Private Little War

The fiercely proud Naga tribesmen, who inhabit the hills of India's elephant-ridden northeast frontier, no longer lop off other people's heads with abandon, but they still adamantly refuse to bow their own to any man. For two years India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, so often a volunteer peacemaker around the world, has been fighting a private and bloody little war of his own with dissident Nagas.

Left pretty much to themselves by the cautious British Raj in the days of empire, the savage Nagas, many of whom are good pious Baptists, have long fiercely resented the fact that Nehru's government split their tribes into two camps and clamped one under the rule of New Delhi and the other under the state of Assam.

Sealed Off. Finally, Naga guerrillas, under the leadership of a former schoolteacher and insurance salesman named A. Z. Phizo, sharpened their native daos, collected an armory of ill-assorted and outdated British, U.S. and Japanese guns, and went to war, demanding complete independence. Jawaharlal Nehru, who likes to keep the skeletons in his own closet well hidden from the world, promptly sealed off the entire embattled area from the prying eyes of newsmen, both Indian and foreign, and dispatched 9,000 Indian troops to put down the trouble.

Last week in New Delhi, surrounded by a tight little circle of moonfaced Nagas in pressed Western trousers and clean white shirts, the Pandit announced to newsmen what amounted to at least a partial victory for the Nagas. The announcement granted amnesty to all Nagas for past (but not future) guerrilla activities, promised an end to the military practice of "regrouping" Naga villagers into what amounted to concentration camps, and heralded the formation of a single, self-governing "autonomy within the Indian nation" out of the two largest Naga areas. This new "state" will unite some 250,000 Nagas now living under the hated and mistrusted government of Assam with another 200,000 of their fellow tribesmen in rugged, steep-hilled Tuensang.

Being Practical. Notably absent from the peace conference was Guerrilla Chief Phizo, whose ill-clad, ill-fed, weary and malaria-ridden troops were reported reduced to a mere 1,000. The agreement with Nehru had been reached without their consent by tribal chieftains who were fed up with the war. and convinced that Phizo's headhunters are pretty poor rifle shots anyway. Many of the chiefs had also come to realize that Nehru would never grant complete independence to a frontier people so close to Red-occupied Tibet. For the sake of expedience and compromise, Phizo was momentarily swept aside. "He just does not come into the picture," insisted the Naga Delegation Chief Incongloba Ao. Privately, Ao admitted that most Nagas still favor Phizo's demand for complete independence. "But," he added with a sigh, "we must be practical.''

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.