Books | A Problem Called Manipur

 How the Naga resolution is more complex than what the government makes it out to be

Sudeep Chakravarti

The middle-aged Naga rebel looks out of the window. Hard rain masks the jade-green hills in this unspoiled northern suburb of Kohima. It’s a tranquil afternoon in early-August. We’re at the home of a mutual acquaintance, sharing tea and conversation.

The former deputy chief of NSCN(I-M)’s army glances at the Walther PPK handgun on a table by his side. For some minutes he had inspected the Walther, a wedding gift to our acquaintance from the faction’s army chief at the time, Phungthing Shimrang. Our host had brought it out from a safe to briefly show it off and kept the weapon by the tea service before leaving the room.

Ramkathing Varah opens and inspects the emptied magazine, slides it back in, thumbs off the safety, primes the slide, aims down the barrel at the teakwood bookshelf at the end of the room, and pulls the trigger. Click. It is all fluid motion that lasts seconds. He gently replaces the Walther on the table, and responds to my query about what could happen if a political understanding isn’t reached about securing the Naga homelands in Manipur.

‘Manipur nathaki jabo,’ he says simply.

There won’t be a Manipur. More precisely, there won’t be a Manipur as we know it. According to Varah, it’s a possible outcome of one of the deadliest games of political chess being played in India.

He maintains that if the government in Manipur, Nagaland’s southern neighbour with homelands of several Naga tribes across more than a third of its territory, doesn’t agree to the demand of its resident Nagas for administrative autonomy—dealing directly with New Delhi—Manipur will break. It’s what the apex agency of the Nagas in Manipur, the United Naga Council (UNC), terms ‘Alternative Arrangement’.

Varah’s observation is not an idle one. The man carries combat reputation and has spawned lore. In his younger days Major General Ramkathing Varah is said to have ridden a bicycle to the Imphal home of Yangmaso Shaiza, a former chief minister of Manipur, and shot him dead in front of his family. Varah escaped in the ensuing fuss. That was in 1984, in the glory days of united NSCN—four years before a split into its first se