Land and territoriality in the Northeast
- Part 4 -
- Politics of ethnicity and armed violence in Manipur -

Lokendra Arambam *

This aspect of prolonged resistance, the perpetuation of political conflict, the intense hit and run engagements in the valley, and stubborn confrontation with India's military might in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands had been suppressed in the contemporary discourse of political conflict. Nor do they seem to inform the structures and dynamic of the ethnic societies' painful ascent to modernity.

The overall militarisation of the Northeast as part of the objective of crushing Manipur's armed opposition groups since 2003-04 (subsequent to the Bhutan operation against ULFAinAssam) and increase of resistant violence by non-State actors, progressive increase in suffering of the civilian population, women and children had so far failed to rivet attention in the public sphere.

Yet the qualitative and quantitative enhancement of the Vairengte style counterinsurgency schools which had trained more than three and half lakh counterinsurgent forces over the last thirty years, establishment of such schools in Diphu in North Cachar Hills of Assam, Somsai in Ukhrul district and lwalamukhi in Senapati district, unheralded presence of military camps in schools, colleges in rural areas and foothills, occupation of churches or complexes of sacred deities, deployment of security forces at the ratio of 1:16 over the Manipur population etc. are indicators to the magnitude of the armed confrontations in the State.

Over the last three or four years, the military engagements of the Indian security forces with the Meetei non-State armed opposition groups had revealed a pattern of progressive linkages between armed conflict and politics of ethnicity. Since the end of 2003, the thrust to secure the Manipur hills to restore civil administration and exercise area domination over the western ranges of the Manipur state, there were slow, periodic, inch-by-inch, yard-by yard occupation of strategic mountain villages, flushing out of Meetei insurgent outfits who had earlier entrenched themselves in the rugged mountain terrains, mingling with the "neglected" and "marginalised" hill people.

Earlier stories of mutual support between the ethnic populations of the hills and the valley, stories of help in arms and equipment, and training of ethnic brothers by valley insurgents, stories of development interventions by militant cadres in areas where state presence were negligible - all these were suddenly transformed into chapters of spite and hate campaigns over the valley people by the hill civil society organisations.

The turmoil in the lives of ethnic populations caused by these unfortunate incidents of armed conflict between the instruments of state and non-State actors were suddenly catapulted into chaotic disequilibrium and massive uprooting of life's rhythm.

Stories of displacement, collective exodus into neighbouring hill townships and villages, incidents of physical harm and de-capacitation in landmine explosion, charges of rape and criminal assaults over the bodies of tribal women - all these concomitant agonies were brought into the public sphere in a confusing amalgam of doubt, distrust and heightening ethnic differences over perceptions on truth and reality.

The earlier balance between ethnic brotherhood were substantially damaged as a result of the military engagement of the Indian security forces with the Manipur nationalists in the rugged hill terrains of Manipur.

For the Indian State, the operations against the Manipur militants in Operation All Clear (2004), Operation Tornado (2005), Operation Dragnet (2006), etc. were meant to clear the western ranges of the Manipur Hills for restoration of civil administration as well as the destruction of "Meetei hegemony over the hill people." The highland ethnic psyche was thus aroused to see the lowlander valley people as oppressive others.

The valley Meetei as indigenous community therefore stands at a critical thresh-hold of the state's modern history. Though there are quotidinian complexes of grass root relationship, and natural historical equilibrium amidst these ethnic societies, the heavy politicisation of ethnicity and ethnic differences signal unease, anxiety and instabilities which portend ruptures, fissures and unimagined arousals over its contemporary status as a distinct civilisational entity inherited from the past.

The uncertain future of ethnic negotiations, which modem India continues to play with, pervades the premodern imaginations of the indigenes of the State. The developmental interventions of sheer global economic processes, ruthless violence over the natural geographies - on roads, rivers, waters, forests, etc - portend a system of life where territoriality and exclusivity of ownership of the earth's surface through ethnic rights may even be forced to wither away.

The NorthEast is now inevitably drawn into a vortex of intense geo-economic and geo-strategic compulsions of the Indian state which ethnic indigenes should either challenge with newer insights of trans-ethnic NorthEastern nationalism or consociational imagination of the native peoples capable of over-riding the marginalizing tendencies of "racial others" ofIndia'sAsian ambitions.

The placid, pre-modem, tribalistic self-centredness which had withstood the forces of change shall not stand the test of times.

Concluded