Muivah says NSCN (I-M) will not compromise on Naga political demands

Less than 48 hours before his scheduled departure from his birthplace in Manipur’s Ukhrul district, NSCN (I-M) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah said his group would not budge from its position on the Naga political issue.

The armed group wants New Delhi to recognise the Naga national flag and the Naga constitution, which it claims were part of the deal when the Framework Agreement was signed in August 2015.

NSCN (I-M) expands to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah). The group prefers to be called the National Socialist Council of Nagalim.

“They [Government of India] started giving ultimatum… We were forced to tell them, come what may, we will stand our ground. We know who the Indians are and their history,” Mr. Muivah, 91, told journalists from the Gethsemane hall in Somdal on Tuesday (October 28, 2025).

He reached Somdal, his birthplace, on October 22, six decades after he left home in 1964 to join the Naga freedom movement. He is scheduled to fly back to the NSCN (I-M)’s central headquarters near Nagaland’s Dimapur after a stopover in Manipur’s Senapati town on October 29.

“…We will not come taking your (India’s) history to surrender to you. We will never do that… Whether it is today or tomorrow, Nagas are Nagas and Indians are Indians,” Mr. Muivah, the chief negotiator in the peace talks, said.

“If you don’t come to understand us and appreciate, then there is no point for us going to you,” he said, insisting that the peace negotiators representing New Delhi understood his position.

He claimed that the NSCN (I-M) has been clear about its position since the day it declared a truce in 1997 and that the Centre’s negotiators were aware of it.

Earlier, during a welcome ceremony, Mr. Muivah said that the “historic national decision” for a “sovereign Nagalim” had been defended and consolidated from the battlefield to the negotiating table. “We have not surrendered the free existence and sovereignty of Nagalim, and we shall defend the sovereign national decisions of Nagalim to the last,” he declared.

He also assured the Nagas that the NSCN (I-M) would not compromise on the twin issues of the Naga national flag and the Yehzabo, or Naga national constitution, while working out an arrangement of coexistence with India.