Moving towards a Delusional peace ?

Toney Naorem *

Major players in the Naga political arena :: Pix - TSE

The recent development of NSCN-IM's dialogue with GoI has again raised many question and doubts in people's mind.

And in this regard it's important to see what is happening, what happened in past, what will probably happen and some ways to avoid any conflicts in this unidirectional peace process.

Lack of transparency is one of the main reasons which havesowed the seeds of distrust among the groups involved and the general public.

It's quite obvious to everyone that this peace initiative is very narrow in its vision; for the region and issue we have it should have been a more holistic approach engaging all groups concerned.Instead it has been more skewed towards groups that have more of fire power.

This kind of categorical attitude will send a wrong message to any group in conflict with the Government. The very basic idea Govt. should not contradict is "All men are equal", when you honour the fact that Nagas are unique, and are in the process of giving special rights, special brand of autonomy/freedom for Nagaland, is it not imperative to give the same status to the other groups like Kukis, Meeteis, Assamese etc.

They have been living together with Nagas all these years with almost the same situation and even have similar insurgents fighting for similar objective. And if you talk of historic uniqueness, are the histories of any of these groups less unique. Or will the Govt. wait for some decades for the other groups to take up the path taken by NSCN-IM.

The point is there should not be any differential treatment towards any community or group only because another group might have a greater capability ofviolence.

And the effort to involve the respective state governments is too late and it will not serve the purpose, unless we involve other stake-holders. Going by the past decisions of GoI, it's hard to say if they won't take any decision with absolute lack of knowledge of ground realities prevailing in the region.

It may be noted that many recent conflicts were created just because of some wrong decision by the people in power and we are talking about recent episodes of the likes of cease-fire extension without territorial limit etc.

It will be too early for any group to speculate what will be the outcome of this dialogue. But nevertheless all the groups should have their strategy to deal with situation that may arise in future and at the same time each one should try to involve each other in the process towards peace, for the peace in this region cannot exist in isolation.

The region needs peace but not at the cost of future conflicts. The way to peace should be an approach which considersthe entire stake holder ecosystem in forming a strategy towards peace, and not just a top-down approach in decision making, where the few select group ofpeople makes the decision at the top and the other concerned groups has to follow.

Involving all stake holders to bring peace in the region might be a difficult task but that will ensure a long term solution. Government needs to develop a holistic approach in providing a peace package to the region as a whole and not one community at a time. Any solution that GoI and NSCN-IM comes out should not be a fuel to the communal and ethnic politics or else we might never come out of this mess forever with the collective narcissism only to live with.