UNPACKING THE DISSOLUTION OF TRUST AND MONOPOLY OF LEGITIMATE STATE VIOLENCE IN MANIPUR
The current Manipur violence completes one year since its eruption on 3rd May, 2024. This violence has caused untold misery, displacement and pain to the Zo ethnic Kuki, Zomi, and Hmar/Mizo group of tribes in Manipur. This article focuses on the structural dissolution of trust that eventually led to the outburst of violence on 3rd May, 2023. This shall be done by critically analyzing the manner in which the state government made its political moves in the months and years preceding the conflict.
Tracing steps back from the Sangai Festival
Starting on 21st November 2022, Manipur celebrated the 10-day Sangai Festival in 13 different places across six districts in the state. The Sangai plays a significant role in the myths and folktales of the Meitei, as well as a few 'tribes' in the region around the Loktak lake. Its celebration by the state is thus of immense significance in promoting the conservation needs of the local biodiversity and the local culture of the region. As a state project, the 'state festival' is celebrated annually in the valley districts of the state, with periodic 'Chapters' being extended to different hill districts in different years. The current conflict was preceded by the celebration of the Sangai Festival in Lamka (Churachandpur) district for the first time in its history. The political and social environment that surrounded this celebration however made it an extremely conspicuous and performative celebration that seemed to lack any genuine interest among the people.
In preparation for and during the festival, the district witnessed a peculiar development that put its masses on edge. Many district-level government employees received 'Whatsapp Orders' that made it mandatory to attend the festival throughout the district's four-day celebration. All DLOs in the district were informed to 'mobilize maximum public,' 'reach by 10 am, 'attend with friends and family mandatorily.' While bigger departments were reportedly informed to organize 'at least 50 people', the other DLOs were asked to 'mobilise at least 30 people' each, with the sub-division level offices coordinating the mobilisation. Several Village Authorities (VA) in the region also informed villagers to attend the festivities to complement their attendance as 'work days' on their Job Cards. In the case of the former, 'proof of attendance' was reportedly submitted via daily 'photo proof' attendance in the program, while in the latter, it was reported that 'free transport' was provided by the authorities for the attendants. Despite widespread discontentment, participation was co-opted via the coercion of district level employees and local Job Card holders (MGNREGA). Those who did not attend were issued ‘show cause’ notices, while protests of civil organizations were entirely sidelined. This practice repeated itself during the Sangai festival celebrations and during the planned inauguration of an open gym on 28th April, 2023.
There was a huge performative element that was extremely the state-choreographed ‘performance’ of mass attendance in the festival became at par with the on-stage performances. While it is taken for granted that district-level officers are responsible for the overlooking of such 'state' festivals as in the case of all other cultural festivals in the district, such forms of coercion are neither a part of 'official' conduct nor enforced in other cultural festivals in the district. Governance mechanisms being utilized in this manner are symptomatic of a 'neo-colonial' form of governance, pushed through by political and economic elites and usually tainted by certain ethnocentric interests.
The rapidly destabilizing political environment at the start of 2023
It is common knowledge within Manipur that ethnic groups, development projects, cultural festivities (including sports tournaments), and state policies are closely intertwined with the state's politics. Behind the pompous festivities and cultural extravaganza, Churachandpur district has also recently been in the limelight due to the opening of Behiang village on the Indo-Burma border as a new economic corridor to Southeast Asia. In 2017, the Chief Minister of Manipur gave a proposal to the Central Government for a 100-crore ring road project along the India-Myanmar border, which includes the 122 km long Tedim road that connects Imphal to Behiang (via Lamka). The Tedim Road extends to the city of Tedim, a major commercial center in Chin state, Myanmar. If the state intends to expand the growth of Behiang as an international trading centre, in the likes of Moreh, its initiatives towards the overall development and infrastructural growth of the village remain negligible.
The state’s non-existent efforts to prepare the indigenous Zo people for the incoming wave of market competition are trumped by the opening and reinforcement of state police forces in the vicinity. On the other hand, there was a growing fear of cultural assimilation with the growing activities of the Meitei insurgent groups in the region like the People Liberation Army (PLA). This was most visible in the ambush in December 2021 by PLA and Manipur Naga People's Front (MNPF), killing of Col. Tripathi, his wife, and six year old, along with six other Jawans.
