Word: nagaland
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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India gave Nagaland official status as its 16th state in 1963, but many of the 400,000 Nagas still want nothing less than full independence. The Nagas are racially distinct from Indians, tracing their Oriental origins to Tibet and Burma. Once ferocious headhunters, many Nagas are now Christianized but have scant brotherly love for Hindu administration from New Delhi...
...troops and turned back. Friendly Nagas in Burma sometimes aid the would-be rebels in traveling to China, but others have beheaded at least three Naga rebels and presented their severed heads to Indian officials as signs of good will. Some 300 China-trained Nagas have already returned to Nagaland, and the rest are due to infiltrate back by November...
...expected once the rest of the rebels return. Last week a small band of rebels, armed with automatic weapons, overran a village near the Burma frontier, captured rifles and ammunition from the local volunteer defense force before withdrawing. India, with a division of troops already tied down in Nagaland, does not want to be encumbered by a cease-fire in dealing with the rebels if the trouble increases. More troops may well be needed, for some Nagas have reportedly been taken all the way to Viet Nam for on-the-spot observations of how guerrillas there bedevil U.S. forces...
India estimates the strength of the underground rebel army at from 6,000 to 8,000, scattered through the hills and thick forests of Nagaland. Nominal leader of the Naga rebellion is a school teacher named A. Z. Phizo, who organized an independence movement back in 1947 and left for London in 1961. He now carries on his battle from Britain, representing the self-styled "Naga Federal Government" that claims to speak for the 16 Naga tribes in. the 6,236-sq.-mi. state...
...Delhi will not consider independence for the Nagas, even though it has held desultory discussions with the rebels. "Nagaland has more autonomy than any other state," says an Indian official. "They have so much freedom that they don't know what to do with it." Government policy has been to keep extending the cease-fire in hopes that the rebel movement will slowly atrophy. But Peking's encouragement of the rebels makes that prospect less and less likely-and that of a renewal of bloodshed all the more probable...