By Aga Rengma
On April 29, 2025, three young Naga soldiers of the NSCN (IM), fell to bullets fired by Indian security forces in Assam’s Dima Hasao district. It happened during a declared ceasefire, in a territory that belongs to the Nagas, in our own homeland. The silence we had mistaken for peace was broken, yet again, by gunfire. And as three more lifeless bodies of Naga youths are returned to the soil, we must ask the most painful question of all; What value do these deaths add to the Naga aspirations? Was it all not in vain?
For us, the Nagas, It is deeply tragic to lose the lives of young soldiers not in the battlefield, but during a supposed ceasefire, caught in strategic traps set by the Indian state. Let us be honest with ourselves, these are not martyrs of war, but just innocent victims of a failed and directionless peace process. Our leaders must urgently and sincerely reconsider the implications of this indefinite ceasefire and the silent erosion it has caused to our cause, our people, and our future.
This is not just about a single incident. This reflects the deep rot in a process that claims to be a peace negotiation but has neither delivered peace nor progress. It is about the human cost of waiting. About the illusion of calm that allows violence to persist under diplomatic cover. We have not forgotten the Oting incident where 14 innocent Naga youths were massacred without mercy on December 4, 2021 by Indian forces for no reason.
In 1997, the Naga people, tired of war, longing for a peaceful future, agreed to a ceasefire with the hope that it would pave the road to lasting peace. Dialogue, not death, was to be our path forward. Yet nearly three decades later, what has that promise yielded? We have watched the years pass by, the graves multiply on both sides, and the peace talks spiral into stagnation. We have raised a whole generation under the banner of ceasefire only to show them that even silence has a body count.
Security forces claim the recent killings followed a “tip-off” and led to an arms recovery. But to me, this incident is no routine encounter, it is a rupture of faith. It is a brutal reminder that while we lay down arms in good faith, the other side may not see restraint as peace but as permission. The NSCN (IM) has called it a betrayal of the 1997 truce. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps we must admit that this ceasefire, meant to be a bridge, is now a brittle crutch.
The recent clash is not the first and will not be the last, so long as there is no political resolution, no mutual respect, and no clearly defined framework. Ceasefire is supposed to protect lives on both sides and give peace a chance to bring permanent resolution to conflicts without loss of lives. If a ceasefire cannot protect lives of soldiers, then what is it protecting, what is its purpose? Worse, the language of “peace” is now being used to paralyze our collective will. We are told to be patient, to stay calm, to keep talking. But talking has its limits when the other side listens only to the sound of compliance. The peace process has become a performance of the government, and we are its silent audience, watching our youths die, our lands militarized, our dream of a Naga nation reduced to a shadow.
These three fallen men were not statistics. They were sons, brothers, neighbours and friends, and so are the many Indian soldiers who lost their lives trying to please the Indian government. Their deaths demand more than ritual mourning. They demand a reckoning. How many more lives must be lost while we wait? How many Naga and Indian mothers and fathers must bury their children before we ask whether there is going to be an end to this “mere management “ of Naga political issue in the guise of ceasefire.
Let us remember: the ceasefire was never meant to be permanent. It was a breathing space, a fragile pause meant to lead to a just conclusion. If that conclusion remains elusive, and the pause itself becomes a new form of control, then we must confront an uncomfortable truth: this ceasefire, once a gesture of hope, now risks becoming a cruel deception for both Nagas and Indians.
The ceasefire, while reducing direct violence, has entrenched a political limbo that allows fragmentation, corruption, and moral decay to fester. It has weakened the legitimacy of both the armed movement and the state, creating a society stuck between unresolved history and a compromised present.
This is not just about Naga lives lost. Indian soldiers too have died or been wounded in these encounters, young men drawn into a conflict they did not start, tasked with enforcing policies they did not create. The state may declare them martyrs, but we must ask: what honor is there in dying while trying to suppress another people’s right to self-determination?
These soldiers are not enemies; they are also victims of a failed political system, of a historical injustice left unresolved. Like the Naga youths, they bleed because of broken promises and political paralysis. And in this, we are all diminished. The longer this festers, the more it becomes a war without enemies, just humans on both sides caught in the machinery of a conflict that should have ended long ago.
What pride or honor is there in telling their families, their children, that their father died not defending their own land, but attempting to occupy someone else’s? What comfort can be offered to sons and daughters who learn that their parent’s life ended in the service of suppressing another people’s rights, seizing ancestral lands that were never theirs to claim? These are not heroic deaths. They are just casualties of a morally bankrupt enterprise, of a state’s policy that values domination over dignity, control over coexistence. Both Naga and Indian lives are being wasted in a conflict that should have been resolved through justice, not perpetuated through force.
To the families who lost their sons whether Indian or Naga, words offer little comfort. But to the rest of us, their deaths offer a final warning: we are living in the pause between betrayal and collapse. We cannot afford to be bystanders to our own tragedy. Let this incident not be buried in bureaucracy or forgotten in tomorrow’s news cycle. Let it be the turning point.
Both the Government of India and the Naga national government must treat this issue with utmost seriousness and bring the peace talks to a conclusive end without further delay. It has already been over three decades, and it should not continue indefinitely at the cost of public suffering and inconvenience.
Let us honor the fallen not with slogans, but with a unified and fearless pursuit of a just future. Let us make their legacy not just about how they died, but what we did in their name.
Because if we cannot protect the living, then what did they die for?
As I write this from my son’s hospital bedside, I’m reminded that every word I pen is also a promise to him. A promise that he will grow up in a land that chooses justice over control, unity over division, and peace with dignity, not silence born from fear. No child should inherit a broken future while we stand idle today.
The writer is Interim Convenor, Western Naga Youth Front . Contact [email protected]