Quite obviously, things are in a stalemate in the conflict between two of Manipur’s ethnic groups, Meiteis and Kuki-Zo group of tribes. More than 17 months after open hostility broke out in an explosive way on May 3, 2023, at Torbung in Churachandpur district, already leaving close to 230 dead, over a thousand injured and an approximate 60,000 displaced, nothing seems to have changed to defuse the hostility, although currently there is a lull in overt violence. The silence however is by no means a sign of return of tranquillity. On the other hand, it more akin to what has been described as the silence of graveyard. Far from those eager to claim this is as a sign of return of peace, as the graveyard analogy goes, the silence means practically nothing or anything. It could for instance mean combat fatigue, despair, a desire for peace or even a break while the warring parties plan deeper and more sinister schemes. Such calms always succeed in leaving everybody with a sense of unease, and in this sense the silence is even eerie.
By now it is also becoming clear, though it should have been clear from the very beginning, that the stakeholders in this conflict are not just the two ethnic groups currently fighting, but also other communities in the state, in particular the Nagas. The United Naga Council, UNC, has now come forward to demand a rollback of the seven new districts created in 2016, just before the Assembly elections by the then Congress government. It will be recalled this decision followed a long agitation, including a crippling blockade along National Highway-2, Manipur’s chief lifeline, by Kukis of the then Sadar Hills subdivision of Senapati district, demanding the upgradation of Sadar Hills to a full-fledged district.
Probably prompted by this demand, the then Congress government not only upgraded Sadar Hills to Kangpokpi district bifurcating it from Senapati district, but also bifurcated six others districts to create six more full-fledged districts. Three of these were in the Imphal valley. While the bifurcations of valley districts were taken well and seen as aimed at administrative convenience, it has not been so with respect to some of hill districts. In particular, the bifurcation of Kangpokpi from Senapati district and to a lesser extent the bifurcation of Tengnoupal from Chandel district, were seen as splintering Naga districts to create Kuki districts.
Hence, when this demand was granted, there was again an agitation by the Nagas, blockading the same highway for close to six months, but after a new coalition government headed by the BJP and chief minister N. Biren Singh, was installed, an understanding had been reached that the rollback of the newly created districts would be settled through negotiations, but the negotiation itself came to shelved with everybody, including those behind the agitation, fatigued by the blockade. The issues was never resolved, but simply allowed to recede deeper into the shelves of political and public concern.
This in essence is what is behind the district creation rollback that the UNC is now once again demanding. Curiously, a Kuki-Zo organisation, World Kuki-Zo Intellectuals Council, WKZIC, jumped the gun and promptly came out supporting UNC demand for district rollback, writing a letter to the President of India to this effect. Its condition is for the rollback to be not status quo ante 2016, but 1972, when Manipur was granted full statehood. These so-called intellectuals probably confused between districts and autonomous district councils, ADCs as firebrand executive editor of SKTV, Raj Nongthombam was quick to point out. In 1972, there were five hill districts but six ADCs as Sadar Hills constituting basically the foothills between the hills and the valley, which was neither hill nor valley, and was also left as unreserved territory. Sadar Hills was then treated as part of Senapati district but also as a separate ADC, not a district as WKZIC believes. The ADCs are rural local self-governance institutions to parallel the Panchayat system in the valley districts.
If land and forest records from the British period as well as post British period were to be examined, the Sadar Hills not too long ago was virtually uninhabited, or else very sparsely populated. Even the Koubru hillsides where Kangpokpi town is located till as late as the Second World War were almost completely barren of settlements. According to a Tangkhul elder and a former minister of Manipur who was boarding student at the Mission Compound built by William Pettegrew before outbreak of WWII, some shacks of Nepali cowherds such as those at Noonpani were probably the earliest settlers here. Even in the mid-1970s, when this writer in his early teens began joining the annual pilgrimage of Meiteis to the Koubru peak, the forests in this mountain range was dense and there were virtually no population along the route to the top. We were even warned not to stray from the known path, for the risk of getting lost in the jungle is high and dangerous. Today the jungle has disappeared though human settlements have multiplied.
Coming back to the matter of districts rollback, if the Kuki-Zo tribes actually support what the WKZIC agreed to, perhaps the district rollback should be given a go ahead if this can restore normalcy in the state. But this is unlikely to be the case. If this is the case the WKZIC should clarify, before a district rollback comes to treated as a consensual remedy. This also brings to mind the notion of frozen conflicts in International Relations. One of the most illustrative examples is the conflict between North Korea and South Korea. The two fought a war, but the war subsided on its own without any formal agreement or treaty to end the war. Technically therefore they are still at war, though they are no longer openly fighting. But because these conflicts were never settled, they can easily unfreeze and violent hostilities can resume again.
The idea of frozen conflicts is very much true on smaller conflict canvases too. The Naga-Kuki ethnic conflict in the 1990s, as well as the friction over the district creation between the two communities, too did not end with any mutually agreed terms. Combat fatigue ensured open hostility to subside and finally cease, but the root causes that fired the conflict in the first place still remain unresolved, therefore the conflict technically is still not over with the danger that it can become alive given the provocation.
The concern should be, frictions over the renewed demand for districts rollback can become the spark to reignite the inferno the state once witnessed. Given the fragility of the lull in overt violence today, between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zos first, but also now the possibility of renewed tension between the Nagas and Kukis, the few low key peace initiatives we are witnessing today, in particular the meeting between MLAs of the three communities to break ice and look for and prepare the ground for return to normalcy, should be encouraged. If a mutually acceptable breakthrough results, nothing like it, but if no such breakthrough comes about, the state can at worst be in the stalemate it is in today without escalating the conflict at all.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
