Guwahati — The reputed Berghof Peace Foundation based in Berlin has held up the pedagogy, approaches and attitudes associated with the Northeast India Peace Team as an outstanding model for peacemakers anywhere in the world.
“The Berghof Foundation had been watching carefully the Joint Peace Mission Team for over five years before it proposed it as an exceptionally interesting model among 42 others that they had been studying” said Leban Serto of Peace Counts who is closely associated with the Foundation.
Serto, who belongs to the tribe of Mary Kom from Manipur, was addressing a large gathering of peace workers from the seven states of the Northeast at the Assam State Museum in Guwahati for honouring the leader of the Peace Team, Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil. Several important leaders of the team were present as well as Mr. Loh Hoe Peng from Singapore.
Mr. Goldsmith, the Secretary of the Northeast Peace Team gave a report of what it had accomplished during the last two decades. He said, “Our Peace Team has intervened helpfully during inter-ethnic conflicts at Kokrajhar, Churachandpur, Diphu, Haflong, Udalguri, Gossaigaon, Mendipathar, Uriamghat and other places.
He thanked Archbishop Thomas for motivating the team, developing a sense of strategy and a style of approach, and keeping the team together over the years, in spite of great difficulties. “He always keeps a low profile and bears the brunt of the hardship,” he said.
The delegates from Manipur were anxious about the worsening of situation in their state. Mr. Y. S. Wingleton from Manipur, who is also at present the Director of the Assam State Museum, said, “People from Manipur seem to be doing best in other places, not in their own state. This is for the absence of peace.”
Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil briefly described his Team’s approach to a situation of conflict. “We never blame anybody,” he said, “no matter what wrong things people have done. We ask the persons concerned to look to the future and see how we can live together.”
He spoke at length about the importance of anger-reduction before negotiations are taken up seriously.
“There is too much accumulated anger in the world,” he said, “whether it be in Paris, Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. Unless this anger is brought down, all the big power arms budget increase will take the world nowhere. It is the same about the little angers between communities in the Northeastern region.”
The peace-initiator prelate lamented, “The Pedagogy of Persuasion is a lost art. In such a context the Pedagogy of Humiliation takes the upper hand, leading to increase of anger, house burnings, AK-47s, bomb blasts, suicide bombs, and loss of life on a big scale.”
“The path to peace is long,” said Archbishop Menamparampil, “the winding roads can lead you to despair, but the believer always retains hope, and he never gives up. He seeks to draw from the small deposit of the ‘love for peace’ that is in the heart of even the sternest fighter, and make it grow. Then peace comes like a miracle.”
The Archbishop is in the fiftieth year of his priesthood and sixtieth year of his religious life. As he moves into his eightieth year of his life, he still has the care of a diocese, the Diocese of Jowai, as its Apostolic Administrator.