John Thomas’s research while affiliated with Union Christian College, India and other places

In the 1920s and 30s, the Naga areas comprising Naga Hills and the adjoining Naga inhabited hill tracts of Manipur witnessed two important initiatives which were to become integral to the imagining and making of a Naga nation: the movement among the Rongmeis, Liangmeis and Zemes under the leadership of Jadonang and later Gaidinliu—popularly known as the Zeliangrong movement—and the programmes and activities of the Naga Club. Both the Zeliangrong movement and the Naga Club had a history and trajectory of their own but at the same time, faced with situations that seemed to threaten their way of life, they envisioned and anticipated a moment when Nagas would be united as a single political entity independent from the kingdoms of the plains and other external political authorities. This article looks closely at these initiatives, their shared and particular histories, how they made sense of and negotiated with their existing reality, and finally the visions they had of their anticipated Naga nation. The article concludes by briefly looking at how and why the Naga national movement, in the later decades of twentieth century, came to privilege one initiative over the other.