Contiguity, Community and Conflict in Manipur

Despite Marxist derision, in spite of liberal aversion and in forms communitarians would not extend any regard or accord respect, identity and forms of politics it can spawn is alive and, as it were, parading its casualties in Manipur.

More than a month has passed since violence broke out in Manipur between Meiteis and Kukis. Before surprise could be expressed over its scale and spread, terror and shock shot up and shoot at sight orders were issued, Biren Singh’s elected government stands in suspension and a unified command is in charge. Both warring parties of conflict are expressing two views that are similar; first both are finding all actors, authorities, agencies, powers and opinions as partisan and secondly both are talking about massacre and genocide of ‘their people’, and state level involvement in the planning and execution of the violent events. As is the wont of areas designated as disturbed and under the AFSPA, the death count, disappearances and accountability is absent and will not add up or explain, either the conflict or lead to any solution. Missing is the significant part of the picture and the fact of their absence is often THE picture. Missing accounts and versions and those who have to flee and others who are dead ensure that those who benefit and perpetrate violence never have a complete picture.

Kuki’s extended support to the government that is under suspension and in Manipur no party wins a majority in an election without the support of a large section of Meiteis. It is unclear as of today, whose demands are met by the arrangements that are in place today. Suspension of an elected government is supposed to fill the accountability gap for prevailing state of affairs or it reveals the role that the proverbial centre has played across situations and conditions in Northeast and elsewhere in India?

The emergency powers under the aegis of article 355 - provisions when a breakdown of constitutional machinery at state government’s level leads to federal control - of Indian constitution was invoked. The elected government has not been dismissed. As to why the elected government is under suspension and not dismissed has to do with the fact that the government is aligned to the ruling BJP, else it is anybody’s guess. What does suspension instead of dismissal and handing over the reins to unified command tell about the conflict that has risen, how and why it got instigated and may get resolved? A large part of Manipur was already under AFSPA so the fact that Meiteis and Kukis fought in 2023 cannot be the reason that it has been in place since the 1950's! The unified command is clearly an example of one emergency measure superseding another emergency measure.

The abandoned villages, burnt houses and people that have fled and those who are dead are horrific and dreadful, but they are signs of the fact that all areas were not exclusive or dominated by one group. Mixed villages did exist and contiguous and adjoining areas were inhabited by different groups. The ties and trust between the communities is not only an immediate but the final casualty and may have a more lasting impact than the violence that erupted.

Notable Views

This document does not intend to offer an inside view of things, or is report from the ground. A couple of paragraphs that follow will engage with three expert opinions, namely of Kham Khan Suan Hausing, Bimol Akoijam and Pratap Bhanu Mehta expressed in print and electronic media about the present turn of events in an already long history of conflicts and series of violence in Manipur. This document aspires to be representative and inclusive, but is aware that it is not. When the specifics of a formed identity are identified as a cause or fuel a conflict, there is a tiny little opening to parse how they have already been presented and process the events through available accounts and information. Is it possible to foreground a view in which the warring parties appear similar and equal for which peace, normalcy and resolution of conflict is primary and paramount?

Day before yesterday an interview of Bimol Akoijam with Karan Thapar appeared in the wake of an article he wrote for Hindu and an opinion piece written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta and KKS Hausing's appeared on various media has stood out, this document would engage with them, hopefully without being repetitive.

In the aforementioned interview Karan Thapar repeats a phrase and in response Bimol’s absolutely is revealing. The phrase in question is ‘false topographical perspectives’. To the viewers it may occur that Karan Thapar was marveling at the linguistic expression and the logical explanation it offered to an intractable conflict. Bimol, at first, was at ease that he was being heard, understood. As the repetitions proceeded, however, the interview took a different turn.

The dominant form aligns strategic thinking with geography, and the matching of topography with demography is not new. The combination usually intends to naturalisation of a  specific view and produces a certain set of outcomes. Should one remind Bimol that ‘hill’ and ‘valley’ are topographical entities? A dialogue that proceeds with interruptions and differences is better than no dialogue and infinitely better than conflict and violence. Bimol did mention that those who were de facto in charge earlier and are now de legal in Manipur work and proceed with the same, if not similar, mix of demographic and topographic views with which we now characterise the British colonial state. What distinguishes the British colonial state from the Indian state vis-a-vis Northeast is a question whose answers are not as smooth and clear as it is often assumed.

