Introduction to Naga film Story

Dear Friends,
Thank you for inviting me to the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. It is a great honour for me to come to your wonderful country and to present my films to you. I am especially grateful to Professor Hidemitsu Kuroki, Ms. Riho Isaka and Ms. Naoko Murakami for the efforts they have made to bring me here and for giving me an opportunity for interacting with you. I look forward to learning more about the rich culture and ancient tradition of your great country, about which I have heard so much through books and films. I also hope to imbibe the rich experience of Prof Kuroki and the university in general in peace-building initiatives and conflict resolution.

Three of my films will be screened here today. I will provide an introduction to each of them to help you understand their context. I will begin with a brief introduction of myself and then I will talk about the first film in the schedule, Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence.

I was born in Kerala, one of the southern-most states of India. Kerala has an unusual geography and history which make it very different from the other states of India. With the Arabian Sea in the west, the Western Ghats towering 500-2700 m in the east and networked by forty four rivers, Kerala enjoys unique geographical features that have made it one of the most sought after tourist destinations in Asia. Waterfalls. Sprawling plantations and paddy fields. Ayurvedic health holidays. Enchanting art forms. Magical festivals. Historic and cultural monuments. An exotic cuisine.... An equable climate. A long shoreline with serene beaches. Tranquil streches of emerald backwaters. Lush hill stations and exotic wildlife. And what's more, every one of these charming destinations is only a two hour drive from the other. Kerala is one of the last homes of the Asiatic elephant. Ayurveda which evolved around 600 BC in India is a system of medicine that stresses the prevention of body ailments in addition to curing them. It is a complete naturalistic system and Kerala is the only State in India which practices Ayurveda with absolute dedication.

Kerala, India 's most advanced society : A hundred percent literate people. World-class health care systems. India's lowest infant mortality and highest life expectancy rates. The highest physical quality of life in India. Peaceful and pristine, Kerala is also India's cleanest State. Women are also empowered in Kerala. In fact many families follow the matrilineal system and my own name is my mother's family name. Kerala was also the first state in the world to democratically elect a communist government.

I was born in 1974 and completed my BA in English from Calicut University, Kerala. I then acquired a Master's in Business Administration. Kerala has a very strong tradition of filmmaking, both fiction and non-fiction. During my undergraduate days, I became involved in student politics and made a film on the destruction of tropical evergreen forests in the Nilgiri biosphere. After completing my MBA I moved to Delhi and began documenting the Naga and Kashmiri political movements. Two films have evolved from this - Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence (on the Naga struggle) and PAPA 2 (on enforced disappearances in Kashmir). My film Hey Ram!! Genocide in the Land of Gandhi, on the Gujarat riots, was the first on the subject, and was widely used to raise awareness about the riots. I followed this up with Voices from Gujarat on the continuing peace process in Gujarat.

I have made several films on the dalit issue. Resilient Rhythms documents a range of responses to the dalit issue, from identity politics to armed struggle. My other dalit issue films are Of Inhuman Bondage, on manual scavenging, and Your Slaves No Longer, on the land struggles of Musahars (a dalit community).

I have worked as Location Director for a Channel 4 News report on the funding of Hindu Extremist organisations and shot the film in UK and India. This film – "Hindu Nationalism in Britain" – was telecast in UK on the day of the Gujarat elections and was widely reported in the Indian media as well. The report has subsequently been tabled in the British Parliament.

My recent campaign films Twice Evicted and Caste Out have been on the Tsunami and its aftermath. I am currently making a film on the peace process between India and Pakistan, with Kashmir as the Central issue. I am also making a film on the Maoist movement in Nepal.

I have given you a rather detailed introduction of myself and where I come from. With your permission, I will return to today's programme. It is interesting that the first film in the schedule is about a subject that has several touchpoints with Japan, though this may not be very well-known.

When I moved to Delhi in 1998, I met a few Naga students at the office of the Naga People's Movement for Human Rights, and became interested in their political movement. I went to Nagaland, a state in India's north-east, to shoot the 20th anniversary of the NPMHR. After the first day's shoot, in the night, while having a drink, a Naga friend told me that the meeting ground had been used as a concentration camp by the Indian armed forces in the 1960's. I was shocked that the Indian government could have done something like that and that too under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, who is hailed as the father of Asian democracy. And for many years all these things have been hidden from the rest of the Indian public, in whose name these crimes were supposedly committed.

I would like to explain a little more about the situation in the north-eastern part of India, which is where the Nagas live. India is a very large country with numerous races, religions, languages and cultures. It is said that in India, the local language changes every 11 km. While this may be an exaggeration, it is certainly true that the people who live within the political boundaries of India are very different from each other.

