Currency of Violence and Social Strife in Manipur
Peace has eluded India's North East for a long time. Legacy of
identifying and indicating areas as 'disturbed' predates India's
independence. As years pile on the disturbed region/community already
under strain and stretched to its wits in terms of resources to maintain
its normal functioning, disintegrates slowly. In Manipur, Irom Sharmila
Chanu is not the sole influence on people though uniqueness of her
stance stands out. She is however, not the only participant in the
troubled region, unlike other regions that has witnessed social strife
and political turmoil and the movements and responses they incubate,
including the neighbouring areas. Women, do participate in all troubled
zones; the usual mode is of a victim. As political agents or one with
their own subjectivity, their association to political disorder and
social strife is an exception, not a rule. Middle aged women reacted to
the bare act, rape and subsequent murder of Manorama outside the Kangla
fort in Manipur in 2004. People's responses to an oppressive condition
vary. In Manipur, it has lasted for decades. The range of reactions in
this tiny part of the world is disconcerting. Their extremities border
on otherworldly. Incidentally, this region is located at the border as
well, namely the north east of India.
A low ranking policeman, Herojit, socially sharing the same world that his victims and inhabitants inhabit, if his confessions are true, has shot more than a hundred people. Most of them in cold blood! He belongs to the Meetei community, which converted to Vaishnava Hinduism centuries back. It is a feature that distinguishes them from other communities around them, who follow either Christianity or various forms of traditional worship. The only cleaning, Herojit apparently resorted to, while being at it is of clothes, i.e. his official Uniform. He checks with his wife about blood stains. It is alleged that Herojit consumes drugs, should he be seen as the part of the drug abuse problem of north east?
Meanwhile, many members of the community join organisations seeking liberation from Indian occupation through armed struggle, or other means and espouse objectives and alternative visions. In Manipur, as it happens in other such areas, there is not just one organisation, but many. Community members can 'choose' their organisation; recruitment through force and extortion is not unknown, and as the Herojit’s case has shown, official uniform is also an option. You need not have your 'own' militia with a distinct uniform. For resources, the mobilised look back at their community, demanding men, material and money.
Within this flux, the community and its members react in various ways. Many resort to migration. Those who can afford, move to safer and better environments. For example, the number of people from North-east has steadily risen in the last decade in India's capital, Delhi. The eateries run by them and their food in Delhi is received well by wannabes, locals see them as 'fun' people, if not as some variants of Chinese. Last year or was it the year before, the students from Northeast comprised the largest chunk who choose to enrol themselves in Delhi University.
People who remain in the region, stranded have to fend for themselves and contend with protectors, liberators or turn into onlookers and spectators as events of their life pan out before them. They need to respond to numerous pulls and pressure; their response to their ‘own’ condition reconstitutes the community. Now the region and the community harbour a set of assassins, who are willing and has in fact murdered many. Manipur and Herojit appear as aberrations. But are they as the stereotypical narrative suggests?
The state responds by applying and defending AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act). AFSPA suspends the normal, and enters the social and political life. The exceptional law coming, straight from the war rooms and sanctioned by the powers to be, being exceptional and extraordinary needs no pretensions to think about its social and political effects. It is an act, after all and demands action. The acts it covers do not require adjudication; it confers immunity. The fact that the community and region reacts in turn sustains and justifies application of AFSPA or similar laws and regimes in this circular logic.
Circular logic is in vogue, even those who recognise that we are not addressing the issue and have only found a way to talk around it, not about it, take recourse to it. Ordinary and common people make sense of their life-world via this route, so a part of world? You can choose to express dismay; others may get exasperated or feel frustrated with the way things are going on and on. Yet others just ignore and move on. What we may have forgotten is this: circular logic and its acceptance as part of our world also have consequences. They also throw up victors and vanquished. This process encompasses mass and stray murders, and pushes aside difficult to mention events. Circular logic is not against morality, it has its own purchase. Bad things happen, they leave behind an uncanny feeling, but they happen and can occur again. Herojit’s case is an exception. The morally inclined can console themselves, it's a stray case, but is he really as singular as it appears?
