On 14 August 1947, the Naga National Council pressed ahead with its demand for a separate nation, declaring that Nagaland would remain independent and not submit to the Indian constitution. In a plebiscite it organised on 16 May 1951, over 99 percent of the voters upheld full Naga sovereignty. Not a single vote was cast in Nagaland during the first Indian general election of 1952. In September 1954, the NNC president Angami Zapu Phizo formed the Free Naga Government, which wrote to the Indian president affirming that the Nagas had a 1,700-year history as an independent nation. “We do not want anything from India,” the letter said. “Please leave us alone.”
The Indian government initially ignored the declaration of independence, but responded in the face of greater assertion of Naga nationalism by arresting nationalist leaders and raiding their villages. The 1954 letter documented a list of atrocities committed by Indian armed forces, including beatings, torture, rape, killings and the burning of villages and crops. In December 1955, Phizo announced plans to establish an army to defend Nagaland against Indian aggression. A violent insurgency soon ensued.
When the conflict was at its peak, Visier Meyasetsu Sanyu was living with his family of nine in the village of Khonoma. In this extract from his latest book, A Naga Odyssey: My Long Way Home, he narrates how in 1956, when he was five years old, his family fled their village out of fear of the Indian Army and sought refuge in the surrounding jungles, where they would remain in hiding for over two years.
When the Naga Army attacked the Indian garrison at Kohima in June 1956, violence spread very quickly as the Indian Army sent in reinforcements and led a general attack on Naga villages in the region. Many people secretly prepared to leave our village. Over a series of nights people slipped away in family groups—but only members of two khels [clans], Merhüma and Semoma. Before they left, family heirlooms and possessions that could not be carried were secretly buried. This added to their sorrow as precious household and ritual items were abandoned and their survival left to chance. On a night in June 1956, our family of nine—my mother and father, three brothers and three sisters and I—slipped into the darkness. Most members of the third khel, Thevoma, who supported autonomy within India, stayed there under the protection of the Indian Army, but a few joined us. Indeed, some Thevoma joined the village guard set up by the Indian military and fought against their own people. This was a time of great village upheaval, bitterness and division.
My father took his gun—loaded of course—for we were in great fear of discovery. Others carried spears and axes. Most of us lugged baskets brimming with food and essential clothing, and any precious items such as jewellery. My mother took coins loaded in a belt. We all wore our Angami tribal shawls about our shoulders to keep us warm. As I was just five, my eldest brother Perhicha, then in his twenties, carried me wrapped in a Naga shawl slung over his back like a rucksack. We left the village walking past our rice fields in the dark, then we climbed and climbed to put some distance between us and Khonoma. I dozed in my sling, bumping against my brother’s back. A sharp pain caused me to cry out as a nettle bush scraped my legs, causing one of my family to gag my mouth to avoid detection. For all of us it was an emotional time, although being five I had no real sense of what was happening. Yet now that I understand, I become emotional just remembering this leaving of home. Since then, separation from my home has been a constant feature of my life. Even the more knowing and older ones in the family were at the time in the fog of the present, unaware of how long the separation from home might be. As it turned out, our time as nhanumia—jungle folk—lasted over two years, while some families spent many more years in the jungle.
Over several nights, two thousand fellow villagers crept out of Khonoma and camped in small groups not too distant from our village. We felt quite safe in the embrace of the jungle as the Indian Army was ignorant of our jungle terrain. Besides, our ancestors’ reputation of being head hunters, and the reality of members of the Naga Army being active in the area, made the Indian soldiers wary of following us at this time. However, in these first days of exile, we saw our village burnt by the Indian Army. The fires burnt and smouldered over many days, causing utter desolation for my family and other villagers. In the first months of our exodus we stayed at no great distance from home and crept back into the area at night, mostly to take food from our gardens and rice from our terraced lands. No doubt it was also the pull of home that kept us close. The terraces lay below the village and the midnight harvesters had to act with great stealth, searching for crops in the moonlit earth. Once the Indian Army realised what was happening, they patrolled the rice fields at night, and some villagers were shot. The nhanumia then brought guns to defend themselves and this led to gun-fights over the food. But as the gardens and crops were stripped, and the Indian Army became more active in our pursuit, we moved further afield.
