Nearly three and a half months of mayhem and uncertainty later, Manipur’s tragedy is still unfolding. It is also surprising, or not surprising as it were, that it took Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak of Manipur in Parliament only when a no confidence motion was moved against his government for its inability to bring the Manipur crisis under control.
There was no way the House would have voted in favour of the Opposition’s motion for the BJP lead National Democratic Alliance, NDA, has a comfortable absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, although it is learnt now that a few, including the lone Mizoram MP of the Mizo National Front, MNF, an NDA ally, voted for the motion. The Opposition’s intent in moving the motion was understandably not so much to dislodge the Modi government, but to score a moral point. The Parliamentary elections in 2024 will demonstrate if this point was indeed won, but till then, it is back to the usual business, and in this business, Manipur still seems out of the government’s primary focus.
The Prime Minister did assure that the nation is with the besieged people of Manipur and Home Minister Amit Shah also did assure the Centre would resolve Manipur’s problem at the earliest. Unfortunately he gave no hint of a strategy towards achieving this end. The only tangible intent of action he made known was that the state will continue to remain under the charge of Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, for the latter has been fully cooperating with the Central government. This is well and good, but it says very little of how the BJP views the autonomy of state governments, especially northeastern state governments, for the implication seems to be that they will remain uninterrupted so long as they are in the good books of those in power in New Delhi.
Complete mess
What was missed in the debate is the emergency the state continues to face. The state’s many institutions are not only hibernating now, but in some cases they are crumbling. Leave aside the tragic hostility between Kuki-Zo tribes and Meiteis for a while and look at the state of the security establishment. Meiteis see the Central paramilitary forces as hands in gloves with the Kuki-Zo militants and the Kuki-Zo group see the state police as openly leaning towards the Meiteis. This extreme mistrust does not auger well for the future of the state or the country. Even after the current crisis is overcome, the scars of this division will continue to haunt for generations.
Since the polarisation between the two warring groups has been acute, it is to be expected that this polarisation would also percolate into sections of the forces, especially the local police, but there can be no justification for official policy to accentuate this polarisation. What ought to have been done is to have joint forces on both side of the divide under a commonly agreed command structure. This would have prevented the forces from being seen as totally sectarian. The forces themselves also would to some extent have served as the check and balance on each other. Since this was not done, the antagonism is coming to be between even the forces themselves, and the FIR lodged by the police against the Assam Rifles for obstructing it from discharging its duties, is the clear signal of this. At other times, the two even came dangerously on the edge of gunfights against each other.
Resolving the conflict
After all that has happened, and after all the atrocities so many have had to bear on both sides of the conflict fence as in any communal conflict situation, to think of ways to resolve the crisis is easier said than done. But this does not mean all hopes of return to normalcy must be given up. For a peaceful resolution however, the first and foremost requirement is for the violence to end and dialogues of stakeholders to begin. But the question is how must this start?
Leaving aside the allegations and counter allegations of who started the conflict, the focus now should be on identifying the issue most in contention and then think of a way to resolve it. This issue at the moment, everybody will agree, is the demand for a separate administration for the Kukis and the strong opposition to it by the Meiteis. But at no point should anybody presume that these are the only two parties which can settle this issue, for the Nagas definitely will want to have something to say on it too. Indeed, Manipur’s 10 Naga MLAs first, and after them so many more Naga organisations, including the influential United Naga Council, UNC, have made it clear territories Nagas consider as their domain, cannot be touched if any territorial settlement were to be thought of for the Kukis. The Nagas instead want the contents of the Framework Agreement signed between the NSCN(IM) and Government of India, to be taken to their logical end.
This obviously means all stakeholders must agree to sit down together and sort out a solution acceptable to all parties. Here, it may be helpful to be reminded of an age-old wisdom which ways when the answer to a particular question seems too elusive and difficult to arrive at, the way forward may actually be in changing or rephrasing the question itself. This is the power of semantics, that often the same thing can be said in different ways, and depending on how the problem is stated, it can open up new meanings and pathways to solutions, or else foreclose all answers to it. Hence, if the idea of a “separate administration” is contentious – desired by one but is a red flag to others, then how about replacing the term. For example, a phrase like “restructuring the autonomy model” in place of “separate administration”. If the discussion were to be for improving and empowering Manipur’s already existing autonomous administrative institutions, it should become more agreeable and acceptable to all.
In these negotiations, what needs to be remembered is the idea first flagged by British economist, E.F. Schumacher, who called for retuning our notions of relationship with land and nature. He advocated for people to incline this relationship more to the idea of belonging rather than possessing. If this were to be so, so many of the conflict situations the modern world is plagued by, would become defused on their own Schumacher said. Everybody can have a sense of belonging to a beautiful hillside or a simmering lake and enjoy the bounty of its beauty without diminishing the beauty or richness of any of them. But the minute somebody decides to possess them and assert sole authority over them, thereby dispossessing all others, conflict potentials associated with any zero sum game would build up. What we want is not this but a win-win situation of allowing everybody to belong together to nature’s bounties rather than possess them exclusively – a condition Schumacher calls the Buddhist approach.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