AFSPA is just not an exceptional law to be applied in extreme cases. AFSPA and similar laws/acts brings with them a regime that alters the social relationship. Isn't this plain and simple that with prolonged application, it will affect not just the participants involved? Are those just unintended effects? Effects are not wishes, they are real. Its effect will be borne by people, the region and those who partake in it. AFSPA as a strategy wins by bringing into being a regime/scenario in which community members will kill each other or members of other communities. It will force people to respond to presence of armed forces and bring more and more people within its ambit. The ability to inflict mortal wounds is the hallmark of the sovereign. The state, the sovereigns’ legal act to deploy its army, erases the distinction between enemy and citizen. In areas, where sovereignty is contested, as in North East of India, communities’ challenging the State and each other, muddled is the order. Elsewhere, the normal and exceptional stand poles apart. Here they are fused with each other. You cannot have one without the other.
Bimol Akoijam, associate professor at JNU who teaches sociology, from Manipur, keeps a photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi in his official room. As the photograph turns into a background, shadows of events back home populate the conversation. His inclination for critical examination of theories of sovereign power and its modern avatars is unmistakable. Enjoys, weird though it may sound, talking about warplanes and military manoeuvres. The pricked moral compass ceaselessly oscillates, as it were, between Irom Sharmila Chanu, Herojit and so many other events that happened just the other day. Conversations seek an elusive anchor. History recalls moments, events, episodes and movements from the past and the present refuses to die. What holds us back is the inability to imagine a future, together, now that the events had already occurred with their specific contour.
Manipur is not just one community. If one goes by the agitation of their neighbours, Nagas, living mostly outside but also inside Manipur, Manipur doesn't exist. Territory of Manipur is a part in their narrative of what they call Greater Nagaland. Naga movement/agitation is older in terms of origin, reach and ambition. And apart from Nagas within Manipur's territory and beyond Kuki's also have a sizeable presence. How do we make sense of it: ancient indigenous people/tribes coming to terms with each other and modern nation-states? Their rivalries and conflict with each other at least a part of them is older than the advent of modernity in Europe. However, in Manipur and in north east of India, communities are not unamenable or hostile to modernity or to each other throughout their history. Many features of modern life they have embraced enthusiastically.
The Indian state and the dominant view that decides on its behalf, claiming 'awareness' of the complexities of the region and the situation at the ground, then, proceeds with a comparison and strategy, almost mechanically. As if it is a software program running and unfolding its logic. The only way to move forward is to chart this route, follow this roadmap… What follows from an AFSPA and views aligned with it and other similar ilk’s works with collateral costs. Thinks in terms of-- locate an edge and breach the gap. Proceeds with a comparison about who has got what, in terms of arms, ammunition and training and balks at ideology. Commitment, resilience, brutality and death are merely points of this calculus that are analysed and is tied to efficacy. Map the community, mark the region and track the movements are its operative mechanism. Measure the intensity of conflict, fathom the loss, count the dead, take a tactical retreat, seize the moment and advance the cause. Are these the only way out of this impasse.
A low ranking policeman, Herojit, socially sharing the same world that his victims and inhabitants inhabit, if his confessions are true, has shot more than a hundred people. Most of them in cold blood! He belongs to the Meetei community, which converted to Vaishnava Hinduism centuries back. It is a feature that distinguishes them from other communities around them, who follow either Christianity or various forms of traditional worship. The only cleaning, Herojit apparently resorted to, while being at it is of clothes, i.e. his official Uniform. He checks with his wife about blood stains. It is alleged that Herojit consumes drugs, should he be seen as the part of the drug abuse problem of north east?
Meanwhile, many members of the community join organisations seeking liberation from Indian occupation through armed struggle, or other means and espouse objectives and alternative visions. In Manipur, as it happens in other such areas, there is not just one organisation, but many. Community members can 'choose' their organisation; recruitment through force and extortion is not unknown, and as the Herojit’s case has shown, official uniform is also an option. You need not have your 'own' militia with a distinct uniform. For resources, the mobilised look back at their community, demanding men, material and money.
