No, we don't really care about Manipur

For most of us, the Manipur crisis is out of sight, out of mind. The story in a state so small and so far out is a 'Big Yawn' for many. I try to persuade you to wake up

Do we, as a nation, care about Manipur, our easternmost state? It is right now seeing a crisis that no Indian state has faced since the breakdown of Hindu-Sikh relations in Punjab in the 1983-93 decade and the violent expulsion of the Pandits in the Kashmir Valley.

The answer to the question is “yes” and “not really” (says the latter with a big yawn). Let us try and explain this.

Imagine for a moment that a new insurgent group rose in Manipur and launched war on the Indian state and security forces, saying they were fighting for a sovereign state. They will immediately catch our attention. That will explain the “yes” in our answer.

This isn’t that hypothetical or far out. The state has had multiple insurgencies in our lifetime, waging these wars in the Imphal Valley and the hill districts.

At one point in the 1980s, so intense was this challenge that it consumed a full, oversized division of the Army (the 23rd, moved from Ranchi) to counter it. It was easy to get Manipur in headlines those days. I should know. I was then covering the Northeast from my base in Shillong for The Indian Express for three years (1981-83) and front-page bylines out of Manipur were yours for the asking, as any active threat or challenge to India’s sovereignty does. What happens, however, if the threat is not seen to be a separatist one, but one that is purely inter-communal or inter-ethnic?

That is precisely what is happening in Manipur now. And you know what? We don’t care. It struggles to make it to our front pages or the prime time.

For most of us, it is out of sight, out of mind. For prime time TV, I suppose, it’s a question of — “but who would watch”? It might be better to talk about some Kerala Story again, or a mosque or a temple in Varanasi or Mathura. The story in a state so small and so far out is a “Big Yawn”. I am listing here a few facts to persuade you to wake up.

• While we’ve been counting the votes in Karnataka and distributing gyan on political implications of the election results there, an almighty exchange of population has taken place in Manipur. The use of the present perfect tense is thoughtful and deliberate. It’s a done deal now. Over. At this point, it is nearly impossible to find a Meitei in the hill districts or tribals in the Imphal Valley outside the “refugee camps”. I am struggling to think of another instance of such a total, mutual ethnic cleansing in any of our states in the past many decades.

No surprise then that the delegation of 10 Kuki MLAs (seven from the ruling BJP and three allied to it), in a joint memorandum to the Union Home Minister, used both expressions: Ethnic cleansing and Partition. They are right. The supposedly dominant Meiteis will have their counter-arguments but not on the two descriptions. It is just that they will argue that they, not the Kukis, are victims. The fact is, both are. Equally and tragically.

• As this article is being written on Friday (May 19) evening, Manipur has had an internet shutdown for 15 days. Today, when our lives are run on the internet, you know what this does to the common people. Prices of essential commodities have gone through the roof, long lines form in front of the ATMs 4 am, even 3 am onwards and cash is filled in late at night. The sun rises early in Manipur — this morning at 4.28 am — for example. Those who can flee the state have fled. Does the writ of Bharat Sarkar run? At this point, nobody’s does.
• In the state secretariat, it is nearly impossible to find a Kuki officer. The director general of police, Paotinmang Doungel, a Kuki, is missing in action and you can’t blame him.

• There is a BJP government with a full majority. Its chief minister, N Biren Singh (a Congress import like most key BJP leaders in the Northeast), was summoned to New Delhi earlier this week with his four Cabinet colleagues, the BJP state chief, and the titular traditional ruler/maharaja of the state, Leishemba Sanajaoba. All of them, please note, are Meitei. The Kukis, especially the BJP’s own Kukis, came by themselves, demanding a separate administration and freedom from their own state government. I am sure you haven’t seen this in any other Indian state before. I am also equally sure that most of us were not even aware all of this had happened. That again answers the question: Do we really care? Yawn again.

The ethnic divisions are not new. Traditionally, Manipur was ruled by a Meitei king. After the reigning king, Maharaja Budhachandra, signed the instrument of accession with India on August 11, 1947, and subsequently the Merger Agreement on September 21, 1949, the power remained with the Meiteis. They’ve had a majority, but a slim one.

At this point, they are about 53 per cent compared to the tribals’ 45 per cent or so. Of course, the tribes are divided broadly among the Kuki group (Kuki-Chin-Zomi-Mizo-Hmar) and Naga groups (Tangkhul, Mao and some more).

The power has traditionally remained with the predominantly Hindu Meiteis. Of all the chief ministers of Manipur since the first in 1963, only two have been tribal.

Yangmaso Shaiza, with two terms between 1974 and 1977, served less than three years. Reishang Keishing’s terms added up to seven years. None of them was Kuki, however. Both were Tangkhul Nagas from Ukhrul district.

The tribe had become particularly powerful because its most prominent member, T Muivah, had risen to be the pre-eminent Naga insurgent leader by the late 1970s.

Shaiza was married to Rano, the niece of Zhapu Angami Phizo, the founder of the Naga insurgency. Both played a critical role in the peace process leading up to the Shillong peace accord between New Delhi and the Naga underground. Muivah’s National Socialist Council of Nagaland stayed out and its “boys” assassinated Shaiza on January 30, 1984.

After Reishang and later the decline of the Congress, the tribals have had very limited political power.

That is also playing out in the current distrust and crisis. It would be tempting to see it through the prism of the BJP-Hindu-Christian (tribal) relations. But avoid that temptation. It isn’t the full reality. As the old “law” of good sense goes, never search for a conspiracy theory for what can be fully explained as incompetence.

Four decades ago, when I covered the Northeast, I never wrote one news story on Meghalaya, the state in which I lived. Why? Because there was no trouble there.

I might have done the odd story in the category of exotica: A wonderful man called Dollymoore Wankhar who made ashtrays and wall-plates out of real butterflies (will be illegal now), on the tradition of the tribal chiefs having their own police, the quaint game of ‘Teer” (archery) which was more about chance and betting than skill.

A Khasi IAS officer then had asked me tauntingly: “So how many of your Indians do we have to kill, Shekhar, for you to get a front page headline?” Is that why we aren’t bothered about Manipur now? Because they aren’t killing any of “our” Indians? Then, who were the 74 Indians killed in rioting over the past three weeks?

Manipur is tiny, with no more than 3.3-3.5 million diverse people. Such is their talent that today we can’t imagine life without them: In civil services, armed forces, sports, hospitality, art and culture. Each one who’s fighting, dying, becoming a refugee is one of “our” Indians. These are our own brothers, sisters, children, compatriots. We can’t afford to be so unmindful, ignorant, and insensitive to their plight. Unless we’ve become so arrogant that we think we can afford to lose them.

By Special Arrangement with ThePrint