India's north-east, which is where the Naga lands are mostly located, is made of seven states. The people who belong to this region are mostly of mongoloid descent and in appearance, lifestyle, language and culture, they are very different from the mainland. They have always been separate from mainstream India and this isolation continues till date.

Till the 19th century the contacts of the Nagas with the outside world were minimal. They lived in fortified, self sufficient sovereign village republics and engaged in fierce inter village wars involving head hunting. In 1826 British colonial activities started moving towards the Naga territories. The Nagas' fierce resistance to this ensured that the British were never able to control their territories and as long as the British ruled India, the major part of the Naga territory was referred to as "Unadministered Areas". In these places, the British administration had no presence or meaning and Naga customary law and the village and tribal councils functioned with substantive autonomy.

It is easy to see that the Nagas never considered themselves part of India. When the Indian independence struggle led by Gandhiji became a mass movement at the end of the nineteenth century, the Nagas did not participate in it. It is also noteworthy that even the mainstream Indian nationalists did not involve the Nagas in their struggle, though the Nagas had a long history of resistance to the British. The Nagas conveyed clearly to the British and the Indians that they considered themselves a sovereign nation and did not want to become part of India. Hence on August 14, 1947, one day before India's independence, the Nagas declared independence. They conveyed this to the British, the Indians and the United Nations and affirmed it by a plebiscite in 1951.

At the beginning of this introduction, I had said there was several touchpoints between the Naga political struggle and Japan. I will now describe the first of these. At the time of the Second World War, a section of Indian nationalists raised the Indian National Army to free India from British colonial rule through military combat. The INA was actively supported by the Japanese Imperial Army as an additional force to fight against the British. The composition of the INA was diverse: it included many Indian soldiers who were taken prisoner when the Japanese captured Burma. It also included A Z Phizo, the father of the Naga national movement, who held the rank of captain. In February 1944, the combined Japanese and Indian forces marched up to Kohima, which is the present-day capital of the Indian state of Nagaland. In Kohima, the combined forces fought against the British army in a very hard battle for 64 days but ultimately lost. An estimated 8000 Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Kohima, and this loss is said to be the beginning of the Japanese Army's retreat in the Second World War. Kohima now has a famous war memorial which is also a joint cemetery for British, Indian and Japanese soldiers. The Japanese government, Japanese survivors of the Battle of Kohima, and families of Japanese soldiers who died there, have helped build a catholic church in Kohima so that memorial prayers can be offered for the dead. Even today, there are many Japanese visitors to the church and the war memorial and there is even a Naga-Japanese Society in Kohima.

To return to the Naga struggle, clearly, the Nagas were not part of Gandhiji's non-violent mass movement for independence. They only related to the militant part of the Indian independence struggle. At the same time, the Indian nationalist leaders could never understand the Nagas because of cultural differences. The Nagas' declaration of independence, combined with their persistent demand for a separate homeland made the Indians suspicious. The Nagas met Gandhiji and told him they did not want to be part of the Indian union. While this made Gandhiji very sad, he said that he would not try to force the Nagas into joining India. It was with this strong support from the leader of the Indian independence struggle, that the Nagas declared independence on August 14, 1947.

The other Indian leaders, however, did not take this seriously. Nor did they ever try to engage the Nagas in dialogue. They continued to treat the Nagas' demands as a law and order problem, and finally, sent in the Indian army. This marked the beginning of the first phase of the Nagas' armed struggle against the Indian state. At the time everyone was involved in the battle against India. Ordinary women would cook food for the militants and carry messages for them hidden in their hair or clothes. There was immense support for the struggle. And the more the people fought, the harsher was the state repression including aerial bombing of civilian population and setting up of concentration camps to break the militants' support structure.

The second phase of the Naga struggle started in 1963 when the Indian government managed to split the Nagas with a so-called peace accord. The accord gave the Nagas a state within India called 'Nagaland'. But most of the Naga lands remained outside this new state. In 1975, the Indian government forced some Nagas to sign an accord in Shillong whereby they accepted India's constitution; effectively making them part of the Indian union. The father of the Naga nationalist movement, A Z Phizo, was in exile in London. He, however, remained silent on the Shillong Accord.

This was a travesty of faith for a large section of Naga nationalists. In 1980, the united Naga national movement split and SS Khaplang, Isak Swu and Th Muivah formed the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN). The NSCN continued the armed struggle against the Indian state and also ran a parallel government. In 1988, the NSCN also split into the NSCN (I-M) and (K). The parting was less ideological and more to do with tribal egos. In 1988 when the NSCN split, more than 100 of the I-M group were massacred and Isak and Muivah barely escaped. Subsequently sections of the Khaplang group are accused of colluding with Nagaland political leaders and Indian military agencies.

