Peace talk, surrender & rehabilitation
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 19, 2014 -

Almost all peace talks involving militant groups operating in Manipur and the Government of India or the Government of Manipur or both are in limbo.

Even the much talked about and widely publicized political dialogue between the Government of India and NSCN-IM has been making little headway and it has been 15 years since the two sides entered into cease fire agreement.

Suspension of Operation (SoO) agreement signed between the Government of India, Government of Manipur and scores of Kuki militant groups under the two umbrella groups, KNF and UPF still remains a non-starter as far as political dialogue of any form is concerned.

These bitter facts never fail to strike any keen observer, specially when the Government of India or the State Government comes up with any offer for peace talk or political dialogue with militants.

The latest offer came from none other than Rajnath Singh, the Minister of Home Affairs. A day after Rajnath Singh indicated the Government’s willingness to talk with North East militants as well as Maoists, his deputy Kiren Rijiju went on record that Government was committed to rehabilitating surrendered UG cadres.

The two statements which came in close sequence from the Ministry of Home Affairs can be both complementary and contradictory, depending on one’s reading.

Peace talk or not, the Government is fairly successful in terms of ceasing open hostility with scores of UG groups either through SoO, MoU or formal surrender or home-coming.

However, the big fishes are well out of the ambit of this scheme of things engineered and orchestrated by the State.

Strange enough, many of the UG groups which have ceased hostility with the State as a precursor to initiating political dialogues are still unable to spell out their political objectives.

From the State’s perspective, the Government is employing quite an effective surrender policy although the rehabilitation part is dubious. It is difficult to understand how the surrender policy and the issue of peace talk are linked to each other.

One pertinent question arises here. What kind of peace talk can be done when all the cadres including their arms are surrendered to the Government?

With the exception of a few, the militants surrendered in the name of peace talks have not come out with their charter of demands so far. If they are in a peace talk then why are they unable to spell out their demands?

Who is stopping them and for what reason? It is sure that they cannot raise the issue of sovereignty. Don’t they have any issues of merit which they can raise at the peace talk, provided if there should be any peace talk after all?

Or is it they simply surrendered themselves and their organisations as a sort of retirement plan?

No doubt, surrender policy is a counter-insurgency measure but the State Government using the surrendered cadres to initiate peace dialogue is rather awkward.

The Government process has been mystifying the platform of peace talk and it appears that the Government has been deliberately diluting the meaning of peace talks with an intention to make the particular term sounds synonymous with ‘surrender’.

To our understanding, peace talk is something that can be done between two groups which are not dependent on each other. Further, the Government must be aware that peace talk does not necessarily mean surrender.

There is no point in confusing the common people between peace talk and surrender. The Government must rather focus on proper rehabilitation of surrendered cadres.

Peace talk can be no euphemism for surrender and all euphemism have their limits. Leave peace talk for militant groups which have their own political objectives and restrict usage of the same term indiscriminately for surrender or home-coming of militants who do not have clear cut political objectives.

In short, indiscriminate use of the political term ‘peace talk’ is unadvisable.