On 5 February, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a tripartite agreement with the Government of Nagaland and the Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation (ENPO) to create a special autonomous administrative entity for six districts of eastern Nagaland – Tuensang, Mon, Kiphire, Longleng, Noklak and Shamator.

Officially labelled as the ‘Frontier Nagaland Territorial Authority (FNTA)’, the new formation marks the momentary culmination of a decades-long movement for ethno-political autonomy of Naga groups inhabiting the eastern hills of Nagaland. Naga commentator Sungkhum Thonger Sangtam has called it “one of the most patient, disciplined, and principled democratic movements in the history of Nagaland.”

Remarkably, it was only in January 2024 that the ENPO called for a boycott of the Lok Sabha election in eastern Nagaland over New Delhi’s refusal to grant full statehood to the region. Less than two years later, it has agreed to – some would say ‘settled for’ – an autonomous authority within Nagaland.

Not a new demand

The Eastern Naga demand for greater self-rule has its roots in the devious cartographic manipulations of the British colonial government. The Raj found the remote eastern hills too ‘wild’ and ‘savage’ to govern directly and therefore chose to restrict its civilising orbit to the manageable western Naga hills and valleys.

The postcolonial Indian state inherited this administrative and developmental differential. Struggling to grapple with competing ethnic anxieties and an unwieldy administrative setup, the Indian government continued to move the eastern districts around on the map of Northeast India like loose pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

In 1957, the eastern districts were severed from the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) – modern-day Arunachal Pradesh – and attached to western Nagaland (Naga Hills District) with the ‘Naga Hills Tuensang Area (NHTA)’ label. In 1962, NHTA was merged with the newly created state of Nagaland and ceased to be a distinct entity on the map.

I had traced the perplexing cartographic genealogy of eastern Nagaland in my column piece for Hindustan Times in March 2024. You can read the non-paywalled (PDF) version here.

India State Stories also offers a rich visual storyline of Nagaland’s cartographic evolution (you can also download the raw data).

For now, it suffices to know that the 1962 merger did little to quell the disaffection among the eastern Nagas. Plagued by chronic underdevelopment and a nagging sense of being perennially ignored by the Nagaland government based in Kohima, they continued to demand a greater degree of self-rule through the years.

This primarily meant independence not from the Indian Union, but from Kohima, the dominant power centre of the Indian Naga hills. Therefore, it was not a ‘separatist’ demand in the traditional sense of the term.

This demand was formally articulated by the ENPO in 2010, thirteen years after it was formed, when it submitted a memo to the then Manmohan Singh-led government in New Delhi demanding the creation of a separate ‘Frontier Nagaland’ state.

For the Centre, this was a big ask. It would mean bifurcating not only the state of Nagaland, but also Article 371A of the Indian Constitution, which forms the statutory basis of the modern Indian Naga state. Such a proposition was also anathema for Kohima, which would not accept a disintegration of the much-cherished Naga state.

Federalism as a long game

What followed is a classic case of postcolonial Indian federal bargaining at different levels.

Several counter-offers were made, which were then met by counter-counter offers. New Delhi and Kohima literally threw money – to the tune of Rs 500 crores – at the ENPO to lure it away from statehood. Countless memorandums were submitted to a dozen ministers. And believe it or not, in 2012, the BJP even promised to give them statehood if it was voted into power in the 2014 general election.

The February 2026 agreement marks the conclusion of this long and complex trajectory of federal bargaining. Whether it is a logical conclusion, time will tell.

One may argue that for New Delhi, the task here was easier than usual because the ENPO never took up arms, unlike its more unrelenting counterpart(s) to the south and east, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).

But it does demonstrate how the Indian state can creatively utilise the federal constitution to diffuse regionalism or subnationalism. From the other end, it shows how ethnic minorities can use the many avenues for political innovation that the Indian Constitution offers to secure social, political and economic safeguards.

One may, in fact, forcefully argue that the recent agreement would not have materialised in its current form if not for ENPO’s principled defiance of monetary sops and other political inducements offered by New Delhi. Equally critical to the mix was the political prudence and tractability shown by Dr Neiphiu Rio, the Chief Minister of Nagaland.

As Sangtam writes, Rio’s approach was “neither reactionary nor dismissive; instead, it was measured, consultative, and grounded in wisdom.”

Autonomy, quasi-autonomy or what?

While the exact draft of the agreement isn’t yet out, it appears from media reports and analytical pieces that the ENPO agreement creates an autonomous arrangement – FNTA – that is constitutionally unique.

