Naga Homeland: A vital transnational land-linked to and between South, South-East, and East Asia

Historically, the ancestral Naga homeland shared borders with two Asian behemoths: India to the west and south, and China to the north. It shares an eastern border with Myanmar. Given the strategic importance, it is not surprising that control of the Naga homeland is one of the main dynamics driving India and Myanmar to come closer. There has also been much debate and discussion since the colonial British rulers’ departure from the region about how the colonial British handed over the Naga homeland for continued colonization by India and Burma (now Myanmar). It is also questioned whether the handover of the Naga homeland by the colonial British empire was legal or illegal under any recognized international law. The main fear of those who sit in Delhi and Naypyidaw has been the Naga people having economic independence to further strengthen the historical political independence.

With the departure of the colonial British from the region, India (under India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru), emerged as a strong force in forming a join bloc with Burma (now Myanmar, under its first prime minister, U Nu), against the Naga homeland when they arbitrarily divided it – a division that has continued to this day. Since Nehru and Nu’s times, and even now, India and Myanmar’s policy toward the Naga homeland has always been to create a strategy of economic dependency through the use of various divisive/divide and conquer models and approaches in the form of grants and numerous incentives, rather than create a conducive scenario of economic independence.

Proposed Strategic Transnational Connectivity Policies/Projects via Naga Homeland
India’s Look East Policy / Recast India’s Act East Policy: To recover from the loss of its strategic partner, the Soviet Union, at the end of the Cold War in 1991, India sought to strengthen ties with the United States and its Southeast Asian allies. As a result, former Prime Minister of India P V Narasimha Rao launched the Look East Policy (LEP) in 1992 to give a strategic push to India’s engagement with South-East Asian countries, bolstering its standing as a regional power and acting as a counterweight to the People’s Republic of China’s strategic influence in the region. It was recast Act East Policy (AEP) by Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in 2014, with a focus on ASEAN countries + Economic Integration + East Asian countries + Security cooperation.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): On September 7, 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the concept of a “Silk Road Economic Belt” in Kazakhstan, and the following month in Indonesia, he proposed the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” (October 3, 2013). The above two proposals are known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), or formerly One Belt, One Road (一带一路 (yīdài yīlù) in Chinese). The BRI represents a significant strategic departure in China’s external policy and is one of the world’s most ambitious economic initiatives, aiming to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks, thereby improving regional integration, increasing trade, and stimulating economic growth – with a focus on building “smooth, secure, and efficient transportation routes” along the Belt and Road.

The two major transnational overland connectivity routes proposed (initiated) by India and China that will pass through the ancestral Naga homeland are:

India-Myanmar-Thailand Highway (IMT): It was envisioned as a Highway of Opportunity and Friendship at an India-Myanmar-Thailand (IMT) Trilateral Ministerial meeting on Transport linkages in Yangon in 2002, facilitating not only the movement of goods and services but also of people and ideas.

Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Forum for Regional Cooperation, formerly known as the “Kunming Initiative” when it was launched in 1999, seeks to establish a sub-regional cooperation zone connecting the relatively backward regions of southwest China and northeast region of India via Bangladesh and Myanmar. The BCIM Forum seeks to restore the historical arteries of overland connectivity that once linked India’s northeastern states with China’s southwestern province of Yunnan via present-day Bangladesh and northern Myanmar, invoking rhetoric from the ancient southern Silk Road.

Naga Homeland – Opportunism
The Naga homeland is undeniably an important land-linked connectivity/route, particularly for India, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, and China, as it will reduce distance if transnational overland connectivity is successfully established. Aside from serving as an overland trade way, the potential benefits of transnational overland connectivity include:

1) contributing to regional development;
2) fostering transnational cultural cooperation; and
3) strengthening social cohesion.

Local positive opportunism includes the creation of facilities that help generate new revenues, equipment that helps generate new revenues, and job creation with the assistance of private and public partners who support the various transnational transit services.

Major Challenges in the Transnational Overland Connectivity Projects
The BCIM-EC project has the potential to improve the economic and geostrategic benefits of the four participating countries, Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar, as well as the Nagas, in the long run, but its implementation has been stalled due to India’s lingering concern about the Corridor’s implications for its national security, particularly if China is granted entry into the region, which has already created a security dilemma for India since the early 1960s.

The dynamics of power politics shifted dramatically as China entered the capitalist market, and its rapid growth has increasingly threatened the influence of the United States (US) in Asia and beyond. At the same time, India’s ambivalence about China’s strategic considerations has pushed both India and the US in recent years to work toward a close partnership on various fronts against China. Thus, the region’s major countries’ increasing competition for regional influence rather than cooperation has stymied various regional transnational regional overland connectivity progress. For instance, the India-Naga-Myanmar conflict has entered for more than seven decades, and in order to create a conducive environment in the region for successful implementation of the recast AEP by leveraging the US (Obama) Asia Rebalance strategy (2011), the Modi-led Indian government signed the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement (FA) with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) in 2015. However, given the geostrategic timing of the FA’s signing in 2015 and non-implementation, it is not incorrect to conclude that the FA was not implemented because India changed its strategy in response to the uncertainty of the US (Trump) Indo-Pacific strategy (2017).

Lingering Question and Next Step
India is pushing for policies like the AEP and the IMT project to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for regional influence because it is concerned about losing its dominant position in projects involving China, and it has also refused to accelerate the BCIMEC project due to security concerns in the region. It has refused to join the BRI officially due to the BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) route. However, despite the scope of border trade expansion under AEP/IMT, creating a conducive environment and institutional arrangements for trade and transportation facilitation have been slow, despite the fact that IMT Highway development in Myanmar has been accelerated, and the project’s completion date continues to slip. Considering the background, the question is whether the proposed AEP/IMT will be successful, or whether it will remain a forever dream or just a hope, as transnational overland connectivity under AEP/IMT is still a distant dream even today, in contrast to the BRI project, where nearly 150 countries have joined the BRI – in the tenth years since its launch, totaling more than 2,600 projects with a combined value of $3.7 trillion, according to data analysis firm Refinitiv.

Conclusion
The success of the project is significant for regional development and all participating countries, particularly Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar because it will significantly reduce the distance between them and beyond; however, due to India’s security concerns in the region and the ongoing conflict between India, Nagas, and Myanmar, the overland project connectivity may not reach its full potential. The rule of the game is that, rather than taking a win-win approach to the historical conflict, it has always been a zero-sum game, with both India and Myanmar having “monopolized power” in targeting the Naga people’s legitimate right of existence as a nation, resulting in the conflict continuing to this day, in 2023. As a result, developing a pragmatic approach to resolving one of the world’s oldest political conflicts is critical, necessitating a fundamental shift in negotiation structure and processes. Without a doubt, the resolution of the conflict will be a driving force behind positive engagement in shifting the region, particularly the Naga homeland scenario, from a security concern to a vital transnational land-linked and push for better economic development activities in the region.