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Give peace a chance

By Rituparna Goswami Pande |
The northeastern states have lately reaffirmed themselves as cauldrons of violence. Instances of violence have repeatedly marred the peace of these sibling states where rebel guns have resulted in a number of casualties.

Imphal is smoldering after an ambush at Sorbung village in Phungyar sub division of Ukhrul district in the daylight hours of this Wednesday morning. One Assam Rifles officer and two jawans were killed including a Major while seven others were left wounded. The ambush took place while the Assam Rifles troops were moving from Soide village to Kasom on a routine patrol duty. Mentionably, this was the second major militant ambush in Manipur after members of the People’s Revolutionary party of Kangleipak gunned down five CRPF personnel along the Imphal-Jiribam highway recently.

Meanwhile, Meghalaya is caught in a quagmire of allegations regarding the gunning down of five suspected militants of the Hynniewtrep national Liberation Council (HNLC) in an encounter at Cleve Colony on October 31. However, local NGOs have expressed their doubts on the authenticity of the episode. Whereas, in Itanagar, armed miscreants have destroyed the peace with their unscrupulous activities, where PWD engineer SP Srivastava kidnapped by these miscreants was however released shortly after being in captivity for about 20 days.

Assam too has its own demons to fight against.

Peace initiatives though put forward have failed miserably sometimes for government apathy or rebel inflexibility. But mostly it’s the people’s complacency that is to blame for the present situation. Our parochial mindsets have further distanced us resulting in our demands of becoming autonomous bodies. The day is not far when every community or caste would vie for a state of their own and if denied new rebel outfits would be born to further move the wheel of violence.

Peace it seems has become a pipe dream for us. Our young generation have never really known peace in the true sense of the term. It seems we need to include peace studies as a subject in the school curriculum to mould the young minds and prepare them well in order to tackle with the violence of real life. Perhaps they may realize the folly of the older generation and give peace a chance.
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Journalist, writer

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charlie's picture

Submitted by charlie on Sat, 03/11/2007 - 08:06
give peace a change as u wrote who will hear it,nobody,the present Honb.P.M will took initiative as he elected from M.P,Rajya Sabha as he know better then us that Assam people want diologue with U.L.F.A as the central govt. can make cease fire to naga why not to U.L.F.A as u.l.f.a also willing to talk with centre but from centre and Assam govt. wonth took initiative then where peace will come both side took initiative for that then peace will come to Assam.
jaay's picture

Submitted by jaay on Tue, 11/12/2007 - 06:03
I envy the time when I could go out without fear, gone are the days when life used to dance fearlessly and children did not care about how the guns looked like and operated. Now a days, if you don’t see a uniformed person out in the street, you start wondering, is everything alright? And it is rightly said, if there is no peace, you cannot understand freedom, they are very closely related. “It seems we need to include peace studies as a subject in the school curriculum to mould the young minds and prepare them well in order to tackle with the violence of real life.” It has nothing to do with educating children; the spirit of nationalism is missing. We are confined more in regional identification, we do not care about nation, and certainly this is missing in school. Which school imparts the spirit in a child to be proud of your Nation, culture, all the poor children land up is with ‘BHARAT MATA KI JAI”, which is good till the assembly session, after that it’s up in the smoke. Another example is NCC, children just enroll for that free diet or firing the 3 not 3’s. Who will teach us that we are should be proud of the fact that we are part of the 3000 years old civilization? Who will tell our children that the fighting which is going on, is all about petty politics? But look at the result of raising children passionately, the experiment in Gujrat, in the name of ‘GURV SEY KAHO HUM HINDU HAIN’. We are treading on razor edge when we address of being passionate. The true identity if India lies from North to South, East To West, not in one culture / region or a religion. Nice article. Keep posting.

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