At a threshold of another year, the FNR greets you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and reports once again, to the people, as we complete 4 years of the Journey of Common Hope. We remain ever grateful to all for your support despite our finitude.
With much gain, within the Naga family, we fear that the “Naga political” issue has driven our neighbors through the “Pax-Naga-na” passion, no matter how genuine the Naga cause may be. Naga peoples’ search for our rightful place must never be at the expense of the neighbors and the people of the world. What we are searching for is genuine rightful place that will promote and enable men and women to live and grow and to hope and build a finite good in a global community—not merely a rightful place for Naga people alone but for all men and women.
April 2008, witnessed a new dimension among the Nagas. This is the dimension of Naga Reconciliation. Through these years, we have experienced the magnitude of “factional” battles being overturned by friendly football matches, common social works, and sitting across the table in search for a common belonging of the future. Nagas are learning that the “Grand Narratives” of freedom as the only vision is a total failure.
In like attitude and understanding, the Nagas must take into confidence the heterogeneity of identities of our regions. It is an irreversible fact of creation that Mizos cannot be Meities nor Nagas be Assamese and so on. Therefore, instead of being obsessed by grand narratives, in a heterogeneous world, we must explore humane and rational possibilities for the finite good.
Nevertheless, it is crucial that we all explore and understand the nature of identity. Every “identity is marked by a boundary” and this is the unique particularity of any people groups. Notwithstanding, “identity-boundary” as a people group should never be impermeable. “People with identities will have (firm-emotional) but permeable boundaries.” In a post-modern world of culture, social and politics, people groups with identities and permeable boundaries need not assert ones position but endeavor and have the will to discover the secret of learning and be taught and be enriched to enrich and to dream new possibilities and explore new paths.
Naga peoples’ search for a rightful place through reconciliation must be wide and open in the midst of Naga identity. A more profoundly disturbing fact along with better understanding and peace arrangements within the Naga family, we need to honestly address that new conflicts and disagreements among our neighbors are not generated.
While reconciliation is a process with its final goal—future oriented in nature, the resources we need towards that final goal is to live in peace in the here and now. By all means, the typology of the “oppressed and oppressor” must be liquidated. Reconciliation in the midst of differences among the neighbors of the North-East is a responsible reconciliation and we must be the informed party to facilitate and herald the good news. It will be crucial for us to learn that 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. Our new relationship and understanding entails erasing hatred and the threads of violence gently removed and assured. We must believe and advocate that we are one big family with a common racial stock with different identities and permeable boundaries.
Before it is too late, let us advocate loud with resounding clarity that if we see differences only, we will “empower those who saw hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than cooperation.” Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” must be replaced with a vision of cooperation of those who are different and yet have much in common.
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.
Once again, the Naga National groups and the FNR humbly urges upon the churches and all the communities to support the Journey of Common Hope in the coming year.
Thanking you,
Forum for Naga Reconciliation.
