Idea of United Manipur Increasingly Difficult; GoI Should Address Kuki-Zos' Demand for UT With Legislature

The state-sponsored ethnic genocidal violence against the Kuki-Zo community has entered the nineteenth month this November since it began on May 3 last year. This ongoing structural violence has been prepared by the State in ways that it converges and overlaps with the majoritarian minded Meitei civil society organisations and their heavily armed extremist outfits.

The extent of this ethnic cleansing pogrom becomes apparent not just before the start of the violence but also subsequently for more than one and half years, which suggests the structural forms of violence being validated and has been enforcing till these days. These structural forms of persecution against the minority communities are now endemic to perpetuating aggression across the hills of Manipur.

From the beginning of this violence, there are sets of distorted narratives being spread like wild fire, led by the communal Meitei Chief Minister N. Biren Singh and his cohorts - spreading venomous and vicious propaganda against the hill people in various media platforms, print and digital including social media, thus stereotyping and otherising the minority Kuki-Zo community so as to subserve to the electoral interest of the powers-that-be.

The so-called defenders of the territorial integrity of Manipur should realise that these particular vicious politics and distorted narratives which ethnicised on the issues of “encroachment”, on issues of “poopy cultivation”, or on issues of “illegal immigrants”, etc., are all lopsided arguments, totally unfounded and far from reality.

For instance, barely five years before the violence erupted, the incumbent narcissistic Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, in his interview to India Today’s Conclave, had said that there were “no illegal immigrants” in Manipur. A year before the violence, his government’s appointed Committee had found out some 2000 Burmese refugees inside the territory of Manipur, who were then rehabilitated and had nothing to do with the present violence. On the issues of narcotics, the former decorated Meitei Police officer, Th. Brinda, in charge of Narcotics and Border Affairs (NAB), had categorically indicted N. Biren Singh and other political elite classes for their deep involvement in illegal narcotics trade.

In spite of debunking all of his distorted narratives, N. Biren Singh and his political cohorts continue to spread false propaganda one after another by stereotyping against the Kuki-Zo community. This shows that the whole democratic institutional experience under his leadership is in peril and its legitimacy has now been in question. Unless the like-minded populace, irrespective of all ethnic groups, confront all these distorted narratives, what is left to be salvaged should be very less; given that there is a drastic destruction of the State’s territorial space and complete breakdown of communal trust in the lowest level.

In terms of the deeper level of penetration of these false narratives and how it leverages mutual distrust, suspicion and full of hatred to the extent of civil war between the two communities, there is no possibility of keeping the idea of united Manipur anymore .

It is clear by now that the geographical, demographic and emotional deep divide between the Meitei and Kukis has become the new buffer zones which in effect has laid down the foundation of territorial disintegration of the state of Manipur. In fact, it is unprecedented to witness, for instance, in any Indian state of the Country that a reigning Chief Minister is not able to visit even one part of the State, which has about 16 percent of the total population. The Meiteis are confined in their own homeland in the valley areas just as the Kukis in their own ancestral land.

Acknowledging the present circumstances, given that there is no other option to resolve the ongoing mayhem, the Government of India must wake up from its slumber and start addressing the political demand of the Kuki-Zo community, which is Union Territory with Legislature.