High command at Imphal : Creating a vacuum
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 25 2011 -

The announcement that the Manipur People's Party is set to file a case against the constitution of the Naga People's Front, whose primary objective is the integration of all Naga inhabited areas under one administrative unit may be interpreted differently and while to Mr O Joy and his men it may mean challenging the validity of the NPF's stated political aim of integrating all Naga inhabited areas, to others, especially the NPF and the idealogues of Naga integration this could be seen as an attempt to foil the political ambition of the Naga people.

These two views may be understood as occupying the two extreme ends of the strand spawned by the Lim divide but one point that stands out glaringly is the disconnect between the political parties active in Manipur and the emerging political thoughts in the hill districts.

That this point has not been articulated systematically has only helped in deepening this thought process. The Congress, which has not been able to snap the umbilical cord that ties it to the High Command, has not been able to keep a tab on the changing political aspirations of the people and far from addressing the issue at the grass root level it has managed to remain significant by overturning the handicap of the High Command into some sort of an advantage by claiming that it is only its men who can get Delhi to listen.

The MPP, by virtue of it being a regional political party has had no such alibi, and far from making the people its High Command, it started aping the Congress and in the process turned Imphal into its High Command.

That this was political hara-kiri is there for all to see and from being a regional political party with a pan Manipur appeal, it has today been reduced to a Imphal or valley centric political party.

Of the five MPP MLAs in the present 9th State Legislative Assembly, not a single one is from the hill districts. The last time the MPP managed to send a man from Ukhrul district to the Assembly was in 1990 when the late Somi Shimray was elected from Chingai Assembly Constituency.

Some of the other prominent MPP leaders from the hill districts included Thangminlien Kipgen (Kangpokpi AC), C Doungel (Saikul), Ngamthang Haokip (Saikul), TN Haokip (Saikot).

None of these political leaders are in the stable of the MPP today and in as much as this say something about their principles or lack of it, on the other hand it also says something significant about the failure of the party as a whole to keep the flock together.

With the MPP reduced to the status of only being the oldest regional political party in the State, which otherwise should have been able to keep a tab on the pulse beat of the people, a vacuum was understandably created.

This vacuum was fanned by the emerging cry of a Greater Lim, championed by the NSCN (IM) and the entry of the Naga People's Front to the soil of Manipur must be understood in the backdrop of these points.

A political vacuum created by the increasing tendency of the MPP to ape the Congress and equate the high command of the Congress with Imphal instead of the people and an increasingly aggressive stand adopted by the NSCN (IM) proved to be just the right time for the NPF to look beyond the border of Nagaland and transform itself from Nagaland People's Front to Naga People's Front. The change in the nomenclature is significant.

The announcement that the MPP would challenge the constitution of the NPF is fine but what is needed more than such announcement and step is an inward study and see how the MPP can shake itself free from the shackles of the valley centric approach.

The veterans of the oldest regional political party in the State need to acknowledge and study why it no longer has any presence in the hill districts. To work towards this, rhetoric should be given the go by.

It would be foolish and unrealistic for the political mandarins at Delhi to understand the ground realities here, if the leaders of a regional political party based in the State cannot look beyond some districts. Numbers in the Assembly do count, significantly, but in the long run what matters most is identity.

In the last one decade or so, the identity of the MPP has been eroded to such an extent and this has been brought about chiefly by its blind aping of political parties like the Congress. What is food for the Congress will not be for the MPP. This is a fact that should register.

If the Congress has Delhi as its high command, it does not follow that the MPP should have Imphal as its high command. The high command should be the people.

It is a tragedy that this fact has been overlooked for too long that today a vacuum has been created to such an extent which has afforded enough room for a party based in a neighbouring State to make inroads into Manipur.

Can anyone sincerely imagine the Telugu Desam Party making inroads into Tamil Nadu or Karnataka on the strength of the Telugu people settled in these two States? The answer should be obvious to all