Forgiveness and Politics: A Critical Appraisal

List of Acronyms

Chapter 1

Introduction

It is said that authors are not absent from the story they tell. This adage is also true of research: researchers are not absent from the research they undertake and write. Ever since I was a very young boy, I knew that forgiveness makes a difference – it often saved me from my parents’ stick! I knew that my parents’ forgiving of my childhood faults, both trivial and serious, invariably led to the restoration of our relationship. I also knew, since my early childhood, that God forgave people their sins in and because of Jesus Christ, and that Christians are required to forgive others. When I personally put my trust in Christ as a teenager, I also experienced the sense of freedom, joy, and peace that comes from the knowledge of the sins forgiven. I thus grew up learning, practicing, and receiving forgiveness. Forgiveness does truly make a difference.

But while there was no doubt in my mind that forgiveness makes a difference in interpersonal relationships and divine-human relationships, I began to wonder if it had any power in the wider world of politics and political conflict. In 1956, my maternal grandfather was murdered by a Naga nationalist group fighting for Naga independence from India. Again in 1992 and 1996, two of my paternal uncles (both Naga political leaders and brothers) were assassinated by another nationalist group over the Naga political issue. During the funerals of my two uncles, my father, as head of the Kevichusa family clan, declared that our family forgave the murderers, and that the family would not harbour any intention of revenge. However, till today, none of those involved in the murders have been brought to justice and there has not been any sort of reconciliation. The forgiveness also seemed to make no difference politically. I have since often wondered how forgiveness and politics are related, and how forgiveness might have a role in the mitigation – or idealistically, the resolution – of the Naga political conflict. But while my exploration in this has its roots in the particular and the concrete of my own personal and family experience, I had always wanted to theorise more theologically, philosophically, and ethically on the relation between forgiveness and politics.

Research Question

What is the relationship between forgiveness and politics? This is the primary question that this research attempts to answer. There are a number of subsidiary questions: What are the foundations – in particular, the biblical foundations – of forgiveness? What does forgiveness refer to and mean? What does politics refer to and mean? How can forgiveness and politics be related or incorporated? What happens to the question of justice when forgiveness is incorporated into politics? How does forgiveness relate to reconciliation in politics? These are the key theoretical questions that this research deals with, and they constitute the first half of the book.

The first half of the book – chapters 2 to 5 – is considerably theological, philosophical, and theoretical in form and content. As I studied the literature on the concept of forgiveness, the biblical basis of forgiveness, and the theories and proposals for relating it to politics, I found considerable lacunae in the theological and theoretical works, and the academic proposals for relating forgiveness and politics. This research is, thus, an attempt to fill some of the gaps in the academic body of knowledge on forgiveness and politics, and to provide another way of answering the questions at hand.

I also attempt to relate the theoretical arguments and findings of the first half of the book to the second half of the book, which is more contextual in form and content. If the first half deals with the theoretical stuff up in our heads, the second half deals with the contextual stuff under our noses. The contexts that I focus on are the Naga political conflict and the Northern Ireland political conflict. I have chosen to focus on the Naga conflict because of my own personal experience mentioned above, and because I am interested in exploring how forgiveness might have political import and purchase in breaking the cycles of violence and conflict in Nagaland.

A brief introduction to the Nagas is, at this point, in order. Nagas[1] are a hill people comprising several tribes, contiguously spread over India’s northeastern states of Nagaland, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and parts of northwestern Myanmar. For over six decades, the Nagas have been embroiled in one of the world’s longest, but little known, violent conflicts. The Naga conflict originally began as a struggle for Naga independence and for the integration of the Naga areas, and initially displayed remarkable solidarity founded upon romantic idealism. It has, however, long since degenerated into a cycle of interfactional feuds that has caught Naga society in the vortex of hatred, violence, and vengeance. About 90 percent of Nagas are Christians, predominantly Baptists. Christianity in Nagaland is not merely a set of private beliefs; it contributes significantly to the way Nagas interpret and respond to the world. The predominance of Christianity also means that its resources, not least the concept of forgiveness, can be crucially tapped into in the search for peace and reconciliation in Nagaland.

