State of unrest: Manipur violence shows no sign of let-up in tension

Shubhadeep Choudhury in Imphal

LAST time the majority Meiteis of Manipur were found to be involved in large-scale violence was in 1993 when 100 Meitei Muslims, known as Pangals, were killed in a single day in and around Imphal. Reducing the 1993 violence to an instance of Hindu mobs killing Muslims would be grossly incorrect since Sanamahism, the religion followed by the people before the introduction of Vaishnavism in Manipur, has made a strong comeback in the northeastern state.

Similarly, describing the current violence in the state as a clash between Vaishnavite Meiteis and Christian Kukis will be far from true. Ethnic clashes are not new to Manipur and the current strife is yet another instance of flaring up of hostilities between two distinct ethnic groups.

Tension had been building up between the Kukis and the Meiteis for a while. It reached a flashpoint in the wake of a Manipur High Court order in April that required the state government to submit recommendations for granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Meitei community.

Protests against the order took a violent turn in Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district. All hell broke loose in the state subsequently. The clashes between the majority Meiteis and minority Kukis that started on May 3 have left over 200 people dead and led to displacement of thousands belonging to both communities, and destruction of properties worth crores. One of the narratives in circulation projects the hostilities as a conflict between indigenous folks (the Meiteis) and immigrants (the Kukis).

A popular demand has emerged among the Meiteis for updating the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) with 1951 as the base year in the wake of the clashes. Those advocating the demand believe that the Kukis will be adversely affected by the exercise as they would not be able to produce evidence that can validate their being residents of Manipur.

“Those who do not qualify as citizens will not have to be necessarily deported (to Myanmar). They may be deprived of voting rights. They may also be prevented from availing the benefit of reservation in jobs and admission in educational institutions,” says Romeo Ngasepan, a leading figure of the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (CONCOMI), a Meitei think tank.

The success of Kukis in securing decent government jobs along with the advantage the ST status provides them in this regard remains a sore point with the Meiteis. Activists and ordinary citizens alike, all Meiteis are deeply resentful of sharing the state’s resources with the “outsider” Kukis, whose “massive influx” worries them. The “influx” theory, however, has many a hole.

A report titled ‘Manipur Conflict: The Untold Truth’, brought out by CONCOMI, talks about “2,187 illegal immigrants” identified earlier this year by a Cabinet sub-committee headed by Manipur minister Letpao Haokip. While it is not clear if all the “illegal immigrants” are Kuki tribals, this is the only official figure with regard to the presence of suspected foreigners staying in Manipur illegally.

“An unaccounted number of Kukis has infiltrated and settled in Manipur. They have occupied most of the reserved as well as protected forest areas, and started poppy plantation as their main cultivation and source of income,” the CONCOMI report goes on to say.

The Kukis rubbish the theory of “influx” and accuse Chief Minister N Biren Singh of unleashing an agenda of “ethnic cleansing” of Kuki-Zo tribals.

“Without any reliable data, the CM and the valley-based media began labelling the entire Kuki-Zo community as illegal immigrants or foreigners despite the decadal censuses of the Government of India from 1901 to 2011 showing that there is no abnormal growth rate among the non-Naga tribal community, which constitutes just 16 per cent of the state’s population,” says Ginza Vualzong, spokesperson of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF).

According to Letminton Haokip, president of the Churachandpur district unit of the Kuki Students Organisation (KSO), several steps have been taken by Biren Singh during his second term to target the Kukis.

“One of Biren Singh’s most successful PR exercises to garner support from the majority Meitei community is his ‘war on drugs’ campaign, in which he selected a particular community as the villain and projected himself as the incorruptible crusader. Poppy cultivation is found in Kuki, Naga and Meitei-inhabited areas, but the CM targeted only areas inhabited by the Kuki-Zo community, often using inflammatory words like ‘poppy cultivators’ to describe all non-Naga tribals,” stated an article published in the official website of ITLF.

The Kukis also accuse the Biren Singh-led government of declaring large areas of the hills as “reserved” and “protected” forests without following the due process. “This is a blatant violation of the rights of the Kuki-Zo tribes, who have been living in these hills from time immemorial,” says Marie Hmar, a Churachandpur-based Kuki activist.

Muantom Bing, secretary of the Paitei Tribal Council (Paiteis consider themselves to be a part of the larger Kuki family), says, “We want a legislature of our own. All Kuki-majority districts should be granted autonomous administrations with some key powers. A Delhi state kind of system is also acceptable to us.”

Historically, the Meiteis have been very touchy with regard to any demand that proposes handing over control of a part of a state to another group. The move by the Centre for integration of Naga-inhabited areas of the North-East, including the Naga-majority districts of Manipur, in 2018 had led to violent protests by the Meiteis.

W Tiken, an Imphal-based senior journalist, claims the Kukis are working on a “project” of creating a homeland by carving out areas from India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. “They are flush with funds generated from drug money.” He says besides the influx from Myanmar, the Kuki tribe is also growing in number by incorporating other tribes in its fold. “There was a violent clash between the Kukis and the Paiteis in 1997-98. But now the Paiteis call themselves a member of the Kuki family.” The paranoia is perhaps reflective of the insecurities the Meiteis and the Kukis harbour.

Ironically, Biren Singh, in his first term as Chief Minister of Manipur (2017-22), had reached out to the Kukis. He even held a meeting of the Cabinet in Churachandpur. Bodies of eight people, kept in the morgue of the district hospital in Churachandpur for more than a year, were finally buried when Biren Singh brokered peace with the Joint Action Committee against Anti Tribal Bills (JACAATB). The eight victims had died in police firing in September 2015 during a protest against three Bills passed by the Congress government in the state headed by Okram Ibobi Singh.