Blaming the British isn’t a take and nobody should take away from this interview that the root cause and evil doing is of the British and that is where the buck stops. Of course it is 'their' doing and as Bimol pointed out this episode of eruption of violence in Manipur occurred in the year when India is celebrating the 75th year of independence Has India acted differently about the people and places, which it still sees and finds in its Northeast? For the British it was a frontier area of their empire, of which Burma was a part till 1935, their strategic interest in expansion and stable control of this area dictated everything. Independent India, its power-center, its common sense and commoners continue to process the Northeast in roughly the similar manner: as a frontier to conquer and subjugate not as people, distinct and worthy of inclusion and assimilation by the terms they define and are in agreement with. The diverse people of Northeast as a whole or the geographically tiny Manipur in particular is home for many communities.

Manipur and Northeast India works with modern liberal representative institutions and their deficiencies are addressed with smaller ‘compact’ states fitted and tempered with autonomous district and hill councils. Old and traditional communities have retained their traditional forums as avenues for congregation, consultation and participation for community members but have largely jettisoned the mode, forms and tiers of traditional and pre-modern governance. The modern liberal representative institutions, tiers of governance and forms of laws and market acts as the distributive mechanism that structure identity and representation of communities and decide and affect distribution of resources.

Some of the structural constraints and zero sum configurations Pratap Bhanu Mehta identified aren’t unique or limited to Manipur; they generally accompany liberal institutions. He seeks an imaginative solution to a structural limit that defines one community while pitting one community against another for the same resources, but Mehta himself offers none. The systems of laws and governance can either expand and encourage co-existence or turn historically and mutually compatible groups into rivals and adversaries: in the Northeast what India( Indian state or it is we?) have chosen to do has mostly ended up with the later. Regardless of the system of law and governance or the historical turn, however, to what extent land as a resource can expand, no matter the level of encouragement or the wildness of imagination?

Bicameralism at state level in India is largely defunct if not extant and has a forgettable history but Bimol’s suggestion of another assembly is worthy of attention, not because it may turn out as a solution. It is precisely the kind of exercise of imagination that might avoid and bypass inscribing and marking exclusive territory with one community. His suggestion extends the existing shackling of identity and representation to territory. Unified territory that is exclusively for one community should not/cannot be taken as the default solution for the challenges that modern conditions throw at us. 

In their partiality, the lessons and examples from the complex and ‘glorious’ ancient history are easy to invoke, but difficult, if impossible to emulate and regain in the present. Areas and influence of empires, kingdoms and ancestor's home wax and wane and one is tempted to mention Sinlung /Chinnlung, Nagalim, Kangleipak here, but impulses and drives these terms engender aren't confined to them. Fractured and fragmented selves and communities desire pristine order that are partly historical and in part mythical. This search in the garb of an ideal defies rational bargaining and calculation and lies beyond the realm of rationality, but are stuff for and of imagery, imaginary and  imaginations-- territorial, political and much more.

We need to seek and pursue imaginative solutions that last decades or accommodations that avoid conflict and violence, and they can only emerge with dialogue and discussion, never with guns and violence.

Arms and Community

The prevailing month-long run of uncertainty, lawlessness and concomitant violence has further fueled distrust and prejudice, and exacerbated a condition where each party defends itself against another; it sees as sinister, vile and with ulterior motives. The arming of the community, whether dictated by strategic border interests or to contain insurgent groups, ensures that when violence breaks out its scale is that  of militias rather than civilians fighting. Whether one accepts the balance of terror model to ensure peace among  communities, in such a context, as flawed or not, it is fatal and accentuates casualties. Presence of arms and arming of community ensures the continuing presence of the Indian Army as a party that can overwhelm other warring parties and groups. Effectively reversing, replacing and amplifying the force of law with the law of force. While lawlessness and uncertainty prevailed, arms were again informally and surreptitiously redistributed and rerouted among communities through the looting of armoury and police stations. The ease and frequency with which it occurred has less to do with the capability of the state to ensure law and order and more to do with how intra-community 'balance' was sought.

The prevailing and ruling disorder, seize and seizure of arms was not only a conflict between two communities, it implicated most institutions. As one widely circulated video exhibited, leading to a standoff between Manipur Police or Manipur Rifles against Assam Rifles. When violence has an uninterrupted run and rules, arms are the critical resource and they become means of defence not offence. 

Whenever allegiance has been foisted, declared, sustained and enforced on the basis of violence, arms and guns and not built on the basis of accessible, inclusive and agreed on orders, the monopoly of violence mode finds its dissenters and has to be enact itself afresh.

