The Indian Connection with Manipur Riots

The present conflict between the Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur has reopened the old wounds between the union of India and the erstwhile kingdom of Manipur though it is not helping anyone, with thanks to the charismatic Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If we go by speculation on how the prime minister of India has been responding—or rather not responding at all when a part of its union is going through a bloody crisis—there is a serious missing link between India and Manipur. If you talk to political observers, you will get the idea that this has always been the case. However, when there is a situation like it is now, there must be no space to replace realpolitik, for the simple reason that people are dying, and they are getting polarised for no good reason. At all. People are always more important than constructs like a nation-state. It might sound paradoxical to state that this is the time when the general public as well as people in governance and administration need their leader the most, while the most you can see is the least care from that person. And this is so unacceptable.

The ruling regime promotes itself with the concept of double engine, taking the idea of a federal structure in which the Centre and the constituent state work together when there is a single political party in these two places. Apparently, it turns out it is just one of the political gimmicks that the Bharatiya Janata Party is notorious for. The joke goes that the social-media savvy prime minister will speak out when a hooligan is killed in the state of Uttar Pradesh but he has nothing to say when there are killings, and internal displacement of thousands of people in a place like Manipur. You will not be wrong to say that India is still clueless when it comes to issues in a place located absurdly far from its imagined nation-ness.

This has been going on for a long time now. Incidentally, does India have a limit to test the patience of one of its people inhabiting in a periphery that shares no social, racial, historical or cultural affiliation? Above all, there have been proxy wars against the citizens with the imposition of draconian act like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. Kill the people and you enjoy all the legal impunity. The relationship between the union of India and the Manipur state has been reduced to, in the words of Prof A Bimol Akoijam from JNU, New Delhi, ‘a patron-client culture with a jeopardized self-agency of the client’.

Note: Prof Bimol also stated in an interview that Modi epitomises the fault-line between India’s and the rest of country. Source: The Interview with Karan Thapa, The Wire

In this context, apart from historical and geographical reasons, it is noteworthy that one cause behind the existence of armed movements is the prejudiced views at best, and often negligence and apathy of the Indian State. Once a proud kingdom, it was merged as a Part-C state with a chief commissioner positioned at the helm of affairs way back in 1949, following the controversial Merger Agreement. So, here, PM Modi can take a breather, because he has already been working for 20 hours a day, and many of the present issues were created and nurtured during the monotonous three-decade Congress rule of free India from Forty-seven to Two-thousand Fourteen with some minor hiccups in-between.

However, can we end the deliberation here? More than 200 people have lost their lives and nearly 50 thousand people are struggling and suffering in relief camps in the wake of the ongoing riots in Manipur. We simply cannot take things for granted, including the fact that it amounts to utter ignorance and arrogance when the head of the state can afford to not say a single word about the severe humanitarian crisis, while he travels around the world, visits places in other parts of India, and spreads the propaganda of his right-wing organisation, and what not.

This tells a lot about India as much it does for PM Modi. And more than this realisation, there is a huge question mark on the nation-state of India. Is it that incompetent? Helpless? Or is it consumed, as always, by its indifference and lack of political will? Or is it that it knows no other way but only for heavy militarisation to solve the political problems? The last one, contemporary history shows, is just too little in terms of intervention though the military occupies a major space in our collective lives, for the simple reason that India is hell bent on applying brute military solutions to political problems.

Today, the unceasing issue is so complicated, yet there are solutions if there is some sense of political will. This will be too hopeful considering the fact that India has learnt so much from its colonial masters and it is imitating them so accurately for its own good. AFSPA, sedition laws, the concept of divide and rule and so on—and the list goes on. However, it is 2023; and all these things must have been scrapped a long time ago. When groups like those in subaltern studies are making a link between the change of agency and ownership, the government can learn something from its experts and ideologues. In fact, that will be the least the nation-state can do for the sake of formality and satisfaction of the people who have been bearing the brunt of the conflict while the authority stands as a nonchalant bystander. However, it can still take control of the organisations with which it has been in talks, under a nomenclature like the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreements with groups belonging to one ethnic group that began in 2008. There is a way, as it goes, when there is a will.

