The slogan of territorial integrity and integration of contiguous areas may be incorrect or politically suicidal one. It is a sharp case of rallying around
for mass mobilization that do more harm than work/help in realizing the political aspiration and self-determination rights of the affected people.
The manner with which the issue of integration is given prime importance raises many queries. And with this issue, all the more important issue of rights which
fuel the unrest and for which so many precious lives and years have been sacrificed has become non-issue.
There are so many incorrect and misleading political tainted concepts contributing in the deadlock by spewing venoms around to poison the collective imaginations,
to deter away from coming up with a feasible or uniting outcome. For instance, the dichotomy hill-valley, Meitei-Naga and so many things like these
make the problem worsen.
The territories of hills and valley cannot have a clinically precise division. No doubt, hills are predominantly inhabited by certain ethnicities but that cannot be
an argument for it to be exclusively belong to those ethnicities and therefore, to be separated from the valley.
It is as much belong to the valley dwellers for their sustenance and survival as much as the ethnicities predominant in the hills belong to the valley. This is a
testimony to the politically inseparability of the landscape without unimaginable self-destruction.
In the case of Meitei-Naga, the two are incomparable. Naga is a term denoting a notion of a nation comprising of many ethnicities with distinctive affinities.
Whereas meitei is a term denoting a single ethnic group and as such Meitei being a group having affinities with such ethnicities comprising the Naga nation can
also be a part of the larger Naga nation as much as it is of the Manipur nation.
And one thing cannot be denied that Manipur and Nagaland are of the same project which drift to the Future with a single destiny. The current unfolding dynamic present itself that there cannot be a complete and permanent solution with only one group of interests of some section of the people.
The only way out from the current stalemate is to involve all the parties having stake in the conflict and look for a genuine federal framework
wherein everybody can be satisfactorily accommodated thus, providing conclusive modern, internationally sanctioned privileges to the naturally
evolved entity of a people.
Not to recognize this reality will mean to delay or prolong the conflict by systematically manipulating its internal contradictions and therefore, a diversion and
deception from the real core issues.
An Inhabitant , a pesudonym used by Nongallakpa Horam, writes regularly to e-pao.net
You can contact the writer at [email protected]
This article was webcasted on 30th June 2004.
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