I have also chosen the Northern Irish conflict for three basic reasons. First of all, early on in the work, it was deemed important by my Director of Studies, Professor Haddon Willmer, that there should be a sort of comparator – in the loose sense of the word – in my work, lest the research run the danger of taking a blinkered approach, focused only on the Naga conflict. Second, the conflict in Northern Ireland, though in many ways very different from the Naga conflict, seemed to be an appropriate choice because of a number of similarities: (a) the geographical size and population are roughly the same; (b) the religious context is predominantly Christian in both; (c) the political conflict in both are fuelled, inter alia, by nationalistic aspirations; (d) the conflicts have both internal and external dimensions; (e) the factional splits in the nationalist groups in Northern Ireland and Nagaland are strikingly similar; (f) most of the questions being asked with regard to forgiveness are similar in both the contexts. Third, as I studied forgiveness vis-à-vis the Northern Ireland conflict, I discovered that what transpired during the peace process that culminated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement can be plausibly understood as a form of forgiveness in politics. Understanding it as such, in turn, (a) makes an original contribution to the existing body of literature on forgiveness in the Northern Irish conflict; (b) serves as an important illustrator of my theoretical argument regarding forgiveness in politics; and (c) offers a model for the resolution of the Naga conflict.

Field of Enquiry and Methodology

There has been a growing interest and impetus in the study of forgiveness. First, in philosophy, forgiveness has been the subject of rigorous enquiry both in analytical and social/political philosophy.[2] Second, in theology, though forgiveness has been a central concept in systematic and dogmatic theological discourses[3], in recent times, its promise has been much more closely considered from other theological disciplines, such as pastoral/practical theology,[4] psychological (approaches to) theology,[5] political theology,[6] and philosophical theology.[7] Third, in political and legal theory, in the wake of horrendous wars and suffering, and the inadequacy of conventional approaches to redressing wrongdoing, there has been a proliferation of studies in forgiveness.[8] Fourth, in psychology, theoretical and empirical study of forgiveness has in recent years become a major research agenda.[9] Fifth, in ethics, the question of the rightness or wrongness of forgiveness in certain situations and circumstances remains a perennial one, especially in the face of appalling evil and wrongdoing.[10] In 2011, Studies in Christian Ethics, the leading Christian academic journal in ethics, devoted a whole issue to the question of the ethics of forgiveness.[11] All of this renewed interest in forgiveness reflects an awareness of the meaningfulness and value of forgiveness – an appreciation that it must somehow be incorporated into human and political life, processes, and institutions – but also a caution that it must not be trivialized or peddled. Needless to say, all these different approaches to the study of forgiveness employ different methodologies, depending on their respective fields of enquiry.

While this research is rooted in multidisciplinary scholarship, and will show an awareness of many of the discussions in the various disciplines, its primary field of enquiry is Applied Christian Political Ethics. It is Christian because I approach the research from the perspective of my own Christian faith commitment and epistemic base. Second, it is political, because it is concerned not so much with the personal, psychological, or the religious dimensions, but with the wider political, communal, and social dimensions of life, and with making proposals in the relation between forgiveness and politics. Third, it is applied because it is not essentially a pure analytical exercise in Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology, Theological Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Political Theory, or Political Philosophy, but a focused study on one concept – forgiveness – seeking to demonstrate through a process of reflection and deliberation how it might be applicable and useful in political life. Fourth, the research is in the field of ethics because it explores the ethical and moral dimensions of the questions at hand.

As an exercise in Christian Ethics, it will employ methodological tools of Christian moral reasoning. By Christian moral reasoning, I mean the dynamic process of (a) reflection (that is, thinking about the issues and questions, asking What is the truth?); and (b) deliberation (that is, thinking towards action, asking What must be done?).[12] This process of reflection and deliberation will also continually reflect an awareness of the factors that go into making moral decisions.

There are, in general, four factors involved in moral reasoning.[13] The first factor has to do with the world in which an individual or a community acts. This is basically a question of worldview, having to do with how the world as a whole is viewed and how the particular aspect of the reality of life that one faces in a certain ethical decision is viewed. Here, information and expertise from other disciplines are also necessary in forming one’s judgments about reality, even if they are not themselves sufficient for reaching ethical conclusions.

