A Durable Peace with a Weak Accord in Mizoram

Abstract

On June 30, 2020, Mizoram celebrated thirty-four years of peace after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of 1986, popularly known as the Mizo Accord that put an end to the twenty-year-long Mizo war of independence spearheaded by the Mizo National Front (MNF). The Accord, often hailed in both the political and the academic fora as the most successful agreement of the Indian state with an armed insurgent group and a model of conflict resolution, has in fact withstood the test of time, generating durable peace. This article, however, debunks the idea of the Mizo Accord as a model agreement by underlining its defects and nonimplementation, and rather argues that sustainable peace in the state of Mizoram was possible due to the social administrative system and political culture of the Mizos, largely shaped and molded by civil society organizations