Emerging politics at play : Looking across the border
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 17, 2025 -

There have to be reasons why the Government of India is so adamant in carrying on with the Suspension of Operation pact with the Kuki-Chin armed outfits.

There have to be reasons why there is a sense of camaraderie between the Indian security force, particularly the Assam Rifles (which is tasked with the job of guarding the Indo-Myanmar border) and the Kuki-Chin group of people.

There have to be reasons why Union Home Minister and the men at Delhi have never ever questioned from where the guns used by the so called ‘village volunteers’ of the Kuki-Chin community have come while talking only about the arms and ammunition looted from the police armouries in the valley districts during the initial stage of the conflict.

And there have to be reasons why the Government is silent on the fact that almost all the arms that have been surrendered during the window period given by Governor AK Bhalla have come from the valley districts.

The guns surrendered in the Kuki dominated districts of Kangpokpi, Churachandpur and Tengnoupal are at best country made guns.

Questions which must be dogging the mind of anyone with a modicum of intelligence and it is against the posers raised here that many have been talking about geo-politics, the politics which say that Manipur can be taken to the scaffold in India’s big political game in South East Asia, starting from Myanmar.

It is this politics that becomes starkly visible in the fact that some leaders of the groups which have inked the SoO pact are Myanmarese citizens.

The game that is being played cannot be kept hidden for long and in as much as the complex web of geo-politics may blind the people for some time, many would have woken up to the sinister game that is being played.

This is one important reason why many see the dots connecting the bloodbath in Manipur with what is happening in Myanmar.

It is for this reason why the open announcement of Phungyar Assembly Constituency MLA Leishiyo Keishing some time back that the number of refugees from across the border has outnumbered the local people at the villages lying close to the international border becomes significant.

Yet no one in the Government seems to have taken any notice, except for the announcement that the Free Movement Regime has been done away (albeit with some modifications to the earlier regime) and the international boundary would be fenced.

Not everyone is unaware of the objective of New Delhi in cossying up to the Kuki-Chin armed groups and one of the prominent factors is obviously to defang the different armed groups of the Meiteis and the Naga armed groups, particularly the NSCN (IM).

This is the primary reason why the conflict has been ‘allowed’ to drag on for nearly two years now.

And given the present condition, everything points to the high possibility of the conflict continuing.

And it is due to the geo-politics at work that nothing has been heard from the Union Home Ministry on the manner in which the free movement call of Amit Shah was so non-chalantly nipped in the bud by the Kuki-Chin community.

It is the need to cosy up to the SoO groups, in the face of the geo-politics at play, that nothing has been said about the arms put on display while some Kuki-Chin militants could be seen desecrating the Flag of the Meiteis, on the day that the march to Mount Thangjing had to be aborted.

The question is, has Raj Bhavan and the Security Advisor taken note of the guns used by the Kuki-Chin militants while playing football with the Meitei Flag ?

Politics at work here and this is where it becomes important to question whether Manipur has the personality or the political leader to play the sophisticated politics that has been at work since the outbreak of the violence in the evening of May 3, 2023 ?

What is the politics in the seeming indifference of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the happenings in Manipur ?

Why has not a single word of condemnation or even concern come from Delhi after three women and three children were whisked away from a relief centre at Jiribam and later killed ?

The politics at play here cannot be missed.