Negotiation is a discussion aimed at reaching an agreement to resolve an issue in a way that is acceptable to both parties. Each party in a negotiation attempts to persuade the other to agree to their point of view. As a result, there is broad agreement on the concept of how to defend their own interests, namely that it includes the obligation to defend each party’s goal, maximize benefits, and enhance the effectiveness of its ‘soft power’ through the propagation of its core assets.
The current Indo-Naga negotiation strategy seeks to avoid fighting and reach an agreement on some form of compromise. However, the tool of aggressively promoting and exporting misinformation agenda has been involved in the Indo-Naga negotiation process since the signing of the Indo-Naga Framework in 2015, causing confusion and disagreement over the signed documents. As a result, rather than disseminating misinformation and misunderstanding, the goal of the Indo-Naga negotiation process should be to reach terms for a single acceptable agreement rather than multiple agreements, which necessitates extreme pragmatism.
India, as a stronger and more self-assured party in the Indo-Naga negotiation process relatively doesn’t have a permanent interest in resolving the Indo-Naga political issue. While India will always have a national interest, the content strategy of that interest will change depending on time and circumstances. For example, when the Modi government prioritized India’s Act East Policy (AEP) as one of its first foreign policies in 2014 to counter China’s strategic influence in South-East Asia, resolving the Indo-Naga political issue was critical for the successful implementation of the overland AEP connectivity, which accelerated with the ‘historic’ signing of the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement in 2015. The aforementioned agreement, however, has yet to be implemented.
By and large, with the signing of the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement in 2015, the Modi-led government took a realistic and pragmatic approach to resolving one of the most serious regional issues as an extension of its foreign policy. Observing the televised signing ceremony of how the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement was signed on August 3, 2015, Modi handled the issue with a shrewd combination of principle and pragmatism to resolve the Indo-Naga political issue. Therefore, what distinguishes and distinguishes today’s Indo-Naga political issue is the impact of India’s foreign policy on it.
With the AEP failing to counter China and national interests require it, India temporarily compromised the AEP and signed another agreement with the Nagas in 2017, causing significant confusion and distrust in the negotiation process. In the end, it is clear that the equation to preserve India’s primary concern of resolving the Indo-Naga political issue as an extension of its national/geopolitical interests of AEP will be determined by its interests at any given time; and the approach to push for a zero-sum game to resolve the issue will end up giving India an advantage in delaying the issue.
The Naga people, like the Indian people, are proud of their heritage, and they expect India to be serious about resolving the Naga political issue. Over the past seven years, following the signing of the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement, India and the Naga people have been excitedly discussing how to resolve the issue, including stalemates in between, but it appears to be in the middle of nowhere. The protracted resolution of the Naga political issue has enraged Naga public opinion.
The approach of India signing two separate agreements with the Nagas to resolve the same issue makes no sense in terms of the possibility of resolution. Similarly, if the Indo-Naga negotiations are not resolved, a successor government of the day in Delhi may take a different stance and reverse the previous government’s decision on the same grounds of national interest. Therefore, to conduct meaningful Indo-Naga political negotiations, both India and the Nagas may require flexibility, the pragmatism of the highest order, and a thorough understanding of the problems and issues at stake. India and the Naga people must look beyond their primary (immediate) concerns to resolve the more than seven-decade-old conflict, and if they are unable to do so, they must consider inviting a third party/country mediator, or, more specifically, the United Kingdom, to intervene on historical grounds, as India’s Prime Minister Modi correctly stated during the signing of the Indo-Naga Framework in 2015 that the political conflict was a “legacy of British rule.”
Author’s Disclosure Statement: Augustine R. is an independent researcher on the India-Naga-Myanmar political issue, as well as on broader global security and strategic issues, and does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article/opinion.
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