Only an imaginative approach can save Manipur now

Amitava Mukherjee

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator)

In 1954, a column of the Assam Rifles was ambushed and butchered in the then NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) by the Thagin tribe as the paramilitary force was on an expedition for setting up some administrative controls in the hitherto unexplored area. Seventy-three members of the force died. It raised consternation in Delhi. Some important members of Congress wanted retribution. However, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of the country, demurred. He wanted an action that would be firm but not vindictive. He advised against treating the tribal people of the Northeast with a superior air. The most important part of his realisation was that he was not sure whether the mainland Indian civilisation had much to teach the tribal people so far as the philosophy of life was concerned.

Had the later-day political executives and administrators imbibed Nehru’s realisations, we would not have seen a burning Manipur as we are now witnessing.

It is now over one and a half years since Manipur has been passing through one crisis to another. There is now an open ‘war’ between the Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal valley and the Kuki-Zos who reside in the hills of the state. Both sides have dug bunkers in their respective areas. Both have arms and ammunition. They are using drones also. The two sides are separated by a no-man’s land that is patrolled by central paramilitary forces. But mayhem is continuing. The Meiteis and the Kuki-Zos are at each other’s throats. One really wonders whether any government exists in Manipur.

Removing one Biren Singh, the Chief Minister of Manipur, will be no fundamental solution because the causes of the unrest lie much deeper—in the faulty perception of successive governments and policymakers. The geographical entity that lies within India, east of Bangladesh, is always referred to as the ‘Northeast,’ as if as a compact whole, overlooking the fact that the region is multidimensional and multilayered. This wrong notion impelled the central government to concentrate developmental activities like airports, educational and health care centres, and also cultural institutions in and around Imphal, Manipur’s capital, situated at the heart of the Meitei community-dominated Valley, little realizing that this would encourage the immigration of those the Meiteis consider as ‘outsiders.’ In a word, it means a fear psychosis among the Meiteis that their culture would be swamped by the ingress of people coming from the hills as well as from outside the state.

The present turbulence started a year and a half back with two principal issues: the recommendation of scheduled tribes (ST) status for the Meiteis and the state government’s endeavour to clear ‘supposed reserved forests’ of encroachers in the hills. Meiteis’ demand for a ST status was in fact an attempt on their part to shield themselves from ‘outside onslaughts,’ a move the hill-based tribes comprising mostly the Nagas and the Kuki-Zos resented. Both sides can cite reasons. The Meiteis comprise a little more than 65 percent of Manipur’s population, but they are settled only on 10 percent of the state’s land. So land for them has become scarce, more so as large amounts of village lands in the Imphal Valley have been taken over for housing security establishments. On the other hand, the Naga and the Zo people constitute a little more than 34 percent of Manipur’s population but have around 89 percent of the state’s land. So it is a two-way hostility—the Meiteis don’t want to allow the Nagas and the Kuki-ZOs in the Imphal Valley while the latter are determined to block the Meiteis’ attempt to get ST status.

It should always be kept in mind that insurgency in Manipur, and in the other neighbouring states also, is ethnicity-based, and the best way to handle it will be understanding the tribal peoples’ urge for autonomy and honouring the customs of each clan. Here the policymakers and the executives of the country have always erred. For example, during the British rule, Manipur was a princely state. But its King Bodhchandra was first coerced and then forced to join independent India in 1949. This led to the valley-based Meitei insurgencies, which greatly respected ethnicity-based symbols. Thus the occupation of the Kangla Fort by the Assam Rifles was looked upon as a cultural invasion by the people of Manipur.

The present-day mistrust between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zos would not have arisen had successive governments realized that the two basic philosophies of tribal life are autonomy and clan identity. With their policy of expansionism, the colonial British rulers first struck at the autonomous social structure of the Manipuri hill tribes. Unfortunately, the process continued in independent India. Although in 1954 Jawaharlal Nehru had cautioned against interference in tribal ways of life, his government enacted in 1956 the Manipur Village Authorities (Hill Areas) Act, which did away with the age-old tribal tradition of nominating one member from each clan for village administration. Instead, an election was introduced, and the size of the village governing body was fixed according to the number of taxpayers of the village concerned. Moreover, in 2008, the all-important word’ ‘autonomous’ was dropped from the Manipur (Hill Areas) District Council Bill.

Much more thought should have been given before the reorganisation of states in the northeastern part of our country. Concept and practice of tribal identity should have been given more importance than the idea of territorialism. In its attempt to create more territorial states, successive governments have in fact created more fragmentation. For example, before creating the state of Nagaland, the Union government should have taken into account the existence of Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Absence of this fundamental exercise has now become a sore point in the ongoing negotiations between the central government and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (Issac-Muivah).

Here lies another cause of trouble. In Manipur also, the Nagas are a factor to reckon with. They dominate in the districts of Chandel, Senapati, and Ukhrul. They have not taken kindly to the creation of some new districts bifurcating the abovementioned three and some others. Till now the Nagas are lying low. But they are certain to act with full force if they consider that their interests are being harmed in any future settlement over Manipur.

That will be a difficult situation because the Nagas consider themselves sovereign. They deny the suzerainty of the Indian state over them, while the Kuki-Zos want autonomy only within the Indian state.