COMMENTARY

Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 20, 2014 vol xlIX no 38 15

Assam-Nagaland Border Violence

Udayon Misra

The violence in August on the border of the Naga Hills that left 17 people dead, scores injured and over 200 houses burnt has its roots in the colonial period. But a solution to this long-standing dispute over land lies not in the realm of constitutional borders or assertion of historical claims to ancestral land, but in mutual give and take.

What happened on the nights of 12-14 August in 16 villages situated on the border of the Naga Hills, some 5 kilometres from Uriamghat of Golaghat district of Assam was not totally unexpected. The Assam-Nagaland border in the region had long been simmering, with the Nagas insist-ing that the villages near the 2-km stretch of forest area near Uriamghat are inhabited chiefl y by relatively recent settlers who are encroaching upon Naga territory. The fact is that encroachment of forest areas has been taking place over the years, with both Nagas as well as villagers from Assam setting up hamlets.

Most of the villages set up by the Assamese on the border of the Naga Hills are populated by marginalised sections of society consisting mainly of adivasis or tea tribes as well as some local Assamese and Nepalese settlers. These villagers have been cultivating crops for years, all the while regularly paying taxes to the Naga militant factions in the hope that they would not be disturbed. But the overall situation has been far from peaceful. Stray attacks on the villagers, abductions and extortions of money from the Naga side of the border

had become a common feature of an area which was supposed be under the control of a neutral central force, in this case, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

The 12-14 August violence carried out by Naga villagers, apparently backed by non-state militant groups, left some 17 people on the Assam side dead, scores injured and over 200 houses burnt down. The attacks on the Assam villages led to the displacement of about 10,000 people from the area and they are at present housed in over a dozen ramshackle refugee shelters on the interstate border without the minimum of basic amenities.

What Sparked the Violence?

The violence is said to have been trig-gered by a land dispute centred on a 25 bigha plot of land in Sector B of the forest area which was claimed by both sides. The plot is offi cially said to belong to the Assam forest department. Given the fact that most of the people from the Assam side died of gunshot wounds, it seems that non-state militant outfi ts possessing sophisticated weapons were involved in the violence. Reports suggest the involvement of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) [NSCN (I-M)] and the NSCN (Khaplang) [NSCN (K)]. On the Assam side, the adivasis had been mobilised for the past few months by activists of the All Adivasi National Liberation Army (AANLA) who had urged the people not to pay taxes to the Naga militant outfi ts (Handique 2014). This had aggravated the simmering tensions.

Udayon Misra (udayon.misra@gmail.com) is National Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.

COMMENTARY

september 20, 2014 vol xlIX no 38 EPW Economic & Political Weekly16

The immediate fallout of the killings and arson was in the form of massive protest demonstrations in the Golaghat district and the blockade of National Highway 39, which is the lifeline to Nagaland from Assam. Hundreds of trucks carrying goods to Nagaland were held up, resulting in a crisis in that state. Attempts by the security forces to lift the week-long blockade and break up the demonstrations resulted in police fi rings which left three persons dead and dozens severely injured. An indefi nite curfew had to be imposed in Golaghat town. This was followed by a state-wide bandh called by the Asom Gana Parishad, supported by the adivasi and student organisations and which re-ceived support from all segments of the population. The Assam governments handling of the situation and the chief ministers attempts to shift the entire blame for the developments to the inef-fective role of the CRPF has come in for strong criticism.

Ancestral Land, Constitutional Borders

Assam has been consistently maintai ning the stand that the states borders as they existed when Nagaland was formed in December 1963 need to be respected. But Nagaland has been insisting on his-torical borders which takes one back to colonial times when the borders between the different districts of Assam (of which the Naga Hills, and subsequently the Naga Hills district itself, was a part) had been altered from time to time to suit colonial administrative needs. For the Nagas, the demand for the return of their ancestral land has a long history.

One may start with the aborted Nine Point Agreement (also known as the Hydari Agreement) of 1946, which, with reference to the boundaries, states:

The present administrative divisions should be modifi ed so as to (i) bring back into the Naga Hills District all the forest transferred to the Sibsagar and Nowgong Districts in the past and (ii) to bring under one unifi ed adm inistrative unit, so far as possible, all the Nagas.

This was followed by the 16-Point Agreement between the Government of India and the Naga Peoples Convention

(NPC) in July 1960, on the basis of which the state of Nagaland was formed. Here too there was mention of the integration of the Naga areas under one administra-tive unit. Point 12 of the Agreement re-ferred to the demand for the return of reserved forests transferred to Assam, while the subsequent point dealt with the consolidation of contiguous Naga areas, this as follows:

The Naga delegation wished the following to be placed on record: The Naga leaders ex-pressed the wish for the contiguous areas to join the new State. It was pointed out to them on behalf of the Government of India that Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution pro-vided for incre asing the area of any State, but it was not possible for the Government of India to make any commitment in this re-gard at this stage.

