Geopolitical consequences in the aftermath of Russian agression against Ukraine have once again underscored that there is no alternative to common and collaborative security which is inclusive. The double standards in implementing human rights and selective wars of aggression on smaller states by great powers have led to a delegitimisation of multilateral institutions and a world that is insecure for all.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022. Since then, several thousand combatants from both sides and more than 500 Ukrainian civilians have died, bombs have ruined many cities, and more than two million Ukrainians—half of them children—left the country to become refugees.
The origins of the present crisis are located in the history of Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union. The decisive role of the continuous expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the hegemonic designs of the United States in precipitating the crisis is analysed.
The narrative of peace in Mizoram has become a part of national memory, but it is also embedded in larger politics of erasing a violent past. This is, in part, associated with the state agenda of presenting a “successful” case of conflict management, along with its refusal to acknowledge its violent actions. Tension over the issue of memorialisation continues to resurface at the local level, across political spectrums and local organisations—a consequence of the purported exclusion of violent memories in the official narratives and the neglect of “other” voices within the narrative of the movement. In this regard, the construction and contestation of the narrative of “peace” in Mizoram and the politics associated with its commemoration, merit further examination.
Waiting is so much a part of everydayness, including waiting for peace, waiting for your loved ones to come home, waiting for curfew to end, waiting for the army to go home. Between silence and waiting one can create a narrative of the Kashmir conflict. Unlike the Holocaust or partition, which have the gigantism of epic memories, the sadness of Kashmir is forged, crafted out of thousands of little memories, unwritten diaries merging quietly together. It is this alchemy of memories that is struggling against government policy, which sanitises violence and erases memory to create this strange machine that moves from violence to violence in facile amnesia.
