A letter to a/the terrorist/militant group(s) in North East India

Dear friends,

I am not writing this as one who hates you or who wishes that someone bad come upon you. As much as you love to do right, I love it too.

It is oftentimes hard to digest criticisms specially one is strongly convinced that one has been wronged all these years and one’s life is dedicated to put these wrongs to right. If someone comes to you and says to that what you are actually doing is perpetuating violence and thus ends up destroying more lives rather than put things to right, I think you would not like to listen to such people. But forgive my audacity for I am going to do exactly that.

I grew up hearing all the legendary stories of some of you. I also grew up hearing that “ Freedom” is round the corner and once that is achieved everybody will be happy; nobody will be unemployed and nobody will ever harassed us. I hear from the older generation that they too grew up hearing such stories. I also learnt that some of you are so sacrificial that some groups can even tame the wildest kids.

However, we are here now. The situation is as bad as it can be. What have you/we achieved? Nothing. How is the moral character of your armed cadres? Not appreciated. People have gone ahead, yet your or rather our people are struggling with petty things. All these years of fighting have killed so many people; so many parents have lost their children. And all this for some kind of “freedom” which will never come true.

True freedom does not come with having gained some kind of control over certain territory. I don’t think it is feasible to gain such territorial freedom because, firstly, the civil society is divided whether to remain part of India or not, and secondly, India is not going to give in to such demand. But suppose the people are united and India is willing to concede to such demand, how are you/we going to run the economy? Political freedom without economic freedom is not freedom at all. You cannot run a country with starving and homeless citizens. It is for this reason that I prefer to remain in India.

Some of you are Christian, some Hindu, some Muslim and some pagan. But does your religion teach you to use violence to fight for you cause? Even if there is difference of opinion whether to remain in India or otherwise, I would expect you all to fight for your cause without employing guns. I don’t think most people of the world appreciate what you are doing. Yet most people, if not all, would appreciate freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi or Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela. Aren’t they consider to be statesmen the world over?

I am a Christian, and I could never understand how it is possible to use the name of Christ to fight for a cause which some of you are fighting for.

You think that you cannot live together with India. But since you are not able to live together with your own people: people who speak the same language, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes, worship the same deity etc. this argument does not hold. Count the number of your own people you have killed. This shows that living together is something that we have to learn; it is not something that comes to us naturally. Whether it is my own tribesman or whether the person from a distant land one must learn the virtue of loving and respecting others. If one will not do that but remain stubborn tin thinking we are the only ‘good’ people, there will be no peace and acceptance even within the same ethnic group/tribe/village. Isn’t that the reason why there is so much of bloodshed within your own peoples group. Ahoms against Ahoms; Bodos against Bodos; Kukis against Kukis; Meeteis against Meeteis; Nagas against Nagas; Tripuris against Tripuris. Some of your brothers and sisters have gone ahead in accepting others; they have gone on even to marry Indian or other Asians or even European/American. These brothers and sisters travel, work, live and prosper with others. While you are into killing even your own people, let alone mixing with others. As long as human society is there on earth differences will not go away, but one has to live with that. I just don’t think it is right to use guns to assert one’s otherness. There are thousand of ways to do that. But the more important thing, I think, is to find ways to be in unity and peace in truth with those others around me. And this pursuit in truth cannot lead to the kind of bloodshed that I find in our beautiful North East.

I have more to say but as we sustain the dialogue, or monologue, should I say? I shall bring out some more points. The scare with many people is that speaking out some factual matters lead to bitterness that ultimately result in silencing them forever. Since there has been occasions when those who speak out views different from yours have been silenced forever, I shall take this lesson of history seriously. There are people I know very well, and whom I believe have much wisdom to share to us all, who have chosen silence on the matter, instead of saying anything against your view, because they believe you or your disciples will put a bullet in their head if they open their mouth. But ultimately it’s you and us all included who are poorer by their silence. Alas, it’s guns…

Yours sincerely,

Jer

Manipur: The God forsaken country!

