Reflections on the Conflicts of our Times :
Attempt at Common Sense reading of the Manipur Experience
- Part 3 -

Lokendra Arambam *

Mass Rally for the common future of Manipur from THAU Ground to Khuman Lampak :: 06th February 2016 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

Inter and Intra-community Rupture?

It seems the dynamics of the ethnic relations between the very participants of the agitation was intricately marked by differences of opinions and worldviews amongst the groups themselves. There were major differences and incompatibilities between the Kuki point of view with those of the Paite community, who also constitute a large share of ethnic population in Churachandpur (six of these killed through police firing were Paites!).

The Paite had an earlier experience also having lost ten lives back in 1997-98, in the Kuki-Paite clashes of a severe nature, when the latter refused to pay house-tax to some Kuki underground outfits, leading to the subsequent killing of the Paite villagers. The Paite settlements on the Southern side of the Manipur border near Moreh were affected by Kuki reprisals from underground outfits towards the aggressive Nagas in the Naga-Kuki clashes, and a lot of Paite population were displaced.

These violences and mutual hurts in the past, though temporarily assuaged through the interventions of apex civil society organizations like the Kuki-Inpi, with Zomi Reunification Army (ZRA), there remained niggling doubts of differences, primordial suspicions and mistrust which become manifest when new incidents did occur. The difference of view-points between the Kuki and the Paite and their non-participation in the Pan Chin-Kuki-Mizo identity movement are stark reminders to stubborn internal beliefs amongst ethnic self-hoods which refuse any kind of forcible foisting of collective decisions by one tribe over another.

Also at the same time certain alliances of ethnic co-operation through inclusionist exercise over recognition by the Nagas of the Paite as Naga, and support with arms, money and materials for self-protection had also strengthened Paite resistance against Kuki hegemony in Churachandpur. The political influence of the NSCN (IM) in the Western Hills of Manipur are strong, because of many other smaller tribal communities, having experienced discrimination and oppression by governments or by other larger ethnic groups like the valley underground outfits in the past helped persuade the non-Naga communities in the Western hills to side with NSCN (IM) who had been assiduously engaging with other non-Naga communities for friendship or alliances to mitigate the mistakes in the 1992-1998 Ethnic Cleansing pogrom.

The issues of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic dynamics in Northeast India, particularly Manipur therefore are much more complex and difficult from those the Indian nation state experienced in the Indian heartland. For mainstream Tribal communities in Central, Western and South-eastern parts of India, it seems are affected more by class conflicts and societal differentiation, whereas the tribal communities in Northeast India are severely affected by issues of ethnicity and identity, which are more accentuated by cultural mores, perceptions, practices and prejudices. The attitude of the Indian state as reflected in the Constitution of India however seem to categorize them equally within a uniform schedule of human groupings, and yet the Northeast Indian ethnicities are distant racial others whose worldviews, concerns about life and the universe are different from those of the Indian heartland.

The Framework of Agreement which was signed by the GoI and the NSCN (IM) in August, 2015 seemed to affect the politics of ethnicity which had long accumulated since the very days when the Indian state inherited the peoples, territories and spaces after the departure of the British Indian Empire. Though the public meeting in Manipur on February 6, 2016 was a signal to the Government of India to notice the feelings of major sections of the Manipur people, the responses from new civil society organizations amongst the Nagas re-affirm their very convictions about the public rally as "a motivated re-action to sabotage the tireless efforts of the NSCN (IM) and the Government of India to bring long lasting peace and development not only in the Naga areas but for the entire North-eastern region." (Nagaland Post February 8, 2016).5

The idea of the hill and valley people are one, "is nothing but another majoritarian attempt to deconstruct the history of hill-valley disconnect so as to muzzle the legitimate aspiration of the Nagas and other tribal communities in the state". (Ibid, 2016). "If the dominant community is really for peace and development in the region and has concern for the hill people, then respecting the aspiration of the Nagas and other tribal people of the state and their aspiration is highly warranted". (ibid, 2016).

The current presentation is a simple reading of the contemporary character and physiognomy of ethnic conflict as experienced by major communities in Manipur. There are also more deeper and sinister micro-level impacts of violences of this nature on smaller communities in the state. Violence is not simply a physical act destroying the body or life of the individual in a society, but it accompanies the structural disintegration of norms, institutions and social universes, more heavier and lethal and smaller communities are not able to speak out for justice and fair play.

There are substantial records of these subterranean oppressions and pressures through claims of intra-ethnic justice and forced change of identities. The inside of the contemporary polity of Manipur had been corroded during its apprenticeship to democracy and modernization. Complex networks of the civil, military, police and bureaucracy in alliance with pushy business and social classes had penetrated into the realm of power and resources, and ethnic insurgencies, surrendered militants as well as those in peace talks with the Government are in hands and gloves with those supposedly concerned with the maintenance of law and order in society.

