The Zoramthanga government’s non-compliance with the Union Home Ministry directive to Mizoram and Manipur — to collect biometric details of refugees arriving from Myanmar — stems from the practicality of electoral compulsions as well as from a place of compassion. The Mizoram government, which had earlier refused to close its borders to incoming Chin refugees displaced by the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, is due for elections by the year’s end. The Mizos share a common ethnicity with the displaced Chins and believe that the data may be used to “other” the incomers.
This is in stark contrast to the conduct of the N Biren Singh government in Manipur, where ethnic tensions between Manipur’s main tribes, the Kukis and the Meiteis, continue to simmer. Manipur started the process of biometric data collection in July, calling for a year’s extension only recently, citing unrest in the state. Through these troubled six months, the erosion of the Chief Minister’s credibility, his inability to douse the fires in his state, has been glaring.
The schism between the primarily Kuki-Chin hill tribes of Manipur and the Meiteis who dominate Imphal’s valley area has deepened also because of distrust in the impartiality of the administration. Singh has framed the unrest as a fallout of the state’s illicit narco-economy, pinning the blame on “illegal” immigrants from across the Myanmar border, with whom Manipur’s hill tribes, too, share a common ethnicity. The crisis in trust has been magnified by Singh’s decision to extend AFSPA for another six months in the hill areas of the state and his request to the Centre to end the free movement regime along the Indo-Myanmar border, which has been in place since 2018.
In the Northeast, borders that separate a refuge from a refugee run through homes and homesteads that were once common ground and have now congealed into fractious identities. The tug of kinship is hard to ignore in times of hyper nationalism and political churn. But while solidarity is a strong motivation, Zoramthanga’s decision also reflects his growth as a leader.
In the aftermath of the pandemic and the NRC protests, he has emerged as a leader not just of all the tribes in his state, but also of the larger Kuki-Chin community, including those fleeing the junta in Myanmar and those escaping violence in neighbouring Manipur. The bogey of the outsider-infiltrator has been a convenient alibi for the Biren Singh government. Zoramthanga’s righteous resistance offers a study in contrast.
