Stay out, don't enter : CoTU to CM :: Points from UNC, LNC
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: November 02, 2024 -

Stay out, don’t enter.

This is the line conveyed by the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) to Chief Minister N Biren when it got wind of the information that the Chief Minister had been invited to grace the biggest post harvest festival of the Liangmai Naga tribe, Chaga Ngee which was observed on October 30 at Marenmai village in Senapati district.

The Kangpokpi based body went one or two steps ahead and galvanised the womenfolk of the Kuki-Zo community to raise a sort of a war cry under the banner ‘Don’t enter our territory’ to the Chief Minister.

There has been no response so far from the side of the Government on the steps taken up to bar the entry of the top man of the State but that has not stopped the different Naga organisations to come guns blazing against the decision of CoTU.

Central to the voice of angst raised by the Liangmai Naga Council and the United Naga Council is the claim of CoTU and the Kuki people over Kangpokpi as their land. So called CoTU is the term used by the UNC to refer to the Kangpokpi based body and while some may not read much into the choice of words used by the UNC, it exposes the fallacy in the words ‘Tribal Unity’ for it stands that there is nothing to signify the term unity.

Much like how the term ‘Indigenous’ has been so craftily used while terming the name ITLF at Churachandpur.

In other words UNC has rung out the message that in as much as the creation of Kangpokpi is a misnomer the terms used by the Kuki-Zo community to christen their two apex bodies are nothing but words coined mischievously to lay claim on what is not theirs.

The stand of the LNC and UNC is understandable given the fact that Kangpokpi was elevated to the status of a full fledged district on a bedrock of controversy, against all the earlier agreements not to create the district without first consulting the Naga people.

That it was created back in December 2016 is there for all to see and while many believed that Kangpokpi was created as a district for administrative convenience, the agenda behind the demand for its creation should now be clear.

Wonder how the Tripartite talks involving the UNC, the State Government and the Centre will proceed, but the very fact that such a talk has been going on for over five years is a testament that Kangpokpi as a district cannot and should not be taken for granted.

The Kuki-Zos may have the number at the moment in Kangpokpi district but it stands that the Nagas, particularly the Liangmais, have for long been asserting their numbers multiplied thanks to incursion from across the border.

This falls perfectly in line with the growing call to update the National Register of Citizens with 1951 as the base year in Manipur.

Again this falls in line with the open declaration of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishanker that unchecked infiltration from across the border is one of the key reasons for the ongoing ethnic clash between the Meiteis and the Kukis.

Abnormal population growth, best reflected in the increase of Kuki-Zo representatives in the Assembly, mushrooming of villages in the hills, the coming up of human settlements in Reserved and Protected Forests are realities to which the Meiteis have woken up just now.

Go back to the early 1990s, when the Naga-Kuki clash erupted, and unchecked mushrooming of villages was one of the primary reasons for the quit notice served on the Kuki settlements back then.

The Nagas know the impact of the large scale influx from across the border better than the Meiteis for it is in the hills that the infiltrators first settle and later make their way to the valley where names that suit their identity may be given to their settlement, the latest being the bid to name a locality as Vaiphei Colony some time back.

The voice of anger and opposition against the stand adopted by the so called CoTU, to refer to the term used by the UNC, can be understood in the backdrop of the points spelt out here. For starters look at the manner in which Mt Thangjing was found changed to Mt Thangting and so too many localities in Moreh more recently.

Manipur needs to be on guard and lessons need to be drawn from the Nagas, particularly the UNC and the manner in which the Tangkhul Naga Long made known their stand on the Imphal-Ukhrul road after the ethnic violence broke out in 2023.