Time for a Paradigm Shift in the Naga Struggle?

In February 2024, the Modi government formally announced the scrapping of the Free Movement Regime (FMR) along the imposed India–Myanmar border. While the FMR had long been criticized for its selective implementation, its abolition strikes at the heart of indigenous communities– most severely the Nagas, whose ancestral lands straddle both sides of the imposed and illegitimate border. For many Nagas, this policy shift has generated frustration, anger, and a sense of betrayal. Yet it also serves as a stark reminder of the Indian state’s determination to suppress Naga political aspirations and entrench the colonial legacies of partition and occupation initiated by the British and later institutionalized by India and Myanmar.

The termination of the FMR, however, should not be seen in isolation. It is but one among a series of policies targeting borderland peoples especially Naga people, eroding indigenous mobility, and undermining the transnational kinship ties that sustain the Naga identity. AsScott (2009) reminds us in The Art of Not Being Governed, upland peoples in Southeast Asia have historically resisted state-making projects through mobility, fluid identities, and alternative governance practices. The abolition of FMR therefore represents a direct assault on these historical modes of survival and autonomy.

While many understandably interpret Delhi’s move as a threat, it may paradoxically serve as a moment of awakening. It challenges Nagas who believed in India’s sincerity to reconsider their assumptions and revisit the core questions: Who are we as a people? What is our political destiny? Can it be dictated from Delhi or Naypyidaw? The situation, though grave, can thus be reframed as what Gramsci (1971) called a “crisis of authority,” a juncture that forces subaltern groups to imagine new strategies and paradigms of struggle. The question is not merely whether this is a setback, but whether it can be transformed into what he further termed a “war of position” – a strategic reorientation that enables oppressed peoples to resist, reinterpret, and eventually transcend imposed structures.

Why a Paradigm Shift is Needed

Scholars such as Lederach (1997), Said (1978), Kelman (1999), and Roy (2004) argue that protracted conflicts and long-standing political stalemates cannot be addressed through conventional negotiation styles or technical fixes. These approaches often deepen mistrust and reproduce the very asymmetries that perpetuate conflict. What is required, instead, is a paradigm shift – a fundamental rethinking of concepts, strategies, and frameworks of struggle.

The Naga struggle, ongoing for nearly a century, illustrates this predicament. Decades of negotiations, ceasefires, and agreements have largely been elite-driven and confined to closed rooms. Elite negotiations in the Naga context are particularly flawed because they are conducted in opacity, without the knowledge or participation of the wider community. Such practices contradict the egalitarian and deliberative ethos of Naga political culturewhich has historically been grounded in village assemblies and collective decision-making. Furthermore, it is important to note that at the heart of the Naga way of life lies participatory democracy, which functions as the basis of decision-making in everyday affairs. So, when decisions about the people’s destiny, like in the context of Naga people, are made behind closed doors, they not only alienate the community but also erode the moral legitimacy of any settlement.Thus, they have failed to translate into substantive transformations in the lived realities of ordinary Nagas. As Lederach suggests, genuine breakthroughs do not emerge solely from formal elite talks, but from shifts in thought, planning, and relational structures that allow people to imagine alternatives. Similarly, Kelman’s (1999) work on identity-based conflicts underlines that solutions cannot be imposed through legal or technical settlements alone; they require recognition, empathy, and frameworks that validate the existential aspirations of oppressed groups.

Equally important is the recognition and respect of the political language of the Naga people. Negotiations that impose the dominant state’s categories and vocabularies on the oppressed often fail to reach honorable settlements because they deny the legitimacy of indigenous self-expression. As Connolly (1991) argues in Identity/Difference, democratic negotiation requires acknowledging difference rather than assimilating it into hegemonic frameworks. For Nagas, concepts such as sovereignty, nationhood, and self-determination carry meanings rooted in their history, culture, and lived struggles. To ignore or distort this political language by subsuming it into the legalistic idioms of the Indian or Myanmar states is to commit what Taylor (1994) calls a “misrecognition,” which not only constitutes disrespect but actively inflicts harms and germinates repercussions.

