Reflections on the Conflicts of our Times :
Attempt at Common Sense reading of the Manipur Experience
- Part 4 -

Lokendra Arambam *

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

While Southeast Asian polities had easily assimilated themselves into the Indic cultural influences since the 4th to 14th centuries in the Common era, Manipur felt these influences while its social and political systems had already been well-established with a definite identity and status of its own. The conversion into Hinduism faced shift opposition from the proponents of the Meitei indigenous religion. But through the exercise of force and violence, subtle intimidation as well as public oppression, the king Garibniwaj (1709-1748) was able to effect a compromise with the clan elders, a sort of contract to accept the conversion into the Ramandi religion. Other indigenous religious systems of tribes and peripheral communities like the Chakpas retained their traditional systems. Christianity entered Manipur during the colonial era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The pre-colonial orientation of the Manipur state towards Indic connections, side by side with the conversion of the ruling kraton class into Hinduism was therefore an 18th century phenomenon. It also coincided with the political orientation towards British India since 1762 C.E., because of the expansion of the imperial Burmese ambitions directly affecting the geo-political awareness of the rulers, necessitating support from the Ahom dynasties as well as the East India Company. Total economic integration was unthinkable at that period of history for more than a hundred years.

Manipur's agricultural economy was based on subsistence with incipient trade relations with the proximate neighbouring countries. However the British defeat of Manipur in 1891 CE introduced forcible changes in the indigenous economic structures. The British introduced the Indian rupee as a medium of exchange replacing indigenous systems in 1892, and the Manipur resources were used to feed the imperial military establishments in Assam and the Northeastern region through the export of rice and cattle.

Imports of British manufactured goods reached Imphal and the colonial economy altered the indigenous social structure by introducing a new imperial racial class of Marwaris and Bengalis for economic management and organization of the new revenue structures. The earlier migrant population of Brahmnis and Muslims had earlier been assimilated into the indigenous social structure, but the new demographic inputs through the colonial economy introduced a sort of contested pluralism, as different from the organic pluralism of the past. A lot of conflictual societal relationship was noticed similar to the system introduced in Burma by the colonial authorities.

The British also introduced a new system of administration totally rupturing the organic plurality of hill and plains relations. The Meitei ruler-ship was divested of administrative jurisdiction over the Hill people, and the administration of the Hill was given to the British political authority craftily institutionalized in the colonised polity. A system of dyarchy, separation of powers between the Maharajah and the British political agent was structured into the system.

When the Hill citizens rebelled against the colonial authority in the first two or three decades of the 20th century, its character and form was later misinterpreted through the prism of awakened ethnicities, which became murky and unclear leading to serious conflicts in the era of ethnic identification movements. When the British left in 1947, leading to a precarious in-equilibrium from the convulsions of the Second World War all the efforts to restore traditional equilibrium of the polity was in vain. Manipur became a district of the vast territories of India through the integration in1949. One can imagine the consequences.

Force – The Basis of India's Relation with Manipur

Delving into the attitudes and worldviews of the Indian rulers in the critical era of integration of the princely states in the proposed Indian Union one can surmise that the representatives of the Dominion of India were completely unaware of the history and character of the pre-merger polity. The official version of the Dominion of India's 'Take-over' of Manipur was based on the considerations that (i) the history of Manipur is 'obscure' (ii) the economy of the state is 'unviable' and (iii) the area is a 'strategic area'.

The administration of the Dominion didn't make it official that the fear of the Indian state of the infiltration of Communist ideologies through Manipur's connection with the Burmese Communist Party was never mentioned. But it was a fact that the new Indian state was forced to take a harsh decision to suppress the Communist Party of India's violent revolution under the inspiration of the Bolshevik Revolution, designed through the strategies of B.T. Ranadive in 1948-1949. The revolutionary movement of Hijam Irabot as a member of the Communist Party of India was suppressed through the use of the Indian Army and the Police (1949-1955).

What is very significant here it that the Indian state which inherited the outgoing British Empire's territorial possessions in Northeast India also inherited the security architecture of the British Colonial Empire. Legitimate as well as covert exercise of force for suppression of rebellions, and for protection of life and properties of the imperial officials, and for maintenance of peace and order in the porous border areas and defensive parameters to be built into the system was inherited by the Indian authorities and strategic thinking in these lines was more ensophisticated by the Indian think tanks over a passage of time.

The great Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel's innate militaristic worldview 'Isn't there a Brigadier in Shillong' during the hectic days of the Manipur merger episode was a statement of immense consequences. This was strengthened by his own observations that the tribal and other communities in the Northeastern parts of India were all Mongoloid in racial origins, and thus may not be loyal to the nation state of India in future was indeed a rational perception.

The security architecture of the Indian state in Northeast India had a long history since the British colonial days. The need for security of the persons and officials of the tea industry of Assam, from fear of raids and murder by the tribal communities, necessitated the establishment of indigenous security forces, and the Cachar Levy of 1835, the Jorhat Militia of 1838, the Kuki Levy of 1850 etc. were gradually effected in various geographies of the Northeastern region, and they later were progressively merged into the famous Assam Rifles in 1917 in the wake of the first World War. From simple protective measures for colonial officials, these indigenously raised forces became a necessary instrument of the maintenance of the law and order. Military and police pickets in Assam, the Lushai Hills, the Naga Hills and in Manipur after the 1891 war was systematically merged to help effect the security architecture in the Northeast.

