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On Ethnicity, Conflict and Development in Manipur-
III
By Lokendra Arambam
Flickering Beacon:
The late Hijam Irabot, a communist revolutionary of the state in the early 20th century however had foreseen the necessity of these plural ethnoses to determine their futures in mutual relationship. In November 1947, he organized a collective meeting of leaders of Tangkhul, Kuki, Kabui and Mizo representatives and undertook an oath to uphold the unity of the ethnic brothers and respect the territorial integrity of the state. In 1948, the Naga National League under the leadership of A Daiho, a Mao from the northern hills of Manipur made the first demand for Nagas of Manipur to be integrated into the rising Naga movement. The movement was suppressed.
However, the first Naga blood was shed in the northern Hills of Manipur. The Indian government's subsequent settlement of Daiho by bringing him in as advisor to the Manipur Administration helped ease the Manipuri conscience, and they easily forgot subsequent developments. Besikho Chamaii, a Shepou Naga from the northern Hills of Manipur became the first volunteer from the hills of Manipur to join the Naga Army in 1956. Th.
Muivah joined in 1965, to rise soon in their ranks. All these were in keeping with the desires of the British colonial authorities who chose to patronize a separate destiny of the hill peoples and their remaining as Christianized replicas of western civilization in the sub-Himalayan regions. The Indian authorities who succeeded the British vacillated from time to time to design an appropriate nationality policy in the North-East.
The Naga movement was depicted as a secessionist, "hostile syndrome" and no polity debate was organized to inform the Manipuris on these issues of real public interest. In the post 60s things became more critical with large-scale participation of Nagas of Manipur in the cause of Naga identification and integration. The Naga Integration Committee under the leadership of men like Rishang Keishing, a popular democratic representative, also diversified the movement in various channels of negotiation and discussions with the Indian authorities.
Earlier, the Nehruvian ethos of new Indianism prevented any acceptance of Naga identity outside India's cultural pluralism. But his daughter transformed the earlier policies through a creative intervention amidst conflicting ethnic groups so as to weaken the movement from within. Classical Kautilyan devices were reintroduced under the real politick of Madame Indira Gandhi to seek out moderate elements from amongst radical groups and set them against each other. More radical elements could also be encouraged to form breakaway groups and the ethnicities should fight against one another, so that burdens of peacekeeping could be lessened for the sons from the heartland. Large-scale subsidies and largesse, both financial and social, pervaded the mainstreamliner's environment in the name of development. The new political and social elite could be persuaded to sink into corruption and decay. Development packages became fruitful thresholds for the power elite to cling to the status quo of patronage, and the culture of inebriation and decadence.
Wages of a failed state:
Economic failures, inability of the state to meet rising aspirations of diverse ethnic communities, and perpetual conflict within the democratic set-up for allocation of power, continued re-alignment of hill groups within the corrupt system of administration and governance, annihilating intrigue amongst leaders continued to plague the social and political scene of Manipur in the eighties. Government became the only institution capable of meeting the economic needs of the urban and rural unemployed due to
all-round failures of development projects elsewhere. Costly electoral practices broke the spine of the political classes and grasp of power became the only means for rejuvenation of emptied private coffers. The state therefore turned from a welfare institution to a profit making business concern. Here the power elite
encapsulated itself into a serious, self-centered, mutually annihilating corporate enterprise to serve the vicious circle of manipulating politicians, bureaucrats and police officials. A class of parasites was generated by the development efforts of the post-colonial Indian state. This state, which had democratic norms as a front, but which had failed the people for long was to bear the brunt of popular wrath and public hostility in the wake of ceasefire crisis.
The failed state however explodes into periodic bouts of violence over the public in order to hold on to its failing authority. Stories of extreme human rights violations in counter-insurgency operations often appear in the vernacular presses. Opposite viewpoints also emerge from press handouts from the security agencies. No proper conflict documentation is forthcoming from either the print or the electronic media. Reporting of the incidents in the cease-fire issue are often as reflective of the media prejudices, as are symptomatic of establishment discourses widely influencing the manipulation of opinion. The ethnic scenario of Manipur are as complicated as a spider's web, as the silken threads that link the luminous lines are secretive of deadly poison.
The framers of public policy and decision-making to help raise morale of the people and clear the air in the confused public domain of tension, suspicion and distrust are no longer the retreating state, nor the civil society, which exist in narrow ethnic and peer group lines. In fact, true civil society does not seem to exist. Public service organizations and clubs abound, capable and wiling to sacrifice lives again if their perceived notions of unity and dignity are
compromised. But the organizations themselves are as inadequate as the state in understanding the objective social and historical forces that are aroused by the discourse on development.
