Nagaland as a State-in-Waiting

The ramifications of the claim for an independent Nagaland at the junction of China, Burma, and India unfolded far outside its region. This paper juxtaposes the arrival of the Naga nationalist leader Angami Zapu Phizo to London in 1960—the same year that 17 new states received international recognition—with the United Nations General Assembly’s declaration that national self-determination was an international norm, supported by both the US and the Soviet Union. Decolonization was a political moment when the global potential for national liberation seemed strongest, but the UN only recognized nationalist claims that arose from the dissolution of European empire. Certain groups—such as Nagas—who did not see their claims represented by their country’s dominant nationalisms, turned to transnational advocates to represent them in international politics. These advocates, who were drawn from the global anti-apartheid, US Civil Rights, and Indian Sarvodaya movements, often had substantial corporate and government connections and conflicting allegiances. Ultimately, those ties constrained the shape of the claims for which they spoke, perpetuating some of the dependent, paternalist dynamics of empire in postimperial contexts.