Semaphoring wrong messages
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 31 2015 -
The activists who are quaterbacking the sustained pro-ILP movement in Manipur are concerned with the photographs and concocted messages posted in the social media.
There is no gainsaying the fact that these will send wrong messages to the non-Manipuris elsewhere in the country who do not know what is actually happening here.
The people in the rest of the country are told these mischievous stories through these possibly photo montages and fabricated and misleading information on harassing and trying to drive out the non-locals.
Chief Minister Okram Ibobi had aired his concern some months back saying that some daily wage earners may be killed in Manipur.
But in case of retaliations many brilliant students and outstanding professionals will be at the receiving end.
His fear cannot be brushed aside as a figment of imagination since in the past some students had been murdered and their murderers had escaped.
Under the circumstances, it becomes expedient that the true picture be put before the people outside the state.
The government has also a responsibility to track down the origin of the social media campaign and the culprits behind the hostile action which is a child’s play.
The activists ought to depend on the national media to dispel the misconceptions created by these elements.
The present pro-ILP campaign is not directed against the non-locals who are very much in Manipur and are venturing out every day in the residential areas to sell various goods, work as construction labourers.
There has not been a single instance of beating up or killing any non-local from the start of the intensified pro-ILP campaign.
The intention of the proposed bill is not to ban entry and settlement of the non-locals in Manipur.
Its objective is to regulate the flow of the non-locals so that the government could smoke out undesirable elements whose population is believed to be legion.
In fact genuine Indians ought to extend support to the campaign since it is in the national interest to check infiltration by foreigners from two sides.
It is in the interest of the non-locals who have been in Manipur for generations if new economic migrants do not swamp them.
These pre-1951 settlers had assimilated with the indigenous people, socially, linguistically and to some extent culturally. And inter-communal marriage is noticeable.
It does not bode well that the non-locals who have been here for generations are distancing themselves from the present campaign.
It is a fight against the new faces who are out to swamp us in the real sense of the term.
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