Reflections on the Conflicts of our Times :
Attempt at Common Sense reading of the Manipur Experience
- Part 2 -

Lokendra Arambam *

Mass Rally for the common future of Manipur from THAU Ground to Khuman Lampak :: 06th February 2016 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

Civil society groups of Nagas in Manipur and Nagaland expressed deep sense of hurt when mass movements in the plains of Manipur were organized to oppose threats to the disintegration of the state, which they feared was being negotiated in the ongoing talks between the GoI and the NSCN (IM). In 1997, Nagas derided the Meetei rally, 'as it was purportedly organized on apprehension of the Manipur Territorial disintegrity in the light of the ongoing talks between the Government of India and the NSCN (IM). The Nagas of Manipur along with the rest of other Nagas have been combating the mighty India for the last 50 years for Naga sovereignty and this long struggle by shedding blood of thousands of men, women and children cannot be easily sacrificed for the sake of Mammoth territorial integrity. The Naga political struggle is not without historical facts. The voice of the Meiteis should not be allowed to prevail upon the settlement of 50 years long political struggle of the Nagas in any manner'. (M. Dili et al – Naga Territorial Integrity Vs Manipur Territorial Integrity 14-9-97).3

The tense dynamics of the ethnic relationships in Manipur and its contours are often defined by their very relationships with the Indian Government, for the Indian state is the ultimate arbiter and dispenser of ethnic justice. The future of the ethnoses in Northeast India seem to heavily lie with the decisions being made in the corridors of power in New Delhi. The equations of the proximity with and distance from the Centres of power therefore were critical factors in assessing the environment of distrust and mutual suspicion over moves and manoeuvres being made by the representatives of Indian authority, their nearness with respective political groups, and the very secrecies and hush-hush methods of the intent and actions of their higher officials.

There seems to be no room for transparencies where the Central authority could be seen as being impartial and just in the eyes of the contending groups or ethnicities. Ethnic suspicions or distrust amongst themselves were thus heightened by the seeming behaviour and actions of the Central Government. This moral universe which is being tensely watched by the ethnoses in NE-India does not seem to impact on the national political parties vying for power in the five yearly exercise of electoral politics.

The rivalries between the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, and their opposing views and attitudes over the peripheral others of the Northeast does not portend any kind of democratic justice over conflictual issues in the Northeast. For the North-easterners view themselves as equals in their relationship with the Centre, and a slight tilt in favour of one ethnos against other ethnoses is regarded as sheer favouritism. The NDA government is mistrusted as being nearer to the Nagas than to the others in the Northeast.

Anomalies of Incompability – The Kuki Upheaval!

Another second difficulty in the contemporary tensions of the day is the recent explosion of ethnic hostility and recurrence of state violence, with its deeper ramifications in all aspects of the life-world of the Manipur people. The decision of the February 6 public meeting to collectively declare that the people of Manipur belong to the same mother – Ima amattagi machani, perhaps alluding to reference to the state as a common birthplace, or of the communities having been of common autochthonous origins, was no doubt a sentimental declaration.

However, the declaration seemed to carry a painful burden of nation-memory, cherished more by the Meiteis of the valley, of having been continuously threatened of disaster, disintegration throughout the state's unfortunate history, that of invasions, or humiliations through defeat, or internal as well as external conspiracies out to destabilize the traditional equilibrium of the polity.

The pre-colonial status of the state in the international community had a character and identity, constituted by the experience of collective participation of its varied citizenry, having fought successfully against the imperial Burmese in the 18th century, and valiant sacrifices in defeat against the Western imperial power of the British in the 19th. This nation-memory forged by the experiences of the sacrifices of the pre-colonial ethnoses are not yet dimmed, but are being ruptured by factors of endogenous failures of contemporary distributive justice, as well as silent exogenous, sinister pressures to destabilize this hapless, corrupt post-colonial polity. Let us attempt to summarise the concrete evidence of this kind of rupture.

Last August in 2015, the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed three bills, namely the Protection of Manipur Peoples Bill 2015, the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (Seventh Amendment) Bill 2015, and the Manipur Shops and Establishments (Second Amendment) Bill 2015, as a result of prolonged agitation by the people in the valley, where one young school student was killed through police firing and more than 400 people were injured in the melee, and loss of public properties were unaccounted.

Having learnt bitter historical experiences of immigrants becoming master of the land and government in Northeast states like Tripura and Sikkim, and having been informed about the complexities of demographic imbalances like in Assam, the Manipur civil organizations in the valley pursued implementations of safeguarding laws for the indigenous peoples, similar to the ones-enjoyed by Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. Their slogan for a similar law began feverishly from 2012 when 32 organizations formed the Joint Committee for Inner Line Permit System in Manipur. They followed certain historical antecedents of that nature back to the 1980s when the students came into agreement on the demographic threat, acknowledged by the then ruling Congress Government, also re-endorsed and ratified the Central Government representatives when Manipur was under President's rule in 1994.

As soon as the Bills were passed on the 31st August, another sudden, unexpected agitation erupted in the Western hills where nine protestors were killed again in the firing by the police and the security forces, and the agitation was against the passing of the three bills. The three bills were condemned as an anti-tribal measure and the dead bodies were still unburied and last rites not being performed till date. The agitation spread throughout the hill areas of the Manipur state. Passions were aroused, and a new slogan which earlier remained at subterranean levels of public visibility surfaced as direct, forthright statement of intent by major ethnic groups of the state.

