Thuingaleng Muivah
| Photo Credit: Illustrations: Sreejith R. Kumar
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi, the Italian General and nationalist who played a major role in the Risorgimento, or the Unification of Italy, in the 1860s, came to be known as the ‘Hero of Two Worlds’ for his revolutionary military exploits in Europe and South America. He never pulled through the loss of his native Nice to France as the price for the French support for the Risorgimento.
To many Nagas, specifically in Manipur, the 91-year-old Thuingaleng Muivah is the hero of the Naga-inhabited world, divided between two countries — India and Myanmar. This world, covering more than 57,400 sq. km, includes the 13,329 sq. km Naga Self-Administered Zone of Myanmar’s Sagaing Division. Mr. Muivah is based at Camp Hebron, the central headquarters of his armed organisation, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN), in adjoining Nagaland, but Manipur’s pre-bifurcation Ukhrul district is where his heart is, like most other members of his Tangkhul community, which dominates the district.
Ukhrul has, thus, been central to the goal of the unified Naga homeland of the NSCN, more familiar to the world beyond as the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland or the NSCN (I-M) that he has led since April 30, 1988. The Manipur government perceived this goal, though subdued since the NSCN (I-M) signed the Framework Agreement with the government of India on August 3, 2015, as a threat to the State’s territorial integrity and banned his entry until recently.
Changing scenario
Two factors facilitated Mr. Muivah’s visit to his village, Somdal, 25 km from Ukhrul town, on October 22, after six decades: his ill-health and the changed political scenario since the ethnic conflict that broke out in Manipur in May 2023, realigning the equations among the State’s three major communities – the Kuki-Zo, Meitei, and Naga. These factors, however, were secondary for Manipur’s Nagas, who regard Mr. Muivah as Avakharar, meaning ‘eldest father’ or godfather in the Tangkhul tongue. Emotions, understandably, ran high when he landed in a chopper at Somdal, with almost the entire village of some 4,500 people eager to catch a glimpse of their “greatest son” from up close, if not to touch him.
The fourth of five siblings, Mr. Muivah was born on March 3, 1934, five years after the Naga Club, the first Naga political organisation, submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission stating that the Nagas should be left “alone to determine for ourselves as in ancient times”. In 1946, the Naga Club evolved into the Naga National Council (NNC), which subsequently fought for the independence of the Naga-inhabited areas from India. Two years after he did his post-graduation in political science from Assam’s Gauhati University, Mr. Muivah bid his village adieu to join the NNC in 1964.
The closest he came to visiting his village earlier was in 2010 when the Centre cleared the trip. Bowing to sentiments in the primarily non-Naga Imphal Valley, Manipur’s Congress government put its foot down and barred his entry, with the resultant crackdown claiming two lives. Mr. Muivah’s convoy could not proceed beyond Nagaland’s Viswema, about 120 km northwest of Somdal.
His homecoming has ignited hopes for an honourable conclusion to the Naga peace process that began on August 1, 1997, when the NSCN (I-M) and the Centre agreed to the cessation of armed conflict. His followers pray that the Naga homeland with a “separate Naga Flag and a Naga Constitution or Yehzabo” becomes a reality for the man who walked out of the NNC when it signed the “compromising” Shillong Accord in 1975. He then went ahead to form the NSCN in 1980, and later the NSCN (I-M) with Isak Chishi Swu in 1988, after differences with his Myanmar-based comrade S.S. Khaplang. “Generation comes and goes, but the nation stays,” Mr. Muivah said in Somdal on October 22. “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.”
Published – October 26, 2025 05:40 am IST
