People take part in the ENPO rally in Mon on Wednesday. Picture by UB Photos

Mon, July 24: “Is statehood the demand of the leaders alone or is it yours too? Do you support our position that talks on a separate state should be held only with the Centre?”

To both questions from Konyak Union president S. Manlip Konyak, the answers were resounding: “Ours” and “Yes” chanted the several hundred people who had gathered in the heart of this town this morning.

From the stage atop a truck, Konyak would have seen few faces as people took refuge underneath umbrellas to protect themselves from pouring rain, but their ears picking up everything. The assembly comprised the elderly to schoolgoing children in uniforms who could not attend classes as a spontaneous bandh was in place in deference to the “mass uprising”.

Similar meetings were held simultaneously in three other districts of eastern Nagaland — Tuensang, Longleng and Kiphire. And like here, there was a shutdown in those districts, too, as people, led by the Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation (ENPO), once again rooted for a separate state carved out of Nagaland for them to move forward from “darkness to light”. “We have been neglected and meted out a stepmotherly treatment by the state government. Our districts have hardly witnessed any development, compared to the others. It is better that we have a state of our own,” Konyak said.

The total area of eastern Nagaland is 8154 square km. It has Myanmar in the east, Arunachal Pradesh to the north and Assam in the west, apart from the neighbouring districts of Nagaland.

Konyak said that historically the eastern districts of Nagaland were under the erstwhile Tuensang Frontier division under the aegis of the Indian Frontier Administrative Services and managed by the North East Frontier Agency.

This area was largely outside the pale of administration of the British but became a part of India in 1947-48.

In the wake of granting statehood to Nagaland in 1963, the Tuensang Frontier Division and Naga Hills of Assam formed the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area in 1957 and subsequently became a part of Nagaland in 1963.

Konyak said although the four districts had a population of about 45 per cent of the total population of the state, they had only 20 members in the Nagaland Assembly out of a total of 60.

“Lack of quality education, accessibility, training and exposure of the people have resulted in the people here falling behind the rest of the Nagas by much more than a century. The backwardness of the people may have been through destiny in the early stages, but now it is through a deliberate and perpetual design that the pathetic and deplorable condition of the people of the area are doomed to remain unchanged in this milieus of the 21st century,” he said. Konyak said the underdevelopment in these areas could be gauged from the fact that AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi had observed during his visit here — just before the Assembly elections earlier this year — that the roads in Mon town were among the worst he had ever travelled on.

“He just travelled for about a kilometre from the helipad to an election rally venue and he realised the pathetic condition of the roads in Mon town,” Konyak said.

Although the organisation has placed its demand for a separate state in 2007, the central government has offered tripartite talks (involving the Centre, the state and ENPO). However, the organisation has rejected such an offer saying “we do not want a middleman and want direct talks with the Centre.” It had also rejected an offer for an autonomous council in these four districts.

“We will not stop short of a separate state. Only statehood would fulfil the aspirations of our people,” said Khaming Khiamuingan, treasurer of ENPO. Yeto Konyak, 30, a resident of the town said: “Only a separate state can take us from darkness to light.”

The organisation today submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh through the deputy commissioners of all the four districts demanding bilateral talks to discuss the demand for a separate state.

If their dream does come true, then India will have another state — Frontier Nagaland, the name the ENPO has chosen for the homeland of Konyak, Phom, Sangtam, Khiamniungan and Yimchunger tribes.