Guwahati, May 10
He is a rebel who is flown in BSF planes around the country. When he moves, it is in a motorcade, surrounded by officials and security men, much as a high government officer would. While other militants languish in jails, the Government of India once moved at great speed to keep him out of one. He leads an ‘army’ which has not fought for the last 13 years, and in this lies the key to his special status.

With a professorial manner and sartorial elegance, this bespectacled man is the unlikely boss of an army of insurgents. Thuingaleng Muivah is the general secretary of Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) or NSCN-IM and a hardened rebel leader to the core. He heads the oldest insurgency in the country that now seems to have lost its steam. The long truce raised hopes of a permanent solution to the Naga rebellion, yet peace was shattered by recent rumblings in the country’s North-East and all because of the seemingly innocuous desire of Muivah to visit his ancestral village in Manipur.

He lives in exile in Amsterdam with his wife Ikris, prefers to speak in English and is invariably dressed in a suit and tie in public. The soft-spoken Muivah would easily pass as a Professor or a Christian priest. Mild manners and gentle smile of this Master’s degree holder in Political Science provide no clue to his adventurous past.

It is hard to see the ageing 75-year old as a hardened, underground rebel. But the Naga leader and general secretary of NSCN-IM led a bloody battle in the jungles of the North-East for 27 years, waging a war on India and demanding independence for the Nagas. The insurgents were egged on by the junta in Burma and received help from both Pakistan and China. Several thousand people, including Indian soldiers, civilians and innocent Nagas died before the insurgents agreed to a truce. As a senior officer said: “He is important and still controls one of the most disciplined armed forces, though over the years, his influence has diminished.”

Muivah fled India in 1980. When peace talks finally began in 1997, he would initially fly to Bangkok to meet the Indian interlocutors. It was because he was arrested there for travelling on a false passport the Government of India issued an Indian passport to him, and had him released from a Thai jail.

Gradually the two sides appear to have reduced the trust deficit, allowing Muivah to actually visit New Delhi for discussions over a possible solution to the ‘Nagaland’ issue. Little is known of what transpired in the over 60 rounds of talks. While New Delhi has generally maintained a stiff upper-lip with little or no background briefings on the subject, the Naga rebel leader has been consistently outspoken, maintaining in public that ‘independence’ for the Nagas and ‘unification of areas inhabited by Nagas’ are non-negotiable.

In India since March this year, Muivah had expressed a desire to visit his birthplace, Somdal village in Ukhrul district of Manipur, which is also where Ikris hails from. He had last been in 1960. It seemed a simple thing and the Indian government gave its consent, apparently without taking the Manipur government into confidence. The Manipur government, however, refused to let him in, arguing that his visit would cause communal tension in the state between the Nagas and the majority inhabitants in Manipur, the Meiteis. It deployed armed policemen at the entry point and as a result, thousands of Nagas assembled and clashed with the police.

With Manipur refusing to relent and insisting that the ceasefire with Muivah is confined to Nagaland, an erroneous assumption since the ceasefire is between the Government of India and the NSCN-IM, passions have been aroused, something that could rekindle the Naga rebellion.

Naga tribes were traditionally headhunters and fiercely independent. Not just each tribe, but each village was an independent republic before the British finally managed to subdue them and began to administer the area through loose treaties with the tribes. The Nagas first asserted their independence in a memorandum submitted to the Simon Commission in 1929 and declared their independence a day before India became free in 1947. With India rejecting the demand, Naga leader Phizo escaped to London and spearheaded the movement from exile. A separate state of Nagaland was created in 1963 but the insurgency continued.

Muivah’s rigid stand on unification of all ‘Naga-inhabited areas’ is viewed with alarm by other North-Eastern states. None of them is in favour of giving up its territory and Muivah’s visit, the Manipur government argued, would become a rallying point for reviving the demand for further reorganisation of the North-Eastern states.

Although much of the mystique associated with him has dissipated during the prolonged peace talks. His exile appears to have weakened his hold over the Nagas. And efforts to build up infrastructure and promote development schemes have helped win over a large section of the Nagas. Muivah, however, is still held with a mixture of awe, reverence and fear. His personality is such that he can fix anyone with a cold look that forbids inconvenient questions

One of the reasons for the aura around him is possibly his claim to spirituality. A devout Christian, Muivah speaks of a separate ‘Nagalim for Christ’, explaining that his idea of a Naga state would not be theocratic but that it would follow Christian values.

The armed insurgents under his command, christened by him as the Naga Army, are said to be the most disciplined among insurgent groups. NSCN-IM, he admits, runs a parallel government in Nagaland and collects taxes from the people. He, however, denies charges of extortion and passes the blame to ‘criminal gangs’, ‘bad elements’ in his own group and the Indian government, which, he claims, is giving the NSCN-IM a bad name.

He also blames other Naga factions, notably NSCN (Khaplang) which split in 1980. Khaplang, a Naga of Myanmarese descent, has defied Muivah all these years and the two groups have clashed quite often. Some semblance of peace was restored at the initiative of the Church backed, Forum for Naga Reconciliation. But Muivah coldly vows to settle scores with the ‘Khaplang gang’ when he asserted in another interview, “we have to settle accounts with the traitors, the hypocrites and the mad dogs.”

The last public meeting he addressed was on March 21 this year at the NSCN-IM headquarter to celebrate the 30th ‘Republic Day’ of the Government of People’s Republic of Nagalim (Nagaland). Two thousand people, including women and children, turned up in their best attire on a hot and sultry day and waited since morning to hear Muivah address the ‘Naga nation’.

The atmosphere was festive and there was much conversation and laughter. But a sudden hush descended on the gathering as Muivah’s motorcade appeared at the venue. Muivah and Ikris were escorted to the podium by ‘Naga Army’ personnel dressed in battle fatigue. Armed guards suddenly popped up everywhere and took up positions.

The crowd rose to its feet as soon as Muivah stood up to address them. He spoke in broken Nagamese about the unique history of the Nagas and the ongoing peace talks with the Indian government to attain ‘sovereignty’. “The peace process has entered a crucial phase and it is time for Naga people to take a decision as a nation,” he declared.

There is grudging admission in New Delhi that the peace process cannot move forward without him. Not only does he have the ability to move his masses but he also has contacts in China and Pakistan and, even more significantly, with virtually all other insurgent groups in the North-East. The ageing maverick may have lost his appetite for a life in the jungles but he still retains the ability to derail the fragile peace in the troubled North-East. No wonder, he can still call a few shots.