Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  “Yes, there are good nurses,” he assured us, raising his hand, “China-trained. Several of our officers’ wives have had their children born at general headquarters.”

  That, at least, sounded promising. Kewezeko left together with Phatang without his having given us any answer as to where we should cross the frontier, or how it could be done. When we next saw Kewezeko, we told him how unsatisfactory this meeting had been. In the meantime, Hseng Noung and I had come to the conclusion that given Phatang’s character, we would have to be firm with him, maybe even pushy, if anything at all was going to happen. When Kewezeko brought the man back for another session in our room a few days later, we began to put the pressure on.

  “As you know, we’re staying here illegally. We must leave soon, before anybody finds out we’re here. And we’re expecting our first child within a few months’ time. We need your help to cross the border immediately.”

  Phatang appeared nervous. We began to suspect he was not as well-connected as he would have liked us to believe. But he seemed to know the area quite well so in order to get a better view of the route ahead of us, I laid out on the floor a map of the border region, a 1:1,000,000 air pilot’s chart. It was the best contour map we had managed to find, but still some of the areas east of the borderline were left blank with the annotation “Relief Data Incomplete”.

  Phatang and I knelt on the floor and began examining the map together.

  “There’s the village of Longva.” Phatang pointed at a place near the border in the northernmost corner of Nagaland, close to the border with Arunachal Pradesh.

  “You can get there from Mon town. The village actually straddles the border. It cuts right through the headman’s house. His cooking-place is in India and his sleeping room in Burma,” Phatang turned to me and smiled. It was obviously a peculiar situation.

  “From Longva, you should be able to reach the NSCN’s headquarters within a few days. The mountains are steep and it’s hard walking. But the main problem is how to get up to Longva.”

  The first difficulty was evident from the map. The only road from Kohima to Mon goes via Mokokchung, and then down to Amguri in Assam before it forks off, back into Nagaland again. Evidently, we would have to pass two more Inner Line Gates: before Amguri and at Tizit when leaving the Assamese plains up to Mon in the hills. I sighed. I thought, once in Kohima, we had by now passed the most rigorous checkpoints.

  “Then in Mon, it might be even more difficult.” Phatang sat down on a chair. “There’s a road from Mon to Longva but it’s jeepable only during the dry season. Now I’ve heard one of the bridges has also been washed away—it’s raining heavily up there.”

  And between that bridge and the border lay a big Indian Army camp with units patrolling the road and checking vehicles using it.

  “You can make it if you walk in the forest beside the road. But the problem is that I can’t send you unless I get an azha, an order, from general headquarters.”

  I had anticipated this might be the case, so I had already written a letter addressed to the NSCN’s troika, the Chairman, the Vice Chairman and the General Secretary: Isak Chishi Swu, S.S. Khaplang and Thuingaleng Muivah. The latter was reputed to be the real strongman of the movement. Depending on one’s stance towards the NSCN’s activities he is respected, feared and hated throughout Nagaland and the Naga-inhabited areas of northeastern Manipur. We got the impression Phatang knew Muivah quite well. They were both from the same tribe, the Tangkhuls. Tribal identity appeared to be a significant factor in the region’s political scene.

  In the letter I explained our difficulties, stressing that we needed help across the border, that Hseng Noung was in an advanced stage of pregnancy—and that we were on our way to Kachin State at the express invitation of the KIA. And if the NSCN was interested in having objective articles written about them in the international media, we would definitely also be delighted to spend some time in their headquarters. I signed the letter with my own name, but added that for reasons of security, I was travelling under the name ‘John Hamilton’.

  “As it happens, I’m leaving for general headquarters in a few days’ time. I have to conduct some people back to the base area in the East.”

  Phatang folded the envelope with my letter and put it in his pocket. He used the Naga underground’s term for the rebel territory on the Burmese side of the international frontier. ‘The West’ refers to the Naga-inhabited areas of northeastern India.

