In September 2025, Dr. Rosemary Dzuvichu—a respected peace activist and former president of the Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA)—received a death threat on social media. Her alleged offense: years of advocacy demanding women’s quotas in urban local bodies (ULBs) in Nagaland, a right guaranteed by the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act of 1993.
The prolonged legal battle, spearheaded by NMA, challenging the Nagaland state government’s refusal to hold ULB elections, culminated in a 33% reservation for women in ULBs in 2023, following an order by the Supreme Court of India. A total of 102 women won seats in the 2024 ULB elections held after a gap of two decades. Patriarchal sections of the Naga society vehemently opposed women’s reservation, citing Article 371(A) of the Indian Constitution.
The case of Nagaland exemplifies the constraints women in Northeast India face while participating in electoral politics, evidenced by abysmally low numbers of women in the state legislative assemblies. The active involvement of women in grassroots activism for peacebuilding has primarily occurred against the backdrop of violence in Northeast India spanning several decades since India’s post-colonial state-making started in 1947.
A Region Shaped by Conflict
Located between South Asia and Southeast Asia, Northeast India is home to several indigenous communities with complex histories and linguistic and ethnic diversities. The desire to maintain autonomy and a unique identity among certain communities led to self-assertion movements, including armed insurgencies, which peaked in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Inter-group rivalries and the Indian state’s counterinsurgency measures, especially in the form of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1958, claimed thousands of lives of state and non-state armed actors and civilians. During this time, as the law and order situation deteriorated, social issues, including drug and alcohol abuse, plagued the conflict-affected states of Northeast India.
Mothers Step Into the Breach
Women, propelled by their essentialist roles as mothers, stepped in with the dual goals of putting an end to the bloodshed and addressing the emerging social issues due to the disruption of law and order. For instance, NMA was established in Nagaland in 1984, and the All Bodo Women’s Welfare Federation (ABWWF) was established in the Bodo areas of Assam state in 1986. Although focusing on social issues in the beginning, inter-factional killings between the insurgent groups and the clashes between the insurgents and the security forces deployed to curtail the insurgency led these organizations to intervene for peace.
The members of these organizations mediated between the insurgent groups in conflict and urged them to participate in peace negotiations. On a few occasions, the members of NMA undertook a difficult journey crossing rivers and jungles to reach Naga insurgent hideouts in Myanmar to urge them to take part in peace negotiations.
Although the 2019 Naga peace talks between the Naga insurgent groups and the government of India ushered hopes of ending the protracted Naga conflict, new fault lines were exposed, as the neighbouring state of Manipur expressed concerns over certain clauses of the agreement having the potential of impacting the integrity of Manipur. As such, the NMA reached out to the Meira Paibis (Torch Bearers), an informal mothers’ group of Manipur, to discuss the situation and ease the tensions. In the Bodo areas of Assam, the ABWWF members brought two rival Bodo insurgent groups to a common space and mediated discussions between them.
These initiatives helped pause the violence in both contexts, as the insurgents heeded the appeals of the mothers. During clandestine home visits of the insurgents, mothers and grandmothers also made efforts to persuade them to surrender arms. These initiatives of the members of NMA and ABWWF and mothers and grandmothers of these conflict-affected societies stemmed from what academics describe as motherhood politics or maternal activism, that is, women leveraging their roles as mothers and exercising their agency to pave their way into peace politics, which is otherwise a male-dominated space. Similar strategies have been adopted in other contexts of conflicts, such as Argentina, Israel, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and more, with successful outcomes.
Motherhood politics in the conflict-affected regions of India’s Northeast manifested in informal ways, including women’s collective organizational agency. Collectively, in their respective regions, NMA, ABWWF, and Meira Paibis (torch bearers) exerted motherhood politics in several ways—overt activism, nude protests, everyday resistance, and devising coping mechanisms during conflicts. For example, NMA and ABWWF organized peace marches, the Meira Paibis of Manipur bared their bodies as an act of resistance against the atrocities perpetrated by the security forces, and women in villages came together to devise everyday strategies, such as undertaking weaving or opening grain banks. As men hid in jungles fearing arrest and torture by the security forces, women shouldered all responsibility inside and outside the home.
A Continuing Struggle for Inclusion
The larger society, whether Naga or Bodo, recognizes and acknowledges the undeniable roles of the NMA or ABWWF in building peace and reconstructing the ruptured societies. For example, in Nagaland, the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), a joint effort towards reconciliation, established in 2008 at a time when Naga society was “drenched in tears and mourning” due to factional fights and fear of the Indian Army, included NMA, along with other organizations, for its long-term peace contributions to Naga society.
FNR conducted faith-based mediations among rival Naga factions by arranging prayer meetings and football matches to help build team spirit. Their efforts bore fruit with the signing of the Covenant of Reconciliation (CoR) on 13 June 2009 by the leaders of the three major Naga armed groups, who resolved to end violence. The killings reduced significantly in the years that followed.
However, women’s organizations have been kept at the margins of conventional peace talks and peace accord signing ceremonies, which are primarily led by the government. Evidence suggests that including women in formal peace processes increases the durability of peace accords. Therefore, in Northeast India, given the recurrence of violence, including women in formal peace processes could be the first step towards attaining durable peace solutions.
Keywords: Nagaland, India, Northeast India, mothers, motherhood, motherhood politics, women, women and peace, peace, conflict, conflict resolution
Amrita Saikia
Dr. Amrita Saikia is an Assistant Professor at the School of Liberal Arts & Humanities,Woxsen University, Hyderabad, India. From 2023 to 2024, Dr. Saikia conducted herpostdoctoral research on women and peacebuilding funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Cologne, at the Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany. Dr. Saikia’s research interests lie at the interstices of forced displacement, refugees, conflicts, peace, gender, and women. Her recent monograph, Gender, Nation, and Nationalism: Perspectives of Tibetan Women in Exile (Routledge, 2025), is basedon her doctoral research conducted at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.
