Rev. Daniel L. Buttry
In any peace process time will be an important issue. The Past includes the history of the conflict with all the causes, hurts, crimes and injustices that call out to be redressed. The Present includes the immediate needs and challenges. The Future encompasses the dreams to give our children and grandchildren a better future, one of peace and hope. How we put together the Past, the Present and the Future will determine the viability of our peace-building and reconciliation efforts.
From my ten years working alongside Nagas I have noticed that the Naga leaders tend to be very focused on the Past. Almost every time I meet with a group or with key leaders I hear the recitation about the Simon Commission, the visit with Gandhi, the plebiscite, the 16-Point Agreement, the Shillong Accord, and the terrible things that other groups have done to the people with whom I am talking. The Past has become a tyrant to Nagas, bringing accusation, bitterness, and limiting any possibility for new beginnings.
Recently a key Naga non-political figure issued a confession in which he looked at the Past, stated some of the hurts experienced, but took responsibility for his people’s negative contribution to the problems of the Nagas. He tried to break free from the Past by confession, but some of the response showed the chronic problems of dealing first with the Past in Naga society. A key critic responded not to the spirit of the confession but to some of the particular hurts expressed, taking issue with them. Denials were given, justifications and counter-statements of fact. Such discussion and debate has been as hopeless and vain as the violence that has taken so many Naga lives on all sides. To get to peace for the Nagas, dealing first with the Past is a non-starter.
So may I offer a different starting point in the quest for Naga reconciliation and peace? I suggest that you not revisit the Past, either with confession or with accusations and self-justifications. A spirit of humility, sorrow and repentance about the past would be necessary, but any attempt at a closer examination of the Past will just get bogged down. So perhaps Nagas can start with either the Present or the Future.
If reconciliation begins with the Present, you can begin by recognizing that everyone in Naga society, except a few war-profiteers at high or low levels, is sick and tired of the fighting, with weapons and with words. People are war-weary. Naga youth are either leaving to find their future elsewhere or else sinking into the oblivion of drug-abuse and joblessness. There is a crisis now which is made worse, not better, by the on-going intra-Naga conflict. The Naga struggle is different now than it was in the 1950s or even 1970s. It is time to hear the voice of Naga leaders, many of them in social and educational sectors, who are engaged in the struggles that today’s people face. These leaders may be more critical for meeting the challenges and opportunities of the Present than leaders who rose to prominence in the Past. Cease-fires have been made and renewed with India, and recently between the Naga factions. Something positive has been accomplished, and you must build upon these accomplishments. Older leaders can solidify their legacy before they pass on by making their own peace with their brothers and sisters, including a new generation of leaders. That is their Present challenge if they are able to live in the Present and not the Past. If they fail to meet that challenge, they will be remembered as leaders of the grim Past, not as people who successfully met the challenges of their own historic Present moment.
If reconciliation begins with the Future, we look at our children. Are we going to condemn them to the Past that haunts the bitter souls of leaders quick to justify their own violence by the accusations about the violence of the other side? Will our children be locked in the political and social cells constructed by an older generation that is rapidly fading from the scene? That will happen if Naga leaders of all groups love their own vanity more than they love the Naga children playing in the streets of Naga cities and villages. Do Naga children need your wars? Or do you love the children enough to give them a Future that is free from the horrors through which you have lived? They will flee your Future if you demand they stay prisoners of your Past. Nagas have at times made wise choices about the future, and now is a critical time for such a choice. The world is moving fast, and Nagas will be swept away unless they can support their children to face the challenges of a globalized economy and rising powers all around. You will lose your best children to violence, drugs, HIV/AIDS, emigration or to Indian education and economic power unless you begin now to construct a future that gives them hope. You need to construct a Future that gives them pride in being Nagas rather than shame. You need to construct a Future that brings out the best in Naga culture and faith. It is a Future that needs deep roots to provide strength and creativity to meet challenges unlike any you’ve faced before. You will have to lay aside all the grudges and recriminations of the Past if you are the help your children enter that Future.
It can be done. Peace and reconciliation are possible. But the question is whether the Naga leaders will be up for the challenge. If you continue to be bound in a bitter spiral of recrimination about your Past, I feel only sorrow and grief for you. Many people will pay the terrible price for your lack of vision. But if you craft a new covenant of reconciliation based on the accomplishments and opportunities of the Present and upon the dreams and aspirations of the Future, you will have met the challenge well.
Once you have built those new relationships and started the healing process, then maybe your children can lead you back into the Past where you can finally be free enough to truly confess, ask forgiveness and extend forgiveness.
