The leader of a rebel group in India's north-east challenged the world's biggest democracy to live up to its name and let the people of the troubled state of Manipur choose for themselves if they want independence.
Sanayaima, chairman of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), said there was no room for peace talks with New Delhi without UN mediation, nor any middle ground short of a plebiscite on the restoration of Manipur's "sovereignty".
The UNLF was established in 1964 and has been waging an armed struggle since 1990 for independence for nearly two million people in the lush valleys and forested hills of Manipur on India's far eastern border with Myanmar.
"Whether we remain with India or whether we become a sovereign, independent nation: let the people decide," Sanayaima told Reuters in his first ever interview with foreign media.
"I think if India is the largest democracy in the world then they should accept the challenge."
The softly spoken underground leader, sporting a goatee and glasses, was speaking on a trip to Hong Kong shrouded in secrecy. Refusing to say how he left Manipur or where he was going next, he requested this story be issued only after he left the city.
"If necessary, we will continue our struggle for another hundred years because it is the very fundamental right that we are fighting for, the national right that we are fighting for, so we cannot afford to get tired," he said.
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