Living under emergency laws for decades, the populace under its duress often mimic measures and solutions that modern Military is more likely to follow. Advancing a cause not by eschewing but escalating violence and conflict. While tracking conflicts in disturbed areas one should never lose sight of eruptions of violence and the dynamics within which they emerge, form and operate. Kham Khan Suan Hausing following Paul Brass's model of treating riots as maufactured presents Manipur riots  in methods in the madness as an instance of 'instituionalised riot system'. Manipur has a riot system and to what extent it is institutionlasied, especially when Kuki vs Meitei conflict is recent and relatively unheard off?

The forms of identity arise in the midst of difference but concretise within administrative, legal and constitutionally stipulated moulds. A set of readers of this document and the readers of the unfolding of violent events there is a section that demands details, local specifics, forms that demands have assumed and in the same breath critiques structures, their history and the interests that surround them. Some are particularly unhappy, if the suddenness or the scale of violence is not explained to them to their satisfaction. Manipur and designated disturbed areas or/and areas under AFSPA violence is the norm, it is not an exception; in such areas violence acquires a purchase among whom it is inflicted and also acts as a currency in circulation. Do readers, learners and followers of violent events take adequate cognizance of the fact that immediate forms of demands and persistent causes of conflict would be articulated in the terms of the structures and laws that have brought this state of affairs and at times even strengthen them. Earlier like a parrot they were saying do not essentialise now they chant no binaries! And they themselves forget that there is no indigenous without an exogenous. Among the Meiteis, Nagas and Kuki’s there is no place for indigeneity.

Valley and Hill

Geographically Manipur is tiny, ranking 25th of the 36 states and union territories of India. Comprising 22327 square kilometers, roughly 90% of this area is designated as hill areas and 10% area is Valley; Manipur is a hill state. Most of the Meiteis and many other communities live in the valley, which means for the residents of valley that they have less territory for more people. Colonial laws of marking hill areas for hill people and the consequent fitting and filling of constitutionally mandated scheduled tribes by hill people of hill areas, through the domestic and residential laws of Manipur, effectively leads to a condition, where land designated as Hill areas is not accessible or available for people in the valley. While the hill people of hill areas can own and buy land in valley, the residents of valley resent that they cannot buy and own land in areas designated as protected without permission. Many laws that were colonial continue to be the laws of independent India and new layers of protective laws have clubbed exclusive areas/territory with communities.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta identifies the skewed distribution of four sets of goods as the source of the current conflict; his first and second are closely intertwined. The demand of ST status by the Meitei is less about jobs and vacancies and more about access to land. Once Meitei have ST status their access to land can increase. Nagas and Kukis are designated as hill tribes and their contiguity in hill areas is the source of many of their long standing conflicts. Land is not an resource that expands and other resources and opportunities aren’t also expanding. Being at the frontier and a border area, economic and other forms of development is really not the first priority of the center and state governments flag fiscal and other constraints. The development of public infrastructure in the valley further erodes the land that is available to people living in the Valley. Scarce resource is a universal problem but the structure of laws and governance are pitting communities against each other vying for the same resource as rivals and competitors in Manipur and Northeast. 

Suggestions about the way out from such an impasse and conflict over access to land are recommending instituting market institutions and mechanisms with respect to land in adjoining and contiguous areas, but how do we ensure that it would be fair to communities? Kham Hausing argues that the state government's integrationist, developmental agenda is majoritarian and tinged with community specific codes and hill's areas and their people are clearly seeing a threat.

Bidhan S Laisharam rightly has been pointing out that the conflict over land has been brewing for years, if not decades and hasn't not emerged overnight. He presents this as an avoidable structural limit that the instituted category of hill and valley brought about and is strengthened by state and union laws. It has manifested as a conflict and violence between the Meitei and Kuki, but before the violence erupted, Laisharam rightly contends that it wasn’t seen as involving these two specific communities. The extension of ST status was its purported solution, now the solution has become part of the problem.

The division of Northeast as seven small states is around majoritarianism. The democratic forms of liberal electoral representation in India is based on a form that is majoritarian. Meiteis majority in Manipur is in accordance with the rules of the game in this region, not an exception. The allocation of assembly seats and the census data it relies on is slated for a revision and the informal calculations are also fueling divisions and separatist tendencies. Meiteis by one account are 53% of the population but by other counts the percentage is in mid 40%. They do not enjoy  brute majority and how populations are scattered and divided across constituencies decides electoral outcomes. Do we strengthen these existing structures of governance and forms of law to meet  demands of specific groups or do we seek to overcome them? Where does the solution lie?

