Opinion In Manipur, shadow of an earlier ethnic clash

A paper by author-activist Urvashi Butalia published in 2008 points out that in the early 1990s, as much as Rs 50-60 crore worth of business passed through this route every day.

At the time, Moreh and its surrounding areas were occupied by the Kuki-Zomi community, Naga tribes, and a smaller concentration of both Manipur’s dominant Meitei community, and a Tamil population that had been pushed out of Myanmar in the 1960s as the military junta took over.

When the 1993 clashes first began, it was the NSCN-IM that held sway over this important trading town, but various fledgling insurgent groups of the Kukis were already making their mark — including the Kuki National Army (KNA), the Kuki National Front, and numerous others.

In 1992, the Kukis led by the KNA served a “Quit Naga” order in Moreh. The Kukis, who till then would pay “taxes” to the IM, have claimed that the order was served after aggression from IM militants in which two Kukis were killed near Moreh, and a Kuki teacher was beheaded. The order unleashed a series of bloody attacks by the IM, which were countered by the Kuki groups.

But as the clashes spread across Manipur state, the violence broke out of the confines of a battle between the warring Naga and Kuki insurgent groups, and erupted between the two communities. In September 1993, the IM issued a similar order to the Kuki inhabitants of Zoupi village, subsequently killing nearly 100 Kuki villagers which came to be known as the ‘Zoupi massacre’, and is observed by the Kukis to this day as a “black day’’.

In the days that followed, Kuki villages across Manipur, and Naga villages in Kuki areas emptied out as residents fled their homes. Until then, many of these villages had been intermixed, and more often than not, Kuki villages could be found in neighbouring Naga areas. Over 200 Kukis are believed to have been killed in the clashes (there is no official record of any Naga death) and over 100,000 were displaced. Now, Kuki and Naga inhabitations remain markedly separate. The 2001 Census noted the sudden increase of population in the Naga districts of Senapati, with fleeing Nagas relocating here. Similarly, Kukis from across Manipur found refuge in the Kuki-dominated district of Churachandpur.

Naga analysts say that while Moreh may have been the flashpoint of the dispute, tensions had been brewing between the two communities over land. The Nagas have contended that the 1970s saw a high influx of Kuki-Zomi refugees from Myanmar, who would often settle on Naga land. Numerous villages mushroomed across the region, making thinly populated Naga tribes nervous. Often, this alleged influx of refugees would settle in land that had been notified as reserve forests, they claim.

The Meiteis at the time were not concerned about the ebb and flow of tribal populations. In the 1980s, the community initiated an “anti-foreigner” movement targeting non-Manipuri populations — such as Biharis or Marwaris, who were settling in the state for business.

The issues that formed the fulcrum of the Naga-Kuki clashes find an echo in the recent ethnic clashes between the Kuki-Zomi and Meitei communities. But there are also large differences. In a pre-communications era, the killings that took place in the 90s were often sporadic incidents spread over a five-year period. The clashes then did not match either the scale or the intensity of the present unrest in Manipur, spurred by social media and fast-paced rumours. Similarly, the displacement of communities also took place over years, and not over a period of days.

Besides, the two warring communities at loggerheads in the ’90s did not belong to the dominant Meitei community. This time around, the year-long run-up to the violence in Manipur saw the state government and the Chief Minister being accused of bias towards one community — giving an entirely different and far more dangerous colour to the violence than what occurred in 1993.

In 1997, the clashes finally subsided with the signing of a ceasefire between the NSCN-IM and the Indian government. But the reverberations of these clashes are felt to this day, with deeply entrenched distrust between the Naga and Kuki communities. The families that fled their villages never returned home. Only recently, over the last couple of years, as memories of the 1993 clashes have begun to fade, several attempts have been made by Naga families to return to their ancestral land — though with little success.