Thus, when in 1962 the Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Act was pa ssed, paving the way for the creation of a separate Nagaland state within the Indian Union, the borders of the new state were defi ned as under the Nagaland Act 27 of 1962 which stated that the three districts of Kohima, Mokokchung and Tuensang would constitute the new state. The Naga demand for the inclusion of reserved for-ests and contiguous areas inhabited by the Naga tribes, which they felt had been transferred out of the Naga Hills and joined to other districts of Assam by the colonial government for administra-tive convenience, was left unattended.

The Naga position has been that ever since 1852 when a part of the Naga area was included in a subdivision of Assams Nagaon district, the transfer of Naga territory had begun. This was fol-lowed in 1870 by the creation of a sepa-rate subdivision known as the North Cachar Hills subdivision in which, accord-ing to Naga scholars, a large segment of

Naga territory inhabited by the Zeme Nagas was incorporated. But this area also included substantial populations of Kacharis and Kukis and hence the claim that it was undisputed Naga territory does not seem to stand. In 1925, for ap-parently better administrative reasons, the colonial administration created the Naga Hills district of Assam with Kohima as the headquarters.1 The Naga side has been insisting that when this district was created, large tracts of forests which were part of Naga ancestral land were left out. According to some scholars, the origins of the present dispute may be traced to the separation of the Naga Hills Tuensang Area from Assam and it being made into a separate union territory. The common refrain of the argument from the Naga side has been that large tracts of forest which were the ancestral land of the Nagas was transferred to differ-ent districts of Assam where reserved forests and tea estates were set up by the British.

The Dispute after 1963

Ever since the inauguration of the state of Nagaland in December 1963, portions of the Assam-Nagaland border covering the districts of Sivasagar, Jorhat, Golaghat and Nagaon have seen occasional vio-lence in the form of raids, forced harvest-ing of crops, kidnappings, abductions and even killings in Assamese villages, with the fi rst interstate border clash occurring in 1965 at the Kakoda nga Reserved Forest area, a year after the new state was born. This was followed by a series of clashes over occupation of cultivable land. In an effort to settle the issue, the union government set up the Sundaram Committee in 1971, but while Assam agreed to the committees

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COMMENTARY

Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 20, 2014 vol xlIX no 38 17

proposals regarding the border issue, Nagaland rejected it.2

It was in January 1979 that the fi rst major violence in the Doyang Reserve Forest area of the Assam-Nagaland border took place (Misra 1979). In this violence, attacks were mounted by Naga villagers on some 50 Assamese villages which were burnt down and over a hundred people were killed. The raiders included men in uniform which suggested that ei-ther Nagaland Armed Police personnel or Naga militants were involved. The intensity of the violence of January 1979 forced the two state governments to come to an agreement which entailed that the status quo on the border area would be maintained and that a neutral force, the Assam Rifl es, would be in control of the disputed area. It was only later in 1979, following an interim agreement between the governments of Assam and Nagaland, that the CRPF was given the res ponsibility of maintaining law and order in the disputed area. It was stipulated in this agreement that the Assam armed police and armed personnel would be withdrawn from the Naga inhabited areas in the Diphu, Nambar and Rengma reser ved forests and in their place the CRPF would be inducted. It was also agreed that the Nagaland Police post would be with-drawn from the same reserved forest area.

Merapani and Its Aftermath

But while the tension in the Dayan area was contained, the confl ict point now shifted to the Merapani region3 where in 1985 a full blown war took place between the Assam Police and their Nagaland counterparts. The violence led scores dead, with Assam bearing the major brunt of the offensive. It was al-leged then that armed cadres of the Naga underground had participated in the attacks, along with personnel of the Nagaland Armed Police. Following the Merapani violence, the two governments once again came to an agreement to maintain peace in the area which had come to be known as the Disturbed Area Belt (DAB) of the border. The union gov-ernment set up the Shastri Commission in 1985 but with little positive results.

Within three years of the Merapani episode, the Assam government moved

the Supreme Court under Article 131 of the Constitution and pleaded that the Assam-Nagaland boundary be demar-cated. On its part, the Nagaland govern-ment did not fi le any affi davit. The case is still pending in the Supreme Court. In 2008, the Court appointed a local com-mission headed by Justice S N Variava who was to be assisted by a retired chief conservator of forests and the additional surveyor general. Finally, in 2010 a division bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice T S Thakur and Justice Markandey Katju appointed Niranjan Bhatt and Sriram Panchu, senior advocates of the Gujarat and Madras High Courts as mediators. The Court also asked the two state governments to continue negotia-tions on the subject. As one waits for the Supreme Courts decision on the conten-tious issue, the people of the border vil-lages continue to live in uncertainty and fear in what may be termed as the land of the ungoverned.

