Land and territoriality in the Northeast
- Part 1 -
- Politics of ethnicity and armed violence in Manipur -

Lokendra Arambam *

Northeast India in the past hundred years has seen major shifts in its ethnic landscape and polity. Post-independent India in the region has moved from ethnic harmony and organic geo-political body to fractured polity and antagonistic ethnic identity claims largely created by the Indian State's struggle to retain its territorial integrity.

The challenge before the ethnogenes is to device ways of responding to both the militaristic framework as well as the newly devised "development" mantra of the Indian State.

INTRODUCTION

In the month of June this year, at Moreh, about 120 miles to the Southeast of Imphal at the international border adjoining Myanmar, marked yet another rupture in the chequered history of pluralism in Manipur. For the first time, two ethnic communities - the Meetei and Kuki - who shared an age-old history of friendship and amity were locked in armed violence.

Eleven people were killed during those events. Moreh, incidentally, became a centre of human activity since international trade and commerce had been formally opened between the Govt of India (GoI) and Myanmar in 1994-95. This small hill township has a diverse population including Tamils, Malayalees along with Manipur's ethnic indigenes, notably Nagas, Kukis and Meeteis.

There had been political movement based on ethno-national ideologies. For example, the Nagas claimed the district of Tengnoupal, wherein Moreh was a major economic and political centre, as the ancestral domain of the Nagas.

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, the Kuki ethnic communities, ranging from various clans of the indigenous variety to kith and kin from across the border in Myanmar, had been actively pursuing the political goal of Zalen-gam, the abode of the Kukis which includes Moreh. A significant number of Meetei settled in Moreh completes the overall ethnic balance of this border town.

The incident at Moreh which nearly sparked off a communal bloodbath between the Meetei and Kuki communities has been assuaged temporarily through the combined efforts of various civil societies and the Government. But the enmity between two militant outfits, the UNLF (United National Liberation Front) and the KNA/KNO (Kuki National Army/Kuki National Organization), which lies at the root of the incident continues to simmer in the backdrop.

The press releases of the two militant outfits remind us of conflictual perceptions on issues of land and territory. The KNO believes that the unfortunate events of June 9, 2007 at Moreh, in which 11 people died, were a direct consequence of UNLF's "intrusive presence in Kuki territory," and urged "the UNLF to confine their revolutionary activities, ideologically and physically, to the valley called Manipur, which had been their abode from time immemorial."

The UNLF, on the other hand, charged the KNA of targeting the Meetei people indiscriminately with the sole agenda of whipping up communal tension in Moreh. The UNLF also reiterated that it has nothing against the Kukis but it will deal with the KNA/KNO firmly for allowing itself to be used as a weapon by the Indian Army against the liberation struggle and against the UNLF.

Incidentally, the Naga civil society groups who support the implicit claims of Naga ancestral domain which includes Moreh proffered friendship to the Kuki community. Incidentally, the Nagas and Kukis were involved in a noholds-barred mutual ethnic cleansing campaign in 1992-93, which began from the struggle to control Moreh and its economic under-belly.

NAGA LEBENSRAUM AND THE MEETEI

Since the late 1960s, the Naga ethno-national movement had been propagating integration of contiguous portions of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh into Greater Nagalim. They also had been insinuating that the Meetei independence struggle against the Indian Union is that of and for the valley (consisting of some 700 square miles) alone.

The KNA/KNO also claims that the Meetei independence struggle is of the Meeteis alone for the valley. The Meetei non-State actors in the valley, however, have a spatial imagination of their independence encompassing the organic topography of the hills and the valley along with ethnic populations as in pre-colonial times which gave formal shape and features to the polity of Manipur.

Ethnic insurgencies in the Northeast in the course of their prolonged struggle against the powerful Indian State seem to be losing their original character of ethnic unity and harmony. Ethnicity, as an element of group affiliation and "subjective, symbolic and emblematic use of their own cultures in order to differentiate themselves from other groups," had been accentuated during the course of the struggle.

Amongst the major ethnic communities of Meetei, Naga and Kuki, only the Meetei remain as armed contestants to the Indian State, when the other communities of Naga and Kuki are in varying levels of ceasefire and political understanding with Government of India.

It is hard to say whether the heightening tensions and sharper accentuation of social boundaries between/among these communities are caused by the internal dynamic of struggle for power and resources in conflictual growth processes, or these relationships are being manipulated by exogenous factors like the counter-insurgent forces, or that these symptoms are the surface manifestation of internal intrigue and behindthe-scene maneuvers of elite stakeholders in the identity project. At the present moment, the attitude of the highlander civil societies sympathetic to their respective armed groups no longer reflects the pluralities of the pre-colonial order.

The issue of distance mentalities amidst civil society groups and hardening perceptions of the divide between the "we-self' and the "other" are portents of latent social conflict. The formulation of separate entities and the spatial dichotomisation of the imaginative geographies between the hills and plains in terms of ethnicity and ethnicisation of social relations and networks are deeper issues afflicting the plural order in the era of insurgency.

The politics of insurgency and counter-insurgency, and variegated responses by the awakened ethnicities in the changing dynamics of life, and the development of selfconsciousness and subjectivity in ethnic formations in the emerging discourse on land and territoriality are matters of deep import.

How does the issue of land and territoriality then inflect the changing dimensions of ethnic strife?
Or are these proclamations and media handouts reflections of the self-appropriation of peoples voice in the subaltern margins of visibility by strident political elites in the stream of insurgent history?
What is the reality behind insurgency and counter-insurgency which form conflicting discourses?

A brief history of contemporary insurgency would throw light on the patterns of political and social violence afflicting ethnic relations in the state. We are all aware that the assertion of Naga nationhood has "legitimate" claims to territorialisation of substantial portions of Northeast India's geography through claims of land-people relationship and concepts of the ancestral domain.

Territoriality is not a simple occupation of a sizable piece of the earth's surface. Territoriality, according to Robert D Sack, "is the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence or control people, phenomena and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over geographic area.... It is not an instinct or drive, but rather a complex strategy... and the device through which people construct and maintain spatial organisation."

The Nagalim concept also features ardent pursuance of a geographic boundary which is linear where vertical interfaces between "state sovereignty" intersect the surface of the earth. As vertical interfaces, boundaries have no horizontal extent.

This modem concept of territorialisation therefore is being processed as against the non-boundedness of the human geography of precolonial times. The old order is sought to be transformed since Mr. Th. Muivah, who happened to be a Tangkhul Naga from Manipur, is regarded as the main protagonist of the political project of Nagalim.

In the words of Winnichakul, territoriality involves three basic human behaviours - a form of classification by area, a form of communication by boundary and an attempt at "enforcing." The third factor was what forced the use of aggressive spate of hate Meetei campaigns and various democratic agitations, economic blockades and all other forms to effect enforcement.

The event of June 18, 2001 where eighteen valley people lost their lives was a result of such profound measures to officialise the enforcement. As the NSCN (1M) stated over and over again that it does not believe in Manipur's integrity, that the present Manipur State is a temporary phenomenon, and that the NSCN (1M) is "not greedy about land and will never take even an inch of Meetei's territory, nor will it part with what is theirs."

To be continued ....