23 months on and Delhi still lost ! Deliberate or otherwise ?
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 04, 2025 -

Out of ignorance or out of wittingly failing to acknowledge the truth or out of being fed wrong or doctored reports, New Delhi has got it wrong on at least two points, as evidenced in the 9 minute speech of Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Manipur in the Lok Sabha at 2 am of April 3, 2025.

Ungodly hour and definitely not the time to discuss a place which has been on the boil since the evening of May 3, 2023.

In talking about Manipur, the Union Home Minister pointed out that there has been relative peace in the State and went on record to state that there has been no violence in the last four months-December, January, February and March.

Surprising it is that Delhi continues to see and understand the condition in Manipur only through the prism of confrontation or violence between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo community and it was under this mindset that Amit Shah conveniently overlooked the siege of NH-2 on March 8 when his call to ensure free movement of people across the length and breadth of Manipur was violently pushed back and which resulted in the death of one person.

Two civilians who had taken it upon themselves to voluntarily take the road route to travel to Senapati had to be taken inside a Casspir vehicle of the security forces so that no harm came to them.

If this was not violence then one wonders what parameter is being used here to define violence.

And not unexpectedly the call for free movement of people from March 8 began and ended on the date itself, ringing out the message that Delhi was merely testing the water for free movement !

Farcical it certainly was and looking back one can safely surmise that it was the March 8 ‘misadventure’ which has emboldened the Kuki-Zo CSOs to set the precondition ahead of the April 5 joint meeting-There shall be no movement of Meitei individuals in Kuki-Zo dominated areas and vice versa.

This is where one is left wondering whether Delhi is actually serious about resolving the issue here and whether it has been able to look beyond President’s Rule, which was imposed on February 13 after Chief Minister N Biren Singh was made to put in his paper.

There are certain basic truths which Delhi is refusing to acknowledge.

Just some days after May 3, 2023, Union Home Minister Amit Shah pointed his fingers at the ruling of the High Court of Manipur for the start of the violence.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but since Delhi seems intent on sticking to this line, why hasn’t it raised the question of why the Meitei community was targeted for a ruling passed by the Judiciary ?

Go back to May 3, 2023, go back to Torbung and Churachandpur to appreciate the question of why the Meitei community should have been targeted for a ruling passed by the High Court of Manipur ?

There is nothing to show that the Centre has taken the trouble of trying to understand the genesis of the violence and this is what is hard to digest, especially given the fact that the violence is fast racing towards the two years mark.

The Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, 2023 was ostensibly against the ruling of the High Court which directed the State Government to send the ethnographic and socio-economic report of the Meitei community to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, a report sought back in 2013.

Everyone, including the Union Home Minister, knows that it is not the job or duty of the Judiciary to decide whether a community fits the bill to be tagged a Scheduled Tribe or not.

Then why did the violence erupt, that too only at Churachandpur and not say at any of the Naga dominated districts like Senapati or Ukhrul ?

Why hasn’t the Union Home Ministry, with the best brains in the country, ever raised this question ?

It should be an open and shut case and in pointing fingers at the ruling of the High Court of Manipur, one gets the uncomfortable feeling that Delhi and by extension Imphal is trying to absolve itself of the failure to rein in the trouble when it broke out.

As repeatedly said in this column, Imphal retaliated only late in the evening and it is for this very reason why a former Kuki MLA dropped in at the office of The Sangai Express in the early evening of May 3, 2023, without any problem.

The visit of the former MLA was for a reason totally removed from what was going on at Churachandpur at that point of time.

Delhi needs to study sincerely if it wants to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of everyone, especially Manipur.