Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Manipur has re-ignited the debate on how badly the Union government handled the crisis in the state. The opposition will describe the PM’s visit as too little and too late to have any positive effect. The BJP, on its part, will have difficulty in explaining why the Prime Minister’s visit came around two years after the state was plunged into a vortex of ethnic violence.
The shocking video of two girls being molested and paraded naked in Manipur left the entire country shocked and disgusted. This was the most stark but only one of the reminders of the ghastly situation that was prevalent in the north-eastern state.
The spiral of violence involving the most dominant community of the state, the Meiteis, who populate the Imphal valley, and the Kuki tribe, concentrated in the Churachandpur district, kept the state disturbed for a prolonged period. Eventually, it led to the resignation of the Chief Minister, Nongthombam Biren Singh, and the imposition of President’s Rule. Unsurprisingly, Imphal and Churachandpur were the locations of PM Modi's rallies on his visit.
Derailment of Manipur from track to progress
The tragedy of Manipur is that this degeneration into violence came out of nowhere. When the last assembly elections were held in 2022, Manipur had witnessed a prolonged period of relative peace and development. The state seemed poised to turn a corner and go from being a disturbed area to a land of promise.
Road and rail connectivity in the state was given a massive booster shot. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurated several highway projects in the last few years to boost Manipur’s intra-state as well as inter-state connectivity.
The ambitious Trilateral highway, going from Moreh in Manipur, through Myanmar, to Thailand, is now more than 70% complete and would have given Manipur a major stake in trade and commerce with ASEAN countries.
The long-overdue rail connectivity for Manipur is also in the process of attainment with the 141-meter high Noney bridge – set to be the world’s highest railway pier bridge – the showpiece structure in this endeavour.
Yet, the sudden turn into vicious chaos shows how slim the line is between peace and tumult in this state. It also proves that despite tangible and quantifiable progress over the last few years, Manipur remains constantly a misstep away from regressing into complete disorder.
The state government is getting blamed squarely for this crisis. However, it is hard to figure out what it could have done to prevent such a conflagration. The Inner Line Permit was introduced in 2021 to assure the local population, especially Meiteis, of their cultural identity being protected. The attempt to spread the fruits of development to the areas inhabited by tribes was also gaining some success.
The fact that one High Court judgement could tear apart the state says more about the internal social fragility of the province than any lack of administrative diligence. Some suggest that the aggressive war on drugs launched by the ruling party has indirectly led to the crisis, with the affected parties looking to stir up trouble. But one can’t blame a government for such an endeavour.
Misconceptions about Manipur's conflict
What many people outside Manipur do not realise is that the current conflict in Manipur is not of the type they are familiar with. On social media, right-wing accounts are depicting it as a clash between Hindu Meiteis and Christian Kukis, the former seen as ‘nationslists’ and the latter depicted as ‘secessionists’.
This depiction is incredibly ill-informed, if not downright perverse. The Meitei community, despite a majority of them being Vaishnavite Hindus, have grievances of their own against the Indian state. These may not be justified but undercut the simplistic binary drawn by keyboard warriors.
The day of Manipur’s accession to India – October 15 – is still considered a black day by a significant section of the population, including Meiteis, and usually witnesses a statewide bandh. This lingering sense of resentment may not be a widespread emotion, but it has anyway led to major impediments in Manipur’s full cultural integration with the rest of the country.
For instance, Bollywood movies are not allowed to be screened in the state, as it is seen as a means of endangering the native identity of Manipur.
For those who consider this a Hindu vs Christian problem may want to remember that heart-rending picture of a group of Manipuri women, all Hindu, standing naked in front of Assam Rifles Headquarters in Imphal with a banner saying ‘Indian Army rape us’. This shocking protest was in response to the brutal killing and rape of Manorama Thangjam, allegedly by members of the security forces.
The lady who then came to symbolize the fight against AFSPA, the controversial act that gives immunity to security personnel from prosecution in ‘disturbed areas’, was a Hindu Meitei – Irom Sharmila. She went on a hunger strike that went on for 16 years. For giving herself strength, Sharmila used to keep a copy of Bhagavat Gita with herself.
Long-standing issues
When the BJP came to power in 2017, in a coalition government, they managed to provide five full years of relative peace and development. Interestingly, despite its reputation, the party worked hard on cultivating support among the tribes, almost entirely Christian, who inhabit the mountains that surround the Imphal Valley.
These tribes, numbering around 30, fall into two major categories – Nagas and Mizos. While the present conflict has seen the Meiteis in conflict with the Mizo Kuki tribe, there have been major clashes involving the Meiteis and Nagas too in the past.
In 2011, a planned division of a Naga-majority region through the creation of a separate district led to a 121-day blockade by the United Naga Council. As can be imagined, the public of the state endured enormous suffering with supplies running low and prices skyrocketing.
Another lockdown, this one 139-day long, took place in 2016-17. Once again, the people suffered economic hardships that went largely unnoticed in the rest of the country.
The BJP government, under Chief Minister N Biren Singh, knew that they cannot rely only on the Meiteis alone to win electoral power. Furthermore, the progress of the state also depended on the cooperation of the Hill Tribes.
The N Biren Singh government thus launched a special program to reach out to the hill tribes. The ‘Go to Hills’ mission saw two iterations, the second in the run-up to the elections in 2021. As part of this initiative, the CM visited different hill districts and inaugurated or laid the foundation of several developmental projects.
Interestingly, the first stop in ‘Go to Hills 2.0’, in 2021, was Churachandpur, the same district which has been the center of violence in the last few weeks. This district, with a large population of the Kuki tribe, had been at the center of a storm before also.
In 2015, it was in this district that nine men were killed while protesting against three laws that the then Congress government was bringing to modify the definition of the native population. This led to a long protest at Jantar Mantar, where the tribal communities of Manipur demanded action against these killings and the discarding of these laws.
The dead bodies of the nine tribal men were not interred for a long period pending these demands. This protest hardly gained any attention from the media but then BJP MP and RSS ideologue Tarun Vijay visited the protesters at Jantar Mantar and even raised the issue in Parliament.
The sensitivity of this district in particular and the fractious relationship between the Meiteis and Mizos has been a long-standing problem. For a long time, violence in Manipur and sufferings of its people hardly got a mention in national media. Because of the opposition’s all-out attempt to corner the BJP in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the present situation is getting leading coverage.
This should lead the central government to pull out all stops to resolve the conflict. However, the underlying issues that prevent Manipur from gaining complete normalcy are much more complex and difficult to solve.