Governing through Peace Accords

תקציר

A study of peace accords is a study of state-formation, of patterns of power, of the desire of democracy to run away from that regime of domination from which it eternally tries to free itself only to find itself never free. It is crucial to an understanding of the modern stale that relies on the instrumentality of contract to survive and strengthen itself Accords are contracts within and between states, specifically with the deviants who want to opt out of a given political setting. The paper reviews and analyzes the history of peace accords in the Indian subcontinents containing the texts of treaties, accords, memoranda of understanding, resolutions, and also the enabling acts for their implementation. These are the texts of resolution of conflicts, and are protocols of power, scripts of status, arrangements of prestige, and the invitational metaphors for further conflicts and peace. Some have failed and some have succeeded. Some have passed the verdict of history, while others remain as papers in dusty archives. But they belong to a genre, a specific group, with their own rules of formation, their procedural laws. The agencies contracting them impose a practicality on them, then these treaties as events find their own principle of practicality and regularity. But beyond the practicalities, the history of accords in the subcontinent reveals the embedded and unresolved vagueness of right and might, power and justice, violence and peace.