Clash over boundary line : Mindless violence
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 07, 2024 -

Four dead. Over forty injured. 20 guns looted. 18 looted guns recovered.

This is how the story has panned out so far following the clash between Ukhrul (Hunphun) and Hundung (Hungpung) on October 2.

Total madness and even as efforts seem to be on to make the two warring sides smoke the peace pipe, everybody is keeping their finger crossed, for no one knows how things will turn out in the coming days.

The State police responded quickly in despatching a police team led by senior IPS officer IK Muivah (IGP) to try and bring the situation under control and even as this is being penned down, internet service remains suspended.

Ukhrul and Hundung have been digitally cut off since 1.20 pm of October 2 after the ‘full fledged’ confrontation between the two sides went viral on the social media and the fact that the net suspension is still effective, after a lapse of four days, is an indication that the Government is still wary of things taking a turn for the worse.

As pointed out, no one knows how things will progress in the next few days, but it is important to keep in mind that this is perhaps the most crucial period since blood must still be hot on either side and any step that can be misread or misinterpreted must not be allowed.

This is where everybody needs to be on their toes and this is precisely one reason why The Sangai Express has decided to keep in cold storage the narratives received from either side for the time being.

Serves no purpose to give room to any input that points a finger at the other side and this is one reason why such inputs are not being entertained by this newspaper.

Rumour mongers too should be identified and sidelined and so too the elements who may be out just to have some fleeting moments of prominence by asserting confrontationists stand.

It is not the case of this newspaper to comment on who started the clash and whose stand on the land dispute is more legitimate, but the clash of October 2 was really unfortunate and it is only the family members of those killed in the clash who will feel the uselessness of such a clash.

A confrontation from which no one will emerge winner for it was not a clash between two different sets of people, but the same Tangkhul folks, people who happen to stay in two different settlements.

Whether one is from Ukhrul or Hundung, the world at large will recognise them as Tangkhuls and not as a Tangkhul from either Hundung or Ukhrul.

The mindlessness of it all should dawn on the people who matter and while boundaries between two settlements may have mattered a great deal in the olden days, the lines dividing the settlements have today become extremely blurred.

This is the age when a man or a woman from either Ukhrul or Hundung can have a video chat with a friend or a family member staying at say the USA, a place seven oceans away.

A globalised village and not a globalised town.

This is the term that has been given to understand the fast emerging universal reality and to think that people open fire with an intent to kill, all on the premise of where the line that separates ‘our settlement from their settlement’ makes absolutely no sense.

One wish that the ‘bravehearts’ who led the fight from the front and the instigators who pushed the frontliners from behind to draw blood from the other side, had given an ounce of their energy in pursuing some positive agenda and the whole of society would have benefited.

The people of Ukhrul and Hundung, in fact the Tangkhul folks should embrace the reality that it is their community which has given personalities such as Rungsung Suisa, Thuingaleng Muivah, Yangmasho Shaiza, Rishang Keishing, former Chairperson of Manipur Human Rights Commission W Shishak, former Chief Secretary of Delhi and Goa the late W Shaiza and the list can go on.

It is these personalities who have put a halo around the name and identity of the Tangkhul community and shooting to kill each other all because there is a disagreement on where the line of one settlement ends and where another starts is nothing but plain foolishness.

This is not the character of the Tangkhuls that Ukhrul and Hundung would like to draw. Or is it ?

The answer is best left to the folks concerned.