First we moved southeast to the area of the Dzuku valley. This valley is covered in bamboo reeds and from a distance it looks like an English lawn. However, it is very cold in the winter and the streams that feed the reed beds become frozen. There are village stories of hunters in this valley getting lost. Chükheu, the god of wild animals, protects them by confusing hunters or making their efforts in vain. Some hunters claim to have glimpsed Chükheu, but he always vanished before a second look. The valley’s bird life was abundant, including the Blyth’s Tragopan, a grey-bellied pheasant that is the national bird of Nagaland. There were also bears, tigers and other animals. We lived in a bamboo hut built by my fathers and brothers, while my grandmother, uncle and aunt lived close by in a cave. We realised we were vulnerable if we stayed in the one place, so we moved. Increasingly we split into smaller groups of several closely-related families, or even broke into the one extended family.
Movement became the template of our lives in the jungle. We moved to gather food, to avoid detection, and because of fear of Naga spies informing of our whereabouts. Each new journey was through the jungle. The terrain was often impenetrable, even at times to animals, being thick with bamboo in parts to the point of despair for any traveller. And yet there was a rare beauty about this jungle that lingers with me still. Over several years we travelled to more than twenty sites where we camped. We gave tags to each place and my mother constantly challenged me to remember the name of each camp in correct succession. I could recite them, much to my pride, but now the years have wiped away most of my memory of those names. One in a valley was called Dzuku, meaning “cool waters” and another was Tsucha, meaning “elephants’ path.”
We moved according to the seasons, avoiding the mountains once the weather turned cold and snow fell. But my homeland is mostly around 2,000 metres, so the nights were cold everywhere, requiring a camp site with wood and protection from the elements. At each place we made a shelter upon arrival, usually a thatched wind and waterproof shack, constructed from branches, fronds and sedges. Sometimes we camped in caves that promised warmth and seclusion. We chose places where we thought food might be plentiful and the Indian Army distant. However, spotter planes were active. If one came too close, we surmised our campfire smoke had been seen, so we were forced to move. At one camp we awoke to hear firing in the middle of the night and fled into the jungle, running until we were exhausted. We then hid in the jungle till daylight. My brother was sent to see if our camp had been destroyed. He returned relieved and chuckling with the news that the noise had been bamboo crackling in a bushfire.
On one occasion we found what looked like an ideal site. It had rocks for shelter, a good water source nearby and plenty of trees for firewood and cover. Our family laboured all day to construct a bamboo frame, which we thatched with leaves and fronds. We also made an enclosed area for our chickens, which provided eggs and meat at little risk to us. If they made a noise it sounded like jungle fowl, so we thought we were safe keeping them. As nightfall approached my sisters wearily began to prepare an evening meal as we brothers made a fire. My mother rested, then slept and dreamed. She was visited by a long dead aunt in her dream, who issued a warning: “Leave this place, for this is not clean. Some stones are unclean; they are inhabited by evil spirits. You must leave.” My mother woke in alarm and told us all about the dream, exclaiming, “We must leave now.” My father protested that it was almost nightfall and we had only just arrived at this fruitful place. But my mother insisted.
Backed by the power of belief in premonitions, we reluctantly packed everything then and there and trudged into the night, resting only when some distance had been travelled from this camp. Our night was far from comfortable as we huddled together for warmth until dawn. The next day we began anew the search for a sheltered and safe camp site. Months later we learnt that the Indian Army discovered that place of the dream shortly after we had departed. Our mother and our faith in tradition saved us!
This is an extract from Visier Meyasetsu Sanyu’s book, “A Naga Odyssey: My Long Way Home, published by Speaking Tiger.