The second factor has to do with the constraints under which one acts. In making moral decisions one is not totally unlimited. There are external forces and constraints and internal forces and constraints. External constraints include forces such as geographical location, natural law, the law of the land, given existing political arrangements, and so on. Internal constraints that limit one’s ethical decisions are those like conscience, education, mental and physiological state, religious belief, etc. While some of these forces are not fixed and unchangeable (for example, conscience can be reformed), others are (for example, natural law cannot be changed).

The third factor is the ends (telos) for which one acts. An individual or community acts with purposes, intentions, goals and targets. Moral actions are taken in the hope that as a consequence of the actions, the world in which one acts will be changed for the better. Therefore, in making moral decisions, one must often think of what one is intending to accomplish through one’s actions.

Finally, there is the question of the person or the community who acts. Ethical actions reveal who the actors or agents are, the sort of persons and communities they are. Actions also not only change the world, they also change the actors, making them become certain sorts of persons or communities as a result of their actions. There is always the question of the sort of person or society that actors want to become. Although the process of reflection and deliberation, and the factors involved in moral deliberation are not usually made explicit in the book, I have continually been aware of them, and have been implicitly informed by them in the argumentations, judgements, and conclusions of the various parts of the book.

The theories that I engage with are also primarily, albeit not exclusively, located in the field of Political Ethics, pertaining especially to the concepts of forgiveness, politics, justice, and reconciliation, and emanating predominantly from the West. This inevitably lopsided engagement with Western literature on the questions at hand will hopefully be compensated and counterbalanced by the following: first of all, one must be careful that dichotomies, polarities, and distinctions such as East, West, North, and South must not be overemphasized and over-policed. Second, all theories, despite the particularity of their genesis, (claim to) have a certain level of universality in truth and applicability. And to deny the validity or truth of a certain argument or theory merely on the basis of its place of origin is to commit what in Logic is called the genetic fallacy.[14] Third, the fact that one engages primarily with theories emanating from a certain tradition to which one is an outsider does not necessarily mean that one cannot engage with them critically. Indeed, it can be quite the reverse: being an outsider to a tradition often gives one the distance required for the employment of a sufficiently critical epistemology in engaging with theoretical proposals emanating from the tradition; this is an advantage that outsiders can have over insiders which can counterbalance certain other disadvantages of being outsiders to a tradition. Fourth, my work will itself be assessed in the West by those who are steeped in their own tradition, and it will ultimately be judged, not on the basis of whether I am a Westerner or an Easterner, but on the basis of the accuracy of the judgments and the strengths of the arguments in my work. Fifth, because of the shared discourse of Christianity between the Nagas and the West, the language and discourse of forgiveness, which is central to Christianity, is not something that is at all foreign to Nagas, and will be more than adequately meaningful in the Naga context.

With regard to the study of the contexts, there are a number of methodological questions: What kind of data did I collect? How did I collect the data? How do I analyze the data collected? With regard to the kind of data that I collected with regard to the Naga conflict, I have sought to focus more on collecting written documents and statements. In my view, there is a certain exactness[15] and finality about written texts that makes assessment surer. Second, because this project is an exercise concerned with the political dimensions of life – engaging, debating, and proposing with regard to the life of, and in, the polis that is Nagaland – statements and positions that are out in the public domain and part of the political discourse have been considered more appropriate. Third, because I make concrete, definitive, and critical judgments – theological, political, philosophical, and moral – regarding other people’s views and opinions, I considered it ethically appropriate that the readers and assessors of my work should have (more or less) equal access to the positions, views, opinions, and statements of those I engage and disagree with. On that basis, readers and assessors can themselves make their own judgements regarding the accuracy and fairness of my representations of the positions that I disagree with or criticize, and the strengths or weaknesses of my arguments. The data that I collected have, thus, been predominantly written documents, statements, and written speeches made by significant political actors, bodies, and groups. I have also been able to collect considerable data from newspaper and magazine clippings.