Comparative cases clearly illustrate this dynamic. In New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi process has shown how recognition of rangatiratanga (chieftainship or sovereignty) in Mâori political language is central to any honorable negotiation; ignoring it risks reducing Mâori aspirations to mere “minority rights” within a settler framework (Durie, 1998). In Canada, Inuit struggles for autonomy in Nunavut succeeded not only through legal bargaining but also through the state’s gradual recognition of Inuit political language around land, livelihood, and cultural survival (Abele & Prince, 2006). By contrast, in contexts where indigenous vocabularies are silenced – such as the suppression of Kurdish discourses of nationhood in Turkey – negotiations repeatedly collapse or remain fragile (Gunes & Lowe, 2015). For Nagas, therefore, an honorable settlement requires more than technical compromise; it demands recognition of their political language as constitutive of the negotiation process itself.

Similarly, political stalemates, as the literature on Southeast Asia and the Middle East demonstrates (Barnett, 2006; Richmond, 2011), are not neutral. They are structured by power asymmetries, colonial legacies, and competing narratives of legitimacy. For Nagas, the absence of a paradigm shift risks leaving the struggle perpetually deadlocked or suspended – neither defeated nor victorious, but trapped within a cycle of endless negotiations that only legitimize state power while sidelining indigenous sovereignty.

Rethinking the Struggle: Four Reflections

1. Terminologies: Language is not a neutral instrument; it is a site of power and so, it matters. As Said (1978) emphasized in Orientalism, colonial dominance is exercised not only through military and political means, but also through discursive regimes that shape how subject peoples are named, termed, framed and represented. Terms such as “insurgents,” “secessionists,” “separatists,” or “militants” have been systematically employed by the Indian and Myanmar states to frame the Naga struggle as illegitimate. These terminologies carry the danger of normalizing and further legitimizing state-sponsored violence and occupational practices (for example, the AFSPA and FMR). For instance, we need to, in fact, realize that theFMR itself, coined and defined unilaterally in Delhi’s ethos, was never a concession to the Nagas but a mechanism of control that presumed the authority to decide whether Nagas could freely move across the imposed border.

The real question should arise in our mind, “Who is India or Myanmar to decide or tell us Nagas whether we can move in our own land freely or not?”Let us be reminded of thatby framing mobility in statist terms, the occupational regimes not only denied the inherent right of Naga people to traverse their ancestral lands but also reinforced the colonial logic of partition. In this sense, such terminologies and policies delegitimize indigenous claims to sovereignty while consolidating the state’s narrative of legitimacy in a subtle way. Again, another question still lingers, “But are Nagas aware of it?”

The ability to tell our stories in our own language and terminology is not merely symbolic; it is foundational to reclaiming agency over our history and political future. As Ngig) wa Thiong’o (1986) argued in Decolonising the Mind, language is the carrier of culture and worldview, and when people are forced to narrate themselves through the occupier’s categories, they internalize subjugation. For Nagas, continuing to describe our struggle in the idioms of the Indian or Myanmar states – whether as an “insurgency,” “border issue,” or “law-and-order problem” – reinforces the colonial trap that denies our nationhood.

Comparative indigenous struggles underline why telling stories in one’s own language matters. In New Zealand, Mâori insistence on the use of tereo Mâori and the concept of rangatiratanga has reshaped constitutional debates, ensuring that negotiations reflect Mâori worldviews as explained above. Among the Sámi in Scandinavia, the use of indigenous terminology such as Sápmi (their homeland) and SámiidRiikkasearvi (the Sámi association) resists assimilation into Nordic national categories and reinforces transnational indigenous solidarity (Josefsen et al., 2015). In Canada, First Nations leaders have shown how employing their own political vocabularies – such as treaty rights and unceded territories – shifts the conversation from administrative inclusion to recognition of pre-existing sovereignty (Alfred, 2005). For Nagas, therefore, narrating our struggle in our own political and cultural language is not just an act of resistance but also a strategy for envisioning an honorable settlement.Again, to tell our story in and through our own language is not just about resistance but also about our very own existence as a people whose fundamental rights has been denied. By doing so, it means we refuse the occupational language trap and instead affirm a counter-discourse grounded in our historical and political rights.

