Toward a Win-Win Resolution of the Indo-Manipur Armed Conflict (IMAC)
- Part 5 -

Nongdrenkhomba Senjam *

Troops of 4/8 Gurkha Rifles staging a Khukri dance on January 15 2010: :: Pix - TSE

PART -IV

Procedural Commitments of Party 3

1. The UNSCRIMAC will never act or decide outside its ambit or in an arbitrary manner under any circumstances.

2. Before initiating any action in response to a claim or complaint, the UNSCRIMAC undertakes to verify its grounds thoroughly. If it is found to be based on truth, the UNSCRIMAC will speedily take all necessary action within its ambit and the framework of this treaty without fear or favour.

3. The UNSCRIMAC will stand suspended indefinitely in the wake of the complete fulfilment of all the undertakings of both Party 1 and Party 2 made herein. But in case a dispute arises between Party 1 and Party 2 after the UNSCRIMAC has been suspended, either or both Parties 1 and 2 may seek its reactivation by lodging representatives with the UN Secretariat, CC the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

4. The UNSCRIMAC and, by extension, the UN will recognize the elective legislative assembly of Manipur as Party 2 in the immediate wake of the termination of the Joint Committee of the ASGoMs.

Part -V

Joint Declaration

All the above contents, formulated and embraced by all the Parties to this treaty after thorough negotiations, are hereby declared correct, definitive and true by putting our signatures hereunder:

Party1 Party2 Party 3

This Treaty stands concluded here.

In analysing this made-up treaty, which must have given a broad idea of what a ROSBECA based settlement of the IMAC will look like, one may get the impression that this IMAC resolution model has been unnecessarily complicated particularly by the incorporation of the hypothetical UNSCRIMAC. But one does not need to possess the intellect of Karl Marx just to conclude that there can be no equitable and reliable settlement of the IMAC unless a powerful and impartial international organisation is involved in it as its enforcer.

Well, anyone having a pro-GoI attitude can change this article with blowing the IMAC out of all proportion and trying to undermine the Constitution of India; whereas anybody sympathetic to the cause of the ASGoMs are likely to call this article 'an effort on the part of the tail to wag the dog' and criticize it on two grounds: it undeplays the issue of sovereignty and its tone betrays cowardice and defeatism. But the question is, what is the wisdom of adamantly carrying on the IMAC further by the worst strategy set, i.e. (Inflexible, Inflexible), when there exists a Pareto efficient and equitable Nash equilibrium of the IMAC, that is (Flexible, Flexible), by means of which the IMAC can be resolved in a win-win fashion anytime?

It may be remembered that in April 2010, the period when the Kashmiri version of the 'Intifada' (stone-pelting protest) was at its height, then Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said in an exclusive interview to IANS that anything below Azadi (Urdu equivalent of independence) was negotiable for Kashmir. He also implicity invited the separatist Hurriyat leaders to come up with any idea that was below Azadi.

So if the GoI is ready to accept anything below Azadi in the case of Kashmir, there is no reason why it should not adopt a similar attitude to the IMAC. Though the IMAC is currently not as internationally well-known an issue as the kashmir dispute, it can also come to a head and become even worse than the Kashmir Dispute in many ways if complacency becomes the norm of the GoI. Given these and other grim contingencies, the GoI had better treat the IMAC on a par with the Kashmir Dispute and try to settle it through the principle of ROSBECA, which certainly fits the below-Azadi bill.

On the other hand, the ASGoMs must appreciate the reality that the unstoppable forces of globalization and technological progress, which are too strong to resist effectively, are fast transforming the world into an integrated and interdependent global village, where East and West or North and South would not mean much any longer.

Today the whole world has become so developed and scientifically and technologically so advanced that the parallels of Stephen Hawking have come to claim the theoritical possibility of building a 'relativistic' spacecraft that could reach 98 per cent of the speed of light and enable a man to travel into the future or take a trip to the edge of the Milky Way during his lifetime. Some overinquisitive CERN scientists are also busy smashing atoms at the LHC facility somewhere deep under the Franco-Swiss border with the aim of generating the Higgs boson or God particle and disproving the involvement of God in the creation of the universe.

Even several 'business' companies offering cryonic preservation of bodies to be brought back to life when soul-infusion technology becomes a reality have cropped up these days. In such an age, does separatism not sound like anachronism from the Stone Age? Does resort to violence not seem like a conscious attempt to return to the barbarian era?

Well, if the GoI is able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt, that is to say, by giving the people of Manipur adequate constitutional safeguards that it has no evil design against them, then there is no reason why the ASGoMs should stick to their current stand on the vexed issue of sovereignty. Anyway, I feel an irrestible temptation to say that the results of the recent state assembly elections, despite all the anti-Congress efforts of the Coordination committe of the ASGoMs, were nothing short of a painful slap given by the people of Manipur across the collective face of the ASGoMs.

However, I also feel an equally irresistible temptation to say that the election results were too good for the INC to be completely true, given the anti-incumbency air, which had been prevalent in the run-up to the elections. Well, those who lost the elections can blame their failure on the possibility that remote-controlled modules had been planted somewhere inside the EVMs, enabling operators sitting some 100 or more metres away from the polling booths to rig the noting process, or that the EVMs, which had been manufactured by the ECIL, had simply been time-programmed to begin to function in a particular party's favour from a particular point of time in the day of voting. Nowadays it woul d be a mistake to place much faith in any electronic equipment.

So far the GoI's endeavourto suppress the ASGoMs through the barrel of the gun has not yielded much. If the GoI remains stubborn and continues to try to defeat the AGoMs through the philosophy of Mao Zedong in preference to reason and wit, they must never be expected to become flexible in their consistently rigid position on the vexed issue of sovereignty and are bound to proceed with their armed struggle with the Indian 'occupation' forces, who, according to the ASGoMs, lack a cause worth risking life and limb, and are more common fodder than whatever they claim to be.

After all, the ASGoMs are not some loose bands of cowards so that they can be cowed by killing their members in fake encounters. Well, the ASGoMs are composed of individuals in whose genetic make-up exists the courage of the great warriors like Paona Brajabashi, who dared cut with his sword the burning fuses of cannonballs at the historic battle of Khongjom during the Anglo-Manipur war. It is no exaggeration to say that if the IMAC is left to be settled through the bullet-for-bullet philosophy, the GoI is bound to be given a good run for its money. At least!

In conclusion, let me declare that this article is entirely based on purely personal perceptions and has nothing whatsoever to do with any organisations that I am liable to be associated with. If this article happens to hurt the sentiments of any persons or groups to whatever extent, I extend my unqualified apology to them for the same. Also, I would like to further declare that the views expressed herein are mostly flexible and can, therefore, be subjected to 'recalberation'. depending on how the Indo-Manipur equation develops.

Let humanity and rationalism assert themselves.

Concluded ....