Needed: Consistent, correct narrative : Marching towards May 3
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 29, 2025 -

Manipur should be very clear that what it needs is a consistent narrative, a narrative that reflects the truth and nothing else. Violence erupted on May 3, 2023, not at Imphal, not at any of the valley districts but at Churachandpur.

This was after the Tribal Solidarity March organised by the All Tribal Students' Union, Manipur (ATSUM) against the directive of the High Court of Manipur to the State Government to send the ethnographic and socio-economic report of the Meiteis to the Centre for consideration whether the community fits the bill to be included in the ST list of the Constitution or not.

It was a lie, but even if the rally was actually staged against the ruling of the High Court of Manipur, why were Meiteis identified, picked out and targeted at Churachandpur and Torbung?

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum (ITLF), the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), the more recently formed Kuki-Zo Council and the Kuki Inpi Manipur have never ever bothered to answer this question, for it was the act of assaulting the Meiteis and setting their houses at Churachandpur and Torbung on fire that Imphal and the valley districts retaliated.

The question is, if there are any grievances against the ruling of the Court then why were members of a community targeted, which in this case happened to be Meiteis?

And why refer to the days ahead of May 3 at Churachandpur, in a seeming gesture to assert that violence had started before May 3, 2023?

This narrative should be done away with for Manipur has seen protests and opposition against the policies and programmes of the Government.

The Meiteis have done it and so too have the Nagas.

But what is disturbing is to See the claimed protest against the ruling of the High Court getting morphed into an attack on people just because they happen to belong to a particular community and this was what happened at Churachandpur on May 3, 2023.

Imphal retaliated only late in the evening of May 3, 2023 and to repeat a point already made here earlier, a Kuki gentleman, a former MLA to boot, had dropped in at the office of The Sangai Express to discuss a matter, totally different from the happenings at Churachandpur, in the evening of the said day without any problem.

It is this point that must be laid clear before Delhi and at the same time it is also time to rubbish the alibi that the ST for Meiteis demand was the trigger that set the violence rolling.

And accordingly rubbish the premise of the Tribal Solidarity March held on the said date.

If at all the ST for Meiteis demand was the core objective, then why did the rally pass off peacefully at the Naga dominated districts of Senapati, Ukhrul and Tamenglong ?

Again no answer has been forthcoming from either the ITLF and CoTU and even as the benchmark of 2 years is fast approaching, it has not stopped these two self appointed 'tribal unity' and 'indigenous' organisations from playing the victim card.

Setting the narrative right and consistently at that too.

That the need to remind this should come even as Manipur is fast approaching the two year mark should underline the fact that many do not seem to have come to the importance of sticking to a consistent, true narrative.

At one point of time it was the drive against drugs that was peddled as one of the important reasons of the violence erupting, another time it was the hard stand taken against illegal immigrants and at another time ST for Meiteis demand was flagged as the reason.

Whatever one may say, the truth is Imphal and the valley districts retaliated only when the Meiteis were targeted at Churachandpur and Torbung.

Retaliation, this is the narrative and not anything else.

If no Meitei had been targeted at Churachandpur and Torbung on May 3, 2023, then Imphal would not have retaliated and targeted the Kuki-Chin people in Imphal and the valley districts.

This is the fact and it is precisely because of this that ITLF, CoTU, KZC and KIM have been taking recourse to raising demands all with the intention of disturbing the idea of Manipur.

Hit where it hurts, is the agenda behind the demand for a Separate Administration and this is where Manipur would definitely need to look inward and acknowledge that it does not hurt at all to have friends in the right place.

And this is where one needs to come to one's senses and see the reality and accordingly act.