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Journalism of Courage
The Northeast is no stranger to violence. With some of India’s oldest separatist movements, going back seven decades, still raging in the region, it has witnessed untold horrors over the years. However, over the past 20 years, conflict in the Northeast has been on the decline, with normalcy having been established in many states.
What Manipur had though was largely a long, peaceful stretch, which has now shattered, with violent clashes gripping the state, and leaving more than 50 killed at last count. Houses and shops have been razed, churches set on fire, scores have fled homes, many have taken shelter in camps, while others are hiding out in their homes, hoping the first such clashes between ethnic communities in the state in 30 years won’t reach them.
The last violence on this scale was in 1992, when there were clashes between the NSCN (IM), representing Naga interests, and the Kukis in Manipur’s Moreh town, located on the Indo-Myanmar border and a trade centre infamous for smuggling — including of drugs, Burmese teak and arms.
While the violence was arguably started by the NSCN (IM) insurgent group, though the Nagas contest this, it quickly turned into ethnic clashes between the two main tribal communities of Manipur, and spread across the state like wildfire. Over 100 Kukis
are believed to have been killed and over a lakh displaced from hundreds of villages that were razed to the ground.
Since then, there have been sporadic minor clashes between villages — particularly those inhabited by the Nagas and Kukis — but these have been local and contained.
Like in 1992, when the NSCN (IM) was blamed, in the clashes this past week, fingers have been pointed at Kuki-Zomi insurgent groups. The state government incidentally snapped its Suspension of Operations agreement with these groups recently, claiming they were allowing infiltration from across the border with Myanmar. However, the Kuki-Zumi groups have denied a role in the violence, and reports from the state also indicate that the clashes this time involve common people.
There is another difference. Since 1992, there have been other violent protests in Manipur, such as by the dominant Meiteis demanding an Inner Line Permit for the state – to check “infiltrators” — in 2015, which had resulted in a 10-day curfew. Later, this saw counter-protests in Churachandpur, leaving nine dead in alleged police firing.
However, in both the cases, the protests were targeted at the State. The same was the case when there were occasional clashes between civil society and state authorities.
The insurgency that raged before 2012 – having nearly petered out since then – too was specific, and directed at security forces or involved insurgent groups belonging to different tribes and communities taking on each other.
Observers point to one more worrying aspect this time. During the deadly Naga-Kuki clashes, Manipur’s powerful civil society organisations had reached out to the warring factions, to build bridges and restore peace.
Now, even as neighbours take on neighbours, and attack colonies with dominant populations belonging to the other side, there seem to be no leaders – or they remain in the shadows. So, there is no one to reach out to, to try for peace.
Not that anyone is taking the lead. The civil society organisations as well as student bodies which once occupied a pivotal position in Manipuri society — across communities and tribes – are absent. While student bodies’ role has come under question over, in fact, raising tempers on both sides, civil society groups are no longer a part of the discourse and, hence, any peace-building measures.
At least some of that absence is a fallout of the larger muffling of civil society groups across the country under the BJP regime.
Sources say that in Manipur, that space has been recently filled by a couple of new Meitei civil society organisations, which are accused by both Valley and Hill activists of propagating a more radical brand of Meitei nationalism.
Sources in the Imphal valley (which is dominated by the Meiteis) say these groups have systematically silenced dissenting voices in the area, often threatening intellectuals in person. One vocal Meitei professor from Manipur University is said to have relocated outside Manipur due to this.
Meitei nationalism has also been fed by the government’s concerns – not all unfounded – over developments such as migration from Myanmar of those fleeing the military crackdown there. Given that the refugees share common ethnicity with people living in the border areas of Manipur, they find easy havens here.
Correspondingly, a crackdown on poppy cultivation across the hill districts and on “illegal settlements” in these areas have been adding to tribal fears.
And if these are the issues that eventually lit the fire, the situation has always been ripe for it, with a complex mesh of unresolved matters lasting decades.
On the Meitei side, these include frustration at occupying a smaller parcel of land than the tribals, the prohibition on them buying land in tribal areas while tribal communities can buy land in the Imphal valley, and the reservation in government jobs for tribals in a state with few other opportunities for employment.
On the Kuki-Zomi and Naga side, there is resentment over severe underdevelopment of their districts, with a majority of the state’s budget being spent on the Imphal valley; lack of infrastructure, be it roads, health, education; and the dominance of the Meiteis in the state’s administration, with 40 MLAs compared to 20 tribal ones.
The BJP government, which was welcomed once by all sides for its efforts to solve the region’s old-age problems that had been left to fester, is expected to have a daunting task erasing these fissures going forward.
