In his book “My Century”, a collection of 100 inter-linked short stories, each not any longer than a page or two, summarising the mood of each year of the century from the German perspective, Gunter Grass characterises the atmosphere in pre-First World War Europe amidst wide public insecurity introduced by an arms race in 1911, by a single line in a fictional letter written in 1913 on the edge of the outbreak of the great war, by implication supposedly by the then German Chancellor to a Count friend: “I wish to be a prince of peace – but well-armed.”
This seems exactly the mood in Manipur today in the backdrop of multi-pronged hostile rivalries between communities, most pronouncedly now between Kuki-Zo tribes and Meiteis. In the immediate wake of May 3 outbreak of violence, this mood could be sensed strongly even amongst Meitei residents in the relative security of Imphal. The anxiety and insecurity were that Kuki militants under Suspension of Operation, SoO, were involved, and that they were armed and allowed to wield their weapons openly by the security forces precisely because of the SoO agreement. This anxiety was also writ large in the repeated calls for arms rather than essential commodities in the initial days in the local media by Meira Paibis, especially in the peripheries of the Imphal valley, while they kept nightly vigil of their villages.
It was also this same anxiety that in the initial one week, there were over 10,000 gun license applications in Imphal alone, and the queue continued to grow by the day, so much so that the security advisor to the state government, Kuldiep Singh, had to issue an advisory to not entertain these applications for the time being. It is imaginable that the same anxiety was prevalent on the other side of the conflict fence too, especially after the cases of mobs overrunning police armouries and looting weapons. It must be added here that such looting of arms happened on both sides of the fence, though the numbers were far bigger in the valley areas. In quite an irony, that these arms looting which should have alarmed everyone did just the opposite. In the tense situation of an emerging arms race, these lootings were largely met with a sense of relief amongst the communities. But even as the heat of the conflict eases now, there is now an increasing realisation of the latent danger of so many arms left in the hands of so many unknown people.
The truth also is, every community now virtually has a militia, all with objectives that vary widely in terms of ideology and approach. The cause-and-effect story of how this came about is a matter of allegation and counter-allegation but the fact is, caught in the middle are the ordinary unarmed citizenry, across the board and across the ethnic divides. The state institution is supposed to ensure this does not happen anytime, but unfortunately it is in this area of onerous statutory responsibility that the shadow is darkest. Under the Indian system, not only is the state supposed to have monopoly over legitimate violence, but also monopoly over legitimate possession of arms.
The unwritten understanding is, the individual citizens are supposed to repose absolute faith in the state that it would take care of their needs for defence against external as well as domestic aggressions. It is this unwritten article of faith which is degenerating, and with it the exponential rise in complications in the matrix of ethnic violence and friction. Inability to handle the situation is one thing, but the state institution must never deviate from the fundamental premise that possession of unlicensed arms by anybody other than the security organs of the state is illegal.
This implies that the state under no circumstance can turn a blind eye to illegally armed men regardless of whatever the exigencies. The moment it ignores this need, a breach would have been created in this article of faith. The state is required to fight all illegally armed organisations impartially. If any truce is reached or ceasefire agreed upon with any armed organisation, they have to be under definite and strict ground rules that will not compromise the security of the ordinary citizenry. In other words, let those who agree to negotiate peace come under the protective umbrella of the state, but without compromising on the initial article of faith that bearing arms or using them is illegal, except by the security organs of the state.
If this were not to be so, then there is the American approach which trusts arms in the hands of the citizens for their individual defence against aggression, external or domestic. It is interesting that the very second amendment of the American constitution, incorporated into the constitution in 1791 along with nine other amendments which together form what is now famously known as the “Bill of Rights”, is the right to possess arms by citizens.
The first amendment is about the guarantee of freedom of speech and the press. If the order of arrangement of the amendments in the list of 10 is any indication of priority, the American constitution can be said to consider the right of citizens to possess and carry arms most fundamental after the right to free speech and expression. Perhaps this outlook had a lot to do with the nation being a settler state, having for most part of its pre-constitutional history to advance its frontiers westward, encountering in the process hostile resistances both from Native Americans, as well as colonial powers other than England.
Again, in the end, it was also a citizen’s militia that ultimately had to shoulder the responsibility of liberating their country from English colonial yoke. Such a policy is unthinkable in India. For one, in a country of such diverse nationalities, and such diverse religions, there is considerable legitimacy in the state being insecure about an armed citizenry. But then, if this is the case, it becomes all the more the bounden duty of the state to ensure that nobody is illegally armed to become the cat in the pigeon coop. The sense of security that an armed individual supposedly gets from the possession of arms must under the altered circumstance be had from the knowledge and confidence that an armed state is his or her protector.
As for Manipur, its immediate future has been made so uncertain because of so much arms now in the hands of the communities. Even if normalcy returns in the state, and inter-community animosity ceases, this uncertainty is unlikely to lift so soon. That is, if the state remains impotent and unable to assume the monopoly over what political thinker Max Weber has called “legitimate violence” precisely by disarming its civil population of all unlicensed weapons effectively.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
