Manipur has been witnessing ethnic violence since 3 May, which has not only claimed 71 lives but also polarised peace-loving students, intellectuals, and civil society groups.
The state experienced similar clashes in the 1990s. Throughout the history of violence, we have been clubbing and differentiating everyone in Manipur based on categories such as Naga, Kuki, Meitei, and Pangal. By now, we have gotten used to conflating each of us into these categories as potential and emotional defenders of our communal interests. The violence took place once again on such a scale that we lost sight of people who can bridge borders and boundaries to promote dialogue.
One would think that years of assertion for the right to life and activism around human rights in a conflict zone, involving both state and non-state actors, would deepen mutual respect among individuals and groups. But the situation in Manipur is the opposite. We have not imbibed respect for each other’s life into the thick and thin of our intersubjective worlds.
Failure of civil society
Can civil society initiate dialogues across communities during these hours of violence? The current state of unrest highlights the failure of civil society, which we perceive as agencies safeguarding our rights. The so-called mass movements against black laws like AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) or the extra-judicial killings, the alleged rape of Thangjam Manorama, etc., hardly replicate a discourse for the right to life across the boundaries and borders of our ethnic mindscape and landscape.
I remember that in the 2006 alleged mass rapes by a group of insurgents in Churachandpur district’s Parbung and Lungthulien villages, civil society groups primarily chose to confine themselves to the usual arguments of tribal versus non-tribal and developed valley versus marginalised hills. Nobody specifically spoke of the rights of women victims. Our political language of majority and minority, hills-valley dichotomy, and developed and underdeveloped geographies dominate the discourse against the right to life.
Organisations such as Churachandpur-based Hmar Women Association have been able to speak for the plight of women with force. It has done so by maintaining a critical distance from civil society actors, insurgent groups, and the state government without falling into the unresolved ethnic binaries and categories of politics. Even in 2004, after the alleged rape of Manorama, the visibility of civil society groups on the streets and the discourse on rights against violence were similarly dismal. The rights discourse has been asserted mainly among the valley-based groups and not beyond, in such a context.
In Churachandpur, contrary to the discourse against the state security forces, the central security forces were favoured in countering the insurgent groups in the district. For the people in the southern district, a significant disturbance was created by what they called valley-based ‘Meitei’ insurgents working in the areas. But it is also a reality that non-state armed groups belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Zo community are becoming stakeholders of ethnocentric and group differentiated autonomy demands under the constitution of India.
Reportedly, non-state armed groups have been alleged for violating ground rules since the beginning of the talks under the Suspension of Operations among the United People’s Front (UPF), Kuki National Organisation (KNO), the Manipur state government, and the Union government of India in 2008. It is not just factional wars among the armed groups but violations of common citizens’ right to life as well. State agencies choose to remain silent on such incidents either because they may have symbiotic relationships with non-state actors or are actively neutralising one armed group against another through covert collaboration and exclusion tactics, called counter-insurgent measures.
Over the last ten years, the limited civil society space has gradually been replaced by loosely organised violent crowds that engage in mob trials. From an ethnocentric perspective, one can observe the emergence of various new fundamentalist organisations that claim to defend identity, religion, culture, and history. Fear and anxiety have replaced rights-based liberal discourse in much of civil society.
Also read: IDs checked, skull cracked, ‘dumped alive’ in mortuary — 3 Kuki survivors recount Manipur mob horror
Need for alternative people’s discourse
Amid long-standing trust issues between communities, discussions arise regarding the protection of culture, territory, and people. In this context, it’s inevitable for one group to question whose land, culture, history, and identity will be safeguarded, and who may be left out. Unsurprisingly, many fear exclusion when the State steps in to check the entry of ‘outsiders’ under the proposed mechanisms, like the National Commission on Population or the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The eviction of villagers from the Churachandpur-Khoupam protected forest area may have contributed to the current unrest in Manipur. Instead of looking through an ethnonationalism perspective, why is the problem not linked with other cases of eviction that have already occurred in the rest of the state? This is yet another example of the deeply divided political discourse on the rights of people affected by various state policies and programs.
The issue of eviction is narrated as the game plan of the State representing a ‘majority community.’ Why can’t our civil society come together, keeping aside the politics of communities and ethnicity? Eviction of people occurs for various objectives of the State. One of the reasons behind the displacement of tribals from forest areas is to filter out ‘illegal migrants’ and to conserve national property. Another reason is the prevention of ‘illegal encroachments’ in the protected and reserved forest areas. Eviction of forest dwellers or forest-dependent people also occurs for the State’s compensatory forestry planning or to encourage mining or extraction of natural resources. The rights activists have resisted such objectives.
To understand the eviction problem in the Churachandpur-Khoupum protected area, we must consider it within the framework of the neoliberal developmental state, which often leads to the displacement of people in different development projects. In the process, citizens are transformed into a population category, people who don’t have rights and are not expected to speak for them. In that case, anyone who protests eviction becomes a foreigner enough for the State to suppress. Many rights activists in the state who questioned eviction and displacement due to hydroelectric power and road infrastructure projects have been called anti-national.
The rights of forest dwellers or those dependent on forests must be rightly placed with the rights activism happening across the state over evictions due to the hydro power projects in the Tamenglong and Senapati districts, mining in the Ukhrul district, and tourism development in the Loktak wetland areas. There has been a global indigenous discourse on safeguarding the common people dependent on the environment against the neoliberal state policy and programs of extracting resources.
However, any of this discourse that concerns our society generally is not interesting enough for agencies like the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, KNO, Scheduled Tribes Demand Committee, or Kangleipak Kanba Lup. Instead, the issue is approached through the political discourse of tribal versus non-tribal or valley and hills dichotomy. The ethnic community has been challenging the proprietary rights of the State over the land on the ground of the group’s ancestral right. One can see a heavy investment of ethnic, religious, identarian, and essentialist interests in understanding land and forests.
While one must debate the importance of human autonomy on land, resources, and entitlements, every issue should not be reduced to a case of complete autonomy of a specific group or ethnic experience. Since civil society won’t speak up, an alternative discourse is needed across borders and boundaries. Such an alternative can only come with the thought and courage to cut across the social divide and engage with the issues beyond ethnic enclosures.
The author teaches in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)