The Delhi-based International Human Rights Council has announced an “Ambassador for Peace” Award for retired Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil of Guwahati. The Award will be conferred in due solemnity on December 9th in Delhi in the presence of invitees from all over the country and abroad. One of the earlier recipients of the Award is the Dalai Lama among many other internationally known figures.
The eighty-three-year-old Archbishop Thomas took up office in 1992 as the first Catholic bishop of Guwahati. Prior to that, he had been the bishop of Dibrugarh for eleven years. Earlier he was in the field of education, working for many years in Don Bosco Technical School, Shillong, and St. Anthony’s College. Several of his students have emerged as prominent leaders at Northeastern and national levels.
Asked when he began his initiative for peace, he said he was drawn into it in 1996 when almost two-and-a-half lakh people fled into relief camps around Kokrajhar having lost their dear ones and property. Fortunately, he says, like-minded people came together to help from different Churches and communities. With the encouragement and support of the State Government and the general public, relief work made progress and an atmosphere for peace was created.
Archbishop Thomas admits that after that experience he was called to help in several other instances of conflict in the region where ethnic violence had taken away several lives, destroyed houses, and caused immense suffering to people, e.g. to Churachandpur, Haflong, Diphu, Udalguri, Mendipathar, Sarupathar. He insists that his contribution was small, but those who were working for peace in those contexts have greatly valued his initiatives. He rejoices that certain measure of peace has come to the Northeast, and hopes it will last.
Of late he has been invited to several universities in India and abroad to speak on themes like inter-community understanding, healing of historic memories, and the arduous path to peace. He made a very useful contribution at the World Congress of Philosophers last year in Beijing. He often repeats, “Peace comes when all of us recognize that we need each other.”
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