Having said that, because I was, for the large part of my research, based in Nagaland, I have been able to gather views and insights through interviews and conversations with peace activists, reconciliation workers, intellectuals and commentators, nationalist workers, and church leaders. My interviews with the individuals and commentators were also conducted with prior information given to the interviewees that the interviews were being conducted for the purpose of the research. While in most cases I have given the names of the sources, in certain cases, I have withheld the names of the individuals concerned because of the sensitive nature of their views.

I have also been able to collect data by being a participant-observer at reconciliation meetings and events. For the reconciliation meetings and events I attended as a participant-observer, I was able to gain access and record the proceedings by special permission from the organisers. In one closed-door deliberation on Naga reconciliation organized specifically for Naga intellectuals, I was invited by the organisers, and allowed to record the proceedings of the meeting for the purpose of my research. In this particular meeting, I was also given the opportunity to contribute and engage in the discussion. Although I sought permission to be an observer at some of the more sensitive reconciliation meetings among the various conflicting political groups, I was, however, denied access. I have, however, kept a close track of the statements emanating from these reconciliation meetings.

For the chapter on Northern Ireland, I was able to undertake a research period at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in Belfast in October 2008, studying the literature on the Northern Irish conflict, discussing with specialists at the ISE, and analyzing the discourse on forgiveness in the Northern Irish conflict.

During the process of my research, I was also able to test some of the proposals and arguments of this book by presenting papers in a number of conferences. In January 2009, I presented a paper on forgiveness and politics at the Christian Mission Society consultation, held at Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, India. In October 2009, I presented another paper on forgiveness and politics at the Peace Capacity Building Training in Dimapur, Nagaland, which was organized by the Peace Affairs department of the Nagaland Baptist Church Council. In November 2010, I presented another paper on Naga nationalism, the politics of identity, and forgiveness at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies in Bangalore, India. Then in January 2011, I led a workshop on the topic Political Forgiveness at the Angami Baptist Church Council triennial conference. On 11 December 2012, I presented a plenary lecture on Forgiveness and Politics at the Asia Pacific Youth Hoho, an international conference (with representations from fifteen countries), organized by the Initiatives of Change (formerly, Moral Re-Armament), at Sechü, Nagaland. These conferences, and the responses and feedback received, have considerably helped me in testing and sharpening many of the proposals being made in this work.

On the question of how I analyze the data collected, the analytical tools that I employ remain that of Christian moral reasoning mentioned above. That is to say that I approach the data collected and being analyzed, continually asking reflective, analytical, deliberative, political, and ethical questions, in the same way I would critically analyze any other text or phenomenon. What I have endeavoured to do is to represent as accurately as possible the views of the sources I use, and to critique them as fairly and charitably as possible. In analyzing and critiquing the various positions, I have sought to be continually, albeit imperfectly, self-aware of my own biases and prejudices, whether in terms of my religious, epistemological, ethical, and political standpoints. I have also sought to be reflexively conscious of the above-mentioned factors in moral reasoning that need to be continually brought to bear upon the process of assessment and judgements of the data at hand.

To be sure, the clear distinction between the two parts or halves of the book can be potentially misleading, because, throughout the book, there is an implicit dialogue between the conceptual half and the contextual half. Indeed, throughout the more theoretical parts of the book, my recurring complaint against many a conceptualization of forgiveness in politics is that they are not sufficiently informed by or sensitive to contextual realities, and my own theoretical proposals for approaching the questions remain grounded in a serious, if implicit, consideration of contextual realities.

The contexts that I discuss in the second half are also not completely disjointed from the concepts discussed in the first half. They are explorations on how some of the theoretical discussions of the first half might bear upon – even if they do not, admittedly, map perfectly or apply neatly into – the contexts of political conflict discussed; how the contexts might illustrate the theories discussed; and how they might further illuminate or deepen the understanding of the concepts.