Unsurprisingly, the indigenous Zo people's anxieties of cultural colonization were amplified with the opening of a controversial Park at Chivu, a month before the Sangai Festival in Behiang-Tonjang, when it was named after the controversial Meitei King Chandrakirti. The months leading to the celebration of the Sangai festival in the district had been marked by continuous uproar from local intellectuals and masses against the association of Chivu with Chandrakirti. Chivu is a natural saltwater spring in the vicinity of Behiang (Tonjang village).
Despite being an essential source of salt, hunting ground, and site of significant historical events for the Zo people, the site is strategically 'curved' by the Manipur State to associate with the remains of Meitei King Chandrakirti's 'footprints'. The objective of this association would undoubtedly negate the lived and embodied historical association of the ‘Chivu’ natural salt spring with the Zo people. On the other hand, the construction of a park in the name of a ‘foreign’ king, who was responsible for the capture of a particularly important Chief. Goukhothang Guite, sparked a significant contention between the official state and indigenous history.
The move of the state government to build a culturally oriented ‘Park’ in Chivu, in light of the opening of Behiang as a cross-border trading hub, represents the state’s anticipation of partaking in the upcoming economic exchanges through this area. On the one hand, the state’s specific choice to name it after a Meitei King Chandrakirti and the narrative myth of victories that never happened over the southern hill chiefs only incites romantic populism among the valley Meitei peoples, thereby ensuring them of the mass numerical support in the state. While the drastic imbalance of representation in the state legislative assembly allowed the legal continuation of such developments, it stirred further anger and resentment against the state, which by then had already become seen as a ‘Meitei Government’.
With the entry into 2023, Protected and Reserved Forests were declared and pushed by the state across vast swathes of lands that would, if enforced, displace hundreds of Kuki-Zomi tribal villages causing another source of contention. Local chiefs and activists filed legal cases and a rally was organized on 10th March, 2023, but the state pre-emptively issued Section 144 CrPC on the CM’s claim of the rally on the likelihood of violence. Despite this order, the rally was organized as planned and remained peaceful in all hill districts except for one when police personnel had reportedly manhandled certain women on their way to the rally. In Lamka (Churachandpur), so hasty was the transfer of the SP for allowing the rally that the state website continued to show the name of the old SP (Shivanada Surve) even after the new SP (Karthik Malladi) issued his first order in the district!
Triggering the current Conflict – the state’s complete loss of legitimacy
In the intervening weeks following these developments, the Manipur High court had submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of India for the inclusion of the dominant Meitei into the ST list of India. Notably, Meiteis can buy lands in the hills by following due process. However, becoming Scheduled Tribes will do away with the need to follow statutory procedures, thereby rendering Article 371C irrelevant. This is grossly against the constitutional provisions' rationale, thereby endangering tribal lands and their landholding patterns. As a show of protest, the All Tribal Student Union Manipur (ATSUM) organized a tribal solidarity rally on 3rd May from 10am to 2pm across all tribal hill districts in the state. While this rally was going on, Meitei CSOs like the Meitei Leepun had organized “counter-blockades” in various highways that connected the hill districts. It was at this juncture that the current violence in Manipur was sparked off. Rallygoers in Churachandpur who had attended from Kangvai, a border village to the valley were waylaid and beaten up by miscreants while videos of them being beat up and tribal houses being burnt started circulating around 3pm. One of the persons who had been beaten up later succumbed to his injuries and died in the district hospital.
What followed this set of provocations seemed all too well coordinated. The anticipated reaction of angry masses was reciprocated by an even more rapid spread of propaganda of rapes and killings by the tribals as well as the participation of Kuki-Zomi insurgent groups in the clashes. Most of these viral claims have by now either been disproved or remain without evidence, while inspections by a joint monitoring committee of both the army and the police disproved the suspected involvement of insurgent groups. The escalation of violence has now culminated in the estimated displacement of 50,000 Kuki-Zomi tribals, while videos that have surfaced of state police and radicalized Meitei miscreants identified as the ‘Arambai Tengol’ with links high up in the ladder of state leadership remain unacknowledged. Considering not only the damage and destruction that has caused the mass exodus of internally displaced people, but also the complicity of the state in the perpetration of violence, there has been a complete loss of trust in the state government among the Kuki-Zomi tribes. In response to what many now call a state-sponsored ‘ethnic cleansing’, the demand for separate administration by the 10 MLAs reflects the deep-seated grievances and frustrations of the Kuki-Zomi people, and reflects the urgent need to establish steps towards a dignified and political solution. Justice, not patronage is the need of the hour.
Tawnsuanlal Valte is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Hyderabad.
Views expressed are personal.