Dimapur, November 21 (MExN): In response to the Naga International Support Group (NISG) posing what it termed as ‘irrelevant and mischievous queries to the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the Peoples Committee for Peace Initiatives in Assam (PCPIA) said it was taken aback by the “tendentious” questions posed by the Dutch based NISG and that the questions have come at a time when Naga and Assamese mass organizations were making an all-out effort to defuse tensions arising out of misunderstandings between the two peoples, local villages, armed groups and others who share common land and cultural history of amity. “These measures, one needs to reiterate, have happened despite the insidious and relentless efforts of groups and agencies wishing to prevent a non-military solidarity among people”, stated a press note issued by Lachit Bordoloi, chief convener of PCPIA.
On the reported incident between the ULFA and the NSCN (IM), the PCPIA maintained that the event did not result in large scale conflicts on the ground and that this should have been reason enough to exercise caution on the part of NISG in its choice and timing of words. As such, the PCPIA urged the NISG that an attempt was on to bring about peace and justice for people and affirming by the principles of solidarity that any embattled people ought to foster and nurture. “In such realities, a high moral ground is the least comfortable space to speak from”. The PCPIA stated that perhaps the NISG had jumped the gun and that perhaps the words could have been mulled over before being posted on the internet. “The virtual world has a nasty way of impinging upon the real one. Hence, a statement such as the one that was posted ought to have been more circumspect”, it stated.
The PCPIA pointed out that there was a great danger in conducting virtual wars on the internet using “simplistic readings of political situation that come from a media that is not exactly independent and from an ideological position that is unable to be critical of rhetoric”. The PCPIA stated that what the NISG had raised with the ULFA were questions that were not the sole purvey of ULFA alone. “These questions are directed at the Assamese political community, in all its heterogeneity”, the PCPIA stated and therefore rather than wait for the ULFA to make a statement, it was answering the questions in order to bring the debate on the political situation in Assam back to the purview of the political and civil community.
The PCPIA reiterated that what the NISG was attempting to do was not only insidious, but also detrimental to broadening solidarities and dialogue between people resisting militarization and occupation. It was pointed out that the statement from NISG was “sweeping and facile observations based on media reports” and thereby revealing its own distance from politics on the ground. “The same statement questions ULFA’s reasons for establishing camps in eastern Nagaland with the help of a faction of the NSCN; makes a quantum jump to questioning ULFA’s demand for independence (and thereby denying Boros their independence…the mathematics boggles the mind) and goes on regurgitate security propaganda about planting bombs in markets”, the PCPIA stated pointing out that NISG’s clueless reduction of politics and real life to a mathematical calculation was indeed unfortunate.
The PCPIA reiterated that at a time when the Naga and Assamese peoples are trying to find alternative ways of addressing their common problems “without falling back on a simplified and childish rhetoric”, it was sad to see a support group come out with such statements that cast aspersions on an “entire political community and its experience”. In this regard, the PCPIA made known that NISG’s “internet intervention” was regrettable at a time when there was a serious attempt to give politics a tangible and real face through processes such as people to people dialogues. “Questioning an organization’s morality, strategies and so on, from a series of newspaper reports is detrimental to enabling an environment conducive for dialogue”, the PCPIA stated.
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