Guwahati: The Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland – Issak Muivah (NSCN-IM) asserted on Monday that the Indo-Naga peace negotiations are not being hampered by its demand for the Naga flag and constitution.
The organisation said in a statement that the Indian government is “totally accountable for the delay” and that the inclusion of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was the “real point of delay starting”.
“Today, the Nagas are completely baffled by the Indo-Naga peace talks and have started expressing their entire dissatisfaction by blaming the very persons who brought about the ceasefire and the peace process.
“Some people believed mistakenly that the flag and constitution issues were the reason why the peace talks were being delayed. However, this is false because the Framework Agreement (FA) includes both the flag and the constitution as essential parts.
The Government of India has acknowledged the distinctiveness of Naga history and its position that Nagas were never a part of the Indian Union, either by conquest or voluntarily, according to the NSCN-IM. Of course, a Naga national movement cannot exist without a flag and a constitution.
It said that the Plebiscite of 1951 and the declaration of Naga Independence Day on August 14, 1947, had been acknowledged and accepted by the Framework Agreement. The FA is now represented by the flag and the constitution, it continued.
The organisation claimed that acknowledging and accepting Naga sovereignty entails sharing sovereign powers as described in the FA. It was asserted that the power partition was not authorised by an Indian constitutional clause.
The irony is that this issue was actually settled a long time ago, but the RSS element intervened by raising concerns over the existence of two flags and two constitutions.
The RSS/Hindutva manifesto directly opposed the FA’s guiding principles. From this moment on, the genuine delay began.