BK Nehru held various positions in Indian government, including governor of numerous states and ambassador to the US. I’ve been going back over his notes from the amusingly titled Nice Guys Finish Second on his time in Nagaland. Some choice quotes:
“What I was faced with here was incredibly tiny groups of separate identities with problems so small that I could not grasp why they should be bothered about” (p. 477)
“the demand for Naga independence was nonsense” (p. 503)
“they [Naga rebels] should never forget that they were nothing more than a bunch of ignorant brigands living on money extorted from their own people and the charity of foreign countries” (p. 511)
“the ‘problem’ was in reality the shock inflicted on the Naga social system by the sudden removal of its protected isolation from the modern world which its status as an excluded area had provided it. . . the solution lay in the passage of time” (p. 518)
Paul Staniland 