The politics of naming and framing has profound implications for how struggles are perceived, both domestically and internationally. Bourdieu (1993) reminds us that “symbolic power” operates precisely through the imposition of categories that are misrecognized as neutral. For Naga scholars and leaders, uncritically adopting state-imposed terminologies risks reproducing colonial categories and undermining the moral legitimacy of the struggle. A paradigm shift, therefore, requires critical engagement with language, the conscious reclamation of indigenous terms of self-identification, and the articulation of counter-discourses that affirm the historical and political rights of the Naga people.

2. Political Correctness: The pursuit of political correctness in the context of occupiers often means aligning with narratives and frameworks defined by Delhi and Naypyidaw. Naga leaders, intellectuals, and organizations are frequently pressured to present themselves in ways that appear “reasonable” or “acceptable” to the occupational states. Yet this form of political correctness is embedded in what Spivak (1988) calls the “epistemic violence” of colonial discourse – it silences oppressed voices by compelling them to speak in the idioms of the oppressor.

This has consequences beyond rhetoric. For example, when Naga organizations adapt their positions to fit within Indian constitutionalism, they implicitly validate the state’s sovereign claims and legal frameworks designed to eradicate indigenous aspirations. As Chatterjee (1993) has argued in The Nation and Its Fragments, the colonial/postcolonial state often incorporates nationalist resistance by confining it within state-sanctioned categories of legitimacy. For Nagas, therefore, the critical question becomes: Whose definition of political correctness guides our struggle? To break the stalemate, Naga intellectuals and leaders must resist the temptation to seek approval within the hegemon’s framework and instead cultivate what Santos (2014) terms an “epistemology of the South” – a politics grounded in subaltern knowledge, not metropolitan validation.

3. Decolonization: At its core, the Naga struggle is an anti-colonial struggle. Fanon (1963) famously described decolonization as “the creation of new men,” a process that is not merely about the transfer of power but about the radical transformation of society, culture, and consciousness. For Nagas, decolonization means confronting not only the presence of Indian and Myanmar state structures, but also the lingering colonial legacies within our own frameworks of resistance.

This internal dimension of decolonization requires a conscious effort to avoid reproducing colonial categories in the very attempt to overcome them. Quijano’s (2000) notion of the “coloniality of power” is particularly instructive here: colonial legacies persist long after formal independence, structuring knowledge systems, governance models, and identity categories. If the Naga struggle does not actively engage in epistemic and cultural decolonization, it risks legitimizing the very structures it seeks to dismantle. A paradigm shift, then, entails reclaiming indigenous epistemologies, governance practices, and land relations – anchoring the struggle not in colonial recognition but in the lived sovereignty of the people.

4. The What and the How: The objectives of the Naga struggle – the what – are clear: freedom, dignity, and sovereignty. Yet in today’s fragmented and postmodern global order, the how of struggle is equally decisive. Tilly (2006) reminds us that contentious politics is shaped by repertoires of contention – innovative strategies, tactics, and alliances that movements develop over time. The absence of a paradigm shift has left Naga strategies largely confined to negotiations, armed resistance, and appeals to international forums – tactics that, while important, may no longer suffice in the current conjuncture.

