The Significance of 28th September in Manipur History and the 900 Ghosts Purported to Haunt the Day

28th September, a date brought to recent light and infamy by an unofficial note from the Secretary to the chief minister of Manipur which stated that, “Reports have been received that over 900 Kuki militants, newly trained in use of drone-based bombs, projectiles, missiles and jungle warfare have entered Manipur from Myanmar…reportedly grouped in units of 30 members each…and expected to launch multiple coordinated attacks on Meitei villages around 28 September 2024.” and thereby requesting the Police Department to take all necessary measures in this regard. Such specific information reports the concerned sleuths in the Intelligence Bureau, RAW and the Indian Army guarding the Indo-Myanmar would be envious of – only if it were true. But this “report” has clearly been fabricated from the Chief Minister’s Office – a position currently occupied by a man who has been accused of being the instigator of the whole Manipur violence and who has allegedly confessed it all on tape in a moment of unguarded bravado. And as suspected, this has been later confirmed as such by the Director General of Police himself, adding that the reports have not been substantiated on ground and that there is no basis currently to belive in any such input, So the question now is not whether the information is true or not, but what lies behind the dissemination of such blatant disinformation and the creation of 900 ghosts to mark a very specific date.

The DGP’s press release denouncing the veracity of the source(s) of the report from the Chief Minister’s Office will by now have caused much embarassment to the many propaganda mongers on national news channels and on social media who pounced upon the leaked report like ravenous wolves, salivating at the mouth and spewing and spinning the narrative against the Kukis, One can at least hope that decency, if any keft in their hollow souls, will make them think twice about blindly lapping up the propaganda released by any state agency henceforth.

Newsreel Asia on its digital platform has published a very well researched and well written article titled “Did 900 ‘Kuki militants’ really enter from Myanmar?” under its Insights section dated 24th September 2024 which this bulletin published in its entirety in its issue of the same day. The article questions the intel, the timing just after the Manipur Tapes, the reasons as to its intention and the baffling stance taken by the state security advisor on the issue and points out the preposterousness of the logistics of 900 people illegitimately crossing from one sovereign nation to another. I suggest all concerned citizens to go read that article which enables one to think critically and objectively on the issue.

But here, now that we’ve talked about the 900 ghosts and the state Police Department directed to catch those, let us have a look at another crucial component of the CMO’s fabricated report – the purported date around which these 900 ghosts are “expected” to launch coordinated attacks on Meitei villages. The report mentions it as 28th September 2024. Now, this may come as a surprise to many but none - not one member of the Kuki community – was aware of the significance of 28th September in the history of Manipur until the Meitei Secretary to the Meitei Chief Minister brought it to national attention through that fabricated and conveniently leaked intelligence report. I’m certain that most in the Meitei community too, remained unaware. It could only be a date significant to and etched in the memory and consciousness of radical secessionists and like-minded Meiteis among their general civilian population who are constantly in a state of war with the idea of India, and those secessionist Meitei insurgent groups termed as “terrorist organizations” by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India for their constant war with India with a set objective to secede from the Indian Union and create an Independent Manipur and restore the perceived glory of the old Kangleipak kingdom before it became a part of the Indian Union.

On 21st September 1949, the then maharaja of Manipur, Bodhachandra Singh had signed the controversial Manipur Merger Agreement with the government of India. The Merger Agreement remains controversial till this day because large sections of the Meitei population have not accepted that Merger. The rise of all Meitei armed insurgency in the 60s and following decades can be attributed to this refusal to accept the Merger Agreement with the Union of India. All Meitei insurgent groups have this one thing in common – secession from India and the establishment of an independent Kangleipak. For this they have all established links with India’s enemy China, based their ideologies on Communist lines against the democratic principles of India, procured their weapons with help from China and established their training camps across the border with assistance from China.

Because of this, the Indian government had imposed the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 in Manipur in 1980 to deal with these secessionist insurgents. But the present dispensation under N. Biren Singh removed the AFSPA from all valley districts recently in the past few years though the Meitei groups still remain alive and devoted to their ideologies of separation from India and the establishment of an independent Kangleipak. The current iteration of the Arambai Tenggol has also been conceived and nurtured by him to revitalize the secessionist movement overground among a new generation of youths because though the underground militancy and the idea of a separate nation of independent Kangleipak remains alive, it had lately lacked momentum as most youths had foregone the way of militancy to embrace the benefits of being a part of India and enjoying a peace not seen in decades of insurgency in the state. But the current chief minister N. Biren Singh has been reviving the secessionist ideology among a new generation of youths by radicalizing and patronizing them and giving them an aura of legitimacy by patronage of the current titular king of Manipur Leishemba Sanajaoba. These two and their illegitimate child the Arambai Tenggol have lit the spark of independence yet once again.

This is the real foreign hand that is currently involved in the Manipur violence. On the other hand, most of the Kuki armed groups had their origins way later in the early 90s after the Muivah-led NSCN-IM perpetrated genocide on the Kukis. Having no prior established defense, the Kukis formed armed groups of their own to defend themselves from the NSCN-IM’s onslaught. Weapons were indeed procured from across the border as was and still is the norm for all armed groups, but the ideology behind the formation of such armed Kuki groups was never a fight against the Indian state or its principles but self-defence against the then NSCN-IM’s aggression which later matured into a talk with the government of India for some sort of settlement within the Union of India. Currently, Kuki forces in Myanmar are engaged in an all-out war in a battle for democracy, fighting the anti-democratic and dictatorial forces of the Myanmar Junta which is being aided by Meitei insurgent groups there. They couldn’t spare a man or a weapon for their brethren in India even if they wanted to, let alone 900.

On 28 September 1949, barely a week after the Merger Agreement with India was signed by the ex-maharaja of Manipur, the Manipur State Legislative Assembly (MSLA) met in the Assembly Chamber in the Johnstone High School premises and adopted a resolution dropping the Merger Agreement which they stated was signed “under immense pressure and duress from Prakash Shah, Governor of Assam, V.P. Menon, Minister of State Affairs and Sardar Ballavai Patel”. Calling India a foreign state, they resolved that the state of Manipur would have “no relations/foreign relations with Indian government without any agreement signed by the MSLA”, thereby refuting and cancelling the agreement signed with the Indian Union by Bodhachandra Singh, the then Maharaja. The birth of the Meitei secessionist movement was thus, adopted by the State Assembly on this date, the 28th of September.

Why the Meitei Chief Secretary to the Meitei Chief Minister would pick this significant date to try to deflect blame on the Kukis and what their plans are remains to be seen. The present leader of the new secessionist wave of the Arambai Tenggol, Korounganba Khuman, who has publicly boasted of over 60,000 trained cadres of the Arambai Tenggol ready for war, posted on his Facebook post that he “cannot wait for 28th September”. This has led to a rather ironic situation in which, contrary to the purported attacks to be carried out on Meitei villages on 28th September by Kukis, it is rather the Kuki community who is in full self-defense and preservation mode, announcing the closure of all borders of their inhabited areas and the closure of all schools and institutions including businesses, restriction of travel and beefing up of defense in preparation for what the Meitei state machinery and its armed “cultural organization” may have planned around the 28th of September.