Peacemaking and the ‘Unofficial’ Peace Process in India’s East and the Northeast

Abstract

While multiculturalism with its reciprocal recognition of rights is usually held as the key to peace and peacemaking in India in general and her Northeast in particular, this article points out with the help of a series of case studies how ‘unofficial’ peace that is made independently of the state mediation bases itself on certain values and standards of culture that more often than not entail compromise with our rights in some form or the other. These values and standards, however, are neither given in our culture nor unalterable as the theorists of ‘unity-in-diversity’ would have us believe. Insofar as their viability and effectiveness in bringing peace depend on their ability to constantly negotiate with and confront the official or the State-brokered peace process and ‘interrupt’ the effects of governmental power, these values and standards constantly get reconstituted, reordered—if not hierarchized—in keeping with the changing requirements of such negotiation and confrontation. As a result, peace, as the article illustrates, acquires forms that are extremely contingent and momentary and does not necessarily depend on rights-based solutions.