A. Anato Swu
(Writing from County Antrim, Norther Ireland)
When rubbish is left unattended, it does not disappear. It accumulates, spreads, stinks and eventually turns a once-healthy neighbourhood into an unbearable place to live. The same danger confronts Naga society today.
Consider a household that refuses to dispose of its rubbish. On the first day, the pile may be small enough to ignore. By the second, it has grown. Soon, the stench becomes difficult to bear, flies and vermin multiply, and the surrounding environment begins to deteriorate. Yet, instead of cleaning up the mess, the occupants gradually adjust to the foul smell. What once demanded immediate attention becomes part of their daily existence.
The consequences soon extend beyond the household. Neighbours who neither produced the rubbish nor consented to its accumulation are forced to endure its stench. Their health, comfortand environment are compromised by a problem they did not create.
This is the danger of allowing a political problem to remain unresolved for generations. What begins as a failure of leadership can become a crisis for society. A temporary impasse becomes a permanent condition. What should provoke public concern is normalised, and what should never be accepted gradually becomes the order of the day.
The Naga political issue demands an uncomfortable but necessary question: have we become so accustomed to the “trash” surrounding our political struggle that we no longer recognise how deeply it is poisoning our collective future?
For decades, our people have endured political declarations, repeated dialogues, competing interpretations of agreements, factional rivalries, public statements and renewed assurances of an imminent solution. Yet the long-awaited political settlement remains elusive. The vocabulary changes, interlocutors come and go, committees meet, resolutions are adopted and hope is rekindled. But the fundamental question remains unanswered: when will dialogue produce a settlement that the Naga people can understand, assess and accept?
We have become accustomed to living amid the debris of an unfinished political journey. Worse, we risk allowing our children to inherit it as though it were their natural environment.
The Naga political struggle did not emerge from a vacuum. It grew out of a deeply held aspiration concerning identity, history, political rights and the future of the Naga people. Generations have made sacrifices, endured hardship and carried the burden of a cause they believed was greater than themselves.
That history deserves respect. The sacrifices of those who genuinely dedicated their lives to the Naga cause must never be trivialised. Nor should the legitimate aspirations of the Naga people be dismissed simply because the political process has become complicated. But respect for history must not become an excuse for refusing to confront present-day failures.
A movement that began with a collective aspiration cannot indefinitely justify a fragmented political reality. A cause that demands sacrifice cannot become a convenient source of personal privilege. And a struggle undertaken in the name of the people cannot be treated as the private property of those who claim to represent them.
One of the most damaging features of the Naga political landscape today is the proliferation of factions, organisations and competing authorities, often claiming legitimacy from the same historical struggle. Each division weakens the collective voice. Every rivalry complicates negotiations. Competing claims make it harder to establish who can speak authoritatively for the people and who can deliver on a commitment.
The result is a political landscape cluttered with rival claims, conflicting positions and overlapping structures of authority. Instead of presenting a coherent and credible political position, we risk projecting disunity that diminishes our bargaining strength. And while we argue among ourselves, the years continue to pass.
Two milestones illustrate both the promise of the peace process and the frustration surrounding it: the Framework Agreement signed between the Government of India and the NSCN (IM) on 3 August 2015, and the Agreed Position signed between the Government of India and the Working Committee of the Naga National Political Groups (WC-NNPGs) on 17 November 2017.
These developments raised expectations that decades of political confrontation might finally give way to an honourable settlement. Yet the agreements have not translated into a final, broadly accepted political conclusion. Differences over their interpretation, the terms of a settlement and the way forward continue to cloud the process.
In September 2019, the then interlocutor, R. N. Ravi, announced that negotiations had concluded, with the expectation that a solution would follow. But a conclusive settlement did not materialise. Subsequent developments exposed how far the negotiating parties remained from resolving their differences.
The issue is not simply whether agreements were signed. It is whether their contents, implications and implementation can be clearly explained, responsibly negotiated and translated into a durable political arrangement. The Government of India cannot escape scrutiny for the prolonged uncertainty. Neither can the Naga negotiating groups escape scrutiny for failing to bridge differences and build sufficient consensus around a workable conclusion.
It is particularly troubling when agreements are celebrated as historic achievements while the people are left asking what precisely has been agreed, what remains disputed, what can realistically be implemented and within what timeframe. An agreement suspended indefinitely between promise and implementation risks becoming a monument to political indecision rather than an instrument of peace.
A political process cannot survive indefinitely on declarations of sincerity. It must produce measurable progress, transparent communication and a credible roadmap towards a conclusion.
The appointment of Ajit Lal, a retired Indian Police Service officer and former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, as the new interlocutor in September 2026, together with the reported move to include a Union minister or a group of Union ministers in the negotiation framework, has created another opening for renewed engagement. The NSCN (IM) has welcomed the development while reiterating its demand for a third-party guarantor and its position on a Naga flag and constitution. These issues illustrate the continuing gap between the parties’ positions.
