Missed call campaign from MTU : More push to ST demand
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: November 20 2023 -

Month long missed call campaign from November 20 to December 20. This one coming from the Meetei (Meitei) Tribe Union (MTU).

Closed door consultative meeting on November 23. This from the Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee, Manipur (STDCM).

The dot that connects the two dates is obviously the call that the Meiteis be included in the Scheduled Tribe list of the Constitution of India.

The STDCM has been at the forefront in raising the ST for Meiteis demand for years while it was the move in approaching the judiciary that the MTU gave a solid push to the written missive from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs to the State Government to send the needed report or recommendation that the Meiteis be included in the ST list of the Constitution.

The missive from the Centre was dated May 29, 2013 and for ten long years Imphal slept over the matter, with the public not in the know that such a report has been sought.

The State Government may have its reasons for sleeping over the matter, but it should say something profound that neither the then Congress Government nor the BJP led Government has deemed it fit to explain why such a report has not been sent even after a lapse of more than ten years.

And it is to act on the unreplied missive from the Centre that the MTU moved the Manipur High Court in the earlier part of this year.

That forces inimical to the idea of Manipur as a geo-political reality were mobilised under the pretext of the ATSUM sponsored rally against the call to include the Meiteis in the ST list is something known to all and it should say something significant that after more than six months of the ethnic clash erupted on May 3, after the Tribal Solidarity March, nothing has been said on the reason for why the rally was organised in the first place.

This lays bare the fact that the reason for organising the Tribal Solidarity March was nothing but a sham and this has been the consistent stand of The Sangai Express.

It is in line with this reality that the MTU has gone ahead and announced the missed call campaign while the STDCM has deemed it better to have a closed door discussion on the matter.

Missed call campaign and closed door consultative meeting-more than enough indications that the ST for Meiteis demand is still alive and kicking and one wonders how Imphal would respond to the situation.

In between The Sangai Express has also been carrying a number of articles coming from either side of the ST divide and more such articles are likely to come in the coming days.

Such exchange of ideas enrich people on either side and it is such debates which The Sangai Express welcomes.

On more than one occasion, The Sangai Express has spelt out why Meiteis fit the bill to be included in the scheduled list of tribals and taking this further, it would help for those presently in the ST category to stop looking only within Manipur but adopt a pan India outlook.

The competition in the job market, competition in the admission process, competition in anything else will be a pan India reality and if such an opposition to the demand that the Meiteis be included in the ST list is raised then why was no such opposition raised by the ST of Manipur when six communities from Assam were announced as Scheduled Tribes ?

Why was there not even a squeak when the Meena tribe of Rajasthan was included in the ST list in 1954 ?

Or is it a case of that happening too long back to have escaped the knowledge of the present STs of Manipur ?

How about the more recent decision to include the six communities of Assam namely Chutiya, Koch-Rajbongshi, Matak, Moran, Tai-Ahom and the Tea Tribe ?

The argument that many of the Meiteis fall in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category and hence should not be included in the ST list should note that the many among the six named communities of Assam are already in the OBC list.

The religious angle given against the demand that the Meiteis be included in the ST list has already been debunked in an earlier commentary in this column and having said this, it would be interesting to see if the missed call campaign of MTU will have any positive outcome in the coming days.

Same is the case with the closed door consultative meeting lined up by the STDCM.