Dear Leaders, Elders, and Beloved Sisters and Brothers,
As the golden sun-rays shine upon the Naga hills and valleys we call home, the same hills that have cradled our ancestors’ dreams, laughter, and tears for millennia, a shadowy claw stretches beyond the horizon. Across the artificial borders carved by foreign hands, in Myanmar’s Sagaing Division, where the Naga Self-Administered Zone spans around 7,000 square kilometers of rugged terrain, our approximately 120,000 Naga brothers and sisters dwell in a darkness so profound it chills the soul. While sunlight bathes our valleys in warmth, they shiver in the cold grip of neglect, trapped in a geopolitical purgatory at the mercy of the Indian regime and Myanmar’s junta. Their autonomy, granted in name only since 2011, remains a cruel illusion: a land stripped of basic amenities and infrastructure, where 80% of the people subsist on slash-and-burn agriculture, while armed factions and junta battalions ruthlessly plunder the timber, jade, gold, and other precious mineral resources that our homeland nurtured.
Dear Naga Leaders, many of you who hold power and influence dwell in luxurious homes, cruise smoothly along well-paved roads in your sleek SUVs and Boleros, while your children enjoy the privilege of comfortable rides to well-equipped schools and advanced clinics. Yet, across the artificial divide, your own kin are left to struggle through treacherous, unpaved paths, wading through dense forests in search of the barest means of survival. This glaring contrast between your life of comfort and their daily battle for existence is not merely an economic disparity, it is a betrayal that cuts deep into the heart of our shared identity. You bask in the fortunes of Gandhi notes, while their cries echo unheard, suffocated under the weight of abandonment. This is not the Naga story we were meant to inherit; it is a solemn reckoning, a call for you to confront the cost of your silence, to feel the deep ache of a legacy marred by neglect, and to rise with resolve to mend the broken promises of our forebears.
Today, we, the concerned underprivileged Nagas who have known the searing pain of marginalization, feel the anguish and agony of our kin on that distant horizon. Our hearts are heavy with a grief that words can scarcely contain. Those arbitrary lines, drawn like scars across our ancestral lands in 1937 when the British severed us between India and Burma, have separated families, and condemned our kin to an existence stripped of dignity. No electricity lights their nights beyond the flicker of pine resin torches; no roads extend beyond muddy tracks washed away by monsoons; no schools nurture their futures, with less than 10% of children reaching beyond fifth grade; and no hospitals heal their wounds, leaving only herbalists to battle malaria and landmine injuries. They are left to subsist on the fickle mercy of nature, forgotten by the modern world, abandoned to a fate that shames us all.
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For centuries, our people moved freely across these mountains and rivers, bound not by borders but by blood. Villages like Leshi, Lahe, Nanyun, and Hkamti (and countless others whose names are etched into the bones of our land) were not mere settlements. They were sanctuaries. When famine clawed at throats, when armies marched with fire, when despair threatened to drown us, these communities gave us refuge with open arms. But now, India’s decision to scrap the Free Movement Regime (FMR), the last thread allowing cross-border trade of salt, rice, and medicine, and the erection of walls of steel and barbed wire will cut off even this fragile lifeline. What happens when a mother fleeing Myanmar’s junta’s bullets finds the border sealed? When a sick child, gasping for breath, cannot reach a clinic in Nagaland, where 90% of Sagaing’s villages lack even basic health posts? Who will answer their cries then?
The junta’s cruelty is no secret. Their bullets have turned our villages into graveyards. Their conscription drives hunt our youth like prey, forcing them to choose between slavery to a murderous regime or starvation in the wilderness. Since the 2021 coup, over 30 Naga villages have been torched, their rice granaries looted to feed junta battalions. And yet, as our kin endure this hell, we, the Nagas of the Indian side, with our all-weather roads, modern schools, seamless internet connections, and empowered voices, remain silent! Our civil organizations, once defiant in their cry for a united Naga homeland, now cloak themselves in apathy. This silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.
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We must ask ourselves: Are these fractured souls of our own people, pushed aside and forgotten, left to struggle in isolation while their cries fade into silence? These families, scarred by generations of neglect, carry the same blood that pulses through our veins. Their suffering is not some distant echo… it strikes at the heart of our shared humanity, a wound that refuses to heal. Every loss they endure is a testament to the weight of our silence: children lost before their first dreams could take flight, futures stolen before they had a chance to begin. Yet, even in their deepest anguish, a spark of resilience refuses to die, a quiet, unyielding belief that the Naga spirit remains unbroken, waiting for the moment to rise again from the ashes of abandonment. For decades, they have clung to hope with trembling hands, believing that unity could transform neglect into belonging, and despair into dignity. That reckoning is today; every moment of inaction steals from the future, and every silence deepens the betrayal of the blood we share. How much longer can we stand idle while the heart of our own people beats unheard?
We must confront the truth: Our inaction is a death sentence. While we gather in heated halls and social media platforms, debating “sovereignty” and “dialogue,” children in Sagaing chew on tree bark to quiet their hunger. Elders perish from fevers that a single pill could cure. Entire villages vanish into the fog of war, their suffering erased by the world’s indifference. The removal of the FMR is not just a policy shift; it is a betrayal of our shared humanity. How dare we preach “Naga integration” while our brothers and sisters are crushed under tyranny’s boot?
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- To our leaders: History will judge you not by your words, but by whether you fought for the forgotten.
- To our civil organizations: Your legacy hinges on your courage to defy borders and act.
- To every Naga reading this: Their tears are your tears. Their survival is your duty.
I, as an impassioned son of the Naga soil, on behalf of all my fellow concerned Nagas, demand immediate, unflinching, and collective action from our nationalist and civil organizations’ leaders:
- Defy the Divide: Pressure India and Myanmar to exempt Naga lands from border fencing. Restore cross-border lifelines; our people’s survival depends on reviving the FMR and recognizing ancestral territorial continuity.
- Clandestine Aid Networks: Mobilize food, medicine, and teachers. Smuggle hope through jungle paths if we must, reviving the Jhuman networks our forebears used to outwit colonial oppressors.
- Scream Their Suffering: Force the world to see the genocide by neglect in Sagaing. Let global shame be our weapon; flood UN forums, ASEAN chambers, and social media with evidence of junta atrocities.
- Reclaim Unity: Tear down the colonial labels of “India” and “Myanmar.” A Naga is a Naga, whether in Kiphire or Hkamti. Demand transnational recognition of our indivisible identity, as guaranteed under ILO Convention 169 for Indigenous peoples.
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The time for mourning is over. Now is the time to rise, with rage, with resolve, with the unbreakable solidarity that once defined us. If we abandon our kin now, we surrender not just their future, but the soul of what it means to be a Naga. The mountains that watch over us weep at our silence; let them instead bear witness to our fury. Let this letter be a torch in the darkness. Let it ignite our conscience, stir our leaders, and rally our youth. Our kin across the border are not “others”; they are the missing pieces of our own hearts. To fail them is to erase ourselves.
In grief, in fury, in unyielding hope,
A Naga Son
Markson V Luikham
The author is an independent writer and researcher specializing in Indo-Naga political issues. He can be contacted at marksonaga@gmail.com. The perspectives articulated in this work reflect the author’s analytical insights into the trajectories of the ongoing Indo-Naga political dialogue.
(This is not a Ukhrul Times publication. UT is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any reports or views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of Ukhrul Times.)
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