The unfolding and expanding tragedy of Manipur, in which the state’s two major communities, the Kukis and the Meiteis, have been in bloody communal conflict since May 3, is proving how futile all competitions for scoring media debating points are; Equally, it shows how hollow all political appearances and appearances can be when it comes to resolving deadly conflicts.
Even after almost two months, the state remains tense and more than 120 people have lost their lives. Although irreversible, there are also an estimated 45,000 displaced people in several temporary community-run relief camps on both sides of the divide. For them, first and foremost, all appearances must end so that all stakeholders in this conflict theater – not just the Kukis and Meiteis – sit together to develop a way forward with a consensus, including structural administrative changes agreed to by all. possible, and for the benefit of all.
interconnectedness in mutual well-being
It is important to emphasize consensus. The fact is that what one community does has an impact on other communities, even if they live separately. The integral geography of hills and valleys, rivers and lakes predetermines it, and any move to disrupt this integrity can be an affront to the other’s sense of security. Robert D. Kaplan in The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, and before that, Halford J. Mackinder shows us how some of the deadliest conflicts happened. The world was always embedded in a shared geographical destiny. We are seeing this in Russia’s response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization resolution in Ukraine, and indeed in India’s own response to the Chinese incursion into Bhutanese territory at Doklam in 2017.
The current standoff in Manipur should have already revealed how dependent the hills and the valley are on each other for their mutual well-being. In this regard, it is also to be expected that the valley will feel a bit more insecure, although it is where the state was first formed because of its geographical and agricultural advantages. James C. Scott outlines this friction between “paddy states” and “non-state bearing” populations living in the surrounding mountains in The Art of Not Being Governed – An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Therefore, the ‘fictitious nation’ of these valleys always includes a sense of control over the surrounding hills, where they have mountain passes, and rivers originate.
The Meitei’s almost paranoid concern about the territorial integrity of Manipur should be understood in this light. Independent India chose to inherit the inequitable land laws enacted by the British, which ensured that they were confined to the small Imphal Valley today. The British had their own compulsions. When he moved to the northeast in 1826, he also had to deal with a “non-state bearing” population of Scott hunter-gatherers, whose community affiliations rarely extended beyond their villages. The British had to either subjugate each of them and bring them under their direct rule or leave them alone under their distant watch. He chose the latter and found it more convenient to engage with the centralized bureaucracy of the “paddy states” there. Therefore, after occupying Assam, he invoked the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873 to draw an “inner line” at the foot of the hills that surrounded the flood plains of Assam. Bodhisattva Kar, in his essay “When Was Postcolonial?: A History of Policing Impossible Lines”, describes it as giving “capital a territorial framework”, “separating the modern from the primitive”. Without actually drawing an “inner line”, this system of governance was also introduced in Manipur after 1891, when Manipur became a British protectorate.
accept meitei’s pain
Many now speak of ethnic cleansing in Manipur, and this may indeed happen if nothing is done to ensure the safe return home of the displaced. What hurts most, however, is the silent and seemingly non-aggressive ethnic cleansing of the Meitei people from the hills of Manipur in the decades following India’s independence. The pain of those forced to flee due to the current crisis is heartbreaking, but it is time to also acknowledge the pain and humiliation the Meiteis must have endured in captivity, which is no mean feat. Therefore, their demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status is also a desperate cry against this sense of siege.
This should also explain – although this is not justified – the shockingly violent reaction of the Meiteis to the massacre on the afternoon of 3 May in the Torbung area of Churachandpur district. In the incident, Meitei villagers were seen on the internet even as they were escaping arson attacks by the Kuki mob, pleading for help. When it became clear that the government was doing nothing to control the violence, a dark, primitive and immoral energy within the wider Meitei society began churning not only in response to the immediate humiliation, but also fueled by an underground feeling. arose, whether it was justified or not. A civilizational and even existential threat. The violence that followed was unimaginably wild and indiscriminate – ambulances, schools, ministerial bungalows and residences, men, women and children, all became targets.
Some onlookers think that two organizations, Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Lipun, are the makers of this catastrophe. This is simple. These organizations (of which few would have heard before this crisis) may have been first responders to the Torbung catastrophe (and may still be part of the problem), but they are hardly the problem entirely. In Freudian terms, what is now being seen in Meitei society is the primitive, malevolent, infantile, id breaking down the ceiling of civilizational control of the superego, while the rational ego is rendered powerless and irrelevant. In this surge of dark energy, it is astonishing how an entire community can organize itself on such a large scale, and it is appalling to see the readiness of ordinary men and women to kill, or die. For this reason WB Yeats said, “a terrible beauty is born”, although there is little to separate this beauty from the beast.
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The insensitive manner in which the government carried out policies such as the campaign against poppy cultivation, illegal migration and encroachment in reserve forests caused the Kukis to suffer a sense of unjust humiliation and oppression for a long time. The damage it would have done should explain why only the Kukis resorted to extreme violence on 3 May, and not the Nagas, when both were at the same rally to oppose the proposal to include Meiteis in the ST list Were.
However, this is not the time to point fingers at “who started it” or “who did more damage”. Return to normalcy should be the priority and this initiative should start from the top leadership. Even though they have accounts to settle, they have to end the conflict for the time being. Simultaneously, to dispel all doubts about the involvement of Kuki militants in this conflict under the Suspension of Operations Agreement, the Assam Rifles will have to provide conclusive evidence of the return of all cadres to their designated camps. Once this is done, it will be easy to either return or recover all the looted weapons from the police stations in the valley areas. In this, a vivid example of the courage of Mahatma Gandhi to withdraw the non-cooperation movement on February 12, 1922 after the violent incident of Chauri-Chaura is exemplary.
Pradeep Phanjoubam is editor of Imphal Review of Arts and Politics