Naga’s Right To Self Determination

The dynamics of the politics of identity, ethnicity and self-determination seems to be at climax today be lying many ideologies who once thought that ethnic dynamism was a non-issue for the 20th and 21st Centuries. This is for the fact that many peoples and/or nations are still “unrepresented” in the comity of the world-the United Nations Organisation (UNO) as equal partners. Through the UNO, the world for the first time has become a family of nations. Many nations have become independent from their so-called colonial maters. India is one of the States that is celebrating its fifty years of independence. However, there is yet another ugly face of the emergence of several independent States (viz., in multi-national States) that has not been well addressed. This is the case of the “unrepresented nations/peoples” that have been arbitrarily annexed into the stronger and bigger newly formed independent States so that they remain as “marginalised” nations in the then existing States system. nagas are said to be one of the peoples and/or nations who were arbitrarily annexed by India and Myanmar (erstwhile Burma). Today, the Nagas are living in two sovereign States as unhappy people. This book, The Nagas; Right to Self determination:.. is a historical and holistic account of the Nagas struggle for their right to self-determination to be independent from India and Myanmar with special reference to India. This work thus mainly covers the Nagas’ old way of life, the emergence of the Naga movement and the later developments till 1999 and the perceptions of the Nagas on self-determination. The author dates back into the remote Naga past traditions and articulates them to the development of the Modern Naga national movement. This ork is the outcome of a combination of an inter-disciplinary academic research and personal experiences as the author is a Naga himself and an active social worker. This book is perhaps the only exhaustive and holistic work on the Naga movement that has been furnished so far by any researcher and/or writer. This work, it is hoped, will be most helpful to scholars, policy makers, the Nagas themselves and persons interested in the Naga movement. The book will also be of equal importance to those involved in the area of conflict resolution/management/ethnic dynamism and so on.

Dr. R. Vashum is form Marem Village, Ukhrul District (Manipur). He did his schooling in a few schools in Ukhrul district and Imphal (in Manipur). His Pre-University and University (B.Sc.) were done in D.M. College of Science, Imphal. He obtained post-graduate degree in Anthropology (Social) from the University of Delhi. He was awarded Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Delhi (Department of Anthropology) for the research work- ‘Nagas and the Question of Self-Determination….’ He has participated in many academic seminars and conferences even as he had coordinated them. He has to his credit several articles and book reviews published in leading journals. He has also co-edited a book on the Nagas, entitled, ‘Nagas at Work’. Right from his School days, he has been a very active social workers in the regional and national levels holding key executive positions. He is now actively engaged with his post-doctoral research on the project- ‘Indo –Naga Conflict: Problem and Resolution’ under the aegis of the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi (which findings will be published shortly). He is currently in the Research Department, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. He has a wide range of academic interests some of which includes areas related to social change, tribal transformation, social stratification, social movements, ethnicity and identity, nationalism, self-determination, self-identification, human rights, collective rights, social democracy, social justice, social/cultural ecology, marginalised society, methodology, philosophy of social science, and synthesis of inter-disciplinary ideas and approaches.