In a bid to strengthen friendship and fraternity between Nagas and Assamese, a civil society team of Assam led by Asam Sahitya Sabha and All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) shall leave for Kohima on Friday, May 13, for a historic visit to Nagaland as part of the ongoing Axom-Naga round table talk.
Initiated by the Nanda Talukdar Foundation at Guwahati last year, the second round is being hosted at Kohima by the Naga Hoho. The top civil society leaders of Nagaland including revered Niketu Irelu are converging at the Friday round table talk where 15 other HoHos of all the major tribes of Naga are also joining.
Assam team is going to be led by Asam Sahitya Sabha President Dr Dhruva J Bora while it consist of AASU adviser Dr Samujjal Kr Bhattacharjya, academician Dr Udayan Mishra, Dr Ramesh Barpatrgohain , dean Faculty of Law at GU, Purbanchaliya Tai Sahitya Sabha president Dr Dayanand Borhohain and Amar Asom editor Prashanta Rajguru.
Besides them, the three convenors of the round table talk, at whose initiative the whole process started, namely Samudra Gupta Kashyap, Mrinal Talukdar and Atanu Phukan are also going to Kohima.
This is the first such visit of an Assam team to Nagaland. The second round of talk is expected to discuss the possibility of expanding the horizon of the trust building peace process besides strengthening friendship and fraternity between the two neigbours.
This is noteworthy, except occasional minor disputes, there have been no major flare up of the decade long boundary dispute since the last year’s round table talk. It has been observed that always avoidable minor issues catapulted into major border incidents between the two-neighbouring states due to provocative local media reporting as well as local politics. This whole exercise is to defuse all possible such forces and nip them in the bud.