The new arrangement must be used to confront outstanding differences honestly, clarify the status of previous commitments and establish a credible path towards a settlement acceptable to the people. The question is no longer whether enough dialogue has taken place. It is whether the political will exists to bring it to a meaningful conclusion.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable subject is the conduct of those who have come to occupy positions of influence within the political and underground establishments. Not everyone who joined an underground organisation did so for selfish reasons. Many may have acted from genuine conviction, a sense of historical injustice, political commitment or a desire to defend their people. Their motives and sacrifices deserve fair consideration.
Nevertheless, questions must be asked about those who entered the underground after abandoning their studies, losing direction in life or finding themselves without a clear future. For some, the movement may have represented an escape from personal difficulties; for others, the attraction may have been the prospect of authority, income, status or an easier life than ordinary employment could offer.
These are serious allegations and should not be indiscriminately applied to every member of an underground organisation. But neither should the language of sacrifice be used to shield misconduct from public examination. A political movement cannot claim moral authority simply because its members carry a revolutionary label. Its legitimacy must be reflected in its conduct, accountability and service to the people.
When individuals exploit the movement for personal enrichment, when authority becomes a means of securing private benefits, or when people are compelled to pay multiple levies to competing organisations, the distinction between public service and private enterprise becomes dangerously blurred.
The public has every right to ask who is genuinely working for a political settlement and who has grown comfortable in the uncertainty that prevents one. Who is prepared to sacrifice personal privilege for the common good, and who expects ordinary people to keep sacrificing so that a privileged few can retain their positions? Who is willing to accept accountability, and who invokes the cause only when questioned about their conduct?
These questions must not be dismissed as anti-Naga or anti-movement rhetoric. They arise from concern for the movement’s credibility and the people’s future. The real hypocrite is not the person who raises uncomfortable questions. It is the person who publicly preaches sacrifice, unity and patriotism while privately benefiting from division, fear and the prolonged suffering of the people.
A genuine leader should be willing to set aside personal ambition for collective progress. A self-serving leader does the opposite, using the collective cause as a shield for personal interests. If the movement has become a source of livelihood for individuals who have little interest in bringing it to a conclusion, the public must confront that reality. No historical cause, however noble, can justify a permanent system of unaccountable privilege.
Every additional faction claiming an independent mandate complicates an already difficult political landscape. Each split raises fresh questions of representation, legitimacy, authority and accountability. Every rivalry risks turning a common aspiration into a competition for influence.
Fragmentation also makes meaningful negotiations more difficult. The Government of India can point to divergent positions among Naga groups when explaining the difficulty of reaching a settlement. Differences within the Naga family can weaken our ability to negotiate with a common purpose, even when the groups involved have legitimate reasons for holding different positions.
We must distinguish between legitimate political differences and destructive factionalism. Differences of opinion are natural in any society and can enrich negotiations when addressed honestly. But divisions sustained by personal ambition, rivalry, territorial influence or competing claims to authority are another matter.
A common cause cannot survive indefinitely when every leader insists on being the principal, every faction claims the exclusive right to speak for the people, and every disagreement becomes a reason for another division.
The consequences are visible in the daily lives of ordinary Nagas. Business owners struggle under the burden of competing demands. Investors may hesitate to operate where the rules are uncertain.
Young people see their opportunities narrowed by economic stagnation, insecurity and the absence of a clear political horizon. Families bear the emotional and financial costs of a crisis that has outlived generations.
Multiple taxation, threats, intimidation and other forms of coercion attributed to armed actors have repeatedly raised concerns among civil society. These are not abstract political inconveniences.
They affect livelihoods, public confidence and the prospects for development. The irony is painful: a movement justified in the name of protecting the people can lose their confidence when its competing structures become an additional burden on them.
We cannot demand respect for our political aspirations while ignoring the consequences of our internal conduct.
The Naga people should never be ashamed of asserting their identity, history or political aspirations. Nor should we measure the worth of our struggle solely by what people elsewhere in India think of us. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge the damage that prolonged disunity and the inability to conclude a political process can do to our credibility in the wider Indian public sphere.
When a people negotiate for decades, sign agreements and repeatedly announce renewed hope without reaching a durable conclusion, scepticism is inevitable. When multiple groups claim to represent the same people but cannot establish a workable common position, outsiders may question the coherence of the movement. When competing authorities coexist without a transparent system of accountability, the political struggle risks becoming an object of ridicule rather than a cause that commands serious attention.
It is not Naga identity that invites such criticism. It is the spectacle of a historic cause being undermined by its own contradictions.
Our people have a proud history of courage, resilience and political consciousness. Yet we risk allowing the public image of our struggle to be defined by factional disputes, conflicting declarations and endless negotiations. We must ask ourselves whether we are strengthening our collective position or giving others reasons to doubt our ability to manage our differences.
Unity does not require everyone to surrender their convictions. It requires a willingness to distinguish between the interests of the people and the ambitions of individuals. Without that distinction, our political rhetoric will remain loud while our collective influence continues to diminish.
- A. Anato Swu
Satakha Town