The I-M group has emerged as the dominant group in the armed struggle against India. Its militant struggle against the Indian government continued till 1997 when both sides declared a ceasefire. This marked the beginning of the third phase of the Naga struggle. Following the ceasefire, there have been many highest-level peace talks between the Indian state and the Naga leadership. In 2001, the Indian prime minister met the Naga leaders in Osaka. This is another touchpoint between Japan and the Naga political movement. There have also been meetings in Paris, Bangkok, Amsterdam and the biggest of them all, New Delhi. The New Delhi meeting was a breakthrough as it was the first time the Naga leaders met the Indian Prime Minister in India.

A major roadblock however, for the Naga movement is their demand for Greater Nagalim, or the unification of all Naga territories. The British had divided the Naga lands between Myanmar and India, and the Indians divided them into four other states. Also, since the British could not subdue the Nagas themselves, they encouraged inter-tribal warfare. They brought the Kuki tribe from Myanmar and planted them as buffers around Naga territories. This ensured that the Nagas were contained to some extent. Post-independence, the Indian government has continued this policy. The Indian government promised the Kukis land and helped them to raise a militant outfit to fight against the Naga insurgents. As a result, when the Nagas called for unification, there were violent demonstrations from the Kukis, and also from non-tribal groups like the Meiteis. These other groups feared the domination of the Nagas, and also felt that the territorial integrity of the states to which they belonged, was threatened. The violent demonstrations gave the Indian government a good excuse to reject the Naga demand.

Let me summarize the main reasons for the Indo-Naga conflict. The Nagas believe that they are a distinct people with a unique history. They have never been part of the political or cultural ethos of India. As a distinct nation, they feel they have the right to self determination. The Nagas also see themselves as a homogenous people in terms of their culture and society, divided by colonial powers. Hence they aspire to be politically reintegrated. The Nagas sense of alienation is constantly reinforced by the discrimination done against them. The Government Of India, in return, has responded militarily to Naga aspirations deeming them secessionist, a law and order problem and terrorism. Violent oppression and human rights abuse, especially against women, has produced more violence. It has also sought to split the Naga national movement by exploiting tribal differences that have fed factional violence and produced cycles of revenge violence.

So this is the present state in which the Naga political movement finds itself. In my film I have tried to show the history of the Naga nationalist movement and also show something about their culture. I would now like to bring up the last on my list of the touchpoints between Japan and the Naga political struggle. On November 14, 2002, members of a Japanese charity supported by the government and business houses arrived in Kohima to apologize to the Nagas for the atrocities they committed on the local population at the time of the Second World War. An eighty-year old war veteran, Dovi Khate, formally accepted the apology on the behalf of the Nagas and granted pardon. "My friends were tortured by the Japanese and I was very bitter but now that they have apologised, it is all over," Khate said. The famous epitaph at the Kohima War Memorial reads: "When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today." But no tomorrows ever dawn from the darkness of war.

On March 10, 2004, a group of Japanese, British and Indian war veterans met at the Kohima War Memorial for a special memorial service and to take steps towards reconciliation. Masao Hirakubo, 84, a Japanese Catholic who was in Kohima for two months during the war, said a part of him remained with his many friends and fellow soldiers who did not return from the battlefield. He said he came to renew the "bond with the dead and to bring peace and reconciliation." The dead, he added, would "never want such a battle to be repeated."

On August 15, 2005, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized for Japan's role in the Second World War on the 60th anniversary of the war's end, and vowed Japan would never again take "the path to war." This year was also the 60th anniversary of one of the biggest ever crimes committed on the human race. I am talking about the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States of America. The US has never expressed regret at this heinous crime; in fact, it has always justified itself. There cannot be any meaningful reconciliation until there is just peace. 9/11 has changed the face of the world. No amount of weapons including nuclear ones can save any nation from its so-called enemies. In this neo-liberal economic world order, nation states have just become security states and have withdrawn from welfare activities. There can be peace in the world only if there are civil society initiatives and direct people-to-people dialogues.

There will be peace in this world only if there is no social, economic, political or cultural hegemony over nations, people, races, religions or communities. Most of the nationality movements in Southeast Asia – including the Naga movement – have their genesis in our colonial history. Today a different kind of colonialism is trying to capture the whole globe. These imperialist forces have already made their intentions very clear in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This film Naga Story: The Other Side of Silence is about 3 million indigenous people who have been fighting for their right to dignity, self-determination and freedom. Let my conclude my introduction by quoting the last interview in the film. A Naga elder says: Some nations are big. Some nations are small. But that does not mean big nations should oppress the small nations. That way, dear friends, it is a film against imperialism. Now I invite all of you to watch this small film and I hope you will like it. Thank you.