brought a heart-wrenching documentary film with him when he returned for a brief visit to 91����Ƶ on June 30, 2011.

Shown to about 50 of his old friends and colleagues at the 91����Ƶ library, the film told of terrorized women living in Khandamal, a small district of Orissa, a state in the eastern part of India. These women were part of a minority group – in this case Christian – violently victimized by mobs from the surrounding majority-Hindu group.

From Ashok’s perspective, the nature of the minority status in this case is less significant than the reality that all minorities tend to be highly vulnerable to persecution by majorities, unless a culture of tolerance, mutual respect and reconciliation is fostered.

“I’ve worked a lot in Sri Lanka, and there the Sinhalese majority group is Buddhist and the minority group is the Tamil-speaking, who are mostly Hindu and Muslim,” says Ashok. “Regardless of the groups involved in the struggle, the fundamental issue is that everyone deserves the same basic rights of shelter, food, clothing, a means to make a living, and freedom to worship as they see fit.”

Ashok and his wife, , often work as a team traveling to hot spots upon request for trainings in conflict transformation and trauma healing, usually over weekends. During the week, both of them hold demanding jobs in southern India – Florina does operations capacity-building for a refugee self-help organization and Ashok is professor of social work at a major university. Both of them earned PhDs in India after completing their master’s degrees at CJP in 2004 as Fulbright scholars.

“The first question I always ask when I go into a situation is, ‘What happened?’ and then I always hear two different stories, depending on which ‘side’ I am speaking to,” said Ashok. “Then I say, ‘Well, let’s put parts of these stories together and see if we can answer the next questions, Who has been affected by this event? What are the violations and what are the needs? Can we take joint responsibility to address these needs?’

“Answering these questions takes days, of course, of people talking in settings, with facilitators, where they feel safe and can be honest and vulnerable,” Ashok told Peacebuilder. “We have to start with conversations and move to relationship-building to emerge from the trauma cycle of victimization, vengeance and re-victimization.”

In the past year, Ashok has focused intently on helping to alleviate the suffering – and break the cyclical violence – experienced by impoverished Christian citizens living in Khandamal. Over a period of 300 days, 50,000 of them were displaced from their homes and several of their villages were reduced to ashes. And it all could be traced to a misunderstanding about the killing of a popular Hindu swami. Local followers of the swami blamed Christians, but Ashok said actually a Maoist group admitted responsibility for the killing. “My goal is to help the people of this region to create what I think everyone wants, deep in their hearts – a just and peaceful society,” says Ashok.

In one part of Sri Lanka, Ashok and Florina have assisted the people in post-war reconstruction, using development as a tool for building peace. They facilitated a “peace dialogue,” which enabled community members who had been avoiding each other to begin to interact.

Two years later in this community, when a terrorist incident caused the Sinhalese-dominated military to sweep through the homes of Tamils, Ashok says the local Sinhalese gave shelter to their Tamil neighbors and told the military, “If you want to take them, you’ll have to take us first.”

Dimapur, Nagaland

(far northeastern India on maps)

To have any understanding of Aküm Longchari’s work, one must have some knowledge of his people, the indigenous Nagas, of his homeland, Nagaland.

Nagaland is located between Burma, China and Bangladesh. For political and safety reasons, tourist visas are difficult to come by. Blogging on www.world66.com, one visitor wrote: “Nature could not have been kinder to Nagaland, the exquisitely picturesque landscape, the vibrantly colorful sunrise and sunset, lush and verdant flora, this is a land that represents unimaginable beauty, molded perfectly for a breathtaking experience.” The blogger spoke of Nagaland containing 35 major tribes and subtribes, each with “its own customs, language and dress.” Each tribe can be “easily distinguished by the colorful and intricately designed costumes, jewelry and beads that they wear.”

Let us clarify here that Aküm Longchari is not a mountaintop-dwelling tribesman easily distinguished by his “costumes and beads.” Wearing factory-made clothing like most urbanites, Aküm has regularly attended, and led, peace-themed and human rights workshops in India and around the world.

In addition to his MA in conflict transformation from 91����Ƶ, he holds a law degree from a university in New Delhi. He has been a scholar at the Caux Institute in Switzerland and a fellow with the Salzburg Seminar. He is a PhD candidate at the University of New England in Australia, where his research focuses on the right to self-determination as a resource for peace.

Parts of Aküm’s homeland fell under British administration in the 1800s. During this period, Christian missionaries assiduously converted the majority of Nagas. Today more than 90% of Nagas are practicing Christians, predominantly Baptists with some Catholics and other denominations. The official language of education and inter-country communication is English.

Thus, in addition to its distant location from subcontinental India, Nagaland is set apart from India by: the prevalence of Christianity, rather than Hinduism; the dominant use of the English language, rather than Hindi; and the Nagas’ status as indigenous people who look and act differently from Indians.

The entire northeast region has been embroiled in violent conflict at various points since the early 1900s. In 1997, a bilateral ceasefire agreement was signed with India’s central government to enable political negotiations to take place. Open warfare has subsided, but fundamental issues remain unresolved.

Aküm paints this picture of the current situation: Nagaland has experienced human rights violations and heavy militarization, which has caused the social networks to collapse, especially during the past 60 years. This has displaced people from their land and created further divisions among the indigenous groups. There has been considerable bloodshed along tribal and political lines among the Nagas. The Indian government does not address the problems that fuel the violence, including: the government’s oppressive conduct; high unemployment; poor health care; and a weak infrastructure.

Where does Aküm personally fit into this picture? Aküm is known in his homeland for his emphasis on all parties taking responsibility for past harms, listening to each other’s truths, and working toward reconciliation in the interests of the well-being of all. He does not demonize the Indian government, but he does ask it to be “accountable,” so that a political solution can be found to the Naga struggle for self-determination.

Aküm says he has been dedicated to nonviolent approaches to addressing wrongs and injustices since an early age. He was formerly with the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights, which initiated people-to-people dialoguing and the “Journey of Conscience” – a nonviolent campaign for peace by Naga civil society groups.

One of the ways Aküm manifests his philosophy is through the English-language newspaper he co-founded in 2005, The Morung Express. It has, he says, a “justpeace” approach to journalism. In September 2010, Aküm was honored for his peace work at the North East [India] Regional Youth Peace Festival.

In 2008, Aküm and other representatives of civil society organizations formed the Naga Forum for Reconciliation, with support from members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain and members of the American Baptist Church. The forum seeks to reconcile various Naga armed groups on the basis of the historical and political rights of the Nagas. The forum has been meeting with militant groups for nearly two years. According to one participant, the groups have moved from “violence, uncertainty, mistrust and fear” to a situation of “fragile and yet substantive progress, with decreased violence.” General meetings are held in a third country and symbolic events, such as soccer matches involving teams of players from different groups, have been instrumental for paving the way toward reconciliation.