Within this flux, the community and its members react in various ways. Many resort to migration. Those who can afford, move to safer and better environments. For example, the number of people from North-east has steadily risen in the last decade in India's capital, Delhi. The eateries run by them and their food in Delhi is received well by wannabes, locals see them as 'fun' people, if not as some variants of Chinese. Last year or was it the year before, the students from Northeast comprised the largest chunk who choose to enrol themselves in Delhi University.
People who remain in the region, stranded have to fend for themselves and contend with protectors, liberators or turn into onlookers and spectators as events of their life pan out before them. They need to respond to numerous pulls and pressure; their response to their ‘own’ condition reconstitutes the community. Now the region and the community harbour a set of assassins, who are willing and has in fact murdered many. Manipur and Herojit appear as aberrations. But are they as the stereotypical narrative suggests?
The state responds by applying and defending AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act). AFSPA suspends the normal, and enters the social and political life. The exceptional law coming, straight from the war rooms and sanctioned by the powers to be, being exceptional and extraordinary needs no pretensions to think about its social and political effects. It is an act, after all and demands action. The acts it covers do not require adjudication; it confers immunity. The fact that the community and region reacts in turn sustains and justifies application of AFSPA or similar laws and regimes in this circular logic.
Circular logic is in vogue, even those who recognise that we are not addressing the issue and have only found a way to talk around it, not about it, take recourse to it. Ordinary and common people make sense of their life-world via this route, so a part of world? You can choose to express dismay; others may get exasperated or feel frustrated with the way things are going on and on. Yet others just ignore and move on. What we may have forgotten is this: circular logic and its acceptance as part of our world also have consequences. They also throw up victors and vanquished. This process encompasses mass and stray murders, and pushes aside difficult to mention events. Circular logic is not against morality, it has its own purchase. Bad things happen, they leave behind an uncanny feeling, but they happen and can occur again. Herojit’s case is an exception. The morally inclined can console themselves, it's a stray case, but is he really as singular as it appears?
AFSPA is just not an exceptional law to be applied in extreme cases. AFSPA and similar laws/acts brings with them a regime that alters the social relationship. Isn't this plain and simple that with prolonged application, it will affect not just the participants involved? Are those just unintended effects? Effects are not wishes, they are real. Its effect will be borne by people, the region and those who partake in it. AFSPA as a strategy wins by bringing into being a regime/scenario in which community members will kill each other or members of other communities. It will force people to respond to presence of armed forces and bring more and more people within its ambit. The ability to inflict mortal wounds is the hallmark of the sovereign. The state, the sovereigns’ legal act to deploy its army, erases the distinction between enemy and citizen. In areas, where sovereignty is contested, as in North East of India, communities’ challenging the State and each other, muddled is the order. Elsewhere, the normal and exceptional stand poles apart. Here they are fused with each other. You cannot have one without the other.
Bimol Akoijam, associate professor at JNU who teaches sociology, from Manipur, keeps a photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi in his official room. As the photograph turns into a background, shadows of events back home populate the conversation. His inclination for critical examination of theories of sovereign power and its modern avatars is unmistakable. Enjoys, weird though it may sound, talking about warplanes and military manoeuvres. The pricked moral compass ceaselessly oscillates, as it were, between Irom Sharmila Chanu, Herojit and so many other events that happened just the other day. Conversations seek an elusive anchor. History recalls moments, events, episodes and movements from the past and the present refuses to die. What holds us back is the inability to imagine a future, together, now that the events had already occurred with their specific contour.
Manipur is not just one community. If one goes by the agitation of their neighbours, Nagas, living mostly outside but also inside Manipur, Manipur doesn't exist. Territory of Manipur is a part in their narrative of what they call Greater Nagaland. Naga movement/agitation is older in terms of origin, reach and ambition. And apart from Nagas within Manipur's territory and beyond Kuki's also have a sizeable presence. How do we make sense of it: ancient indigenous people/tribes coming to terms with each other and modern nation-states? Their rivalries and conflict with each other at least a part of them is older than the advent of modernity in Europe. However, in Manipur and in north east of India, communities are not unamenable or hostile to modernity or to each other throughout their history. Many features of modern life they have embraced enthusiastically.
