The Myth of Ethnic Conflict in Manipur :: Part 1

Sanatomba Kangujam *

Mapping (Ethnic) Conflict

Located at the margin of the Indian State, Manipur has emerged as a conflict zone with the elites of the three struggling communities competing and contesting to carve out their exclusive political space through ethnic mobilization. Ethnicity as an ideological instrument has become central to the political mobilization initiated by the contesting elites to realize their political space defined in terms of Nagalim, Zalengam and Manipur, respectively. Such diametrically opposing pattern of political mobilizations has produced a conflict situation, or to be more precise, an "Ethnic Triangle" amongst the Nagas, the Kukis and the Meiteis.

The prevailing conflict is rooted in the overlapping of political space imagined by the elites of the respective struggling communities. When the elites compete and contest to transform their imagined political space into concrete political structures by resorting to ethnic mobilization, a situation of ethnic cold war or an ethnic conflict emerged.

The Meiteis, the Nagas and the Kukis are identified as the struggling communities in a sense that they have been struggling against feudal oppression, colonial subjugation and class exploitation in one way or the other. But the absence of a sustained effort to resolve the basic contradictions between different communities through mutually acceptable political process has gradually transformed the struggling communities into conflicting communities.

Insurgent organizations are set up by the contesting elites as a political technology to be deployed for realizing their imagined political space. The establishment of insurgent machineries and infrastructures led to intensification of the conflict. It needs to be clarified that conflict was already in existence much prior to the establishment of insurgent machineries. Insurgency emerged only when attempts to resolve the basic incompatibility underlying the conflict met with a failure.

Here, the term insurgency is used to denote both the structures and practices of insurgent organizations. But insurgency cannot operate in the absence of an ideology since insurgency as a form of power needs to be sustained with a particular form of knowledge. This necessity led to invention of ideologies. The contesting elites of the three struggling communities have systematically worked out their own ideologies to suit their political mobilizations.

The contesting elites invoke history, identity, religion, ethnicity, nationalism, human rights, International Law, the principle of Right to Self-determination, the concept of time, the notion of territoriality etc in order to justify their respective political mobilization. Such politically relevant raw materials are used as ideological inputs in the production of ethnic identities and nationalist discourse. Any sort of political mobilization of the masses is made possible only through the construction of identities.

Ethnic nationalism is employed as the most dominant ideology by the contesting elites to mobilize the ethnic masses. This is the origin of identity politics. Identity politics is, thus, simply a manifestation of elite conflict. Here, history is employed as the most powerful weapon by the elites to construct ethnic identities and ethnic nationalism. In the process, history itself becomes a site of contestation and a site of conflict. That is primarily the reason why different communities in Manipur have different histories of their own.

In this way, insurgency as a form of power and ethnic nationalism as a form of knowledge are linked to a specific material operation around elite formation and elite competition. Source: Author's own

Forms of Elite Articulations

The interests of the contesting elites, which can be defined in terms of securing their imagined political space, finds articulations in three different forms of political movements:
(1) The Naga Political Movement
(2) The Kuki Political Movement
(3) The Meitei Political Movement

The political movements spearheaded by the contesting elites of the three struggling communities are manifested in two different ways depending on certain political dispositions. First, the contesting elites may strive to realize their imagined political space outside the Indian Union if they are of the view that the Constitution of India would not be able to satisfy their political interests. Second, they may seek to achieve the same within the India Union if they believe that the Constitution of India can fulfil their political aspirations.

Thus, the political movements of the three struggling/conflicting communities find expression in two different but inter-related patterns of political movements as stated below:
Movements outside the Indian Constitution:
(1) Movement for Sovereign Nagalim
(2) Movement for Sovereign Zalengam
(3) Movement for Sovereign Manipur

Movements within the Indian Constitution:
(1) Movement for Naga Integration
(2) Movement for Kuki State
(3) Movement for Manipur's Territorial Integrity

The political movements seeking to realize the imagined political space of the elites outside the Indian Constitution resulted in the emergence of the vertical conflict. Similarly, the political movements seeking to realize the imagined political space of the elites within the Indian Constitution led to the emergence of the horizontal conflict or the "Ethnic Triangle" in Manipur.

