GUWAHATI: Sixty-one years after he left home to join the Naga revolutionary movement, National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah returned to his native Somdal village in Manipur’s Naga-majority Ukhrul district on Wednesday.
A large number of Nagas, who turned up from different parts of Manipur, greeted the 91-year-old after his chopper, which took off from adjoining Nagaland, landed at the Bakshi ground in the Ukhrul town and he reached the Tangkhul Naga Long ground where a programme was organised in his honour.
The helicopter later took him to Somdal, about 25 km away, where a similar event was organised. He appeared frail due to his advanced age. As he walked, he was seen being assisted by others.
He is the fourth of five siblings. His eldest sister and two elder brothers passed away. His younger brother, now in his eighties, lives in Somdal.
Muivah, the chief negotiator of NSCN-IM’s peace talks with the Centre, will stay in the village till October 28. He is scheduled to leave for Senapati, another Naga-majority Manipur district, on October 29 to attend a programme. On the same day, he will return to Nagaland where the NSCN-IM, which entered into a ceasefire in 1997, has its central headquarters, Hebron.
Muivah had intended to visit Somdal in May 2010 after it was cleared by the Centre. He set out from Nagaland in a convoy of vehicles and reached Viswema, 22 km from Nagaland capital Kohima and 120 km from Somdal.
However, Manipur’s then Okram Ibobi Singh-led Congress government was opposed to the visit over the NSCN-IM’s contentious “Greater Nagaland” demand. The outfit envisaged a greater Naga homeland by carving out the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and integrating them with Nagaland.
The Manipur government deployed a large number of security personnel at Mao Gate in the Senapati district. On the day Muivah was scheduled to enter Manipur, the Naga residents of Mao Gate took out a procession protesting the Manipur government’s position. Violence broke out soon and two Naga youths were killed when the security personnel opened fire. The incident made the NSCN-IM leader put off the visit.
Meanwhile, at Ukhrul, his speech was read out by NSCN-IM leader VS Atem. Muivah recalled that his revolutionary journey began six decades ago from Ukhrul in 1964.
“I thank the Lord God Almighty for preserving me and making it possible for me to return to my birthplace Somdal today. But many people who I knew and who loved me are missing. Generation comes and goes, but nation stays. The issue we are fighting for is greater and older than most of us who are gathered here at this Tangkhul Naga Long ground today,” the nonagenarian said.
On the Naga political issue, he highlighted that the historic national decision for a “sovereign Nagalim” has been defended and consolidated from the battlefield to the negotiating table.
“We have not surrendered the free existence and sovereignty of Nagalim, and we shall defend the sovereign national decisions of Nagalim to the last, come what may,” Muivah declared.
