Opposing ST demand: an insulated world view not crossing Sekmai
- Part 1 -

Kh Ibomcha *

Peoples' Convention on 'ST Status In Manipur' at Iboyaima Shanglen on 14th May 2016 :: Pix - Shankar Khangembam

Amidst frenzied war of words between ST tub-thumpers and anti-ST campaigners as widely seen on social networking sites, on May 3, 2016 in "ISTV GI AYUKSIDA", giving comment on STDCM's campaign to get the Meitei enlisted as ST under article 342(1) of the Indian constitution, a renowned senior journalist taken part in the discussion impulsively retorted that the campaign could never be translated into reality as it is nothing but "mee gi chaklukta khujai thanjinba" likening the move to some sort of ruse aiming to snatch the quotas, reservation and scholarship from the hill people.

"In certain phase of human history we were also tribe, but it has been long since we lost tribal traits by dint of Kanglei national identity formation process started from the time of Pakhangba, more than 2000 years ago. Well, does it talk any sense to go all these years back to history to get listed in ST?" said he, continuing his oratorio leaving me completely disoriented and flummoxed.

I still find it difficult to relate myself to his words. The word 'we' he used while making his argument does not seem to include 'hill settlers' subliminally projecting highlanders and valley settlers as two disjoint groups putting an end to the idea of 'hill-valley machine-manao'. Yes! He left out 'chingmees' from his idea of Kangleipak.

I was really terrified by his words seemingly loaded with implicit class interest to lord it over 'chingmee' that may give birth to several other unpredicted issues rendering certain efforts to reconstruct an inclusive Kangleipak meaningless and empty leading to grim possibility of experiencing a cold war having potentials to get 'chings' permanently severed off our cartography.

Regrettably, he seems to fail to bring himself home of the fact that exclusion of hill-settlers, or rather 'chingmee' from our idea of Manipur or Kangleipak also entails a bitter sense of Chopping off the proverbial 'Chinglon Mapal' from the territorial identity of Kangleipak we imagine justifying hill people's political demands to curve out their own political space with a map truncating out of present Kanglei physical Map.

To put in simple words, if we do not think 'chingmees' as our own people, how can we think 'chings' as land?

If what he said in the discussion is anything to go by, it more than clear that their idea of Kangleipak never crossed beyond Sekmai in the north, Kangvai in the south, Yaingampokpi in the east and Keithelmanibi in the west.

Reading between the lines, I cannot help but suspect if those opposing the demand represents the voice of a class —a voice excluding the interest of the people feeding hand to mouth, worst impacted by present socio-economic set up. This privileged class or rather social elites, in trying to maintain their honored social position and sphere of influence, seem to put down efforts to delude people into believing that their stance represents the interest of common people.

Yes, in Manipur, even this simple and innocuous word 'people' implies the body that carries the dominant voice of the social elites where people like the journalist I mentioned above belongs to, choking off real voices representing common people—the most suppressed group within the system.

As they stand as a group of people representing creamy layer of the society, most benefited from the system with a social status standing above others, they often fail to see the miserable life we are leading. They seem to be extremely worried about their dignity if Meitei becomes ST while there are people wishing if they only could provide their children with two meals a day.

Now the question is, 'by opposing ST Demand whose interest are you representing? Whether the interest of those 'Bolero riders' living in big masons, or the interest of those parents living in huts who cannot even send their children to a government school to buy education?

So, this write up can be taken as a modest attempt to pull out those trapped into the vortex of hierarchical Indian structure that has colossally eroded their rationalities failing to differentiate what's right from what's not thus making them think to identify themselves under their own brother's image as something irrational, unwise and politically incorrect.

Besides, I often hear arguments made by Anti-ST-demand campaigners basically espousing schemes deceitfully crafted by Indian mainlanders aiming at quarantining 'ching' from 'Tam'.

So goes their basic argument: enlistment of Meitei in ST list of India is similar to snatching hill settler's economic opportunities given by Delhi. What's exposed with their argument is the fact that, they instead of instead of giving fitting response to the challenges we have been thrown into, they are dancing to the big other's tune.

To let themselves know whether their argument as respects snatching the quotas from hill people stands to reason or not, I would like to humbly request Anti-ST campaigners to refer to Article 16(4) of Indian constitution where it empowers state to create quota within quota.

My point is that the ST reservation quotas being enjoyed by hill people in Manipur will continue to be fortified under article 16(4) as done in case of Nagaland where ST is divided into advanced Tribe and backward tribe with different quotas. If they have already known about this clause, my question is 'why all these mind-numbing croaking'.

It seems that Indian policy of 'divide and rule' has profoundly seeped into their psychic structure that they begin to think it undoable to stand on an equal footing to chingmee people. To enable themselves sit perpetually on our neck, India needs to decouple 'ching' from 'tam', but ironically these anti-St demand campaigners think that in decoupling themselves from 'chingmee' lies Kanglei national pride.

Kicking where it hurts most, some intellectuals supporting Anti-ST group reason that most of valley-dwellers will turn down the move as they never like tagging themselves with such label as tribe taking on the tag as a brand used to denote inferior human groups.

Infusing such deceptive ideas about 'tribe' into innocent minds of Kanglei people, they try to make people think Pro-tribe's attempt to locate meiteis where his elder brother has been positioned under Indian constitution as a stratagem to relegate Meitei's socio-political status.

Merely looking at previous paragraphs, one can easily see how they look down upon hill people dubbing them as a group far inferior to Meiteis. If such perception about hill-settlers is anything to go by, it is more than clear that they (Anti ST status demand campaigners) still achingly want to lord it over hill dwellers which 'chingmees' hate most—the central cause of axiomatic Ching-Tam dichotomy.

To be continued...