It may also be pointed out that movements for the establishment of sovereign states outside the Indian Constitution are pursued by the insurgent groups while the civil society organizations are engaged in the movements that fall within the purview of the Indian Constitution.Based on the above forms of political articulations of the elite interests, there emerge three different forms of political discourses with each contesting the validity of the other:
(1) The Naga Political Discourse
(2) The Kuki Political Discourse and
(3) The Meitei Political Discourse.

Typology of Conflict

As pointed out above, the conflict prevailing in Manipur may be classified into two types depending on the nature and pattern of the conflict; (1) Vertical Conflict and (2) Horizontal Conflict. The vertical conflict is the type of conflict that prevails between the Government of India and the struggling communities of Manipur as represented by the insurgent groups, on the one hand. On the other hand, the horizontal conflict refers to the conflict between the struggling communities of Manipur or between different insurgent groups.

Of the two types of conflict, vertical conflict stands out as the principal conflict while the horizontal conflict remains as the secondary conflict. The vertical conflict is considered as the principal conflict on account of the fact that all other forms of conflicts are its by-products and that its resolution is central to the resolution of other forms of conflict or crises prevailing in Manipur. On the contrary, the horizontal conflict is considered secondary in the sense that it is largely engendered by the vertical conflict and that its resolution is strictly contingent upon the resolution of the vertical conflict. Until and unless the vertical conflict is satisfactorily resolved or transformed, the horizontal conflict, being the by-product of the former, can never be resolved.

Before Manipur's controversial integration into the Indian Union, there was no (ethnic) conflict in the state. Both the Hills and the Valley had participated in the first democratic election held in 1948, when Manipur was an independent sovereign state. A partially democratic government was subsequently installed on the basis of that election. The elected representatives from the Hills were part of the government. Major R Khathing was a Cabinet Minister and TC Tiankham, the speaker of the independent Manipur State Assembly (read Parliament). Except for Daiho's resistance, there was fair representation and participation of the Hill people in the democratic process that had taken place during the brief spell of Manipur's independence. Even the agitation launched by A. Daiho did not result in any kind of ethnic or communal tension between the Nagas and the Meiteis.

The problem started only when the maharaja of Manipur had signed the controversial Merger Agreement on September 21, 1949 as a consequence of which Manipur was formally integrated into the Indian Union on October 15, 1949. The Hill leaders were not in favour of the merger. It is said that R Suisa, an elected MLA from Tolloi Constituency had lost his consciousness for three hours at the house of A. Daiho when he learned about the merger.

Even A Daiho who had once boycotted the election of 1948 in Mao-Maram areas vehemently protested against the merger. One boy was said to have been killed by the state forces in the course of the agitation. It is the irony of history that a Naga boy had shed his blood in the protest demanding the revocation of the Merger Agreement at a time when the Meiteis were engulfed in the euphoria generated by the merger. The dominant elites of the Meiteis of that period were in favour of the merger of Manipur with India and so there was no immediate reaction from the Meiteis against the said Agreement.

One specific outcome of the merger was the shrinkage of political space of the Hill elites. Consequently, they started imagining an alternative political space for themselves. In the meantime, they forged an alliance with the elites of the Naga Hills with the logic to countervail any hegemonic incursion attempted by the Meitei and the Assemese elites. Since then, the Naga elites of Manipur became part of the Naga political movement.

However, Prof. Gangmumei holds a slightly different view. According to him, the merger had created a political vacuum in the Hills of Manipur as the central rule did not have any democratic base in the Hills. This vacuum was gradually filled in by the Naga National Council (NNC). The Nagas of Manipur were compelled by the historical circumstances to embrace the nationalist movement of A.Z. Phizo. So, whatever might be the case, the merger was largely responsible for setting off the Meiteis and the Nagas towards divergent historical trajectories.

