In the words of an elderly Koireng village functionary - “For years or even decades, a virtually unknown insurgency has been tearing Manipur apart. My dear boy, the era of Maharaja was good; peace and prosperity dawned in the land and no community was savage. The decades long resistance movement has made the state a trouble-zone which is a world apart from the mainland.

There is a growing feeling among the people that the rebels must hold out and the Army should cease counter-insurgency activities for a peace process. Other disturbances are bandhs called by various organizations time without number in the state, and the bandh calls have become a fashion now. The warlike situation must stop.

Then, we can develop the state, and the people won’t have to resort to means like this to survive,” laments he. The prominent issue is the question of sovereignty. For this, the rebels, now fully equipped with modern sophisticated weapons, have been battling on for an independent sovereign state of Manipur for decades with their styles of operation something like that of the high profile Latin American revolutionary, Che Guevara and other forms of guerrilla warfare in the Middle East.

And the state’s ethnic minorities, who make up 40% of its near 2.4 million people, are also fighting for separation from the mainland or merger with another State, and in some cases, for autonomy or self-governing powers. The movement can’t no longer be treated as ethnic crisis only. It has become very much the revolution of the modern age.

An event can be recalled that a tribal team consisting of delegates from Mizoram and Churachandpur district went to Shillong to meet the then Governor of the N.E. Region of India, B.K.Nehru in 1973 in support of their demand for regional autonomy. The Governor was taken aback to find that a particular tribe with a population of only a few thousands was demanding autonomy. Nehruvian reaction was not unexpected, and it was hard to extract a pound of flesh from his statesmanship.

He doubted that political concession to a particular tribe for autonomy would lead to division of the States in the North East Region. Hence, the demand was rejected outright. Now, whether the insurgency in the State is simply an isolated irritant to the Central Govt in New Delhi, or whether the rebels do have the strength to carve out a legitimate role in the State’s future is to be viewed in a wider perspective.

After so many years of uncertainty with the present daily occurrences as the example, we must have greater insight into the complex situation deep within the State. For years — the resistance movement has led nowhere: still unknown is the path. And the insurgents too are sharply divided among themselves pursuing different political goals with different ideological commitments.

Certainly, they are unable to pose a unified threat to Delhi while the Indian Army is solidly engaged on too many fronts to gain a total military victory, probably through all possible military means, with its overwhelming superiority in manpower and conventional weaponry over the various ethnic rebels in the State.

Even then, the separatist or independent tendencies of the rebels are too strong to be stopped by the bombs and bullets. In observing the scenario, a non-Manipuri resident of Imphal may be prompted to say that today Manipuris have become Indianised in their food habits, dresses, traits, manners and culture to a large extent; yet, they still trace their origin back to Mongolia.

Apparently, this must be the main reason for their Far East Asian leaning. The Assamese, who are many times indianised in their food habits, manners, culture and language than the Manipuris, also do the same — pointing their origin to Shan region in Thailand when the latter is seemingly ignorant of the existence of the people of such stock in India.

In fact, Sukhapa established Ahom rule in the Brahmaputra valley in the 13th century. Quite unlike rebellion, or say resistance movement in other parts of the Indian NE Region, the insurgency in Manipur is ridden with factionalism. Over and above this, new parties have sprung up in the hills very recently — liberation fronts or revolutionary fronts are the names of the newly born parties. Together with the already dreaded armed organizations, Manipur has now dozens of revolutionary fronts.

One wonders as to whether these parties are fighting for a cause or not. These varied factions of rebels complicate their respective agenda. In the extremely complicated situation, detachments of Indian Army and paramilitary forces here and there are raiding villages. More than this, they are ransacking houses, and villagers run for lives to the jungles and stay there for nights, alongwith forced labour imposed on them. Speaking to the villagers in clumsy Hindi, millitarymen resort to brutalism by inflicting physical torture to the innocent people.

All kinds of harassment are carried out in the villages. It is senseless to strip off innocent villagers and hit their faces with riffle butts. Every villager is not that conversant with Hindi when there is no such facility to learn it in a Manipuri village — in the hills or plains. A new method of counter-insurgency invented by the military is to terrorize the civilians; not to nab the rebels.

Pedestrians and office-goers are not spared; everyone is not free from their clutches. Ridiculously, when millitarymen come face to face with the rebels, no encounter takes place as one or the other hides away. On the other hand, the tribal insurgencies have produced numerous impostors who are still very much uncivilized in their food-habits and manners by torturing weaker villagers who happen to be the numerically weaker tribes of Manipur.

Their domestic animals like pigs, dogs and chickens are slaughtered for their meat, and innocent villagers are mercilessly beaten up for alleged insubordination and inadequate hospitality—that they are not fed or treated well. These idiots even enter villagers’ kitchens and private rooms with no sign of human faces on them.

The harassments take place in the dark, chasing young boys and even elderly men in the villages. What for are such havocs created? Armed impostors have inborn criminal tendencies, and the panic-stricken villagers are, thus, cowed into submission at gun points - very often under the influence of alcohol.

To be truthful, a single hill village which has various disadvantages will not be able to serve all the factions with delicious food and lodging, and taxes too for all the time.

