Manipur’s tragic ethnic conflict is threatening to acquire a new dimension, bringing in more ethnic groups into the theatre. This looming danger was sensed all along by those who intimately understand the state’s complex multi-ethnic demography.
True to this premonition, even as violent confrontations of nearly three years between the majority non-tribal, predominantly Hindu Meiteis, and Christian Kuki-Zo group of tribes have begun showing signs of easing, a new conflict front is opening pitting Kukis and Nagas whose settlements in the hills are closely interlaced.
For the moment, this new friction is largely restricted to three of the state’s 10 hill districts. The latest is in Ukhrul district, where the Kukis and Tangkhul Nagas are now in a dangerous faceoff, with two fatalities already, and over 50 houses belonging to both sides destroyed in the Litan area along the Imphal-Ukhrul road. Much earlier, tensions began brewing in the Tamenglong and Kangpokpi between Kukis and Zeliangrong Nagas, even while the Meitei-Kuki conflict was peaking.
Like other Naga tribes in Manipur, Zeliangrong Nagas claim that the lands on which Kukis are now settled were originally theirs but leased out to the latter. They are also unhappy that camps for Kuki militants who had signed a Suspension of Operation, SoO, agreement with the Government, were being relocated in lands the consider theirs.
For about a year, Zeliangrong United Front, ZUF, a militant group, launched a campaign of destroying poppy fields in the hills which they claim were cultivated on their lands by Kukis, causing dangerous frictions.
Last month, the problem was compounded with Tangkhul Nagas also coming into the picture. On February 7 evening at Litan village in the foothills, trouble exploded when a few drunken Kuki men assaulted and injured a Tangkhul man. Efforts to reach an amicable settlement failed and by February 9 open hostilities broke out and is now threatening to spread.
Quiet obviously, a single spark could have paused no danger of causing infernos had the grounds not been dry and ready to catch fire. Tangkhuls too consider Kukis as migrants, settled on land leased to them by Tangkhul villages nearby. They claim these leased lands still belonged to Tangkhul villages. Kukis however counterclaim that all lands they are now settled on are rightfully theirs.
It is pertinent to note that the steam for the current spike in Kuki-Tangkhul tensions began building over compensation claims for lands the government acquired for broadening of the Imphal-Ukhrul highway.
Modern land laws under the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms, MLR&LR Act 1960, are not extended into the hill districts. Instead, customary laws of indigenous tribes are in vogue here. The current land administration system in Manipur is roughly modelled on what independent India inherited from the British land revenue management in the Northeast and Myanmar, whereby the hills were left unadministered, designated as “Excluded Areas” or else “Partially Excluded Areas”.
This unfolding conflict dynamics in Manipur is an indication that changes in this archaic system is called for. Entrenched interests can be predicted to resist any move to introduce modern land laws in the hills, but need of the hour is at least to codify these customary laws so they can be justly and impartially applied universally to all stakeholders.
Equally importantly, the law must make it mandatory for traditionally shifting populations to adopt sedentary and enumerable lifestyle. Deadly land frictions between mobile and sedentary populations are a historical reality, and continue to be so. Kuki villages tend to constantly split and proliferate, and this is often the cause for frictions between them and their neighbours.
The history is, when the British took over the Northeast, the valleys where agricultural surpluses led to state formation centralising their bureaucracies under one authority, were easier to standardise one law. In the mountains, the numerous villages were each tiny kingdoms, often at war with each other. An agreement with one would not hold in the next village, prompting the British to leave them as unadministered territories, except for occasional punitive expeditions.
Two centuries after the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo, 1926, which brought the British to the Northeast, the socio-economic playfields have levelled out considerably. Efforts must now be to evolve suitable, consensual reforms to bring the region out of its time warp, towards a more universal legal platform.
Understandably, journalists and fact-finders who trooped into Manipur while the conflict remained restricted to Meiteis and Kuki-Zos are largely silent on this new development. They probably now realise how wrong their familiar conflict templates of Hindu majority targeting minority Christians, Muslims, Dalit or tribal were, now that both the warring sides are Christian tribals.
The lesson is, representation of traumatic conflicts in complex multi-ethnic social structures such as in Manipur, is never easy. The temptation before paratrooping observers is to adopt linear textbook conflict models they are familiar with in comprehending what they witness, but these can prove grossly inadequate.
While it is absolutely necessary to not end up giving moral equivalence to victims and perpetrators, the line that divides the two are not always distinct in conflicts in this complex and intertwined ethnic maze. Often, both conflicting parties can equally be victims as much as perpetrators.
As trauma scholars have cautioned, this shortfall can be true for actual subjects of the conflicts writing of these conflicts, as well as observers from outside these conflict theatres assessing the conflicts.
While the former are prone to what Dominick LaCapra calls ‘fidelity to trauma’ leading to a sense of victimhood, the latter can end up ‘numbing empathy’ – which media scholar Tony Harcup interprets as ‘objectivism’. LaCapra warns they can also suffer from ‘surrogate victimage’, championing the victimhood perception of the side they choose to align with.
LaCapra’s recommendation for trauma representation is to find the ‘middle-voice’. In retrospect, the lack of interest of many in this ‘middle-voice’ in covering the Manipur’s crisis may have complicated and prolonged the conflict itself, quite reminiscent of what Bertrand Russell anticipated was the harm even good men can do.
This article was first published in The New Indian Express. The original can be read HERE
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