The desire to foreground a solution overlooking the dimensions and various aspects of the problems, and how and why they arise is not a unique feature of Manipur; it pervades the third world. It is not always naivete or innocence that wants solutions that work; it also takes hold of people, who have waited for decades for solutions to emerge from the government and the rulers, who are tired to their bones with the inaction and helplessness that accompany what appears to be or is an irresolvable problem.

Some identities are less fixed and mirror the flux that is the place and change with unfolding situations acting as a transit and  working as a connect between the hill and valley and on occasions can tip and shift the balance among communities. (Reformulation of Bidhan Laisharam's) Their numbers is minuscule and presence minimal but can play a major role and are most affected when large-scale violence erupts between large groups.

Kukis might have been brought by the British to act as a buffer against what they saw as warring tribes, or to secure strategically important hills, but their continued presence also offset the historical animosity, equations and balance of power and influence between communities and introduced a new dynamic among distinct people in the region. Historically Kuki’s were nomadic and they appear transgressive to communities who prefer more or less settled existence.

We all have heard about divide and rule and tend to identify it as a colonial policy. Divide and rule should be seen as two sets of divides and divisions. One set divides the rulers from the ruled and the another set deals with the divisions among the ruled.  The importance of one set of divisions over another shifts and oscillates and an orchestrated and instituted set of division among the populace ensures, strengthens, solidifies and protects the division between the  rulers and ruled. The division of the populace that the rulers endorse and encourage and the forms of exclusion they hide and suppress depends on what benefits the rulers. Once the ruled unite together and intend to breach the gap between the rulers and the ruled, rulers cleverly and typically highlight the divisions and differences among the populace. The conflict in Manipur, in the northeast and many other areas cannot be grasped without paying attention to the shifting dual divides and divisions that encompass the simple divide and rule, that is, division among ruled on the one hand and division between rulers and the ruled on the other.

Other acts and motives

Forest conservation and environmental protection laws and laws that seek to safeguard communities from erosion of their land aim to impart to hill areas the rights of hill people (i.e., of the Nagas and Kukis). Kukis share their inhabited areas and sources of livelihood with Nagas and other small hill communities, the ST status for Meitei would constrain them further. The immediate cause precipitating the present round of conflict is the proposal of ST status for Meiteis, largely a valley people. This suggestion has not emerged in the assembly but from the High Court of Manipur. The impasse within and among institutions, and while the proposal from the High Court was in transit to the state assembly, egged the people to act. The present round of conflict is  people acting in light of this persisting impasse over land and an 'imminent' proposal that seeks ST status for Meiteis.

Apart from the centre state governments also draws and fills the list of scheduled tribes and in this regard a decision was taken by the High court of Manipur and forwarded to state assembly for further action. Speaking of decisions taken or pending; a joint petition of hundreds of civil society organisations big and small is pending before the Supreme court for decades. This writ petition pending before the Supreme Court of India seeks removal of the emergency law – AFSPA. This round of violence between two communities has erupted, but within and outside the state assembly, there is a growing consensus that seeks to decouple the link between disturbed areas act and AFSPA, and in this process, reverse it.

After violence has erupted people have acted in other ways as well. Spontaneous and impromptu gatherings of people defying curfews, at all hours of day and night at common and public places clearly show that they prefer people’s presence and control and reject government's apathy. People do not endorse empty roads, localities and streets paved with paramilitary personnel and gear. It was also a response to internet blockage and closure of avenues of communication, these assemblies were/are also an occasion to share news and get acquainted with ever changing situations and facts. Assembly of people constitutes the most important fact in the midst of conflict.

Facts such as censuses produce, result from instituted structures of ordering, measuring and distributing, they by themselves are not conflictual or one sided. Manipur itself is one such fact as an entity listed the first schedule of the Indian constitution. Manipur is not just three communities, the state list of communities identifies 34. Meiteis also are not a monolithic, uniform group, some are Hindus among which some are ST’s, others OBC’s and may simultaneously follow Sanamahi, few are Christians. Known as Meitei Pangals, Manipur is also home for muslims. And Kukis is a rubric name of a diverse set of tribes scattered over many areas of Northeast not confined to Manipur. In fact, their presence spills over Indian territory.

How the markers and facts of identity relate to targeting of communities?

  (What the document wishes to write about  is a series of events and an instituted field that  places actors against each other and it is already written, as a document it can have only editors and readers)