Failing to do so, the villagers are tortured. Revolution or rebellion indulging in such acts will end up disastrously. So, the identities and whereabouts of these beasts should be established as to whether they really are rebels, or impostors, tarnishing the images of the parties to which they claim to be belong. Being members of tribal communities, they must be Christians, and perhaps, enough has been taught to them in their respective churches.

Are their parents feeling proud of their sons becoming monsters? The rapid spread of such act of vulgarity in the hill villages of numerically weaker ones should be the immediate concern of the State Government and the civil societies as well. By the way, a youth of today being unable to adjust his values in the mechanized age, too often finds himself out of joint.

Along with this, we must not forget the inevitability of indiscipline as natural to the youth. True, his rationality does not help him understand the contradictions of life, and to a great extent accounts for the indiscipline of the youth anywhere in the State. When youth indiscipline is viewed from a stand point, we will be able to better understand these problems. We must sympathize with their indiscipline.

But it is a different story. Under the present circumstances, barbarism and tribalism in this age cannot be tolerated when minorities among the tribals are singled out and trampled underfoot as insects.

Rebellion for home lands or autonomy torturing smaller tribes will be universally viewed as oppression. If the rebels emphasize their faiths in the ultimate victory of the people, armed revolution or resistance movement has to be steered in a dimension greater or cleaner than the strategies now pursued. If the ethnic tribal minorities are singled out and tortured every time, nothing can be expected from the revolution.

What do the Government of Manipur and NGOs think to do in the situation? Security for the defenceless minorities? More than this is the urgency to initiate measures ensuring safeguard of the minorities so that they will not once again experience a tragedy of this kind. Even a state wide campaign has become necessary to make the entire tribal population of Manipur aware of the fact that the vilest forms of crime and violence should not be inflicted on fellow human beings in the name of insurgency.

The ethnic tribal minorities have suffered most in the armed conflicts in the State. Except men with vested interests, no one likes to keep the insurgency alive More so, every effort of the State Government has failed in this direction on several counts, nor has it initiated measures for a solution on priority basis, dumping the miseries of the people in the dark.

The new style peace process in which social workers and intellectuals will be included to mark a radically different approach to the raging insurgency should be initiated, involving well planned negotiations and a measure diplomacy to offer political concessions to the revolting parties. Whatever concessions offered should not in any way disturb the territorial integrity of Manipur which is a home to all communities, and the split of the border state will not be the desire of the GOI, too.

Until now, God has not bestowed on us the divine knowledge and wisdom to produce the desired results. Acknowledging the mistakes crept in the previous efforts of the successive Governments and rectifying them, a completely different effort—Herculean task is required now. The Government of the battered State of Manipur may have its own shortcomings and flaws, often easy to detect, and still easier to ridicule.

But in a democracy set up, criticism as a concept is officially tolerated and Government flexible when the situation demands it. Thus, People Consultative Group of Assam on the initiative of one lady intellectual, Raisom Mamoni Indira Goswami is going to bring the ULFA to a negotiating table, something like on the line of the NSCN(IM) is known to all.

In the same way, atmosphere conducive to rebels operating in different parts of Manipur can be created for a meaningful peace process by addressing the issues which prompted them to take up arms in the first place. Secondly, political concessions have to be offered to the groups depending upon credible negotiations. Repressive governance backed up by the military and other brute forces will only aggravate the situation which has already become uncontrollable.

Unless there is a radical change in the State Government’s approach to insurgency, the armed conflicts in the worst shape will come, putting the people in anarchy, where movement for good causes will bring devastation to the state.

Manipur’s freewheeling economy has nurtured widespread corruption - backdoor appointments, financial swindle and stealing of someone’s GPF deposits. It has also created a new class of politicians, bureaucrats and contractors, all with intertwined interests. These class of men and women has showed up as demi-gods to be worshipped.

As a result, social and economic inequality has been experienced to the maximum in today’s Manipuri society. Naturally, the gap between the rich and the poor will be widening alarmingly. Though Manipur appears to the outside world as one state within the Indian Union, the reality of ethnic divisions within it and the community pulling against the other communities and away from the conceptual idea of a modern Indian state can no longer be denied.

But the idea will be wrong to believe that there will be contentment, and peace and prosperity ensured if the territory of Manipur is divided between the communities, mapping the would be homelands on ethnic lines. Rather, the arrangement will inevitably invite civil war in this part of the world, and all will be doomed.

Instead of freezing the ethnic questions, the present Government headed by O. Ibobi Singh must give a serious thought to start peace process with all the rebel leaders before it is too late. As of now, the Manipur Press enjoys an extraordinary freedom which has no parallel in any Indian state as far as one observes.

The local press contains reports of the rebel activities and their statements. Through the help of the press also, the peace deal can be struck if the Government is determined. The concluding part of the story is to convey that in the midst of ethnic rifts, or in the event of the division of Manipur, smaller tribes will find it difficult to survive when their settlement and land holding rights will be threatened all the time.

They have actually experienced every hardship in the preceding years.

For them, God, a united and peaceful Manipur is the answer to the prevailing skirmishes that have crippled the state and its machinery.