  “I’ll give your letter to Muivah himself. You should have an answer within a week.” He nodded authoritatively. When he left, our spirits were raised.

  For the next week, we were reconciled to a confined existence in a small room behind closed curtains. Our warm-hearted hosts looked after us to the best they could considering the circumstances. Zanietso was born in a small village near the Burmese border but went to school in Kohima. His home village had been burnt down a couple of times by the Indian Army during the height of the insurgency in the early 1960s. But he had never thought of joining the underground.

  “We’re part of India whether we like it or not. We Nagas can’t break away. We have to make the best of the present situation, because it won’t change,” Zanietso told us over a cup of tea in the kitchen one night. Only after dark did we dare to leave the seclusion of our room and move about the house.

  He appreciated our interest in the Nagas and thought our plan to visit and write about the NSCN a good idea though he had serious misgivings about certain of the underground’s activities.

  “They kill people, too. Lots of Nagas have been assassinated by the NSCN, accused of being traitors and God knows what. They just shoot without investigating properly. I’m sure many of their victims were innocent.”

  Zanietso’s tall, slender wife Buno took no interest in politics at all. She was completely absorbed in taking care of their children, a boy and a girl; the family church-going on Sunday morning was an important occasion. Two of their relatives, a niece and a nephew in their early teens, were also living there helping Buno with the housework. All of them knew we were in hiding, but not even the children said anything to their playmates.

  Zanietso went to work in the daytime and we were sometimes left alone when Buno went out shopping or to visit friends. Occasionally some of the neighbours dropped by; then we locked the door and kept very still. We constantly stayed inside the room keeping the curtains closed, for fear of being accidentally seen by a talkative neighbour, and played endless games of snakes and ladders, backgammon and ludo to kill the time.

  Kewezeko came to see us every now and then to keep us up to date with the latest developments. But there was no news. Phatang had left for the border with our letter but nobody seemed to know when he was planning to return. So Kewezeko made sure we had everything we needed in the meantime. We still had a few hundred rupees left which we spent on pipe tobacco, newspapers and the occasional pastry to go with our afternoon teas—a tradition we had kept up since the days at the Fairlawn.

  My view of Kohima was a restricted one. Standing in the loo I would gaze with my binoculars through a small, high up window at the distant blue hills and whatever I could see of everyday life on the lower hillside on which Kohima sprawls. Down the narrow asphalt road from Zanietso’s house was a small wooden stall where I could focus in on people buying cigarettes and newspapers. On the slope below our house, construction workers were building a new bungalow; I followed their daily progress avidly.

  Hseng Noung went out a couple of times to take pictures. Kohima was attractive, she told me, and a far cry from the filth and squalor of most Indian towns in the plains. During the British era, Kohima, administrative headquarters of the then Naga Hills District, had been more of an overgrown village. Then as now, ordinary Indians needed an Inner Line Permit to visit the hills. This was not simply due to the Nagas proclivity for collecting heads in the old days, that continued in some remote parts of the territory well into the 20th century, but also because the Nagas possessed a un
ique tribal culture which the colonial authorities were determined to protect from possible exploitation by the shrewder plainspeople.

  Whilst the British and other Westerners required these permits too they were easily given to anthropologists and researchers—and to the many American Baptist missionaries who began proselytising in the Naga Hills towards the end of the last century. Following India’s independence, however, the situation was reversed. Now, it is a mere formality for any Indian citizen to get an Inner Line Permit; since the outbreak of the insurgency in the mid-1950s, the restrictions have been aimed mainly at Westerners. All the foreign missionaries were ordered out thirty years ago—and from that time only a handful of outsiders have been permitted to enter Nagaland.

  A rare exception was the American evangelist Billy Graham who in 1972 stormed in on one of his famous crusades. A hundred thousand Nagas flocked to the Kohima sports ground to hear him preach and the guerrillas took full advantage of the situation—the sound of gunfire echoed across the Kohima hills throughout his visit. This was the first, and probably also the last time the Indian authorities would allow foreign access to Nagaland.

