‘Vision of cooperation’ should replace ‘clash of civilizations’
Morung Express News
Dimapur | November 29
“We are one,” said Rev Dr. Wati Aier, sounding the unity gong, to the participants of the 5th North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) General Conference being held in Kohima from November 27-30. “We must believe and advocate that we are one big family of common racial stock with different identities and permeable boundaries,” advocated the Convenor of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) in his well-meaning and well-taken presentation on the morning of November 29 at the Capital Convention Centre.
Speaking on ‘The Naga Peoples’ Search for Peace and Justice through Reconciliation’, Dr. Wati said that since April 2008, the Nagas have come a long way to achieve peace through a process of reconciliation. The Nagas are learning that “grand narratives” of freedom as the only vision will not work. In that, said he, Nagas have to take into account the heterogeneity of identities in the region, “to hope and build a finite good in a global community” where peace and justice is for all men and women, not just the Nagas.
Every identity (w.r.t. people groups), said Dr. Wati, is marked by a boundary that has firm emotions but is permeable. It is this, in a post modern world of culture, society and politics, that will help teach and enrich new possibilities for the exploration of new paths. “In the Naga peoples’ search for peace and justice through reconciliation…we need to honestly address that new conflicts and disagreements among our neighbors are not generated.”
While it is important, he explained, to liquidate the typology of the “oppressed and oppressor”, it is crucial and responsible to facilitate peace through reconciliation in the entire region. “Reconciliation among the North-Easterners will be the beginning of a new relationship and understanding, and building a future is the beginning of the end of reconciliation.” The resource needed for this is to live in peace here and now.
Propounding that seeing only differences will only lead to more hatred and conflict, Dr. Wati said that Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ must now be replaced by a ‘vision of cooperation’ of those who are different and yet have much in common.
He left the participants with a profound thought that complimented the message of unity that NESO also conveyed through this General Conference, “As we make space in ourselves for the perspective of the other on the path of reconciliation, in a sense we already are where we will be”.
