Awaiting nachiso

Time is known to be a great healer, but the injustice of some wounds cannot be forgotten. The Naga people had a land of their own until 1826, when the British colonialists, through the Treaty of Yandabo, drew the Indo-Burma boundary, thus arbitrarily dividing the Naga tribes and their lands between the two countries. The Naga resistance to British subjugation began in 1832, when the British army entered their 'homeland' for the first time. The Naga Hills, then part of Assam, were classified by the Indian Home Rule Act (1919) as 'Backward Areas' that were to remain outside the purview of the Assam Provincial Assembly. In 1929, the Naga leaders sent a memorandum to the Simon commission asserting that, after the British left, the Naga people wanted to be left as they were before the advent of colonialism – independent and free. There was some hope when the Government of India Act (1935) declared the Naga Hills as 'Excluded Areas' from both British India and British Burma.

In June 1946, the first agreement was signed between the Naga National Council (NNC, the first all-Naga political organisation, formed earlier that year) and the interim government of India. The agreement stated that a protected state would be formed in 'Nagalim' under the NNC, with India as 'the guardian power' for ten years, at the end of which the agreement would be reviewed. However, on 14 August 1947, the declaration of Naga independence by the NNC led to a dramatic volte-face, and the interim government deemed the previous agreement to be invalid. Thereafter, in May 1951, a Naga-organised plebiscite in all Naga-inhabited areas resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of Naga independence. The Indian government responded by sending the Assam Rifles to the Naga Hills.