The Indian state and the dominant view that decides on its behalf, claiming 'awareness' of the complexities of the region and the situation at the ground, then, proceeds with a comparison and strategy, almost mechanically. As if it is a software program running and unfolding its logic. The only way to move forward is to chart this route, follow this roadmap… What follows from an AFSPA and views aligned with it and other similar ilk’s works with collateral costs. Thinks in terms of-- locate an edge and breach the gap. Proceeds with a comparison about who has got what, in terms of arms, ammunition and training and balks at ideology. Commitment, resilience, brutality and death are merely points of this calculus that are analysed and is tied to efficacy. Map the community, mark the region and track the movements are its operative mechanism. Measure the intensity of conflict, fathom the loss, count the dead, take a tactical retreat, seize the moment and advance the cause. Are these the only way out of this impasse.
Is the alternative dead or is seized with the dread?
However, these terms of the discourse betray one difficulty, in distinguishing between aggressor and aggrieved, oppressor and oppressed. In militarised zones and areas experiencing armed conflict and social strife, reasoning and discourse narrows down and one finds convergence around this logic among the opponents. Local people and community, learn, adopt and once imbibed with these meanings, make it part of their lives. Where are 'we' located within and outside, in this scheme of things? Aren't we all caught up in this all-consuming logic and reasoning?
'They' held out a uniform and who knows putting on a uniform helps in eliminating fellow human beings. The job assigned to Assam Rifles, once the resistance concretised, was delegated to local police, in Manipur. Uniform and its designs win: arm the community. Roughly the same strategy was followed in J&K, Panjab, North East, and for a breed named Maoists to name a few, and is being followed at so many named and not so named places. Its standard operating procedure is: foist a new breed, give them guns and bit of training, provide logistical support and if possible keep distance from local issues and people. Turn the community and the region against itself. One should not doubt its success at all. Are there any other issues? Can there ever be any issue arising out of success. What about cutting a rival and serve his flesh as dinner?
An outcome Irom Sharmila Chanu was resisting – Violence becoming part of daily, ordinary lives. Singularity of her example stood out. Irom’s response devalues the currency and purchase of violence. This project of hers inevitably had to meet face to face with other manifestations, reactions and responses coming from the region and community. While navigating these terrains, if one chooses to respond only to similar responses, it would lead to isolation, misunderstanding, incomprehension, irrelevance and ultimately turn Irom into a ghostly apparition, cutting her ties with the region and issues that the community is facing. Lack of tact can only lead you to ignore, overlook and bypass reactions and issues from other quarters and their effect on the community and the region and the import they have on your 'own' position/response. What crosses our path in disturbed areas is a stream of dead ends, dead bodies, graves and the dead weight of history. What we encounter is corpses in the garb of living. How can we exorcise the dead bodies and disorder that marks their social life/calendar.
Irom, for sixteen years, had a clear answer. She steadfastly held it. Resistance and protest derive their worth, in the context they arise, practices they entail and its ability to connect. An ordinary day in the life of community revolves around preparation and consumption of food in North East. Irom refused food for sixteen long years. Meanwhile, other participants, after and before their meals, petition the state and its army for a roll back. Manipur goes through regular elections, like their meals. Three consecutive wins for the current CM, in Manipur was accompanied last time by an unprecedented mandate, winning more than ninety percent seats in the Assembly. The only element missing is an opposition. Irom's announcement to discontinue the fast puzzled many. The change is abrupt or a thoughtful and considered shift in the position, she was upholding? Irom has chosen to reconnect with her community and region, however, concern remains the same. AFSPA and the regime it brought, attendant with its social and political effects must end. The AFSPA and regimes of similar yoke, run roughshod over ordinary, mundane, daily live and hollow out human existence.
Presence of more than one community contesting each other's claims over a territory and people and resorting to violence to settle their disputes and the fact that they offer partial acceptance to the presence of Indian state and treat the question of allegiance as open, one can perceive the difficulties communities/people face. Agreement may not be easy. This is not as difficult to grasp as the positions involved often assume and accounts and stories available suggest. Notwithstanding the peculiarity of a place and specificity of a conflict, emphasis on the 'complexity' of the situation serves the interests of the dominant. Many features of this alleged complexity is simply the modern condition. One place hence only one community, akin to the historical European experience of one language: one nation informing visions? Communities’ turning their backs to the modern condition is not confined to non-western societies anymore and a phase that is over for the rest. Recently United Kingdom decided to opt out of the European community. What is clear, however, is that there is no template available for communities and modernity to fit in and blend with.
