The Legal and the Lethal

AFSPA keeps apart ideas of law and justice; a separation that makes the Nagas 'killable', as in Oting. The law incorporates them into the Indian nation-state as rights-deprived subjects — and, in the process, reveals the dark side of Indian democracy. On the morning of 4 December, the director-general of the Assam Rifles inaugurated the fourth day of Nagaland’s annual Hornbill festival. The Naga organisers rolled out the red carpet and honoured him with a traditional embroidered shawl. The invitation had gone out to him as part of an attempt by the current generation of Nagas to reconcile with the very paramilitary unit engaged, until a ceasefire in 1997, in bloodshot ‘operations’ to suppress the Naga demand for the right to self-determination.