  The transformation of Kohima from a large village to today’s expanding town began in World War Two. It was here the Japanese thrust from Burma into India was halted. The residue of decisive battles, fought here forty years ago, can still be found about Kohima. Hseng Noung had seen a rusty old battle-tank standing in the centre of the town and nearby she had visited a neatly laid-out cemetery where Allied troops, including a few Naga sepoys, are buried. Dominating the graveyard is a large, rough-hewn monolith with a moving inscription on a polished inset:

  When you go home, tell them of us and say

  for your tomorrow, we gave our today.

  Often we thought of these words when we discussed Naga insurgency. Whenever rebels surrender, Indian government handouts invariably declaim that “they gave themselves up because they had understood the futility of the armed struggle.” But Nagaland today receives more aid from New Delhi than any other Indian state save for Sikkim. Education is free, there is no income tax—and the old Hill District, with roughly the same population as any medium-sized town in the Indian plains, was given full statehood in 1963. These concessions were part of the ‘winning-the hearts-and-minds policy’ that followed years of counter-productive, ruthless army suppression. So, in a way, without the armed resistance, Nagaland would not be the prosperous place it is today.

  The free and almost uncontrolled flow of aid money from New Delhi has, however, attracted large numbers of contractors from other parts of the country—plus illegal immigrants from Nepal and Bangladesh. This influx has not been without friction, as we had learnt during our stay in Calcutta when armed clashes had erupted between the police forces of Nagaland and Assam. Militant Naga students have also launched several campaigns for tighter control of the movements of people from the plains to the hills, urging a stricter application of the Inner Line regulations.

  With prosperity insurgency had been largely contained, but the spirit of defiance within Kohima itself would from time to time manifest itself. When in 1981 the state government erected a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the town it was only a week before, in true Naga fashion, it was beheaded. The headless statue of India’s apostle of peace was hastily shrouded with gunny sacks and later removed. Today, Kohima is the only state capital in India without a monument to the Mahatma. Only an empty plinth remains solitary on its own little traffic island at the Police Reserve Hill intersection.

  I was able to see it late one dark night when Kewezeko and Vemesü came over with a jeep:

  “We have come to take you on a tour. At least, you have to see something more of Kohima than this room,” Vemesü grinned.

  Elated at the thought of getting out and breathing some fresh air, I put on my field jacket, pulled up the hood and followed Hseng Noung and the others out to the jeep. They got into the front seat while I climbed as usual into the back where I huddled down. It was drizzling and the roads were wet. We drove at a steady 30-40 k.p.h. over the undulating hillsides. The town centre was nearly deserted, save for a few late night revellers straggling home and groups of Indian military policemen with Sten guns slung over their shoulders patrolling the wet, empty streets. Though there was not a great deal to see, the highlight of the jeep tour around Kohima was driving past the plinth on which had stood the statue of Mahatma Gandhi for a brief period before its decapitation.

  We continued to the outskirts of town. Vemesü stopped the jeep on a deserted road to give me a chance to go out and stretch my legs for the first time in several weeks. This exercise lasted a few minutes. Some other late night strollers appeared and I quickly returned to the rear of the jeep. My one excursion in Kohima, uninspiring as it may seem, dramatically raised my morale even if I was outdoors only for an hour or so.

  By mid-August, cooped up in our room for three weeks, we had settled into so regular a routine that our frustrations and anxieties almost vanished. Day quietly followed day in a numbed sequence. Tea and biscuits in the morning, lunch at noon, when Zanietso was at work. In the daytime we played boardgames and read books, lent by kind friends, of all descriptions: novels, thrillers, travelogues and especially works on the Nagas written by anthropologists, missionaries and colonial administrators.

