 70, 72, 79n17, 83–5, 96, 98, 106, 115, 152, 210, 230, 245 adopted hard-line approach in 1998 elections 246–7 banned Poumai Naga Union 70–1 emphasizes on temporality of current state structures and government jobs 153 failure of accounting 116 joined UN WGIP 40 joining in NNC stronghold 100–5 metamorphosis into political party 247 national workers activities equivalent to state officials 87 political dialogues with central government 13 redirected resources to emboldening its parallel government 87 sided with Tangkhul voice of village 71 national workers 4, 23, 31, 32n2, 82–8, 106–8, 110, 113, 118,

325

122n11, 145, 230–1, 243, 246, 248, 270n2 armed 144 boundaries between state and 29 cultivated sense 39, 143, 154 degenerating character of 117 factional feuds 8, 83 influence voting patterns 245 involvement in local elections 243 lynched 70 molested 70 motivations of 114–16 overground post-ceasefire 89 pecuniary desires of 112 present-day generation of 94–5 private pockets of 178–9 rehabilitation practice 152 selfless motivation of 2 self-sacrificing 105 taxes 4 and tribalism 60–5, 7 native political anthropology 253 negative solidarity 63, 229Nehru, Jawaharlal 6–7, 11, 19, 165n17 address in Parliament on Nagaland 124–6 crafting of Article 371A to Constitution 132 neo-tribal capitalism 159 neo-tribal developmentalism 153–9, 161 Ngaithe, Thangkhanlal 35n16 Nigeria, corruption in 72 Noksen Town Baptist Church 210 Noksen village 25–6 British officer McCabe attack and expedition to 211–13 jhum cycle 235n1 large scale of village-level corruption 196

326

index

talking and praying for statehood 209–11 non-cooperation notice 69–72 Nordstrom, Carolyn 8 North Cachar Hills 33n6 North-Eastern Council (NEC) 167–8, 200n1 North-Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA) 32n4 Tuensang Frontier Division 207 Northeastern states, status of special category state 163n10 North East Frontier Agency 126 Northeast India 132, 149, 200n1, 242, 281 colonial depictions 78n13 conflict-ridden parts 164n13 cosmic federalism 134 as disturbed area 164n13 fission and fusion of communities across 63 in relation to India’s mainstream xvi (in preface) special category state 163n10 territorial and political fragmented 134 tribal belt 76n5 North-East India Vision 2020 report 164n16 Nuh, V.K. 12, 34n11, 35n14, 72, 79n14, 133–4, 146, 148–9, 165n17, 257, 274n27, 282–3 Onglingaku 217–19 operation (army) 27, 120n6, 129, 151 Oungh clan 47 Ounghbo 47 Paley, Julia 241 Pandey, R.S. 190–2, 195, 202n17

Paniduria Nagas 15 pan-Naga political sociality 100 parallel government (governance) 3, 87–8, 98, 103, 119n4, 285 Parkin, David 172 partially excluded areas 17 Patkai Autonomous Council 236n10 Pawsey, Charles 19, 112, 149 People’s Independence League 19–20 Phizo, A.Z. 6, 12, 19–20, 33n8, 39–40, 50–1, 72, 79n15, 99, 133, 162n7, 265, 274n27 Phom Naga tribe 23, 206 Phugwumi village 23–8, 46, 53, 155–6, 205 absenteeism among teachers 202n18 characterization of past 253 clan background of villagers 46–7 elections study in 248–52 failed consensus candidate 262–8, 276n33 form and substance of political in 252–8 human relations in 47 large scale of village-level corruption 196 megaliths erected in honour of feast-giver in 157 polling day in 238–43 protection of village electoral list 258–62 relations of clan 48 Tunyi clan meeting 49 village council 275n32 Pierce, Steven 71–2 plebiscite 20, 96, 104 Pochury Naga tribe 223 political marketplace 207

index polling day 31, 238–43, 250, 258, 269, 274n23 Pongener, Mark 53 Poumai Naga Union 71 Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration 202n17 proxy voting 260 Public Works Department (PWD) 175, 178 Puro clan 47 Radhakrishnan, S. 126–7, 161n4 raids 14–16, 37n21, 52, 57, 75, 212–14, 227, 253–4, 269, 275n31 railway blockades 208 Raising Day ( January 31) 120n4 Ramirez, Philippe 78n13 Rata, Elizabeth 159 Razu Kuhu, Phugwumi’s apex body 263, 267 rebel actors 98 cuts 112–13 groups 107 infighting 98 taxes 118 reciprocal co-dependency 119n2 relations of intimacy 115 The Rengma Nagas, colonial monograph 21, 23 Revolutionary Government of Nagaland (RGN) 68, 152 Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 21 Sakhrie, T. 50, 154 Samaddar, Ranabir 13, 282, 284 Sangtam Naga tribe 23, 206

