SHILLONG: A group of 20 students under the banner of North East Student’s Volunteer (NESV), Jorhat, Assam, are touring four States of the region – Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland – to spread the message of peace, tolerance and communal harmony.
The groups of students, led by NESV president Dr Woba James, who is a lecturer at Eastern Theological College, Jorhat, is expected to cover a total of 2500 km during the nine-day ‘Peace Tour on Bikes’. The tour which started from Jorhat on April 14 will end at Dimapur on April 22.
“North East India represents a cauldron of rich unity as well as diversity with regard to people, cultures and socio-political life. This region time and again draws the attention of the people mainly due to political reason wherein it is viewed as a ‘conflict’ or disturbed region,” Dr James said while addressing newsmen after their arrival in the city on Wednesday.
He said that conflicts in this region generally can be classified into external and internal conflicts.
“We have serious problems such as insurgency, boundary issues, problem of -isms on linguistic, village and ethnic lines and counter retaliations and all kinds of atrocities imaginable taking place under different oppressive powers and structures,” he said.
While the rest of India has had the good fortune of celebrating independence and freedom from foreign or external oppressive rule for the last 66 years, the region and its states have not had much to celebrate due to many different factors of conflict, Dr James said.
“The people of the region are eagerly looking for peace, love and justice to live a life full of dignity and peaceful co-existence. With this rationale behind and within us, the NESV has decided to takes up this challenge of spreading the urgently needed message of peace to the region by organising a peace tour on bikes,” he said.
Dr James informed that during the nine-day rally, they are expected to hold meeting with the public and organise peace gatherings in collaboration with the public, district administration, churches, NGOs, local organisation and student bodies and hold dialogue on the conflict situations in the region.
Dr James revealed that in the course of their interaction with the public so far, everyone has blamed politicians for the present state of affairs in the North East region.
“Everyone feels that politicians are responsible for the disturbances in the region,” he said.
He, further, informed that NESV has held dialogues with leaders of top militant outfits in the region.
“Even the top militant leaders are eager for peace and harmony to prevail in the region,” he added.
The group of students is leaving Shillong on Thursday to proceed to Dimapur via Guwahati.