  Zanietso even had a thick scrapbook of clippings about events in Nagaland over the past ten years. This was a real find for me, and I copied whole articles by hand in my notebooks which provided fuel for our long conversations with our hosts every evening. Occasionally, a few trusted visitors would come and join us.

  But most of the time we were left alone. We had developed an alarm system for when the family had visitors who knew nothing about our presence. Whenever Zanietso heard the gate open, he always went into the garden and greeted them in a loud voice. That was the warning. We locked our door from the inside and, if necessary, turned off the lights and sat still until they had left again. As long as they were inside the house, Zanietso played music on a tape recorder, turned up loud enough to cover our coughs or other involuntary noises.

  One day the whole subterfuge almost collapsed. Zanietso was at work, the children at school and Buno out shopping with the nephew. The niece was also out visiting some neighbours. Hseng Noung and I, alone in the house, had gone to the kitchen to prepare tea. Suddenly, we heard the garden gate being opened. Hseng Noung glanced out of the window:

  “My God! There are people coming!”

  We turned off the gas, grabbed the cups and the teapot and rushed into our room.

  “There are six or seven of them,” Hseng Noung whispered as I locked the door.

  When nobody answered their knock on the front door, their suspicion must have been aroused by the noises they had heard inside. Finding the front door unlocked, they came in to see what was up. We heard their footsteps on the floorboard in the sitting room. They stopped outside our locked room and knocked. We did not answer. They started rattling the door and shouting through it. Getting still no answer, they left, talking loudly among themselves as they walked down the garden path. We had been sitting looking at each other in mute horror.

  “Maybe they thought there were burglars in the house. Do you think they’ll call the police?” Hseng Noung asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Still agitated when the niece returned half an hour later, we begged her not to leave us alone again. When Zanietso came back in the evening, he scolded the poor girl roundly. We could see he was worried and then went out for a short while later that evening—but came back looking relieved. The unexpected visitors had been fellow tribesmen from his home village who were in town looking for somewhere to stay. But finding nobody at home at Zanietso’s, they had gone to another friend’s house where they had been invited in the hospitable Naga tradition to spend the night.

  Zanietso had spoken to them and they had tactfully indicated that they had, naturally, presum
ed the noises they had heard were just children playing inside a locked room.

  In the Naga context the question of exactly whom you could trust was important and always followed tribal lines. Our experience had taught us that although all the peoples of the region called themselves Nagas, they were divided into many tribes speaking dozens of mutually unintelligible languages divided into hundreds of dialects. Nearly all the people who had been taking care of us so far, including Kewezeko and Zanietso, were Chakhesangs, the predominant tribe in southeastern Nagaland.

  Intra-tribal trust and inter-tribal suspicion were evident everywhere. When we thought Hseng Noung needed a check-up of the progress of her pregnancy, Zanietso never thought of taking her to anybody else but a Chakhesang doctor. If a Sema, another of the main Naga tribes, goes to Shillong or New Delhi to study, most of his friends there are as a matter of course also Semas. An Ao would trust an Ao lawyer but not a Tangkhul one and vice versa.

  The same tribalism has long been a divisive force among the insurgents. The early nationalist movement, spearheaded by the NNC, set up in 1946, had its main support base among the Angamis in and around Kohima, and the closely related Chakhesangs. Angami Zapu Phizo, as his name indicates, is an Angami. Other leaders and cadres were Aos, Lothas and Rengmas. Later, when the insurgency gained momentum, the warlike Semas of Zünheboto district came to the fore.

  A split between the Angamis and the Semas in 1968 led to the latter setting up a rival rebel group which eventually surrendered to the Indian authorities. One of the few prominent Semas who stayed with the original NNC was Isak Chishi Swu. The Naga separatist movement in the early 1960s spread to the Naga-inhabited hills of northern Manipur. Many well-educated Naga youth, especially from the Tangkhul tribe, joined the uprising. Among them was Thuingaleng Muivah.