Secondly, the adoption of the Indian Constitution led to institutionalization of ethnic differences. The Hill tribes were subjected to blanket categorization under two nomenclatures, viz. Naga and Kuki. Political recruitment and allocation of economic resources are all carried out on the criteria of ethnicity. The introduction of electoral politics further produced cataclysmic ruptures in the ethnic landscape of the Hills. Thus, the post merger period witnessed ethnicization of politics and politicization of ethnicity.

In other words, the so called ethnic conflict/tension is only a post merger phenomenon arising out of the forcible merger of Manipur with India. True, traditional rivalries had existed between the Tangkhuls and the Khongsais or between the Thadous and other tribes that have now come within the fold of the Naga during the British period. But the tribal rivalries had never assumed the form of Naga-Kuki conflict (Naga versus Kuki). Far from it, the Tangkhul villages, for instance, were fiercely engaged in head hunting warfare even among themselves.

The awareness associated with the terms like Naga and Kuki was virtually absent in the mindset or consciousness of the tribal people. Moreover, the tribal rivalries were not centred on the issue of land. The raids carried by the Kukis against many Naga villages were not guided by any objective to acquire land. Land and identity were not the issues of the tribal conflict in the British period or the pre-British period. The conflict between the Kuki tribes and the Naga tribes had merely remained as tribal conflict and not as ethnic conflict. Ethnic politics and ethnic conflict emerged only with the emergence of elites in the post-British period.

It is, therefore, logical to identify the conflict between Manipur and India as the principal conflict and the conflict among different communities as the secondary or marginal conflict. As a matter of fact, the vertical conflict and the horizontal conflict are structurally interlinked. At least four propositions may be framed for further analysis and discussion:

1. De-intensification of the vertical conflict correspondingly leads to intensification of the horizontal conflict. For example, the Ceasefire and Peace Talks between the NSCN (IM) and the Government of India had led to intensification of ethnic cold war between the Nagas and the Meiteis in Manipur.

2. Intensification of the horizontal conflict correspondingly leads to de-intensification of the vertical conflict. For example, the Naga-Kuki clash and the Kuki-Paite clash had eventually led to ceasefire between the Naga insurgent groups and the Government of India on the one hand and Suspension of Operation (SoO) between the Kuki-Zomi militant groups and the Government on the other.

3. Intensification of the vertical conflict may lead to de-intensification of the horizontal conflict. For example, when the Naga and the Meitei (Manipuri) insurgent groups were engaged in intense guerrilla war against the Indian military forces in the 1980s, cordial relationship had existed between the insurgent groups (of the Nagas and the Meiteis) and the kind of communal tension that can be witnessed today was not visible at that point of time. However, partial intensification of the vertical conflict between the Government of India and the insurgent group(s) of only one of the struggling communities may not lead to de-intensification of the horizontal conflict.

For example, protracted military confrontation between the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and the Indian Army in Chandel District for area domination (in the wake of "Operation All Clear" in 2004-07) did not result in normalization of relationship between the insurgent groups of different communities. Conversely, it led to increased hostility between the UNLF and the KNA (Kuki National Army) and communal tension between the Kukis and the Meiteis (The Moreh Incident of 2007).

4. De-intensification of the horizontal conflict may or may not have any bearing correspondingly upon the vertical conflict (yet to be substantiated).

Recent trend indicates the transformation of the vertical conflict between the Government of India and the insurgent groups into horizontal conflict between the struggling communities of Manipur or the region. The Government of India has reincarnated itself (from being a party to the conflict) to a new avatar of a mediator or an arbitrator. I had the assumption that vertical conflict was antagonistic whereas the horizontal conflict was non-antagonistic in nature and character.

However, the unfolding dynamics reveals that the horizontal conflict has become increasingly antagonistic while the vertical conflict has gradually transformed into non-antagonistic conflict. For example, the insurgent groups of different communities can sit and talk with the Government of India but not among themselves. It is not the Government of India that questions the uniqueness of the histories of the Nagas, the Kukis or the Meiteis (Manipuris). Rather, it is the struggling communities who are cross checkmating among themselves.

To be continued.....