Manipur and Naga Nationalist Assertion: Dangers of Sectarian Politics

By A Bimol Akoijam *

"What next in Meitei Naga relationship?" posed a passionate and well-known Naga nationalist in a newspaper published in Nagaland in the aftermath of the unsavory Mao incident of 6 May 2010. It is difficult to recollect an occasion wherein the Naga nationalists have ever asked such a question in the course of their decades old struggle against the Indian State. But that a Naga nationalist has come to ask such a question is significant; for it points to the changing, if not changed, nature of the concern of the Naga nationalists.

Intriguing Transformation : From Indo-Naga to Manipuri-Naga Conflict

It seems fairly obvious that the concern amongst the Naga nationalists today is noticeably and overwhelmingly that of "Naga integration" rather than "sovereignty" that had primarily driven their movement of epic proportion for decades. Indeed, Sanjoy Hazarika has noted rather candidly, "it doesn't matter now that he (Mr Muivah) still talks of sovereignty—everyone knows that (it) is not on the Indian Government's agenda and the Naga peace talks are no longer a bilateral issue but an internal problem of India" (Imphal Free Press, dated 9/5/2010).

Mr Hazarika may not be far from the truth; after all, from terming the 16 Point Agreement of 1960 that paved the way for the creation of Nagaland as a state of the Indian Union in 1963 as a "great betrayal" to the nationalist cause and calling the Government of that Indian state as a "puppet" regime, happy image of camaraderie between the Naga nationalist leaders and the incumbent Chief Minister of Nagaland flashes in media across Nagaland today;

In fact, Mr Muivah, a leader of a Naga nationalist organisation could today appreciate a former Chief Minister of Nagaland, Late Mr Vizol, as a "popular Chief Minister" (Nagaland Post, dated 16/5/2010)! This might be good news for the Indian authorities who, as Mr Hazarika points out, treat the Naga issue as "an internal problem of India".

This change in the concern of the Naga nationalists and the seeming success of the authorities of the Indian State could have been taken as a promise of an end to the conflict in this part of the world. But unfortunately this new situation has also broaden the sphere of conflict in the region by transforming the "Indo-Naga" conflict into other (potential) conflicts, particularly a real "Manipuri-Naga" conflict.

Significantly, the change in the concerns of the Naga nationalists has also simultaneously brought about a corresponding transformation : from being a party to a hitherto existing (Indo-Naga) conflict, the Indian State has emerged as an arbitrator of a (Manipuri-Naga) conflict! That the Union Home Secretary travels to Manipur and Nagaland to mediate and resolve the ongoing impasse arising out of Mr Muivah's attempt to enter Manipur with his entourage is a clear proof of the changed reality.

It is these shifts that have implicated Manipur as the "other" (which has hitherto been the Indian State) against whom the Nagas today seem to primarily articulate and consolidate its "nationhood".

Therefore, far from Manipur poking its nose into the Naga affairs, it is this Naga politics that has dragged Manipur as a "bargaining item" into the murky waters of the secretive dealings between the "two entities", the Government of India and the Nagas represented by the NSCN (I-M). And "what next in Meitei Naga relationship" is a poser that indicates the tone and tenor of this new dynamics of Naga politics.

Ethnicised Manipur : A fish on the fishmonger's slab?

Incidentally, the poser ("what next in Meitei Naga relationship") reveals an effort to make Manipur into a "bargain-able" item by seeking to enthnicise and fragment the state. Thus, an incident involving the agencies and citizens of a state has been rendered in terms of "Meitei-Naga relationship"! This rendering not only denies the incident as something that involved a state and its citizens but also avoid framing the issue, if at all it had to be so, in terms of "Manipuris and Nagas" or "Nagaland and Manipur".

This is a deliberate attempt to reduce Manipur into an "ethnic" category; for, invoking "Meitei" while talking about Manipur suppresses the fact that the expressions "Manipur" and "Manipuris" encompass other communities who inhabit the state as its natives and constitute the Manipuri identity (e.g., the Manipuri Muslims).

Revealingly, this attempt to discursively produce an ethnicised identity for Manipur is also visible when various Naga groups talk of the people in the North East as "the Assamese, the Arunachalis, the Meities, the Nagas, and the Kukis etc". While choosing the ethnicised expression for Manipur (the Meiteis), it retains the non-ethnicized expression for Assam and Arunachal (the Assamese, the Arunachalis).

Simultaneously, it also clubs a category representing a linguistically or otherwise homogeneous community like the Meiteis with those categories representing conglomerations of multi-lingual and heterogeneous communities like "the Nagas" and "the Kukis".

If "Manipuri" is a contested category, "Assamese" and "Nagas" too are contested categories. For instance, there are enough anthropological and political debates as to which "tribe" is or is not a "Naga tribe" in Manipur. Incidentally, the gentleman who poses the question on "Meitei Naga relationship" wrote a book called "Nagaland and India : The Bloods and the Tears" and in its first edition included "Meitei Nagas" as one of the "Naga tribes" in the Indo-Burma region! (Interestingly, in its subsequent editions of the same book published after the 2001 "cease-fire" incident, that category has been dropped from the list of the "Naga tribes"!).

Modern (nationalist) identities are, as historians tell us, products of historically contingent (political) mobilisations. Similarly, the "desire to be together" is also a product of similar mobilisations; there is nothing naturally "given" about these modern identities and desires. Over the last two decades, identities have been mobilised in Manipur through systematic enthnicisation and fragmentation of the state. The infamous "Kuki-Naga" clashes in the hills of Manipur, which had led to the loss of innocent lives had also produced shifting allegiances amongst communities and sharpening of the "Naga" and the "Kuki" identities.

Regrettably, with such an attempt at ethnicising Manipur, most Naga nationalists seem to look at Manipur today as a fish on the fishmonger's (read, the Indian State) slab, something that they can bargain with the authorities of the Indian State and take a piece of it! Asking "mighty India" to use its power (and invoke Article 3) to cut down Manipur into pieces and part a piece of the same to make up the aspired "Nagalim" speaks of such an outlook.

Ironically, the agenda to tear apart Manipur has also been pursued by invoking the Naga nationalist history as a rationale with a revealing contradiction. The people in the hills of Manipur took part in the Parliamentary Elections held in 1952 and 1957 and had elected Mr Rishang Keishing (1952) and Mr R Suisa (1957) as MPs from Manipur. That both the claims—that the Nagas had totally boycotted the "Indian" Parliamentary Elections in 1952/1957 and the people who took part in the same elections are also Nagas—cannot be simultaneously true.

And yet, certain communities in the hills of Manipur invoke the historical fact of the Nagas (that they had boycotted those elections following their convictions that they were/are not Indians,) as their own truth to justify their demand for integration with Nagaland!

Incidentally, the involvement of the people in the hills of Manipur in those elections is one amongst many indicators that point to the history and experiences that they shared with their brethren in the valley.

The efforts to ethnicise Manipur and interpolate different trajectories of "histories" are being carried out today to rupture the shared spaces and experiences. Partition of South Asia in 1947 had already shown the tragic consequences of a politics that had destroyed the shared spaces of people's lived world.

Hence, the attempt to repeat a partition as a means to deal with the demands of a similar politics in the region would be suicidal for all, not only in Manipur but also the North East. The sooner we realise this, the better it will be for all whose lives have been implicated by the sectarian politics of ethno-nationalism.