Guest contributor
Shalini Perumal
The rugged, mist-shrouded mountains that define the border between India and Myanmar have, for centuries, been home to indigenous communities whose identities predate the modern nation-state.
For the Naga, the Mizo, and the Zo (Chin) people, the hills are not a barrier but a bridge—a shared ancestral landscape woven together by kinship, culture, and a common history.
However, recent moves by New Delhi to scrap the Free Movement Regime (FMR) and construct a massive physical fence along the 1,600-km-long India-Myanmar border have ignited a firestorm of protest.
From the Naga Self-Administered Zone (SAZ) in Myanmar to the streets of the Mizoram State capital Aizawl in India, community groups are rising in defiance.
These protests are more than just a dispute over infrastructure; they are an assertion of indigenous land rights against what many describe as a colonial project that seeks to partition families and sever the heart of indigenous life.
By examining the resistance led by groups like the Eastern Naga Women’s Association (ENWA), the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), and the Zo Re-unification Organization (ZORO), it becomes clear that the border fence is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of people who refuse to be divided by an international border.
On Jan. 18, the Eastern Naga Women’s Association (ENWA), based in Myanmar’s Naga SAZ, issued a blistering condemnation of the ongoing fencing activities on the Indian side of the border.
Their focus is the Nampong-Pangsau area, a region where India has rapidly advanced road construction and begun the process of erecting physical barriers.
The ENWA rhetoric is grounded in the language of indigenous sovereignty. They argue that the fence is not merely a security measure but an act of aggression against the history, culture, social fabric, and family structures of the Naga people.
For the Naga, many families have homes on one side of the border and ancestral farmlands on the other. Children cross the borderline for school; elders cross it for traditional ceremonies.
By demanding an immediate halt to the construction, the ENWA states the fence is a “grave violation of indigenous rights and democratic principles.”
Their call to action—urging Naga women to boycott the Nampong Festival—is a powerful symbol of resistance. It signals that culture cannot be celebrated as a tourist spectacle while the very land that birthed that culture is being partitioned.
This boycott transforms a moment of cultural display into a political act of non-cooperation, asserting that indigenous identity cannot be divorced from the territorial integrity of their ancestral lands.
Further south, in India’s Mizoram State, the sentiment is equally fierce. On Jan. 16, the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) and the Zo Re-unification Organization (ZORO) staged a massive peaceful protest in Aizawl. Their message was simple yet deep: “The Indian government is planning to build a wall that will separate brothers from brothers.”
For the Zo people—who encompass various tribes across Mizoram in India and Chin State in Myanmar—the border is a colonial artifact. The British Empire drew these lines with little regard for the ethnic and linguistic continuity of the region.
Today’s fencing project is seen as a revival of that colonial spirit. Dr. C. Lalremruata, chair of the MZP, articulated a vision of “Zo Re-unification,” arguing that the people belong together under a “single administration” as divinely ordained.
The protest was not just about local logistics; it was a rejection of the Westphalian nation-state model that demands hard borders. The MZP and ZORO view the fence as a physical manifestation of a divide and rule policy.
They argue that the bond between the Chin people of Myanmar and the Mizo people of India is biological and spiritual. To wall off that connection is to commit a form of cultural erasure.
Their vow to oppose the government to the end reflects a deep-seated commitment to the survival of their ethnic identity.
To understand why these CBOs label the fence a colonial project, one must look at the history of the Indo-Myanmar border. Most of the current boundary was defined by the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo and later refined by British colonial administrators.
These lines were drawn in London and Calcutta, often cutting directly through villages and traditional grazing lands.
When India and Myanmar gained independence, they inherited these arbitrary lines. For decades, the FMR acted as a safety valve, allowing indigenous people to travel up to 16 km across the border without visas, acknowledging the unique socio-cultural reality of the region.
By scrapping the FMR and building a fence, New Delhi is effectively completing the colonial mission: the total compartmentalization of indigenous bodies into state-controlled spaces.
The colonial nature of the project is also evident in the lack of indigenous consent. The ENWA and MZP highlight that these decisions are being made in New Delhi, thousands of miles away, with little to no consultation with the people who will actually be divided by the wire.
This top-down imposition of national security over human security is a hallmark of colonial governance, where the interests of the metropole outweigh the rights of the indigenous periphery.
International law, specifically the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), emphasizes the right of indigenous peoples to maintain and develop contacts, relations, and cooperation across borders.
Article 36 of UNDRIP explicitly states that states shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise of this right.
The India-Myanmar border fence stands in direct contradiction to these international norms. By restricting access to ancestral lands, the fence infringes on the right to livelihood.
In many parts of the Naga and Mizo hills, the border is literally a line through a farmer’s field. If a farmer is cut off from their crops by a 12-foot fence (3.6 meters), their fundamental right to food and economic self-determination is violated.
Furthermore, the environmental impact of the fence—often overlooked in security discourses—threatens the biodiversity of the Indo-Burma hotspot, which indigenous communities have managed sustainably for millennia.
The construction of roads and fences in these fragile ecosystems, as noted by the ENWA, constitutes a seizure of land that bypasses traditional land-tenure systems.
New Delhi justifies the fence as a means to curb insurgency, illegal immigration, and drug trafficking. However, the protesting groups argue that these issues cannot be solved by a wall. Instead, the fence punishes the innocent while doing little to stop sophisticated transnational criminal networks.
For the Mizo and Naga, the fence creates a humanitarian trap. In the wake of the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, thousands of Chin and Naga refugees have sought safety among their kin in India.
A fence would shut the door on people fleeing atrocities, turning an ethnic kinsman into a trespasser. The MZP and ZORO see this as a betrayal of the brotherly bonds that have sustained their people through crises. The fence, therefore, is not a shield for the nation; it is a cage for its people.
The protests by the ENWA, the MZP, and ZORO represent a critical juncture in the history of the Northeast. They are sounding an alarm that the India-Myanmar border fence is an existential threat to indigenous survival.
To move forward, the Indian government must recognize that security is not found in barbed wire, but in the trust and cooperation of the borderland communities.
The demands of these groups are clear: an immediate halt to construction, the restoration of the FMR, and a respect for the ancestral land rights that predate the modern state.
If the fence continues to rise, it will stand as a monument to a failed colonial logic—a wall that attempts to divide what is, by blood and history, indivisible.
The resistance of the Naga and Zo people is a symbol of the fact that indigenous identity cannot be hemmed in. As long as the government continues this project of partition, the voices from the hills will only grow louder, demanding a future where borders do not define their destiny.
Shalini Perumal is a creative international development professional who has worked previously in Mae Sot, Thailand at Mae Tao Clinic, consulted for Finnish Refugee Council Myanmar, and served as a Writer/Researcher at Insight Myanmar Podcast. She is currently a freelance journalist working on a novel.
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