Neither does it fall under the Sixth Schedule, which allows for the creation of autonomous councils in tribal-majority districts, nor does it create a distinct constitutional sub-provision within Article 371A, which gives special status to Nagaland.

Instead, it seems to put in place a new semi-autonomous authority using the existing statutory remit of Article 371A. Structurally, such an arrangement falls under the federalist practice of ‘devolutionary autonomy’, as opposed to ‘decentralised autonomy’ that would require sanction under the Sixth Schedule (see this useful conceptual explainer on this issue by Professor Kham Khan Suan Hausing).

In some ways, the FNTA is similar to the unique ‘Hill Areas Committee (HAC)’ mechanism that governs the affairs of the Scheduled Tribe-dominated districts in neighbouring Manipur within the overall ambit of Article 371C. The HAC was created to assuage tribal concerns without alienating the Meitei-dominated government in Imphal, which would not accept a dissolution of Manipur’s territorial integrity – an issue that today lies at the very heart of a deadly armed conflict in the state (I’ll come to this in just a bit).

In a similar vein, New Delhi adopted this peculiar constitutional arrangement in Eastern Nagaland largely to reassure Kohima, which doesn’t want Article 371A – and by extension, Nagaland’s territory – to be internally bifurcated, let alone abrogated in any form (like its infamous cousin in Jammu and Kashmir, Article 370).

New Delhi’s delicate move broadly fulfills Article 371A’s internal legal logic. At the time of introduction, the article recognised that eastern Nagaland deserved, although only for a period of ten years, special attention and direct rule by the state’s Governor (rather than Kohima). While those 10 years did little to bring eastern Nagaland at par with the west, the spirit of the provision – that is, affirmative protection – remained permanently hardwired into the provision.

It is this constitutional logic that the Modi government seems to have leveraged to induce the ENPO towards an autonomous arrangement, and away from full statehood. In fact, at least one media report indicates that the FNTA too is an interim arrangement that mirrors the ten-year lapse period embedded in Article 371A.

Lessons from Manipur

That the FNTA arrangement for eastern Nagaland appears structurally similar to the HAC mechanism for Manipur’s tribal-dominated hill districts is important, for it is precisely in this congruence that one may find an important lesson – perhaps even a warning – for the eastern Nagas.

There are two key issues here.

One, autonomous bodies operating under Article 371 of the Indian Constitution may liaise with the central government on financial matters, but are otherwise subject to a fair degree of administrative-legislative control of their respective state governments – unlike similar entities created under the Sixth Schedule, over whose affairs the Governor has greater say. This explainer by MP-IDSA explains the distinction in a useful tabular format.

In short, the state government has a much narrower avenue to interfere in the affairs of a Sixth Schedule autonomous entity than in the case of an Article 371 autonomous authority (this is a general norm, and there have been exceptions).

The HAC is a good example of the slippery slope on which autonomous bodies under Article 371 rest.

Intended to strengthen tribal welfare in Manipur’s hill districts through greater political-economic autonomy, it ended up being routinely bypassed and thus ignored by the Meitei-dominated government in Imphal. This flaw has come to pass in recent years, as the Manipur state assembly went one step further to amend the HAC structure to allow even greater interference in hill affairs and thus dilute the spirit of the original cooperative arrangement.

Imphal’s intrusive attempts to enfeeble the HAC eventually became a key flashpoint of the ongoing Meitei-Kuki conflict. One could argue that if the HAC had Sixth Schedule rights, the Meitei government would have had to struggle harder and longer to undermine Kuki-Zo autonomy.

Two, even though the Governor has limited space to trespass into the affairs of an Article 371 autonomous entity (like FNTA), an ideologically motivated central government could use its executive authority to subvert autonomy if it so wishes.

As Professor Hausing argues, the “Center – cutting across parties in power – has used pliant subnational governments to extend several provisions of the Constitution over time.” Thus, the Modi government could, in theory, pull off a Jammu and Kashmir on Nagaland – not perhaps by reading down all of Article 371, but only the specific sub-sections that give credence to FNTA.

The last few years have made it amply clear that New Delhi is willing to play fast and loose with India’s longstanding federal ethos for larger ideological-political gains.

The ENPO must pin these cautionary notes on its strategic drawing board if it wants to take the agreement to its logical conclusion on the ground and preserve whatever autonomy it accords to the eastern Nagas.

Lesson for Manipur?

For the Kuki-Zo of Manipur, the ENPO agreement demonstrates that New Delhi is not averse to the idea of granting greater political autonomy to specific Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities in the Northeast. It is only a matter of creatively arriving at a constitutionally feasible political arrangement that benefits all and disenfranchises none.