Can we start with a baseline, a minimum in terms of agreement, within and among the communities and the official state: what we should not do to each other, whatever the circumstances may be?
However, these terms of the discourse betray one difficulty, in distinguishing between aggressor and aggrieved, oppressor and oppressed. In militarised zones and areas experiencing armed conflict and social strife, reasoning and discourse narrows down and one finds convergence around this logic among the opponents. Local people and community, learn, adopt and once imbibed with these meanings, make it part of their lives. Where are 'we' located within and outside, in this scheme of things? Aren't we all caught up in this all-consuming logic and reasoning?
'They' held out a uniform and who knows putting on a uniform helps in eliminating fellow human beings. The job assigned to Assam Rifles, once the resistance concretised, was delegated to local police, in Manipur. Uniform and its designs win: arm the community. Roughly the same strategy was followed in J&K, Panjab, North East, and for a breed named Maoists to name a few, and is being followed at so many named and not so named places. Its standard operating procedure is: foist a new breed, give them guns and bit of training, provide logistical support and if possible keep distance from local issues and people. Turn the community and the region against itself. One should not doubt its success at all. Are there any other issues? Can there ever be any issue arising out of success. What about cutting a rival and serve his flesh as dinner?
An outcome Irom Sharmila Chanu was resisting – Violence becoming part of daily, ordinary lives. Singularity of her example stood out. Irom’s response devalues the currency and purchase of violence. This project of hers inevitably had to meet face to face with other manifestations, reactions and responses coming from the region and community. While navigating these terrains, if one chooses to respond only to similar responses, it would lead to isolation, misunderstanding, incomprehension, irrelevance and ultimately turn Irom into a ghostly apparition, cutting her ties with the region and issues that the community is facing. Lack of tact can only lead you to ignore, overlook and bypass reactions and issues from other quarters and their effect on the community and the region and the import they have on your 'own' position/response. What crosses our path in disturbed areas is a stream of dead ends, dead bodies, graves and the dead weight of history. What we encounter is corpses in the garb of living. How can we exorcise the dead bodies and disorder that marks their social life/calendar.
Irom, for sixteen years, had a clear answer. She steadfastly held it. Resistance and protest derive their worth, in the context they arise, practices they entail and its ability to connect. An ordinary day in the life of community revolves around preparation and consumption of food in North East. Irom refused food for sixteen long years. Meanwhile, other participants, after and before their meals, petition the state and its army for a roll back. Manipur goes through regular elections, like their meals. Three consecutive wins for the current CM, in Manipur was accompanied last time by an unprecedented mandate, winning more than ninety percent seats in the Assembly. The only element missing is an opposition. Irom's announcement to discontinue the fast puzzled many. The change is abrupt or a thoughtful and considered shift in the position, she was upholding? Irom has chosen to reconnect with her community and region, however, concern remains the same. AFSPA and the regime it brought, attendant with its social and political effects must end. The AFSPA and regimes of similar yoke, run roughshod over ordinary, mundane, daily live and hollow out human existence.
Presence of more than one community contesting each other's claims over a territory and people and resorting to violence to settle their disputes and the fact that they offer partial acceptance to the presence of Indian state and treat the question of allegiance as open, one can perceive the difficulties communities/people face. Agreement may not be easy. This is not as difficult to grasp as the positions involved often assume and accounts and stories available suggest. Notwithstanding the peculiarity of a place and specificity of a conflict, emphasis on the 'complexity' of the situation serves the interests of the dominant. Many features of this alleged complexity is simply the modern condition. One place hence only one community, akin to the historical European experience of one language: one nation informing visions? Communities’ turning their backs to the modern condition is not confined to non-western societies anymore and a phase that is over for the rest. Recently United Kingdom decided to opt out of the European community. What is clear, however, is that there is no template available for communities and modernity to fit in and blend with.
Can we start with a baseline, a minimum in terms of agreement, within and among the communities and the official state: what we should not do to each other, whatever the circumstances may be?
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