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