Expanding the how requires both innovation and adaptability. As Escobar (2018) argues in Designs for the Pluriverse, indigenous movements can prefigure alternative futures by creating autonomous institutions, experimenting with local governance, and embedding resistance in everyday practices. For Nagas, this might mean investing in cross-border solidarity networks, building indigenous-controlled economic systems, and leveraging international human rights discourses without becoming dependent on them. The task, if I may recommend one, is to improvise strategies that ensure the struggle does not become entrapped in state-defined negotiations, but instead cultivates the resilience, creativity, and sovereignty of the people themselves.

Toward a Transformative Future
The scrapping of the FMR by the Modi government is emblematic of broader efforts to erase indigenous autonomy and enforce statist borders. Yet moments of crisis can also catalyze new imaginations. As Gramsci reminds us, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The challenge for the Naga struggle is to transform this interregnum into an opportunity for renewal.

Again, the act of scrapping the FMR is not an isolated act of policy, but part of what Wolfe (2006) termed the “logic of elimination” inherent in settler colonialism and occupier’s mentality, where the state continually seeks to undermine indigenous sovereignty by fragmenting communities and restricting mobility. Borders, as Anderson (2013) notes – be it imposed or not in our case – are never neutral lines; they are instruments of power designed to regulate identity, belonging, kinship and access to land. In the case of Nagas, the FMR’s abolition functions as both a symbolic and material attempt to assert state authority over a people whose political imagination refuses to be confined within arbitrary boundaries.

We are not alone! Other indigenous movements offer comparative lessons: the Zapatistas in Chiapas, for instance, redefined their struggle not by seeking validation from the Mexican state, but by constructing autonomous municipalities that embodied alternative forms of governance (Stahler-Sholk, 2007). Similarly, Sámi movements in Scandinavia have shifted from appeals for recognition to building transnational solidarity networks that circumvent statist borders. These cases illustrate that moments of structural repression can become generative spaces for creativity, if seized strategically.

A paradigm shift, therefore, does not mean abandoning core aspirations. Rather, it demands rethinking the frameworks, languages, and strategies through which those aspirations are pursued. It requires intellectual courage from Naga scholars and leaders, a decolonial reorientation of thought, and the creativity to imagine futures not dictated by Delhi or Naypyidaw but grounded in the lived realities and sovereignties of the Naga people.It is also equally essential that the paradigm shift must justify the notion of Naga nationhood. As uncle late Kaka, being one of the most articulate Naga intellectuals, reminds us, nationhood for the Nagas is inseparable from their land and identity. In his reflections on the foundations of Naga nationhood, he wrote: “An animal is not constrained by a national identity or a geographical identity. But humankindis bounded by geographical boundaries. He is chained by national identities” (Iralu, 2013). Elsewhere, he emphasized that “the national identity of a people and its geographical identity is inseparable, and an invasion of a country is not just a geographical invasion of a country but an invasion of the total historical, political, racial and cultural identity of a nation” (Iralu, 2000). So, if we examine the FMR issue carefully from a political science perspective, both the imposed boundary in the Naga homeland and the FMR function as indexical symbols of invasion, representing its culmination in everyday life.These insights,in fact, underline that the Naga struggle cannot be reduced to mere administrative questions of autonomy or federal arrangements; it is fundamentally about preserving a people’s identity and sovereignty in its totality.

Such a shift must also be collective: it calls for mobilizing the wider Naga public, not only political elites, in shaping the vision of freedom and governance. In this sense, a people’s struggle is sustained not merely in negotiation rooms or ceasefire agreements, but in everyday practices of resistance, cultural renewal, and intergenerational transmission of political memory.Only then can the struggle move beyond stalemate and embody what Lederach (2005) calls “the moral imagination” – the capacity to envision and enact possibilities for peace and justice where none seems to exist.The moral imagination is not a passive hope but an active reorientation of struggle, where the future is crafted through courage, creativity, and collective resilience. For Nagas, the task ahead is to convert crisis into possibility, repression into renewal, and imposed borders into opportunities for solidarity that affirm our enduring sovereignty as a people.

~ Athong Makury

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