By Bhogtoram Mawroh
The recent video of two Kuki-Zomi women being paraded naked and raped by a Meitei mob has finally been able to do what the death of more than 140 people, which included a brutal beheading of, again, a Kuki-Zomi youth by Meitei miscreants couldn’t achieve: It got the Prime Minister of the country, Narendra Modi, to finally speak out. Of course, even when speaking about the incident, Modi mentioned Rajasthan and Chattisgarh in an attempt to deflect the blame from his own party, which rules in Manipur. This was reminiscent of the way right-wing groups in the USA tried to play down the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement by putting forward the counter narrative of ‘All Lives Matter’. This was an attempt to deny the historical injustice that black people faced and are still facing in the USA.
While it is indeed true that people of all races and creeds have suffered all manner of from injustices, it is also equally true that there are certain groups that have historically been targeted and deprived of their rights and territories. One of such groups are the indigenous peoples, who are among the most marginalised in the world. Though they constitute just 6.2% of the world’s population, they represent 18.7 percent of people living in extreme poverty (defined as people living below US$1.90 a day) and are more than twice as likely to be in extreme poverty compared to their non-indigenous counterparts. This appalling state of affairs is exacerbated by the fact that oppression and discrimination still continue to this day; and it does not appear that they will go away anytime soon. India is no exception.
Just before the Manipur video surfaced, there was another video making the rounds: the video of an upper-caste man urinating on a tribal person in Madhya Pradesh. The accused was promptly arrested, but the fact that such an incident took place brings to light the patronising attitude that many upper caste Hindus harbour when dealing with lower castes and tribals on the mainland. This is despite the fact that there are constitutional provisions that have been in place to protect the rights of tribals in the country, viz., Articles 15, 16, 19, 46, 335 (II.B., Educational, Economic, and Public Employment-related Safeguards), 330, 332, 334, 243D, 243T (II.C., Political Safeguards), and 338A (II.D., Agency for Monitoring Safeguards). A lot of it has to do with the fact that tribals in the country are not being recognised by their true term, indigenous peoples, but instead are being termed scheduled tribes (ST). This is because the official position of the Indian state is that, since independence, all Indians are considered Indigenous.
This claim, of course, is not true, with historical and genetic evidence irrevocably demonstrating that the present-day nation-state of India has groups that are descendants of populations that inhabited the sub-continent at the time of conquest, colonisation, or the establishment of the present-day state boundary, i.e., indigenous; one of those groups being the present-day tribes, with the Khasi-Jaintia and Garo being two of them. So, by just defining the tribes as ST, the true identity of the indigenous peoples has been taken away from them. Also, the criteria employed for identifying ST groups in the country, viz., i) indications of primitive traits, ii) distinctive culture, iii) geographical isolation, iv) shyness of contact with the community at large, and v) backwardness, betray a highly patronising and paternalistic outlook towards such groups. It is not a wonder that discrimination against them has continued to this date, making indigenous peoples one of the most marginalised groups in the country.
Oppression and discrimination against indigenous peoples have not gone unopposed, especially in the North East, with multiple insurgencies mounted by different indigenous peoples groups in the region, beginning with the Naga, to protect their land and identity. The present conflict in Manipur is also tied to the question of land and identity. At the same time, it exposes the distortion that can take place when the fight for the rights of indigenous peoples becomes deformed to resemble the tactics and ideas they profess to fight against: racial injustice, bigotry, and communal discrimination. The latter is what is taking place in Manipur right now. It is no longer, if ever it was for any moment, about the rights of indigenous peoples, but pure hate stemming out of ideas of racial superiority of the majority (Meitei) against a minority (Kuki-Zomi). In Meghalaya, we have our own variant of that, which is called the Jaidbynriew politics.
The rationale behind the Jaidbynriew politics is very simple: there is a need to protect the rights of the Khasi-Jaintia, and the ones threatening those rights are the non-Khasi-Jaintia. The outcome of such a rationale became apparent immediately after Meghalaya attained statehood in 1972, with the state witnessing many riots (1979, 1987, 1992, and 1997) targeting the non-indigenous population (known as non-tribals) of the state, Bengali and Nepali. This consequently resulted in thousands of non-tribals leaving the state, with the Census reports recording a constant decline of the non-tribal population in the State from 19.52% (1971) to 13.85% (2011). Although recent population figures are not available because the 2021 Census was not conducted due to COVID-19, it will be a surprise if the trend does not continue. But apart from the major riots, the non-indigenous population of the state has been targeted in other ways as well, like restricting their employment opportunities, both in the formal (government) and non-formal (taxi drivers, small businesses, etc.) sectors. I personally know two people: one was my senior and the other was my teacher, both of whom were forced to resign from their jobs after they got the appointment because they were non-indigenous despite having been born and brought up in the State.
I have also been told that non-indigenous traders are allegedly paying extortion money to groups for doing business in the city. And now there is a new target: the Garo, a fellow indigenous peoples group from the same State, who has been accused of depriving the Khasi-Jaintia of their rightful share of an extra 6–7% of the government jobs. And it is the last one specifically that highlights the limitations of the Jaidbynriew politics. Because they see enemies everywhere, they will always lack what the struggle for indigenous people’s rights is built upon: solidarity.
The fight about indigenous people’s rights is not against a certain community, indigenous or non-indigenous, but against ideas that treat one group as inferior to another. Those were used as a rationale for justifying colonialism and the wholesale dispossession and decimation of indigenous peoples throughout the world. It was called the ‘White Man’s Burden’. The Indian caste system, which dehumanises people belonging to lower castes and tribals, is another example of that. Because it is a fight against ideas, it does not view the non-indigenous as the enemy, as, in fact, a lot of the people who support and fight for the rights of indigenous people are non-indigenous. A very good example in the Indian case is the Constitution, which does have very strong provisions for protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples. The Sixth Schedule and Articles 371A and 371G for Nagaland and Mizoram, respectively, are good examples in the North East, along with the Constitutional provisions for the STs in the country. These provisions would not have been possible without the support of non-indigenous peoples who debated these issues in the Constituent Assembly led by BR Ambedkar. As such, the struggle for indigenous people’s rights is built upon solidarity between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to build a society that is not plagued by racial discrimination, bigotry, and communal discrimination, something that the Jaidbynriew politics will always fall short of.
The most critical question is, however, how to differentiate between the struggle for indigenous people’s rights and Jaidbynriew politics, as both can look very similar. The one rule of thumb that I follow and that others might also consider is that whenever there is an issue about a threat to land or identity, look at the enemy who is being projected as the source of the threat: is the enemy an entire community or a system or institution made up of ideas that are inimical to indigenous peoples rights? For example, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, and the proposed Uniform Civil Code are threats to indigenous people’s rights, not the non-indigenous people, many of whom will also be victims of these legislations. Hence, solidarity is the answer, not hatred, which is on full display right now in Manipur. If we instead fall prey to the Jaidbynriew politics, we will be playing into the hands of our true enemies, who will indeed take away our rights. The choice is therefore critical, and hopefully we make the right one.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organization or institution)