- By Ngashan Vashum
Why the Missing Flag Matters.
The Naga flag has never been a decoration at our rallies. It has always been a declaration.
New Delhi | EKHON: I was at the rally held on 9 May 2026 at Jantar Mantar, organised by the Naga Students’ Union Delhi, and it was not a routine gathering. It was a peaceful solidarity protest held in response to the escalating violence against Naga civilians in Ukhrul, Kamjong, Senapati, and the surrounding areas of Manipur. The rally stood with the affected villages, remembered those who have been killed, and demanded justice and security for the communities under attack. It called for the restoration of normalcy, the impartial deployment of central forces, and the immediate scrapping of the Suspension of Operations arrangement with Kuki militant groups. It condemned the Kuki narco-terrorist networks, drew urgent attention to the hostage situation in Sinakeithei village, rejected the illegitimate demand for a Kukiland or any separate administrative or Union Territory carve-out on Naga ancestral soil along NH 202 and beyond, and reminded the Government of India that the Indo-Naga political issue cannot be pushed aside.
It was, in every sense, a rally that asked India to see Naga lives as fully human and fully political. That is why the gathering mattered so profoundly. The turnout was strong. The slogans were sharp. The heaviness in the air was real. And yet, from the moment I reached the venue, one absence was impossible to ignore. The Naga national flag, the flag that has been the visual heartbeat of our most significant political mobilisations, was nowhere to be seen.
This is not a complaint about decoration. In 2026, the Naga national flag is not a cultural accessory. It is an unresolved, living piece of the Indo-Naga peace negotiation itself. Senior NSCN(IM) leaders Thuingaleng Muivah and VS Atem have publicly called the flag and constitution non-negotiable. The Government of India has refused to concede either, a position reaffirmed as recently as February 2026 by Minister Kiren Rijiju. The WC-NNPGs, the other major negotiating bloc, has insisted that the flag appear in the final agreement as a prime symbolic issue to be pursued through democratic processes. In the plainest possible terms, the Naga flag is not beside the political issue. It is at the centre of it. When the flag rises or falls in public view, the political signal travels straight to the negotiating table.
That is exactly why rallies at Jantar Mantar are never just gatherings. They are watched. By politicians, bureaucrats, interlocutors, intelligence officials, diplomats, and the media. Every image is read for signs of resolve or retreat. If we who stand in the open air of the capital do not carry the flag that our own negotiators are fighting for inside closed rooms, what message does that send?
I know what some observers, Indian and otherwise, might ask: “Were they not allowed? Did they lack permission? Was there an NOC issue? Were the flags even available in time?” Those are fair questions, and they deserve to be named plainly. It is entirely possible that the organisers faced severe constraints, time pressure, the complex and often hostile process of obtaining NOC clearance from Delhi authorities for displaying a non-Indian flag, logistical gaps, or the sheer exhaustion of mobilising under difficult conditions. None of that should be dismissed. The Naga Students’ Union Delhi deserves both gratitude and the benefit of every practical doubt. I offer both.
But the very fact that those constraints exist and can be anticipated is precisely why flag logistics cannot be an afterthought. If there is even a possibility that clearance, sourcing, or transport might prevent the flag from appearing, then the flag must become the first item of preparation, not the last. No movement that negotiates with a State can afford to let that State’s bureaucratic machinery decide, by default, whether its primary symbol appears in the national capital. The absence of the flag, no matter how understandable on a human level, still registers in the political arena as a silence. And in a struggle where symbols are argued over in high-stakes rooms behind closed doors, no silence is neutral.
The history of our own mobilisations makes this unarguable. During the 2019 Global Naga Mass Rally in Delhi, thousands marched carrying small handheld blue Naga flags, transforming the protest into an unmistakable political statement. The Times of India would later describe that rally in terms of the “thousands of blue flags,” while the peace talks themselves were reported as deadlocked over “nationhood symbols” like a separate flag. That visual power was not an accident of weather. It was the result of deliberate, difficult human effort. The campaign behind that rally, and the presence of those flags, is widely connected in Naga activist memory to Markson V Luikham, also known as Markson Naga, who helped conceptualise and initiated the Global Naga Mass Rally and Movement campaign and is remembered by many for having personally arranged thousands of handheld flags from Nagaland even when funds were not sanctioned and obstacles mounted. That act, whether recorded in official minutes or carried faithfully in oral memory, established a political grammar that every subsequent rally recognised. The flag appears, or the statement is incomplete.
That grammar matters because images travel faster than denials. A photograph of a flagless Naga protest can, however falsely, suggest to the wider world that the flag is no longer seen as indispensable, that perhaps the demand has softened. No press release can undo that in the speed of a single scroll. And at a moment when the demand for the flag remains one of the most fiercely contested issues in the Indo-Naga peace process, such impressions are not harmless. They shape perception, and perception shapes political momentum.
Let me therefore say with absolute clarity. Saturday’s rally mattered. The voices raised there mattered. The grief and outrage expressed for our people in Ukhrul, Kamjong, Senapati, and the surrounding villages mattered, and the rally’s organisers deserve deep and public appreciation. When Nagas gather in the capital to demand that civilian lives be protected, that justice be done, and that the political issue not be forgotten, they are doing the work that keeps a people’s spirit alive. That work must be honoured.
And precisely because it must be honoured, the next rally cannot make the same omission. The flag is not an accessory to our pain or our demands. It is the public proof that we remain a people with a political existence that predates the present crisis and will outlast it. In a rally that demanded that India see Naga lives, the flag was the silent witness that said these lives belong to a nation that refuses to disappear. Without it, that truth was still true, but it was harder for the world to see.
So let this be a commitment, not a criticism. Next time, the flags travel before the speakers do. They are part of the movement’s own body. They carry memory, sacrifice, continuity, and political meaning. And when they are absent, something essential is missing, not only in the crowd, but in the message the crowd hands to history. The Naga flag has never been a decoration at our rallies. It has always been a declaration. Let it be one again, without fail.
Written in conviction and concern,
Ngashan Vashum
(The views expressed in the article are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the vision, policy, or editorial position of Ekhon.)
