By Dr. Thangzakhup Tombing
Manipur state witnessed one of the worst kinds of mayhem in independent India on the ensuing evening of May 3rd and 4th 2023. One renowned scholar from Manipur working in JNU even cathartically observed that the humanitarian crisis in Manipur is akin to the experience of partition of India and Pakistan. The scale of brutality, murder, burning of homes, churches and the subsequent looting as reported from ground and in videos trending in social media and other platforms connotes and substantiate the gravity of the mayhem.
Witnesses accounts from both sides of the communities reflect the epochal loss of lives and properties. Survivors testimonies from the Meitei side reflect dismay, anger and mistrust towards the Kuki communities who they think should be blamed for the lurking corruption, misgovernance and unrest in the State. The collective sentiments of the Meitei community feels that Kuki communities are contemptuous toward the dominant rights of the Meitei community.
On the other hand, the Kuki communities contest that the Meitei community always had deep-rooted age-old hatred and bias against their communities about their ancestral occupation of land, customs and traditions. According to the Kuki communities, the plain Meiteis have always treated them with disdain by calling them “hao” or “minai” which loosely means ‘outcast or impure slaves’. The way the Kuki communities were targeted, their churches burnt, and their properties were burnt and they were brutally assaulted reek of nothing but an attempt to annihilate their religion, their properties, and their communities in cohorts with state machination. According to the Kukis, the mayhem is the unleashing of all the penned-up frustration, anger and ill feelings the Meitei community has been helplessly harbouring against them for decades till the revival of their imagined past Kangleipak kingdom glory.
The claim of Kangleipak revival process, according to relevant references had been subtlety debated and connected to idea of building ‘Meitei brand’. Among the Meitei scholars, intellectuals and elders of the society who are well versed with the history of kingdom of Kangleipak, the narrative of Meitei brand needs to be advanced from perspective of access to land and ownership of land in the entire territory of Manipur. It is therefore, imperative that historical narrative of their exploration to the hills of Manipur must be established. But since there are social and political impediments due to the constitutional protection of the hill areas, it was steered towards being recognized as an ST first. The demand for recognition of Meitei as ST is being advocated by Meitei scholars on the basis of topographic arguments, British historical records and the other features of being a tribe. The High Court of Manipur direction to start the ST recognition by the State was thus treated as certification for course correction of what they always believed in recent past as their birth right.
Being more advance in education, culture and language than all the other tribes of the State of Manipur within the territory of Manipur, they believe that they have the right to admonish, educate and punish the hill tribes of Manipur in some kind of virtue signaling. This attitude may have got reflected in the way the State government had enacted and imposed rules and regulations against the alleged degrading forests, wet lands and the mushrooming poppy cultivation in the hill tracts. The State had even threatened to bring war on the hill tracts to curtail the plantation and cultivation of poppy. Thus, in pursue to those goals the Manipur state initiated arbitrary eviction of villagers and villages.
It is to be noted that the popularity of the Hon’ble CM used to transcend beyond the valley Meitei community. He enjoyed the support of all the hill tribal communities including the tribal MLAs, community leaders, church leaders and civil society organizations. Tribal communities endorsed the state government’s war on drugs 2.0, the State’s drive against poppy plantation, the government policy regarding wetland, protected forest etc. But when the arbitrariness of the policy started to be manifest with demolition of churches in Imphal and the eviction of villages and villagers, the hill tribes felt the urgent need to express their dissent and wanted to resolve the matter by peaceful protest.
The mayhem unleashed by the Meiteis in the month of May by the Kuki communities living in the Meitei dominated valley area of Imphal, according the Kuki scholars is akin to a deliberate attempt to annihilate the Kuki communities principally orchestrated by the resurgence of radicalized military wing akin to the age old Kangleipak military wing of the Arambai Tengol and Meitei Leepun who are subservient to a titular modern king. Therefore, the Kuki communities’ narrative surmise that whenever voices of dissent were raised by them it was taken by the Meitei supremacist as a personal attack and provocation on the titular king and the very being of a glorious Meitei community. They felt that the Meitei supremacist treat them as pathogen which needs to be weeded out by tagging them as illegal migrants, drug traffickers or poppy planters etc.
Though there has been reported cases of kindness from both sides but the red herring suggests that the politics in Manipur, both in valley and the southern hills, have been irrevocably damaged. The common man from both the sides feel that the fault lines chasm is too deep and wide to cross over. The ten tribal MLAs who represents the shattered aspirations of the Kukis still firmly stand by their demand for separate administration.
Though the peculiar demand for separate administration is being strongly debated against by the Meiteis, the Centre, anyway, will have to soon take a final call to assuage the pains and sufferings of the people of Manipur. The epochal mayhem in Manipur requires attention of the following:
i)Establishment of hill district councils with direct supervision and funding from the Centre government, something akin to the erstwhile Mizoram District Council.
ii)Establishment of Central University in the Southern Hill District of Manipur;
iii) Immediate revamp of legal education and legal accountability in the hill areas of Manipur;
iv)Establishment of Population and Statistics Analysis Institute in the southern hill state of Manipur.
v)To initiate or overhaul the ethnic problems in the hill states of the North East from an inclusive and diverse discourse of race and linguistic diversity, thereby initiate a process to replace affirmative action for tribes of North East from the perspective of indigenous race and its inhabitants.
(Dr.Thangzakhup Tombing is presently working as Assistant Professor of Law at National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam. His core area of research is Legal Pluralism, Private International Law, and Customary Laws and Institutions. His research particularly focuses on tribal customary laws and institutions, whereby he critically examines and compares the significance and relevance of customary laws and institutions from the narrative of contemporary legal studies).