The Assam government, while assert-ing the validity of the constitutional borders of the state, has said that it would abide by the Supreme Courts decision, as and when it is given. Till then, the entire border area remains contested land. Dispur has accused the Nagaland government of having encroached upon over 60,000 hectares of its territory and insists that it is in possession of all rele-vant maps and documents to back up the constitutional validity of its claim. The Nagaland government continues to hold on to its position that the ancestral land of the Nagas will have to be re-stored to them and that the natural boundary between the two states will have to be respected. It has been claim-ing some 4,974 square miles of Sectors A, B, C and D of the Assam-Nagaland border covering the Assam districts of Sivasagar, Golaghat, Jorhat and Nagaon. This includes a region covered by large forest areas and scores of tea estates and is rich in oil and timber.

The Nagas claim to the region has been spurred by the fact that the entire Dayang-Merapani-Dhansiri belt is not only a very fertile agricultural area but also part of the Assam-Arakan basin which is supposed to have large reserves of oil. For instance, the Oil and Natural

Gas Corporation has long been involved in oil exploration in the area which stretches from Sivasagar district to Golaghat and includes the area border-ing Nagaland. Another factor which has obviously spurred Naga demand in the border areas is the strong appeal that the idea of a Greater Nagalim holds for the Nagas, irrespective of political affi liations.

Not by Violent Means

Given the present faction-ridden politics of Nagaland, it is certainly advantageous for different political organisations as well as the militant groups such as the NSCN (I-M) to keep the border issue volatile. Even if there is justifi cation for Naga claims of encroachments upon their terri-tory, to view the entire episode in terms of defeat and victory as some in the media have suggested, would be sad. Some have even tried to view this as a battle involv-ing the Assam and Nagaland governments.

There have also been references to the 1985 Merapani war when Assam got a bloody nose. But while certain sections may see the violence perpetrated by one section of villagers on another as a triumph and a lesson taught, the violence that has claimed so many lives is clearly a defeat for all those who believe that such disputes over territory between two neighbouring states of the Indian Union can never be solved through violent means. Those impoverished villagers that fell to bullets and machetes or were trapped in their burning houses were clearly victims of circumstances. It did not really matter for them whether the land they were living in belonged to Assam or Nagaland. Their deaths were part of their incessant struggle to stay alive in a system that offered them virtually noth-ing by way of sustenance and security.

Finally, it may be said that the present Naga-Assam border dispute which has already claimed hundreds of lives appe-ars as yet another vexed and conten-tious leftover of colonial rule which, for its own administrative convenience, drew and redrew boundaries of differ-ent regions of the country boundaries which in most cases were inherited by the new administration when the British left. Similarly, when Nagaland was carved out of Assam, the same

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september 20, 2014 vol xlIX no 38 EPW Economic & Political Weekly18

boundaries as had been fi xed by the British administration were affi rmed, Naga protests notwithstanding.

At the time of independence and many years afterwards, todays disputed areas were part of sparsely populated dense forest covers bordering the Naga Hills. In course of time, settlements in the forest areas took place from both sides, Assamese as well as Naga and points of confl ict gradually emerged. But this took on new dimensions once the new state of Nagaland came into being, with the question of territory and borders naturally assuming a new signifi cance.

Civil-Society Initiative?

Such boundary disputes can never be solved by murder and mayhem. With both the state governments lacking the politi-cal will needed to work out a solution of the vexed issue, it is quite po ssible that

certain elements may try to push their confrontationist age nda by exploiting the strong feelings that have been evoked by the border violence.

The border violence has brought toge-ther different segments of the Assamese society on a common united platform and this, instead of being exploited to fan anti-Naga feelings, should be used to work out a joint civil society initiative to search for a solution to the vexed issue. In the absence of serious atte mpts by the two state governments to resolve the issue, it is for civil society organisations to try to work out a solution which would not be bound by constitutional borders/legalities or assertions of historical claims to ancestral land, but would depend on mutual give and take and also mutual interests and conve nience. For, as neigh-bours, Assam and Nagaland cannot live without each other and the entire future economic progress of the region depends

on their common effort and cooperation. If history is to be invoked, then it has been witness to centuries of Assamese-Naga relationship which has been marked more by mutual dependence, re-spect and accommo dativeness than by aggressiveness and hostility.

Notes

1 It was on the basis of the 1925 Notifi cation that the state of Nagaland was created, although the Naga side insists that the Notifi cation of 1867 be adhered to.

2 Now, following the recent violence, the state unit of the BJP, along with several other political organisations of Assam have been demanding the implementation of the Sundaram Committee report.

3 The Merapani area covers Abhoipur, Geleki, Desoi valley, Kakadonga, Dayang and Renga plus parts of Nambor and Diphu reserved forests.

References

Handique, Rajiv (2014): Assam-Nagaland Border Confl ict, Assam Tribune, Guwahati, 27 August.

Misra, Udayon (1979): After the Raid, Economic & Political Weekly, 3 March.

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