The demand was for separate administrations of the Hill regions as differentiated from the valley. Earlier a civil society organization from the North-western Hills of Manipur, named the United Naga Committee (UNC), established since 1981 had been propagating an Alternative Arrangement for the separate administration for Naga inhabited areas since 2010, when the crisis that occurred through the State Government's measure to prevent the NSCN (IM)'s General Secretary Th. Muivah's visit to his home village in Ukhrul, where police firing resulted to the killing of two Mao students. Since then the demands for complete severing of relationships with the 'communal' government of Manipur, and the call for Autonomous District Council Elections to be declared 'Null and Void' were their main agendas. As for the neighbouring Kukis, there had been a long democratic history of demands for the establishment of a Kuki state since the 1960s. Various memorandums had been sent to the Central authorities, with varying emphasis on the nature of the Kuki communities relationship with the Central Government, along with their attitude towards the neighbouring communities.

The event of 1992-1998 reckoned as the Ethnic Cleansing campaign of the NSCN (IM) which resulted to severe loss of lives and properties had changed the dynamics of ethnic relationship in Manipur. Some 1000 Kuki citizens were reported to have been killed, leading to retributory violences by the Kukis against the Nagas, with a resultant impact of simultaneous arming of ethnic communities for protection of their respective identities, as well as heightening of ethnic insurgencies in the state. The environment of ethnic violence, mutual mistrust of the other, with occasional proposals for sharing of resources and advantages as well as attempts at alliances and agreements became a blinding feature of ethnic relations in the state.

The Kukis, by virtue of a little better history of sharing of powers on their lands and resources in the pre-colonial times, and of a better form of alliance for mutual protection and help with the Meitei rulers of the state resulted to the Kuki peoples' nearness to the polity and more desire to help protect the territorial integrity of the state. Though the Naga independence movement was prolonged, it made more serious impact on the consciousness of the Manipur Nagas, and more particularly of a strong Tangkhul presence in the NSCN (IM) hierarchy. The Kuki consciousness were more geographically bound in the Manipur state, in spite of a large presence of their kin in the Chin state of Myanmar.

The movement for identity for a Pan Chin-Kuki-Mizo consciousness of these kindred tribes are also in the ascendant in cultural and democratic spaces, but the ethnic armies who became pre-dominant in local as well as trans-geographical spaces in politics had been active in the Manipur hills, whose dynamics it is extremely difficult to identify in the current state of confusion and semi-anarchic configurations of ethnic politics. It is learnt that the NSCN (IM) sought an alliance with the Kuki identity movements, a settlement of earlier unfortunate violences and massacres, and come to a palpable understanding to spite of the 'communal' majority of the Meiteis in the valley.

A proposal that was circulated in August last year secretly by the Kuki National Organization to the NSCN (IM) for parcelling out the hills of Manipur as Nagalim and a Kuki State (Zalengam) was learnt to have fizzled out. Since the Kukis and Nagas had not yet got rid off the accumulated passions and revenge motifs accumulated from mutual hurt and violence during the Kuki Naga clashes. The Kuki Inpi (Kuki government) which was revived in 1993 in earnest from earlier existences had been demanding justice against the NSCN (IM) in many memorandums and appeals to the Central Government.

"The NSCN (IM) preferred and cheated worldwide that they were sovereign nation now revealing their true colours of trying to snatch other peoples lands by (1) invading, killing innocent thousands, uprooting hundreds of villages, but failed (2) Now NSCN (IM) is asking the mighty Government of India to parcel out lands belonging to others, including Kukiland, give them to NSCN (IM).

......

The Kukis had been carefully observing the NSCN (IM) of their suspicious movements, and now this organization has come out openly asking India to take lands belonging to others and give them to the NSCN (IM). This will result to nothing else, but civil war.

Instead, it is requested that whatever present Indian rulers are talking with NSCN (IM) first and foremost (1) The murderers of over 900 innocent Kukis plus other ethnic groups (2) uprooting 360 Kuki villages must be arrested and punished in accordance of the prevailing Indian laws, and (3) all those displaced by NSCN (IM) be rehabilitated to avoid the wrath of all the ethnic groups who heavily suffered in the hands of the NSCN (IM). The wrath has to be avoided at any costs for peace and harmony in the land as it had been from time immemorial." (Kuki Inpi Memorandum to Indian Home Minister June 10, 2010).4

On the issues of the present ethnic tension between the Meiteis, the Naga sans the Kukis, the Kuki Impi added that "Any talk on the question of boundary and land must be tripartite. No single ethnic group has the authority or is authorized to talk and break the territory." (Ibid 2010).

However the contemporary tension however saw certain transformations and twists in positions by the major ethnic communities, when the Kuki and the Nagas came into a certain understanding in the midst of the crisis created by the passing of the bills. Resistances mounted with opposition to the bills, complaints lodged to the Central authorities and pressures from civil society bodies both national and international and the national medias also noticed the violences and complexities thrown up by the issue.

However the last six months from the beginning of the anti bill agitation in August-September last year, sparked off by the sacrifice of the nine martyrs had remain unsettled and grievances of the hill people remained unassuaged. Many waters had flown under the current of ethnic cleavages which still remained a tense feature of public life in the state. The Government of Manipur was reported to have attempted to compromise with the agitators by acknowledging the customary laws of the Kukis (Hiangkham) and having had a few rounds of talks with those responsible for the widespread agitation. Not much of progress was reported about a solution to the issue.

To be continued..