Delivering a significant point : Delist from ST list call
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: January 10, 2024 -

One hopes this does not end as a case of putting the horse before the cart, but a point has been delivered.

As The Sangai Express has been consistently maintaining since the evening of May 3, 2023, the demand that the Meiteis be included in the Scheduled Tribe category of the Constitution of India had nothing to do with the ongoping conflict between the Meiteis and the Kukis.

The same reasoning also goes in the stand adopted that the May 3, 2023 Tribal Solidarity March organised by the All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur had nothing to do with the ST for Meiteis demand and it was just a decoy, a carefully crafted agenda to garner support from the Nagas.

That this failed is there for all to see but it is this very wrong, mischievous card that was played that is threatening to fire back at the very set of people who have stood by the May 3 Rally and the stories that have been scripted and sold to the world.

As things stand right now, the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs has sent a communication to the Chief Secretary of Manipur to reply to a representation seeking to delist the ‘Nomadic Chin-Kuki’ from the Scheduled Tribe list of the Constitution of India.

How or whether Imphal will respond is yet to be seen, but already an important point has been delivered and this falls in line with the growing slogan to identify and weed out the ‘illegal immigrants’ from across the border.

Identify and weed out the illegal immigrants from across the border then entails a process to identify and this is where the call for a National Register of Citizens becomes significant.

Logic then says that NRC must precede any move to delist the illegal immigrants, but the matter of greater significance at this point of time is the fact that a very significant point has been delivered.

In a way one may see the lie of the premise on which the May 3, 2023 Rally was staged threatening to give a fresh new direction to the clash that followed.

The very communication from the Centre is also indicative of the urgent need to initiate the needed process to identify and weed out all illegal immigrants and the understanding of incursion from across the international border should be understood beyond the coup in Myanmar.

This is the reason why civil society organisations of Manipur have maintained that the base year or cut off year for any exercise to detect illegal immigrants should be 1951 while the Government has preferred to stick to 1961.

Early days yet but an important point has been delivered and this should about underline the fact that a lie can and will boomerang ultimately.

It also important for all to see that the fresh directive from the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry is not in any way connected to the demand raised that the Meiteis be included in the ST list of the Constitution.

The two are totally different subjects, but this is something which may be used to further debunk the false and cooked up narrative that has been doing the round since May 3, 2023.

At the same time, champions of the call to include the Meiteis in the ST list may see how to take things further riding on the new development.

As stated many times in this column, it is the Judiciary which cannot decide whether the Meiteis fit the bill to be included in the ST list or not.

It is Parliament and the first step towards this should be to convince Imphal to send the needed report.

Or if the Meiteis do not fulfil the criteria to be included in the ST list then why should such a ruckus or opposition be raised to this demand ?

It is the job of New Delhi to decide, not those standing against the ST demand, not the ST champions including the Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee, Manipur, World Meetei Council, Meetei (Meitei) Tribe Union or others.

This much should be clear to all and here it becomes important for everyone, particularly ATSUM, CoTU, ITLF and KIM, that in the more than 10 years of the ST demand, never has it turned violent.

This should bring everyone back to the question of why Torbung was attacked and why Meitei houses were identified, singled out and bulldozed to the ground at Churachandpur.

For now, it would be interesting to see how Imphal responds to the communication from the Union Tribal Ministry on the ST question of ‘nomadic Chin Kuki‘ community.