Plan of the Book

Following this Introduction, which forms chapter 1 of the book, in chapter 2, I explore the biblical foundations of forgiveness. This chapter is meant to fulfill three purposes: (a) marking my Christian epistemic base; (b) framing my worldview, and answering other worldview questions from a Christian standpoint; and (c) grounding my understanding of forgiveness in the Bible. The basic argument of the chapter is that the biblical metanarrative presents the vision of a world the response to which must essentially be characterised and sustained by an ethic of forgiveness.

Chapter 3 is an exploration of the relation between forgiveness and politics. In this chapter, I consider and respond to a number of objections against the incorporation of forgiveness in politics, and argue that the relation between forgiveness and politics is far more intimate than is often – both ordinarily and academically – presumed. The basic argument of this chapter is that it is forgiveness that makes politics and political activity possible.

Chapter 4 deals with a fundamental question that makes the purchase of forgiveness on politics problematic – namely, justice. In this chapter, I argue how the objection to forgiveness in the name of justice is untenable, and argue for a conception of justice that, rather than being understood as in opposition to forgiveness, can be plausibly conceived as tending towards forgiveness. I also investigate the notion of punishment, looking into how it can be conceptually and practically consistent and compatible with forgiveness.

Chapter 5 deals with the relation of forgiveness with reconciliation. Both in ordinary usage and serious works, forgiveness and reconciliation are often either conflated and used synonymously or separated altogether. I critique both these positions, and argue how the requirements for reconciliation in the context of social and political conflict cannot be met without routing these requirements through forgiveness.

In chapter 6, I investigate the Northern Irish conflict. I begin with a brief sketch of the Northern Irish conflict, and an analysis of the different explanations of the conflict. I then consider how forgiveness has often taken place in relation to the conflict, appreciating them for what they are, but also pointing out their limitations in terms of political effectiveness. I then argue how the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 can be plausibly understood as forgiveness in politics, arguing against those who would not see it as such.

In chapter 7, because of the sheer obscurity of the Naga conflict to many, I give a detailed narrative account of the Naga conflict, highlighting the major contours of the conflict, and setting the context for the following two chapters.

In chapter 8, I assess a reconciliation process currently taking place in Nagaland today, namely the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR). I give an account of the modus operandi of FNR and give my reading of the reasons for its success. Even though I defend the FNR process against some of its staunchest critics, I also offer a number of points cautioning and critiquing it.

In chapter 9, I then explore how forgiveness and politics might be related in Nagaland today, bringing to bear the implications of the theoretical discussions, noting the problems and difficulties, and making concrete suggestions and recommendations with respect to forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation in the context of the Naga political conflict.

Finally, in chapter 10, I bring together the whole research, giving a summary of the arguments and findings, highlighting the contribution of the work to the existing body of knowledge, mentioning its limitations and imperfections, and inviting and recommending further research in some related areas.

Chapter 2

The Biblical Foundations of Forgiveness

Introduction

While there is no doubt that forgiveness is not an exclusively Christian moral practice or ethic, it cannot be gainsaid that it is within a Christian scheme of things that forgiveness is particularly at home.[1] Forgiveness is thus a distinctly, albeit not uniquely, Christian ethic.

Forgiveness is a Christian ethic primarily because it is a biblical ethic. The Christian foundations for forgiveness are biblical foundations. To say that it is a biblical ethic is to mean, on the one hand, that it is an ethic or moral practice which the Bible contains; on the other hand, it is to mean that forgiveness as a human practice and ethic is one that accords with the Bible and one that the Bible affirms.

The task of seeking biblical foundations for forgiveness is also twofold: the first is of the descriptive kind that seeks to analyze and make sense of the ethic of forgiveness contained within the Bible; the second is of the constructive kind that seeks to formulate the conception of forgiveness as an ethic that is truly in consonance with the Bible. While these two tasks are not identical, neither are they completely separate, not least in Christian moral reasoning. Indeed, they are very closely related and intertwined. Christian moral reasoning involves reflection (that is, thinking on the data at hand asking the question What is the truth?) and deliberation (that is, thinking towards action, asking the question What must be done?).[2] With respect to forgiveness and the Bible, this means that the question What is the truth about forgiveness in the Bible? and the question What must be done in the light of it? are not completely different questions.