The new social and business classes had prospered, and having had no prior relationship with core traditional values and ethics, had become rapid operators of mercenary onslaughts of economic opportunism and corruption. These classes are at the helm of public affairs. The system of modern education are heavily structured for enhanced dependency and enslavement of minds, rather than freeing the intellect from routine knowledge and perpetuation of received ideas.

Sheer violence of confrontation, attrition and mutual acrimony destroys equilibrium of extended house-holds, constituencies, and human settlements of artificially created boundaries. Through the pressures of heavily monetized electoral politics, veteran politicians often experience mental and physical wreckage and trauma. Women activists who struggle to protect the body of the innocent son from the onslaughts of the instruments of the Indian state often die unnoticed deaths from vomiting and other complex experiences unleashed in the Meira-Paibee (Women Torch Holders) movements.

Sheer epistemic violence is noticed in the interstices of family, language, culture and behavioural norms and the entire originary world of the autochthons are ruptured beyond repair. In the experience of militarization and clashes between the state and non-state actors, the Manipuris do not live their lives, they live the life of others. Such is the characters of the transformation of the Manipuri in the world of global capitalism and the violence of insurgency and counter-insurgency.

Not much word is said of the role and responsibility of the Indian state and its military arm, who have a double purpose of suppressing internal dissidence and protecting the country from seeming threats to security from across the globe. Many scholars and social scientists studying the issues of ethnic mobilization and ethnic assertion are prone to habitually provide distinctive features of the ethno-national movements, their genesis, their demands, their ideologies and action that fan the movements, but very little on the character of the state with whom these ethnic protagonists are in vital relationship i.e. the Indian state.

History – from Obscurity to Visibility?

The relationship between Manipur and Indian state through history need some understanding, though the relationship was never a harmonious one. (The term Manipur and India are themselves subjects of relative interpretation). From very ancient times, Manipur's cultural and social orientation was towards the eastern direction, towards Myanmar and Southeast Asia. The pre-colonial Manipur state was an endogenous development, impelled by the nature of its geographic and ecological features, initiated by clan warriors who descended from up the mountains into the fertile valley below.

The indigenous populations had origins from racial categories of Southern Mongoloid, with certain complicated admixtures between Proto-Austroloids and incoming layers of Tibeto-Burman speech communities. All these human groups shared habitat, geography, climate, faunal and floral environments, food habits, and ancient technological traits like loin loom and fly shuttle technologies in the plains. While the highlander denizens continued to bear the vagaries of the forest and mountain environments, those who came down in the plains were ushered into challenging the extensive flow of the river waters whose currents had to be controlled and utilized for developing livelihood systems.

Wet rice agriculture, with the system of transplantation provided early impetus to change into peasant lifestyle and invention of better tools for food production technologies. The openness of the alluvial flood-plains helped ensophistication of religious beliefs, with a deep ecological consciousness of the notion of fertility of nature and veneration of ancestors. The initial tribal lifestyles of close clan formation and in-group consciousness were transformed into the need for greater integration on supra-village principality formations and the idea of a ritual theatre state, a designed architecture of governance and authority relationship through ritual was organized under a monarchical system, with war and matrimonial alliances binding the clan polities.

An urge for civilization propelled the lowlanders into producing a philosophy of life, numerous literatures and texts thereby reflecting the literate status of the communities in the plains. Openness to outside influences and miscegenation with incoming migrants with various human groups resulted to a detribalized life-world of hydraulic civilization based on systematic networks of irrigation and flood control. Early possession of the plough, the horse and iron paved the path for rapid development in the ontology of the plains dwellers into a martial race.

Citizen volunteers swift in horsemanship, swift in physical movements in the arts of swordsmanship, rapid in aggression or retreat, with tremendous spirit of sacrifice for the collective, emerged in the medieval period of expansion and conquest. A ranked society helped in smoothening of the governing bureaucracy indigenous in values and beliefs. The clan Piba (male elder of the clan) had been raised to the status of Kingship, and a system of circulation of royal princesses circulated amidst the rising international communities for peace and harmony. The territorial frontiers of the state was recognized in the international community first by the Upper Shan principalities and later by Burmans, the Ahoms, the Dimasas and the Bodos of Tripura.

With the international recognition of prestige, liberality and hospitality of the monarchical regime in the 15th century, the first migration of Brahmin populations, escaping from the violence of western Islamic invasions, was noticed, bringing along with them fresh notions of astrological and cosmological wisdom, along with pragmatic theories of kingship and elevation of the power and authority of the monarch to the status of divinity.

The need for the integration of the clans, tribes and other communities into a well-structured poly-glot of cultures and demographies needed a higher religious system emphasizing the power and exhibitory faculties of the state represented by the monarch and his associates necessitating the conversion of the Meitei into Hinduism in the 18th century.

To be continued..