India has also been in talks with another ethnic group, or the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (IM faction). However, it seems it simply cares little because there are other Naga groups who are against the so-called peace agreement that was formally started in 1997. It is the same thing with the SoO agreements by taking only only a few groups into its confidence. In terms of quantity, the State is in talks with 25 Kuki groups, out of which 17 are under the umbrella group Kuki National Organisation (KNO), and eight under the United People's Front (UPF). Yet, these are only with Kuki groups and simply, Manipur is home to scores of ethnic groups. Officially, there are main three groups: the Meiteis who predominantly live in the Imphal valley; plus 33 other ethnicities that are categorised under the Nagas and Kukis, both of whom live in the surrounding hill areas.

As the present fighting shows, this is only deepening the ethnic fault lines. This must be a blessing for India because it is easier to dominate when the natives are divided on every kind of identities. Still, is it going to achieve its political goals of Akhand Bharat by employing the Kautilyan magic formula of using force, monetary inducement, reconciliation, and the policy of divide and rule? Very unconvincing. This only shows clearly both the levels of Indian ignorance and arrogance. For the sake of formality, though, the present Manipur is legally and politically very much a part of India, and the latter has every right to make an intervention since the state government is just too incompetent to contain the issue. It should not join the state government in being so hopeless. After all, they can flex about the double-engine government if it can make some reconciliation between the warring groups; though clearly, it is not happening.

Coming back, it is not an issue when PM Modi wants to wear the most expensive kurta-pyjama (that reportedly costs ₹4,31,31,311). This will, of course, help propagating the perfect idea of Indian soft power. However, when it comes to substance, the only thing the PM has mastered is not even in expressing his indifference and cluelessness but only in showing off all the styles as dictated by the regime’s affiliated organisations, such as the Sangh Parivar and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that is headquartered in Nagpur in western India. It is not without reason that many people call him a feku, which according to Urban Dictionary, is ‘a colloquial Hindi slang which typically refers to a person who continuously and shamelessly brags and lies about things/deeds far beyond their capacity’. It is even worse when the client-patron binary brings forth a politician like Nongthombam Biren, who is so impressed with the prime minister that he even started growing his beard like how Modi used to flaunt before the pandemic.

Unsurprising it is here, because of the patron-client culture, the state government cannot even persuade its main man (read Modi) to speak up; regardless of the severity of the relationship between India and Manipur. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why Modi enjoys his privilege as the head of a nation-state, as he travels around the globe bragging about the third-world country of India. (As of 21 June, when this article was written, Modi is visiting the US. He has reached there. It is said that India can get more quality arms and ammunition from this country than Russia, from where India has been regularly in business with, as far as military weapons are concerned).

In the last 74 years or so, as noted earlier, the only thing that India has been successful in that part of the world is in sending in army and security personnel and imposing draconian and black laws. The same has been happening in the wake of the present conflict that exploded on 3 May 2023. India does not have to stage fake surrender dramas to show that individuals, who were former members of proscribed organisations, to join the mainstream. Just a bit of sincerity and concern can do wonders. And Narendra Modi, no matter how much vain he is, he can still make an intervention for the peace of mind of the citizens, for the welfare of different ethnic groups, and for the health of Indian democracy at least. After all we live in a modern nation-state and our collective well-being depends on the decisions of the government that enjoys the maximum privileges with access to all kinds of resources.

Many Indians must not be aware that the nation-building project of their country is still a work in progress even after seven decades of independence; and many of them admire the head of the Indian nation-state under no conditions, because the head is banking on religious grounds and crony capitalism with the people regardless of his sincerity. Yet, this cannot go on forever. Check the world map from the last five hundred years and you can see how the boundaries of empires and kingdoms and nation-states have been changing all the time. It is just that 2023 happens to be one of the low years for Manipur, coinciding with the deafening silence of the present regime and the fact that this very territory is politically a part of India, but with no power to exercise its own agency. In the 21st century, experts term this phenomenon as neocolonialism. Why would Modi care about this insignificant thing of insignificant people? And it follows why India should be either. It is no wonder then, that the brutality from both warring ethnic groups continues unabated, with no solution in sight.