Keeping the ST for Meiteis demand alive : Send the report as sought
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 20, 2025 -

The Congress Government slept over it. The BJP led Government too slept over it.

But not the champions of the ST for Meiteis campaign and the Meetei (Meitei) Tribe Union (MMTU) is on course in reminding everyone concerned that the Meiteis as a community fit the bill to be included in the Scheduled Tribe list of the Constitution of India and hence the reminder to Governor AK Bhalla to send the report sought on the ethnographic and socio-economic reality of the Meiteis to the Centre.

The State Government does not have to do much, it just has to send the report as sought and let the Centre decide whether the Meiteis fit the bill to be included in the ST list or not.

This is where it is amazing to see the many arguments against the demand that Imphal send the report as sought.

If the Meiteis do not fit the bill to be included in the ST list, let the Centre say that.

Merely putting up the argument that the Meiteis do not fulfil the criteria to be included in the ST list and hence the State Government should not send the report is not only juvenile but also reeks of something more sinister, much in the line with the Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, 2023.

Again it is also 'amusing' to see that the order of the High Court of Manipur to send the report was mischievously misinterpreted conveniently overlooking the fact that it is not the job of the Judiciary to decide which community should be tagged as ST or not, but Parliament.

Tough to believe that this truism would have blown over the heads of the Kuki-Chin leaders who have demonstrated that they are experts at playing the victim card to portray the Meiteis as the aggressor, with quite a number of pen pushers toeing this line with aplomb.

One wonders how and why these pen pushers overlooked the fact that trouble erupted at Churachandpur and not at Imphal or any of the places where the Meiteis are in majority.

Or if the Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, 2023 was truly against the ruling of the High Court of Manipur, then why were Meitei settlements attacked at Churachandpur and Torbung on May 3, 2023.

Or if the March was staged under any seething anger against the policies and programmes of the Government, why was a community, the Meiteis, attacked at Churachandpur and Torbung?

These are questions which the fantastically christened Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum has failed to answer though these have been raised on more than one occasion.

In the madness and blind hatred that followed, the ST for Meiteis demand was kept in the cold storage and understandably so and this is where the reminder from the MMTU that the demand is far from death is remarkable.

In all likelihood, Raj Bhavan will not address the issue and not surprisingly too.

Remember it was back in 2013 that the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs had asked the then Congress Government here at Imphal to send the needed ethnographic and socio-economic report of the Meiteis to study whether the community fulfils the need to be tagged a Scheduled Tribe or not.

The Congress Government back then slept over it and the BJP led Government too took a leaf out of the Congress regime and remained indifferent to the voices of sanity raised by the MMTU, the Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee, Manipur, the World Meetei Council and others who share the same outlook.

Time was when there were voices of opposition to the demand from amongst the Meitei community too, but with the passage of time and with the growing realisation that the Meitei community needs some sort of a Constitutional protection all have rallied behind this demand.

The miss call campaign launched sometime in 2023 received immense response from the people and so too the door to door campaign launched by the STDCM to elicit the opinion of the elected Meitei MLAs.

The sit-in-demands, the rallies-in fact the call for ST status-did not turn violent even once and no one was targeted, which brings one to the question of why the Meiteis were attacked in the first place at Churachandpur and Torbung during and after the rally ostensibly against the ST for Meiteis demand.