Manipur in its painful history of colonial modernity had to experience the militaristic attitude and culture of the British colonial officials as well as their new rulers from the Indian state. After the defeat at the hands of the British Indian forces in 1891, the sacred capital of Kangla was occupied by the soldiers who remained till 2004. The native citizen army of the pre-colonial Lallup was disarmed and an occupying force of the Indian army was installed in its place. The new prince ruler was divested of any security arrangements of its own, whereas the British political agent had command over the imperial forces stationed in the region.

The Assam Rifles continued to take exemplary roles for suppressing ethnic armed movements like that of the Kukis in 1917-19 as well as the Kabui movement of 1928-34. The Assam Rifles bayoneted the unarmed women in the 1939 food security agitation known as the Second Nupilal or Women's war. It also was responsible for suppressing the Mao Naga no house tax campaign in 1948 leading to the death of three hillmen. In the history of Manipur's integration into India in 1949, the Assam Rifles was used to face eventualities. The trend had to be continued for extensive counter-insurgency campaigns. The Indian security forces are even stationed in the campus of a precious educational institution, the Manipur University still today.

The security architecture at contemporary times is expanded a thousand times under new dynamics of geo-political rivalries, the persistence of insurgency as well as overall challenges by the enforced vulnerability of the borderland syndrome. What is more sinister is the fear that sheer militarism and capacities for ruthless use of excessive force was not reserved for security reasons alone. What was more diabolic was blatant exercise of intervention in the dynamics of ethnic conflict, taking advantage of the primordial passions and prejudices of ethnic rivalries, thereby helping expand ethnic jealousies.

The classical Kautilyan principles of Sham, Dam, Dand, Bhed (of reconciliation, inducement of riches, use of force and principles of split or divide) are all in evidence. Whisper campaigns are afoot silently in the public sphere, in the atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, that the Meitei in the plains were persuaded, not to fear the Nagas, but the Kukis and the Muslims as enemies. Again the Kukis were learnt to have been persuaded, not to hate the Nagas, but the Meiteis and the Muslims.

Concluding Observations

What was the more immediate was the virtual reality to state violence over the general population for the last three or four decades coupled with unbridled corruption and opportunity affliction. The vitals of the polity are eaten up into, which had corroded all institutions of the state. Globalization and liberalization since the nineties had accentuated the vitiated atmosphere, with more violence and ruthlessness of human behaviour in tow. Ethnicity and ethnic conflict shall increase more, affected by the wrenching processes of modernization, of the struggle for power over resources, above the surface of the earth, as well as below. Pure sentimental outcries of Hills and Plains unity of the past will no longer be valid.

The challenge today seems to indicate a heightened response of consciousness, of understanding conflict in a positive way, like by those classical sociologists, who reflected that conflict (or violence) would prevent ossification of the social system by exerting pressure for innovation and creativity (George Sorel 1908). In the words of Lewis A Coser "Conflict within and between groups in a society can prevent accommodations and habitual relations from progressively impoverishing creativity. The clash of values, and interests, the tension between what is and what some groups ought to be, the conflict between vested interests and new strata and demanding their share of power, wealth and status, have been productive of vitality". 6 (George A. Kelly & Clifford W. Brown Jr. 1970)

We must accept conflict as reality, though the Government of India nor its henchmen the local state, do not recognize it. We must respond with more in depth knowledge of what constitutes the violence of what is spread as 'Development'. Developmental violence is another category of oppression under which ethnic rivalries are played out. One has to acknowledge the configurations of ethnic demands, and the global universal values of rights, entitlements and freedoms have to be addressed anew with all honest intensity of commitment and fair play. Civil society have to understand afresh that we are entering into a much more sinister era of intrigue, deceit and lies, and the whole artificiality of discourse of development.

The crisis of the times had thrown challenges to both the people of the hills and the plains, the dynamics of which had not been addressed dispassionately by the indigenous peoples themselves having posed over each other as adversaries for long. The Meiteis in the plains could only blame themselves for their incapability to play the facilitating leadership role for multi-ethnic and multi-religious unity. The Meiteis had failed to learn from their nation-memories of how they carried the burdens of the collective of the past, and it seems they are as community sinking fast in the debris of self-destruction through intra-group attrition and false individualist pride!

References:

1. The Feb 6 rally was organized by three Civil Society organizations – The AMUCO, The CCSKA and the UCM, Imphal.
2. White Paper on Naga Integration, Published by the Naga Hoho, Hekhevi Achumi, 2002.
3. M. Dili et al – Naga Territorial Integrity v/s Manipur. Territorial Integrity-Statement of the All Naga Students Association 14/8/1997 from Claims of Refutations: Compilation on Naga Political Movement Ed. By Dr. Aheibam Koireng, Dr. Sukhdev Sharma Hanjabam & Dr. Homen Thangjam, Jain Book Shop Publication, Imphal, 2015.
4. Kuki Inpi Memorandum to Indian Prime Minister June 10, 2010, cited in the above 2015.
5. Naga Civil Societies – The Naga Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (NPUCL), Forum for Understanding the Naga-India Conflict and Human Rights – statement reported by Nagaland Post, Feb. 6, 2016.
6. George A. Kelly & Clifford W. Brown Jr. 1970. Struggles in the State – Sources and Patterns of World Revolution – John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Concluded..