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In an exclusive interview, spokesperson for Kuki National Organsation, Seilen Haokip, talks to V K Shashikumar, Special Investigations, CNN-IBN about Naga and Kuki issues.

V K Shashikumar: There are competing histories. The Nagas have a different historical outlook on the Kuki issue, the Kukis have a different outlook on Naga issues, and so on and so forth and it seems to be spread over all ethnicities in the Northeast. At some point in time the competing histories will have to cooperate. How do you arrive at that position?

Seilen Haokip: I agree with you there are competing histories, and in a sense that is inevitable because both communities rely on the oral traditions and its difficult in that context to say that this is right and that is wrong. However what has been problematic is our histories in the recorded sense were started by the British.

There is no other recorded history that is accessible to both communities at the moment. It is from the perspective of the colonialist. What is written by the British is not complementary toward the Kukis as much as they are towards the Nagas.

V K Shashikumar: Effort is being made by the Kukis themselves, to present their own history in their own way. Books are being written and so on.

Seilen Haokip: True. But we are relying on sources, again which are lying largely based on oral traditions. And if you pit that against what the British have written, it’s a bit difficult to balance the two. One specific reason for that is, for the time that the British moved to the Northeast, the Kukis sort of opposed them, they didn’t want them to come into their lands.

And they record this in their books as Kuki raids, I mean that’s their perspective, from our perspective it’s defending our territory, our area of influence, etc. Naga nationalism, no offense meant, was promoted by the British.

V K Shashikumar: All of this, including your views on Naga nationalism is colored by or in the context of the Kuki-Naga clashes. Isn’t that kind of a reality, fact of life that those clashes fundamentally altered the way that Kukis looks at Nagas and visa-versa?