When Army veterans speak on Manipur violence
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: September 24, 2024 -

OF late, many former general officers in the Indian Army, including Lieutenant General Pradeep Chandran Nair, who retired from service as the 21st Director General (DG) of Assam Rifles on July 31, 2024, and Lieutenant General Rana Pratap Kalita, who served as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the Indian Army's Eastern Command until his retirement on December 31, 2023, have been giving interviews to various news channels, talking about the violence in Manipur.

The fact that the tiny northeastern Indian state has been engulfed in an unprecedented violent conflict which broke out between the Kuki-Chin and Meetei communities on May 3, 2023 and the last part of their service periods witnessed some of the most violent clashes between the two communities in the history of not just Manipur but also modern India should be enough for anyone to sit up and lend their ears to what they are saying.

But more often than not these interviews turned out to be just another conscious effort to create confusion in the mind of the people on the role of over 60,000 central forces deployed in Manipur, purportedly to contain the violence which has now spanned over 16 months.

Rather than offering any new insights, many of these Army veterans are seen trying their best to defend and clear the names of their respective military organisations from any possible lapses in performing the task of containing the violence and assisting the state administration in maintaining law and order in strife-torn Manipur.

It was for this singular task that one of the biggest deployments of security forces in a single Indian state (outside of Jammu and Kashmir) had been carried out since the violent conflict erupted.

Despite this, violence is unabated and the list of casualties is getting longer with each passing day while the displaced people continue to remain languishing in the relief camps.

This is the reality with which people of Manipur have been living for more than 16 months now.

It is also interesting to note that in their desperate attempt to wash their hands off, many of these former general officers in the Indian Army are contradicting each other on many issues including the root causes of the current conflict in Manipur.

While some have been very vocal about influx of illegal immigrants, proliferation of poppy cultivation and systematic militarization of Kuki-Chin groups by the central government agencies, others have been completely dismissive of all these factors.

Nonetheless, all of them have been unequivocal in saying that the central security forces deployed in Manipur have done "an exceptional good job" in promptly evacuating the people from the violent-hit areas to safer locations, without which, they said, the number of casualties would have been much larger.

This brings us to the question - why can't the central security forces show the same prompt response when the houses and properties of the people they had evacuated came under attack or razed to the ground?

If the houses and properties of the evacuated people had been kept guarded under the watchful eyes of security forces, rehabilitation and resettlement process of the displaced people, who are languishing in the relief camps for the last so many months, could have been possible.

With their houses gone, where would the displaced people go now? Every former general officer in the Indian Army, who are coming out now to give interview to various news channels, should give a satisfactory answer to this question even if the interviewer failed to ask it, deliberately or otherwise.

With the violence in Manipur continuing despite deployment of large number of central security forces, the claims made by the former Indian Army officers sound completely hollow and it reminds us of a humorous social media post made by one Dead Inside@devakishor, which says, "If you feel completely worthless and insignificant, just remember the 60000+ armed personnel of various Indian military wings - Army, CRPF, BSF, AR, etc - currently stationed in Manipur."

This could be more motivational than anything else.