327

Sanyu, Visier 159–60 Saudi government, insist to increase royalty payments on ARAMCO 123n14 Scheduled Tribes (ST) 33n6, 146, 222 Scott, James 233, 237n11 seduction 131, 160, 195 segmentary lineage theory 99 segmentation, notion of 99 self-determination 3, 5, 100, 278, 280, 282self-immolations 208 Sema, Hokishe 272n17, 275n29 Sema Naga 57 The Sema Nagas, colonial monograph 21 Sema Naga 20 Sen, Amartya 42 Shah, Alpa 30, 115, 122n13, 172–3, 200n5, n6, 202n13, n15, 222 Shillong Accord (1975) 96, 120n6 Simon Commission 7, 16, 73, 162n7 Singh, Jaipal 125 Singh, Kanwar 224 slayings 208 social endowments 98 south Asian anthropology 59 Spencer, Jonathan 162n6 Srinivas, M.N. 27–8 statehood 24, 30–1, 127, 132, 134–5, 145, 149, 151, 161n4, 169, 180–1, 184, 205–11, 220–1, 229–34, 235n3, 273n19 state-repression theory 98 stewardship 119n2 stone-pelting 207 structural relativity, notion of 99 Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) 178, 226 Subba, Tanka 44, 63, 224, 229, 286

328

index

Sumi Hoho 70 Sumi tribe 23, 68 Sundar, Nandini 136 Tangkhul Naga tribe 85, 121n9 tax(es)/taxation 3, 15, 83, 110 authoritative regimes of 88, 95, 148, 197 -call 106 extractive regimes of 118 forced 105 house 16, 54, 109 justifies 87 loyalty 110 lucrative 104 multiple 4 payment by Nagas to Nagas factions 33n6 rebel 118 refuse to pay 83 salary 108 underground 105–8, 111–13, 165n18, 189–90 Telangana Movement 209 territorial reorganization 12 Thira clan 47 Thiranagama, Sharika 10 Tillin, Louise 207–8 Tirualia Nagas 15 Tobu clashes 227–8 Transparency International 171 tribal/tribalism/tribes, Naga 60–5 battalions 66–7 entrepreneurs 62–3, 78n12 factionalism 69 and factions 67–9 hohos 69–72 Tripura 33n6 Tuensang area, incorporated into British India 216

Tuensang town 108, 152, 217, 229 Tunyi clan 47, 49 meeting 46 Turner, Victor 249 underground as vocation 114–16 underground effect 88, 110–14, 244 underground factor 243–8 underground groups of Nagas 2–4, 31, 32n2, 87, 110 oppose Indian state structures 112 opposition against Indian elections 252 rank-and-file of 114 United Democratic Front (UDF) 133, 162n8 United Naga Council (UNC) 237n10 United Nations (UN) 166–7 United Nations Public Service Award 202n17 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) 41 UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples (WGIP) 40 vandalism 207 vernacular democracy 241–2 Vero clan 47 Village Council (VC) 48 village defence guards 51, 54, 92 village defence posts 51, 54 Village Development Board (VDB) 48, 55, 77n7, 83, 106, 111–12, 144, 169–70, 176, 179–90, 201n7, 263 village electoral list 31, 239, 255, 258, 269 Village gates 52–3, 59, 140, 272n15

index village guards 51, 53 violence 4, 7, 9–10, 27–8, 34n13, 72–3, 86, 88, 121n7, 125, 127–8, 196, 207, 228, 246, 262 bodily 195 brutal 56 intertribal 69 Naga armed struggle provoked 1–2 Nagaland as product of 130 over-determining 8 past 131 political 87 state 129, 131, 135–42, 169, 199 structural 90, 198 violent conflict 8 in the state of Nagaland and its impact on villagers 136–42 voting of dead souls 260

329

war of movement 87 war of position 87 Welsh Baptist mission 17 western Nagas tribe 23–4, 30, 205, 208–11, 219–21, 223, 225–7, 231, 234 Witsoe, Jeffrey 241 World Bank 171 world wars (first and second), Nagas participation in 18–19 Yehzabo 65 Yhobu clan 47 Yimchunger Naga tribe 23, 60, 206, 229 Zekope (NSCN cadre) 109–10 Zeliang Naga tribe 223 Zeme Nagas 44, 76n4 Zomia xvi, xvii, 233

About the Author

Jelle J.P. Wouters is a social anthropologist and senior lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences, Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan. He has an MPhil (distinction) in social anthropology from the University of Oxford and a PhD in anthropology from the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he was also a Wenner-Gren grantee. Prior to joining Royal Thimphu College in 2015, he taught at Sikkim Central University and was a visiting faculty at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, under the ‘Excellence Initiative’ of the German Research Foundation. He has written about Naga political lifeworlds, democracy and elections, kinship, and social history for HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Studies in History, and other journals. He is also co-editor of Nagas in the 21st Century (2017) and Democracy in Nagaland: Tribes, Traditions, and Tensions (2018).