In this chapter, I begin by outlining how the Bible is typically approached for the understanding and practice of forgiveness. While these approaches are not totally illegitimate, I point out how and why they are inadequate for serving as basic methodological approaches to the Bible for the understanding and practice of forgiveness by flagging a number of hermeneutical questions that beset them. In the second section, I outline an understanding of the Bible as a metanarrative spanning from creation to new creation, with distinct markers in between. Finally, in the third section, I argue how such an understanding of the Bible is particularly fruitful for thinking about why forgiveness is a truly biblical ethic, and how such an understanding of the Bible can illuminate the concept and practice of forgiveness.

The Bible and Forgiveness: Typical Approaches

The Philological Approach

In seeking the biblical foundations for forgiveness, it seems to me that there are four basic approaches that can be, and have been, taken. These approaches may be systematized and called the philological, the precepts, the principles, and the paradigms approaches. While these approaches are not mutually exclusive, a systematic distinguishing in such a manner is nevertheless helpful. According to the philological approach, understanding the meaning and thereby the practice of forgiveness is heavily dependent on the study of the biblical words for forgiveness in their original form through the determination of their literal meanings. The understanding of the concept of forgiveness is thus defined primarily by etymological, lexical, and linguistic considerations of biblical terms for forgiveness, and the syntax and semantic relations of the statements and passages in which they occur. Examples of such approaches can be found typically in Bible dictionaries[3] and other works in biblical studies.[4] The conceptualization of forgiveness through this approach can also incorporate both the study of biblical terms in their original Hebrew or Greek forms and the study of the term in the English language. For instance, Liechty, in his work, Putting Forgiveness in Its Place: The Dynamics of Reconciliation,[5] combines a study of the New Testament Greek word, aphiemi (lit. to let go, and usually translated to forgive), with the English word, forgive (which he understands as love given before[6]), to come up with a conceptualization of forgiveness that comprises two basic and complementary strands: the letting-go of vengeance, punishment, and hatred, on the one hand, and the willing, seeking, and extending of oneself for the good of another, on the other.

Now, there is little doubt that understanding a biblical concept has to begin with a clear understanding of the literal meanings of the words that denote the concept. There is also no doubt that historical criticism, exegesis, and exposition are absolutely necessary in the understanding of biblical concepts. It is also true that, typically, the concerns of such works do not go much beyond the analytical and descriptive. Having said that, there is a danger that many an understanding of a certain biblical concept, including the concept of forgiveness, can be too heavily dependent on, and rigidly bounded by, exegetical minutiae and semantic exactness. A fuller and richer understanding of a certain concept has to go much beyond – not necessarily against – philological exactness, lexical definitions, and exegetical precision. Failure to do so can run the danger of sub-understanding or misunderstanding the concept. No concept or reality can be reduced to the literal meanings of the terms that denote it. To assume otherwise would tantamount to being guilty of the grossest kind of reductionism. For instance, a biblical understanding of the church must go way beyond a philological deciphering of the Greek term ecclesia.

Moreover, a certain concept, idea, phenomenon, process, or reality can be present and operative in a certain text or context even if the exact terms or vocabularies are not used explicitly to refer to it. For instance, one of the curious features of forgiveness in the Old Testament is the fact that the vocabulary and language of forgiveness is used almost exclusively for God. The verb salach (forgive, pardon) always has God as the subject; similarly, nasa (lift, carry, bear [iniquity, transgression, sin] [away]) – which is often translated forgive – always has God as the subject. Would that, then, mean that human forgiveness is not there in the Old Testament and that nothing about human forgiveness can be understood from the Old Testament?

The Precepts Approach

The second approach, the precepts approach, for seeking biblical foundations for forgiveness is to focus on the biblical commands related to forgiveness. The focus here is to look at the biblical passages that prescribe forgiveness as an ethic or form of conduct. This approach is a sub-set of an approach in biblical ethics where the content of divine will and the standards of human behaviour are assumed to be set forth in objectively revealed precepts.[7] Hence, Those actions of persons and groups which violate the moral law revealed in Scripture are to be judged morally wrong.[8] While there