Manipur is no stranger to the curse of the genocide. In the infamous ‘Naga-Kuki conflict’ of 1990, hundreds of innocents were massacred, not for what they had done but because of who they were. In that protracted genocide among Manipur’s ‘tribal’ communities, places of worship and villages were razed to the ground and thousands were rendered homeless. When it came to these Christian communities, the biblical teaching ‘love your neighbor’ was of no use in politically motivated genocidal violence. The specter of bloodshed in Manipur has returned again, this time between Kuki and Meitei.
Incidentally, the ‘Kukis’ have been involved in such skirmishes with their neighbors for years. In addition to the infamous conflict with the Nagas in the 1990s, there have been violent conflicts with the Dimasas (2003) and Karbis (2004) in Assam, and the Paites (1997–98) in Manipur.
So, what’s driving this latest round of ‘cookie’-related carnage? Several commentators have cited the Meitei’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, and the state government’s attempt to ‘survey’ forest areas and evict ‘illegal’ occupants from ‘protected forests’ as some ‘spark’. Are. But then, in order for a spark (chingari) to arise and turn into an inferno, material is needed. That material is a manufactured divide: the ‘hill-valley divide’ in Manipur. This artificial reality must be taken as a historical a priori to understand the current genocide. For, it is a past that lives in the present and borrows from Michel Foucault, ‘Cast'[s] Shadow’.
a topographic division
At the root of the division is the invented topographical dichotomy between two geographical features of a landscape (i.e., ‘hills’ and ‘valleys’) belonging to a single high mountain fold formed by the collision between the ‘Indian Plate’ and the ‘Diamond Plate’. Eurasian Plate’. Imphal and the districts of Manipur (Churachanpur, Ukhrul, Chandel) and the neighboring states of Nagaland and Mizoram are part of a single high mountain belt, while the Brahmaputra valley is part of a ‘thrust’ formed by the said collision.
The then Planning Commission classified states like Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram as ‘Hill States’, while Assam was a ‘Hill Areas State’. And yet, when one talks of its relationship with the ‘Imphal Valley’ (790 m) and the ‘Hills’ of Manipur (eg, Churachanpur which is about 922 m), it is presented as if it were the same. part of the relationship that exists. Between Brahmaputra Valley/Guwahati (about 50 m) and Kohima (1,444 m) or Aizawl (1,132 m).
The British introduced this false topographical perspective into Manipur by extending a plan that separated the Brahmaputra valley from the Naga and Lushai hills in erstwhile Assam. However, the distinction brought by the British was mainly in terms of ‘population’ rather than ‘area’. Thus, while Manipur generated revenue from both the hills and the valleys (for example, the house tax), the people were divided and governed under different regimes of law. Indeed, informed by colonial anthropological knowledge and strategic calculation, this geographical misrepresentation was further consolidated by classifying a section of people as ‘hill tribes’, governed by a separate set of criminal and civil laws from the state of Manipur. were governed, irrespective of whether they lived in hills or valleys.
reclassification
The post-colonial Indian state, far from reversing colonial schemes, during the 1950s and 1970s not only reproduced but expanded these false dichotomy. Thus, the colonial category of ‘Hill Tribes’ has been reintroduced as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (ST) and the rest as general category (later, many of these people were reclassified as Other Backward Classes). has been done) with a small section, as Scheduled Castes. In fact, it has further increased the division among the people by introducing land division through laws like the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960 and Article 371C. Even a ‘mini assembly’ within the assembly of a ‘hill state’ – ironically called a ‘hill area committee’ – even the state legislature was divided.
Nowhere in the country, perhaps even in the whole world, have such unusual and fabricated divisions been officially created and nurtured among a minor population belonging to the same ethno-linguistic family living in a small and compact hilly region. Over the years, this asymmetrical and fabricated division has begun to take shape and form what Charles Taylor calls the ‘social imaginary’ – that is, ‘the way people imagine their social existence, how they fit in with others in the state’.
As a result, the topographical reality of ‘hills-valleys’ characterizing a mountainous area has become ‘hills and valleys’ inhabited by ‘different people’. Such a ‘social imaginary’ feeds and feeds a political culture that prevents people from realizing and pursuing the common good in the state.
role of politics
Moreover, the dynamic of competitive politics of electoral democracy in the state has sharpened the divide. Politicians and certain social elites, especially among STs, have manipulated the sentiments of the people by creating a communal narrative that blames the Meiteis for the perceived and real differential development pattern in the state. The district headquarters are often compared to the capital Imphal, whose residents (36% of the state’s total population) include tribals, non-tribals and people from outside the state, due to the exclusion of the ‘hill areas’ of the ‘valley’. The argument propagated. Such communally motivated statements sidestep real issues seen in development matters, such as topography, demographic factors, law and order, shortcomings of the ‘top down and one size fits all’ model of planning, and Importantly, the effects of a neo-patriarchal socio-economic structure in the cascading state.
Such a communal narrative has been used to explain the ‘politics of redistribution’ during electoral campaigns as well as in communal mobilisations, especially of an ethno-nationalist variety, mostly based on ostracized tribal identities. Is. There is a corresponding expression of territoriality in these mobilizations. Thus, these are identities despite the fluidity, or the familiar anthropological contradiction between ‘tribe’ as a conceptual category and the empirical reality on the ground (who belongs to which tribe and multiple expressions of hyphenated identity) or the shifting and arbitrary nature of territoriality. (often seen in overlapping or different cartographic representations), these mobilizations have given rise to the genocidal violence that Manipur has witnessed. The violence that erupted on May 3, 2023, has all the hallmarks of a politically motivated carnage.
Indeed, genocide fits the description of genocidal violence – an attempt to mark a territory and clear the ‘other’ from that space. And the timing and sequence of events that unfolded point to what Paul Brass called an institutionalized riot system that included a preliminary phase of activities (for example, from the desecration of sacred shrines at Kobru and Thangjing) to Violent activities leading up to the outbreak of violence in May. 3); Activism was represented by the burning of a forest office at the end of the rally and the burning of tires at a memorial gate as a ‘signal’ (potentially a ‘false flag’); The incident of burning of houses in Torbung, Moreh etc., hours before the mob riots in Imphal, till the stage of clarification involving massive attempts to ‘control’ the narrative of ’causes’ and ‘blame displacement’, involving ‘sociologists’ are ‘ in the mainstream and social media.
Organized violence always has some beneficiaries and targets. Genocide cannot serve the interests of those who talk of co-existence of communities and integrity of the State. But it may very well serve communal interests.
Manipur unrest | The embers of the Meitei-Kuki conflict still burn brightly
Incidentally, even though violence has subsided in the valley, and Meitei villages in the periphery continue to be attacked, demands are being made for ‘heterogeneous federation’, ‘decentralisation’, ‘separate administration’, and to prevent tribal people from inhabiting There is talk of banning. ‘Valley’ (as expressed by Kuki MLA in a web-portal). Only an impartial judicial inquiry headed by a sitting or retired judge of the Supreme Court of India can trace the sequence of events and fix responsibility for the unprecedented massacre.
A. Bimol Akoijam teaches Socio-Political Psychology and Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi