Cocking a snook at Delhi meet : Clear tone of defiance
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 12, 2025 -

Two months since President’s Rule was imposed on February 13 and the question doing the round is whether things have taken a turn for the better or whether it has only emboldened the radical elements on the side of the Kuki-Zo community to come out with defiant stands one after the other.

A look at the reality should tell its own story, but significant to note that the free movement call of Union Home Minister Amit Shah from March 8 fell flat on its face and this seems to have emboldened the Kuki-Zo community to cock a snook at any initiatives taken up to usher in a semblance of normalcy in the State.

So even as hundreds of Kuki-Zo elements came out and blocked the Imphal to Senapati route at its stronghold at Motbung and Kangpokpi to derail the free movement call of Amit Shah, it has now cocked a snook at the proposals presented by the Union Home Ministry after the joint meeting held at Delhi on April 5.

Cock a snook at the proposals of the Union Home Ministry and yet at the same time fall back on the buffer zone line drawn up by the Union Home Ministry in the early days of the clash to tell the Meiteis not to violate the same and climb Mount Thangjing to offer prayers.

Not surprisingly double standard politics adopted by the Kuki-Zo organisations has given way to several responses which have gone viral on the social media with the lines reading-preconditions set before Delhi talk of April 5, telling Meitei pilgrims not to visit Mount Thangjing, stopped the free movement of March 8 etc and the natural question that follows is who or which power is backing the Kuki-Zo organisations to raise such conditions which are anathema to the understanding of any efforts being taken up to restore normalcy ?

This is where the Government of India would need to come clean instead of playing politics of the lowliest type.

From selling the victim story from Day 1 of the clash back on May 3, 2023 to now setting down riders and playing politics even to the extent of questioning the acceptability of the two organisations which sent representatives for the April 5 Delhi talks, the Kuki-Zo organisations have demonstrated that they are more than ready to punch below the belt and throw their weight around.

Use and dispose Delhi and this is their approach to the issue at hand and to think that these are the same organisations which laid down the red carpet when the Union Home Minister visited Manipur at the fag end of May, 2023 and the politics at play should be clear to all.

The question is whether Delhi and more importantly the Meiteis are wise to the politics of deception which have been demonstrated with such finesse.

Manipur should also be aware of the politics in coming out with the line, ‘The Meitei civil society organisations, AMUCO and FOCS, involved in the talks do not hold a mandate from their community and cannot be considered legitimate representatives. This is the second key reason we declined to sign the agreement.’

One wonders when and how the Kuki-Zo organisations came under the impression that they can pass judgment on the acceptability or otherwise of the two organisations representing the Meiteis at the talk and if they are under such an impression, then why did they attend the talk in the first place ?

Sounds like a poor attempt to justify why they had to reject the proposals of the Union Home Ministry and in the process they only ended like caricatures from a cartoon.

It was not so long back that a bloody clash erupted between the Kuki-Hmar folks on one side and the Zos particularly the Paites at Churachandpur on the other, which resulted in the deaths of two persons, including a minor girl of ten.

And even as this is being penned down, Churachandpur is under curfew, after yet another round of tension rose between two tribes.

So then can one say that the Kuki-Zo representatives who attended the Delhi talk and said AMUCO and FOCS do not hold the mandate of the Meitei people, say they have received the mandate of the people they claim to represent ?

Do they represent Kukis or the Paites or the Hmars ?

The Union Home Ministry cannot be blind to the politics of lies and more lies that has been played out and this is certainly not the time to molly coddle anyone, especially those who have been playing the victim card with such finesse for so long.