It was ironic to see photographs appearing in the media about Thuingaleng Muivah being in fetters in Bangkok. This was 2000.
The NSCN-IM leader had been arrested on January 19, 2000 on the charge of carrying a false South Korean passport after he stepped off Thai Airways flight TG 508 on arrival at Bangkok from Karachi.
The new cover stories in a section of national media will never have these stories even referred to.
Muivah was released on bail but was again held on January 30 at the Hay Yai airport on possessing another false passport. His arrest, the underground camp alleged, was after the Indian intelligence Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) became “hyper sensitive”.
The detention and the legal case pursued at Ratchadaphisek court had put a question mark on the fate of the peace talks with the Vajpayee government.
Muivah’s parleys with Pakistan and reported meeting with ISI’s Lt Gen Usmani had stunned New Delhi especially after he had been participating in the peace talks.
How much Muivah is and was romanticised could be felt only when during his passport defiance trial in Bangkok, a host of civil liberty activists and journalists from Delhi Nandita Haksar, Justice (Retd) Rajinder Sachchar and Bharat Bhushan, then Executive Editor with ‘The Hindustan Times’ had paid him a visit at the trial room”.
Bhushan even had serialised his news dispatches eulogising the rebel leader.
The same Muivah allowed to visit his native village in Manipur in October 2025 – though seemingly sick – did not waste time to attack Govt of India.
It is a fact of life that Muivah and the NSCN-IM have been adopting a mixed approach for the dialogues, tough at times threatening to call off the talks and at times going very soft willing to cooperate with New Delhi.
On its part, government of India has been committing mistakes in parleys either deliberately or by trusting wrong elements.
Now, when we talk of these ‘mistakes’ — one really cannot blame Team Modi – essentially comprising Amit Shah, Ajit Doval and likes of RN Ravi or AK Mishra for all the scenes that we have on the table since 2015.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee had appointed Sushma Swaraj’s husband Swaraj Kaushal as the first negotiator. He could not make much progress. Next came – K Padmanabhaiya, a former Home Secretary.
He allegedly found post-retirement rehabilitation. Padmanabhaiya even reportedly declined to visit Nagaland.
His favourite meeting place(s) with NSCN-IM eaders used to be Bangkok or even Europe – of course at government’s expense.
His biggest contribution was that in 1999, the two rebel leaders Muivah and Isak Chishi Swu visited Nagaland. During that period (in 2001) Muivah had staged a sort of “Negotiated Coup”, when at Bangkok talks he could pursue the Vajpayee government to accept his long time desired goal to widen the scope of ceasefire to “all Naga inhabited areas”.
Prior to that Muivah applied arm-twisting, true to his style and mannerism, charging the government’s negotiator Padmanabhaiah with being in a “bureaucratic cocoon”. But on a different plane, it was a ‘cooperative Muivah’, who had stayed on in the dialogue process after the government of India unilaterally withdrew from the Bangkok agreement to extend ceasefire to other Naga inhabited areas. This decision came after Manipur burnt for a few days.
Take this reference. Thuingaleng Muivah in Aug 2020 said:
“The Nagas will co exist with India sharing sovereign powers as agreed in the Framework Agreement and defined in the competencies. But they will not merge with India.We are not asking for Naga national flag and constitution from the Government of India.
Recognize them or not, we have our own flag and constitution”.
In Delhi. some quarters were taken by surprise and the refrain was — If things were so fundamental – why and how the talks lasted for last 23 years (between 1997 and 2020).
Of course, the Naga negotiations is 29-year-old and there is no sincere effort on the part of the Status quo club to change the ground reality.
Apparently, India had made a climb down and said in the 1990s (first under PV Narasimha Rao and then under H D Deve Gowda) that talks will be held ‘unconditionally’. Previously, the Government of India assertion used to be that talks can be held only under the ‘parameters’ of the Indian constitution.
By 2020, if some people were getting surprised by the fact that a large section of Indian media was giving ‘adequate space and importance’ to the NSCN(IM) and even making veiled attacks on RN Ravi, a new punching bag in the entire episode – analysts should not have been surprised.
Here, do we have another shocker ? As many as three former Prime Ministers once backed Muivah in circa 2000 ?
The cover stories in a magazine are humble apologies only.
“Three former Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda, who first met Muivah along with Isak Chishi Swu (Late chairman of NSCN-IM) in February 1997 kicking off formal talks at Zurich,
VP Singh and Chandrashekhar in a joint statement, requested the Thai government to release Muivah”.
(The views expressed are those of the writer and not of the newspaper)
