(ANS – Jowai) – “In the unsettled northeast of India, numerous rebel groups are fighting the army for political autonomy and financial sinecure. The only power respected by all sides is the Christian churches. In crisis situations, the Catholic archbishop Thomas Menamparampil brings an interdenominational peace team and rebels to the negotiation table.” That is how Michael Gleich begins the documentary “God’s Rapid Response Team” with photos of Anupam Nathm, for “Peacebuilders across the world” of the “Peace Counts project”.

“All of us are imperfect,” says the Archbishop. “Before we find fault with someone else it is good to look into ourselves and see whether we are equally at fault. I may be guilty of anger or unreasonableness, the very faults I find in others. I need to ask myself whether something of Saddam Hussein is also in me before I hasten to judge him. Where do I have to start, then? I must start with myself!” (…)

“As part of our strategy, at the first stage we concentrate on anger-reduction”, says the Archbishop. “We listen and listen and listen. We do not judge. We do not preach when the anger is high; on the contrary, we show interest in the cause that inspires and motivates them, the injustice they say they are suffering from; we show sympathy for their actual grievances. Most of all, we try to enter into the people’s pain, their inner agony, their sense of loss of dear ones, of their house, their property”.

I do not consider listening to be highly spectacular. I expected the leader of a peace-team to be more active: with eminent skills for reasoning, discussing, negotiating; in other words, a man of action. And now I hear that the strongest tool is compassionate presence. “Your presence itself must have a message” exclaims the Archbishop. “You will have to keep cool even if during the discussions a man jumps up and shouts: ‘for every one of us that they killed, I will shoot ten of them!’”

The Archbishop continues: “The most important thing we do is ask just one question: ‘Will this manner of addressing your problems, the path of violence, help you? Will it help your cause? (…) Will this method of violence help you, help your cause, or help the future of your community, or will your movement lose its respectability before the public, lose its image, and fail to gain sympathy of society as a whole?’”

Micheal Gleich and the Photojournalist Anupam Nath personally met archbishop Thomas Menamparampil during October and November 2014. They thank also the “Berghof Foundation” for making it possible to support and document their contribution.

The whole story is available on the site of Peace Counts.

Published 04/06/2015