I have tried to read up the social and political history for the sustained functioning of militancy/terrorism in various parts of India. Whether it’s the crisis in Jammu & Kashmir or Assam or the effort to tackle the menace of Naxalism or Khalistan or even the political imbroglio of the Nagas/Mizos/Bodos/Tripuris or the elimination of the the dreaded Veerapan, I have no doubt that the most complex situation is that of Manipur. The Meetei civil society as well as the insurgents will not quite agree to the demand of the Nagas; and the Nagas in general will not give in to the demand of the Kukis. The Kukis are not in good terms with the Paites or say UNLF. Each ethnic group needs to support their underground brothers or the other ethnic group will bully the one that does not have the support of the gun wielding young men and women. Without NSCN Meeteis will bully the Nagas, and there is no doubt about that in the mind of every Naga; and the same applies to the Meeteis. Even each politician must have at least one militant group as their benefactor, whether it’s during election or after that. Some politicians will have multiple militant groups as their protector. But without such support from gun wielding brethren they cannot survive in politics. And for the support every politician must shell out couple of lakhs each year. Even businessmen are not spared.

In social and political matrix of Manipur it is very difficult to decipher which individual or community do not have a stake in the flourishing of small scale militant industry. Everybody is deep into it. The Church and the bureaucracy too have a stake. After all each individual in the church or bureaucracy is made up of individual who belongs to a particular ethnic group.

On the other hand it is the politicians who are against the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Act that gives power even to non-commissioned officer to shoot anyone on mere suspicion so as to maintain public law and order. For a politician it does not matter if all the underground groups are killed provided the group that protects him is kept happy. But in the whole process some members of politicians protectors will also get killed. But that’s the way it has to be. Because withdrawal of the Act will make things chaotic.

Each politician who comes to power will try to keep CBI away as the entry of CBI will unlock all the connections—the involvement of every politician in corruption and the siphoning off of money to the militants. Oftentimes money that are meant for development will be shared between a local politician, militants and bureaucrats. No wonder every politician, every senior militants and every bureaucratic will have big buildings and big cars and big belly. The Imphal that was 20 years back is long gone. If there is any city has gone worse from bad in all 20 years then it must be Imphal. Other cities get better and better each decade whereas for Imphal it’s the other way round.

I don’t have any expectation from the government. Nor do I expect the Church to bring any change. I don’t have any expectation from the existing NGOs either. Even Christian NGOs are equally bad like any other (or should I say equally good!) Didn’t they say that God works through us! Well, there is no one through whom God can work. Because there is no one… or rather because God has forsaken it!

We need good seminaries, not many seminaries.

I have never been to a theological college to study. I have not really sought for such a time nor has such thought occurred to me except for a brief seconds. One reason why I have not been keen to study is because of the students that graduated from the theological colleges. I have often felt that it was a waste studying four years for BD when one could just as well read and study at home. Of late I have changed in my perception of such study. After all, I cannot expect all the students to graduate having mastered Church history and theology, and ready to speak to the issues the Church and society face. There are bundles of students who go to study because parents want them do that; and there are others who do that because theological colleges are the only ‘rehabilitation centre’ that can help them get out drug addiction; and there are still others who can afford to study only in such theological colleges. For different reason, therefore, seminaries are not able to produce ideal students. It is mainly for this reason that I have now felt that it’s unfair to undermine the contribution of theological colleges.

A good seminary will definitely provide good library and a good number of faculty numbers and also admit God fearing and hardworking students. To be able to interact with all these resources is indeed something one cannot get elsewhere. But in reality not everybody is wise enough to make use of all the resources available.

In India I have heard people say that UBS, Pune, is the best seminary in India. UTC, Bangalore, is good but it has compromised in its doctrinal matters, they say. SAIACS is doing good, some opined. I am inclined to agree with all the observations. But compared to the number of Christians in India the number of fairly good seminaries is really small. Why is this so? The number of good theologians is also extremely small. We have so many theological colleges, but there is hardly anyone offering Ph.D in Old Testament or Systematic Theology etc. We have many theological colleges offering degrees so cheaply. I think theological colleges has also more or less taken the shape of a small scale industry, manufacturing degrees after degrees for those who cannot afford to join big names. It is also a pity that many of them are funded by Christians in the West.

My view is that some churches/denomination should join hand and form a good seminary. Instead of each denomination running its own seminary and in the process struggle to have a good library, not to mention well trained faculty members, if these seminaries pull resources together they can few very good seminaries. That way denominational bias will be screened out too. As for those seminaries owned and run by individual person funders should re-examine their quality and accountability. I don’t think it is a good tradition for theological colleges to be owned and run by a single person. Such institution gradually takes the form of a family enterprise.

What we really need is a fairly good number of fine seminaries, not a huge number of third class seminaries that can’t even buy books and hire good teachers . After all if we want churches and para-church organizations to remain healthy we need healthy seminaries.