Journey of Conscience:
The Naga right of self-determination, strongly led by a dedicated and committed revolutionary cadre, backed by international non-government foras and a strong Baptist lobby, claims legitimacy and recognition, Fifty years of suppressive actions and atrocities perpetuated by the instruments of the Indian state had created this profile of an "oppressed
nation" seeking their rightful place in the international community of liberated nations in ongoing processes of decolonization. Their suffering and agonies during half a century of struggle had by now aroused the conscience of Indian civil society. The journey of conscience now being undertaken by policy planners, jurists, media intellectuals, North-East experts and rights workers
had perhaps impacted upon the decision makers of the Indian state. Groundswell of peace efforts at the home front also helped change attitudes that possibility of a political solution is around the corner.
However, beneath these high profile aspirations on peace, settlement and development as per genius of the involved protagonists in the Indo-Naga issue, there seem to lurk certain unwholesome ground realities, which lay as "structured absences" in official discourse. Certain unpalatable questions
are- whether the attempt to create political entity on "homogenous populations", the cleansing of the proposed, imagined territory of other "ethnic" elements, and true search for "Naga only" lebensraum has not raised issues of incompatibility of state
formation where pluralistic economies are the essential base? Why is not the concept of multiple ethnicities and ethnos pluralism, stark realities in
contemporary human geography, tried out in present day social engineering and political restructuring endeavors? Is not the concept of the Naga ancestral homeland, though sound and compact in theory, built up assumed
historiographies through sheer denial of the "other" in history and designed for current
political practices?
The current "Nagahood", an ideal consciousness built up through sweat, sacrifice and assiduous labors of many leaders do still retain old semblances of ethnic prejudice. The felt
minoritysm of Naga populations in Manipur and their desire to transform themselves into majority status, so that they may have an equal say in public affairs through integration within the "Naga nationhood" are still haunted by a lurking feeling of the replication of the same status of minoritysm in the proposed, enlarged Nagalim. Why is still there a grassroot suspicion of Wung Tangkhul chauvinism inspite of prolonged and sensitive approaches to the building up of the movement by Th.
Muivah? Why is it that Naga intellectuals regard Muivah as a beautiful flower in the Naga Independence tree, and not the tree?
From the other end of the
telescope:
The Meiteis in the plains, who has shared many vicissitudes of history with other communities in the region do not accept the "hate Meitei" campaigns by Naga organizations in Manipur as politically correct. They also
resent the continuous "depredations" on the national Highway 39 and National Highway 53 which traverse as essential lifelines of the state. In the political economy of Naga insurgency under IM's leadership, the "tax"
campaign over the trade and commerce on the National Highways, control over the sprawling commercial complexes in Dimapur (Nagaland), Senapati (northern district of Manipur), and Moreh (in the India-Myanmar border) etc. that had become vital cogs in the economic network, had been associated with large scale "forcible" appropriation of resources from the Highway scene.
Instead of enabling non-Naga communities to feel the urge for voluntary
contribution to the "cause", the enforced "taxes" had become "excessive extortion", which when loaded with cultural meaning in ethnic relationship is regarded as symbolic gestures of economic and political subjugation of neighboring communities. The presence of institutional apparatus of law and order of the state and India's security forces on the highways had no effect on the depredations (since they do not have the brief!), and their silence is also regarded in the same context as deliberately helping the sway of IM hegemony over the plains neighbors. Any non-action in such situation would be interpreted as deliberate ploys to heighten the ethnic divide.
In fact, marginalized voices in the North-East feel estranged with the Center's overall attitude towards peacekeeping and development within the unstable ethnic imbalances in the region. Sensitivity, a genuine cultural mode for understanding volatile issues, seems to have been lacking. Their "playing up" of the NSCN (IM) as the mother of all insurgencies, their treatment of them as the sacred cow, and their regard for other outfits as untouchables in the context of political approaches to ending insurgencies also smacks of "linear thinking" (in the same vein as they charge President Musharraf of Pakistan with obsessive pre-occupation with Kashmir). The secrecy and hush-hush attitudes in all delicate subjects of possible ethnic strife, their being prone to double speak, their measurement of
North-East peoples' character and standards through the
prism of their close association with effete political classes, their general perspectives on the Northeasterner "other" through the suspicious lens-eye of security agencies, and their ability to know and practice that weak, corrupt and unstable ethnic societies could be manipulated to perpetuate the state does more harm to the cause of India's nationhood than the work of "fissiparous tendencies" in the region.
-Concluded-
(This article is reproduced from the December 2001 issue of the Manipur Research Forum, Delhi's bulletin)
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