Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Aug 5, 2015 0:19:31 GMT 5.5
Signing the Indo-NSCN(IM) peace accord on Monday, an optimistic Modi said, “Today, we mark not merely the end of a problem, but the beginning of a new future.” Even Tehelka, apparently swept by this optimism, excitedly if not gullibly receives this development as a conclusive one in its report earlier today:
Putting an end to a decades-long bitter insurgency in Nagaland, India has signed a historic peace accord with the rebel NSCN(IM). (Tehelka, August 4, 2015)As the details of the agreement are not yet accessible to the public it cannot be conclusively said if the accord actually has put an end to the NSCN(IM) insurgency, but while stakeholders wish this issue being resolved permanently, it is, in the absence of some magic, quite hard to take the parties to the agreement at their word. This secret agreement does seem to have something magical about it, an air of its having been arrived at in a romp while successive governments earlier took questionably too long without even nearly solving the problem. I can’t believe that the issue has been resolved by the accord yesterday.
If the NSCN(IM) issue has been resolved by the accord, then what significance does Muivah’s reported statement have as to the challenges that still remain? Tehelka reports:
While Muivah promised that Nagas would honour the accord, he acknowledged that challenges still remain. (Tehelka, August 4, 2015)What are these challenges exactly? Where do these challenges come from? Does this mean that the agreement may not be received well by the Nagas (perhaps including many of the rebel group’s own cadres) or that the agreement (some, if not all, of the points in the agreement running afoul of the interests of Nagaland’s neighboring states) will be challenged by those it will hurt? If Muivah’s concern is about either of these two, the resolution brought about by this accord is either between the government of India officially on the one hand and Muivah and Isak as individuals on the other (which the Naga stakeholders will disagree) or between the NSCN(IM) spearheading Nagas and the government of India (which the neighboring states will challenge if their interests are threatened by it, meaning that the accord in the latter form would breed brand new problems). In either case, the accord is not a clear-cut resolution but something that will immediately create other problems.
While I am speculating on what the points of the agreement could be, I can’t but wonder why its details are kept secret. Keeping the details of what is presented with a knowing reticence of a priest as landmark and groundbreaking resolution to what has hitherto been a stalemate raises reasonable suspicion especially because a solution to this deadlock is something everybody would happily receive. The keeping of the resolution from the very people who don’t just merely want to know it but, more importantly, will be affected so much as for their fates to be changed has to have a strong underlying reason for this unjustifiable-looking act to be justified, and it is probable that this reason is something not very good. Can the implementation of the accord ever be done in secret without those who will be affected by it knowing it at all? Then, what sort of resolution is that resolution which those it is meant for cannot know?
Interestingly, but mysteriously, Muivah did not insist on the demand for the creation of what’s called Greater Nagaland by annexing all Naga-inhabited areas scattered across Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. While Tehelka’s speculation that “this suggests that the breakthrough could be about an agreement over the degree of autonomy that Nagas outside Nagaland will have” seems plausible, it contradicts the applicability of the accord which “will be confined to Nagaland,” as the Hindustan Times quoted an official saying.
With the details of the agreement remaining unavailable, we are left to speculate on the implications of the agreement. While we would better spare wild speculations, we non-Nagas can’t but be worried because, while we all deadly love this problem to be permanently resolved, what we are told to believe to be a resolution may not be a resolution at all. There are valid reasons to doubt the validity of this resolution remaining secret. A resolution is to be adopted out in broad daylight before all the keen eyes of those who it is going to affect. A secret solution cannot come out into concrete visible reality of daylight if it has reasons to remain hidden from whoever the problem solver wants to keep it from. If anything is wrong in the resolution, that resolution becomes visible in the form of the wrong when it is implemented, which cannot be done in secret.