This has to be one of Manipur’s darkest times, one of those chilling moments of discovery Joseph Conrad had warned of in Heart of Darkness — if you look deep enough into your own soul, beneath the veneer of civilisation, there lies dark, menacing madness. It is unbelievable how a solidarity rally of Kukis and Nagas, two of Manipur’s major ethnic groups, to oppose a proposal to include Meiteis, the third and largest ethnic group of the state, in the scheduled tribe list exploded into a murderous frenzy between Kukis and Meiteis in several townships, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.
In a Freudian sense, what was witnessed was that the retreat or return of order became reciprocal to the absence or the presence of the State’s show of legitimate force, demonstrating that the malignant forces within needed constant moderation, if not by society’s own rational self then by the forceful authority of civilisational norms.
The tussle over the Meiteis’ inclusion in the ST list should have been fought in the court of law. The State had not taken a decision on the demand for over 10 years, probably because not all Meiteis wanted it and also in anticipation of opposition from those already in the list who fear that the slice of the reservation pie would get thinner. They also fear that once recognised as STs, Meiteis would begin grabbing land in the hills, considered exclusive territory for tribals. This reasoning, however, is flawed because even among existing tribal communities, encroachment into each other’s traditional territorial domains is not possible. The bloody Kuki-Naga conflict in Manipur in the 1990s, when Nagas began a campaign demanding eviction of Kuki villages established in territories Nagas considered to be theirs, bears evidence of this.
The Meiteis’ stated reason for wanting ST status is to prevent the marginalisation of their land. A peculiarly skewed land revenue administration inherited from colonial times separates revenue flatlands from non-revenue hills in Manipur. While everybody can settle in the central Imphal Valley — the Meiteis’ traditional home forming 10% of Manipur’s area — Meiteis have not been given the right to settle in the hills constituting 90% of the state. As land pressure mounted with population growth, an increasing sense of siege among Meiteis was inevitable. Although it is unlikely that Meiteis would be eager to settle in the hills even if they are free to do so, the knowledge that they are prohibited from doing so has heightened their claustrophobia.
It should also not be difficult to understand the Meiteis’ sense of injustice at the absence of a creamy layer clause in the existing ST reservation. They keep seeing their ST colleagues from similar or better educational and economic backgrounds receiving preference at jobs, promotional avenues, tax exemption and so on.
Things took a new turn on April 19. Responding to a petition, the Manipur High Court directed the state government to forward its recommendation on the Meitei case to the Union government. The May 3 rally of Nagas and Kukis was in response to this. The spark for the explosion came from Churachandpur, dominated by Kuki-aligned tribes, but the spark would not have meant much if there were no dry tinder to burn.
Circumstances have made Kukis suffer from a sense of persecution too. In recent times, a long-shelved narrative of Kukis being nomadic migrants began being pushed from certain quarters. It is true that because of a peculiar land-holding tradition, Kuki villages have a tendency to proliferate, often causing friction with their neighbours. Even government initiatives, such as eviction drives from reserved forests, fight against the new menace of poppy plantation, push for citizenship registration, came to be seen as targeting Kukis. The unfortunate explosion of tempers in Churachandpur which spread to cause a carnage was the consequence. By the last official count, 71 bodies were deposited at the state’s mortuaries; 41 of them had died in the riots.
Pradip Phanjoubam is editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
