Trundling from 2023 to 2024 : Scripting a tragedy
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 30 2023 -

As is the wont of a weary people, a people for whom the coming of a new year may not mean much, Manipur too will step into 2024 under the perception-what is so special about the beginning of a new year ?

Many would step into the new year as the same old Tomba, Hongba or Chaoba, in the same profession, in the same house and locality and with the burden of 2023 but this time it will not be the same for thousands.

To thousands who are still languishing in the relief centres set up across the length and breadth of the State, to the many who have been orphaned, to the many whose sons and daughters have been killed in the ongoing days of madness, to many more whose houses have been levelled to the ground, to many who have lost their sources of income and jobs, stepping into 2024 will not mean the same as when they stepped into 2023.

To many others too, 2023 will be remembered as the year in which 8 out of the 12 months passed in hatred and bloodshed, as the year which saw parts of Manipur being marked as safe and unsafe zones for either side, to many others it will also be remembered as the year in which the last rites of their beloved were conducted sans their bodies.

Many will officially go down in history as ‘missing persons.’ Nothing to suggest that the nightmare that unfolded in the evening of May 3 will see an end anytime soon and making things all that more ugly is the fact that nothing seems to have been done to take things to its logical conclusion.

It is not with a sense of ease or nostalgia that one looks back at the bloody days that followed the Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, but with a sense of tragedy, a deep sense of loss and the realisation that the house that was once called home now no longer stands.

This in brief is how 2023 will be remembered in the coming years and there is nothing to suggest that things will improve.

Unlike the past years, Manipur occupied prime space in all the news channels and the major publications of not only in India but also abroad and words and terms entered the lexicon of the people in their daily verbal communications such as ‘narco-terrorists’, ‘false narratives’, ‘Kuki terrorists’, ‘Illegal immigrants’ with even the unique and all encompassing ‘flavour enhancer or taste maker’ the Ngari entering the lexicon of the hate mongers who use it in their hate speeches to target the community on the other side of the clash divide.

There have been different takes on the seeds of violence which erupted in all its ugliness in the evening of May 3 and quite a handful of people, including the Editors’ Guild of India have opted to toe the line that tension was already high between the Meiteis and the Kukis prior to May 3.

To set the record straight, it would be totally off the mark to see the incidents in the run up to May 3 as one between the Meiteis and Kukis or between two communities.

If the people of Churachandpur had any grievances, it was seen and understood as grievances or differences with the Government and not with the Meiteis.

That the Government at Imphal was and is identified with the Meiteis is the concern of the people of Churachandpur and it never did prick the people of Imphal and the valley districts.

So when the Forest beat office was burnt, when the open gym which the Chief Minister himself was set to inaugurate was vandalised in the days ahead of May 3, it was seen and understood as a show of dissent against the policies and programmes of the Government at Imphal.

The growing call for the National Register of Citizens should not be seen and understood as being targeted against any particular community, but a necessity to check infiltration of illegal immigrants into the soil of Manipur.

It is only the guilty who will and can interpret it as otherwise.

The seeds of the clash were sown the minute Torbung was attacked, the houses set on fire and the inhabitants driven out of their homes.

Why were gun toting elements participating in the rally touted as a Tribal Solidarity March ?

These are questions for which no answer has been forthcoming and the very fact that these questions are being repeated here is the axis around which the tale of 2023 was scripted on May 3 at Torbung, Churachandpur and which quickly spread to Moreh and Kangpokpi.

Imphal retaliated only much later in the evening of May 3.