However, the context in the two cases is vastly different.

Unlike Imphal, Kohima did not use the state apparatus to violently hound the eastern Nagas using a wide range of political and military devices – such as forced evictions, heavily armed militias and systematic xenophobic othering. This maintained a baseline level of inter-group trust between the western and eastern Nagas.

Unlike the Kuki-Zo, neither did the eastern Nagas have to counter-arm themselves to defend themselves against a majoritarian armed onslaught, nor did they have to deal with a set of pre-existing, traditionalist, heavily armed (and often self-serving) groups of armed outfits from within their communities.

Further, because the eastern Nagas are more united and coherent than the Kuki-Zo in their overall ethno-political makeup, the ENPO was able to maintain strong intra-group cohesion and engage in consistent bilateral negotiations with New Delhi.

Unlike in Manipur, ideologically motivated external sociocultural forces, like the RSS, were largely absent or only marginally present in Nagaland. This allowed the ENPO to negotiate without any disruptive interference of what may be termed as the Hindutva state-civil society complex, which continues to closely influence the Meitei-run power corridors in Imphal.

Moreover, the Kuki-Zo live contiguously with another powerful ethnic group, the Tangkhul Nagas of northern Manipur who claim parts of Kuki-Zo territory. This makes the question of autonomy for the Kuki-Zo harder to resolve than in the eastern Naga case.

Despite these critical differences, the ENPO/FNTA agreement begs a few basic notional questions:

If Delhi can listen to the eastern Nagas’ cry for political autonomy within India’s constitutional ambit, then why can’t it accord the same dignity to the Kuki-Zo?

Why is the eastern Naga’s desire to safeguard their own future embraced as a legitimate political demand, whereas a similar appeal by the Kuki-Zo flagged down as a separatist programme against Manipur’s territorial integrity?

Pacifying a strategic asset?

For New Delhi, ‘pacifying’ eastern Nagaland is more than just partisan politics. It is also a matter of geopolitical statecraft. Sample this statement from the Indian government’s official press release published after the agreement’s signing:

“The Home Minister said that we all are very well aware of the ENPO region and its strategic importance.”

Similarly, the MP-IDSA, a think tank funded by the Indian government’s Ministry of Defence, notes that the FNTA could create a “buffer zone” between “Myanmar, Arunachal Pradesh and Western Nagaland (certain areas of which host operational bases and logistical routes of other insurgent groups)” and that “through sustained security and political stability, FNTA has the potential to play a constructive role in building trans-border connectivity with Myanmar.”

This position echoes the Indian state’s traditionalist, security-centric approach towards ethnic minorities in its Northeastern borderlands. Frontier communities are most often entertained at the negotiating table not out of political altruism, but strategic compulsion.

At its core, this is a colonialist idea of territorial co-option through political pacification. But, ethnic minorities are not always inert receipients of paternalistic nationalism. They too have their own agency and leverage, and can play the state’s anxieties to their own advantage. Such is the transactional nature of modern statecraft, especially in a federal democracy.

Delhi also likely sees the ENPO as the more ‘manageable’ Naga group in an otherwise crowded ethnic resistance landscape. At a time when it is struggling to stare down the NSCN-IM in what has now become an unusually protracted and terse peace process, the Modi government likely sees the ENPO pact as a rare conflict mediation win in the Naga hills.

But eastern Nagaland is just one patch in the larger Naga political canvas. The FNTA won’t resolve the larger ‘Naga question’ – as the Working Committee of the Naga National Political Groups (WC-NNPGs) recently asserted. New Delhi cannot expect to use it to amend the spirit of the 2017 ‘Agreed Position’ with the NNPGs or the 2015 Framework Agreement with the NSCN-IM.

In fact, New Delhi must proactively play its part in taking the FNTA to its logical conclusion by ensuring prompt and sustained fund flows, extending adequate administrative support and avoiding intrusive interference. Failure to do so may once again push the ENPO towards full statehood. Going by the reported statements of the organisation’s leadership, this may not be too far off in the horizon.

Key here is to treat the eastern Nagas as a community of people with a strong sense of collective dignity, political sensibility and economic aspirations – rather than as mere strategic allies in India’s grand state-building and frontier-making project. They are equal claimants in India’s federal democracy, and must be engaged as such.

Angshuman Choudhury is a joint doctoral candidate in Comparative Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and King’s College London.

This article first appeared on the author’s Substack, Barbed Wires, and has been republished with permisison.

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