“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”
The visuals coming out from Manipur each day underscore the truth in these lines from Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. As Sonia Gandhi put it, what is happening in Manipur will not stay in Manipur. It has left deep wounds on the entire nation’s conscience. The home minister has called for an all-party meet to discuss how to control the situation and restore peace, but the roots of the trouble run deep and it is necessary that the prime minister, after his visits abroad himself leads the initiative to restore peace and trust. His silence hangs heavy over the scene.
Until recently, Manipur was a great example of how various ethnic and religious groups may live together peacefully for generations without losing their cultural identities. The violence in the valley seems to follow the same divisive trajectory set into motion in the 1940s, which ultimately resulted in India being partitioned along religio-ethnic lines.
Suddenly, fears of losing land and ethnic identity translated into angers, erupting into violence, first between the Vaishnavite Hindu majority Meiteis and the tribal Kukis from around the hills, and have since spread to other communities. One fears as the 2024 general election draws near and vote bank politics consolidates communities into hostile self-pitying groups, the contamination may spread to other states.
It is true India’s restless north-eastern states have a long history of violent ethnic clashes and often their tribal leaders and secessionist groups have displayed a certain hostility to the rulers in Delhi. The Mughals sensing this left them pretty much to their own devices for sorting out ethnic and tribal problems. They termed them, “Ghair Mumkin”, impossible to rule by the usual procedures. But the British began a sly process of segregating and then weaponising ethnic identities, appeasing the majority groups and keeping the tribal heads busy in their internal battles for superior status while they used its precious natural resources uninterruptedly.
More or less the same template of divide and rule was used to carve out small states that offered loyal vote banks despite their intricate ethnic mix.
A template of divide and rule
Manipur is an example, itself home to some 39 ethnic communities following variously Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. To quell resistance by rights groups in the North East, over the years successive governments imposed laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, handing over the peacekeeping job more or less to the army.
Meanwhile, when elections came, the political leadership in Delhi continued to woo ethnic groups individually, making electoral promises that could empower them far above their rivals.
On the eve of the 2019 general election, a letter from the armed groups to India’s home minister was seen on social media. The armed groups demanded that their candidate be given a party ticket in exchange for the support of their group. Though this is now denied by them, in the 2022 state elections, two Kuki insurgent groups issued statements in support of the Bharatiya Janata Party, while the majority Hindu Meitei community demanded inclusion in the coveted ST category.
The race to claim a coveted share in the reservations polarized the state, with the tribes from the hills, who enjoyed this status, fearing that their quota would shrink. During the elections, complaints surfaced in the media from civil society groups about “open intimidation” by militants and incidents of violence at polling booths.
Eventually, the re-elected government’s efforts to include the Hindu community of Meiteis backfired.
The state has been aflame for more than 50 days but the attitude of the central leadership and the majority of the media towards Manipur’s domestic crisis can best be described by the Yiddish word Chutzpah, which means a supreme uncaring self confidence that if nothing is done, gradually things will normalise over time.
When the violent clashes began in Manipur, both the Union government and the national media misjudged its seriousness. Delhi sent emissaries to douse the fires and restore peace. Two powerful leaders of the party, Sambit Patra, BJP’s coordinator for the North East, and the Assam chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, held meetings with various parties and smaller groups, but the response remained muted.
However, the central leadership, which had during the electoral rallies repeatedly boasted of the great synergy between the government and itself, dubbing it a “double engine” government, maintained a puzzling silence. Finally, India’s home minister, the ultimate troubleshooter, went to Manipur and and met with various groups and local leaders. But this strategy appears to have had little effect on the ground.
The violence continued to spread and armed attacks by one community against another became more and more frequent. What Manipur perhaps expected was that the prime minister, a man who had told them that each vote for the BJP was a vote for him, and together as a noble engine ‘sarkar’, they’d lead the state to great glory.
A delegation of nine Meitei MLAs (eight from the BJP and one Independent) tried to meet the prime minister before he left for his much-publicised State visit to the US, but they failed to meet him. The media turned away and got busy covering Modi’s US visit.
As a result, Manipur could be seen as a circle that has led us back to where it all started: the arrogance and greed of local leaders, coupled with the gullibility of those who elected them. This could be due to the inflated and dangerously divisive promises made to them before the election, that were impossible to deliver without igniting intense anger among the deprived minorities.
Global political unrest
Manipur, in a way, is a microcosm of the macrocosm in the globalised world: torn apart by civil wars, a nuclear power bombing its neighbour to reclaim territory it had before the USSR disintegrated, environmental degradation causing devastating floods, droughts and cyclones, which in turn are causing mass migrations among the poorer nations.
It was difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at the celebration of International Yoga Day amid such misery. A photo gallery of fat, out of shape ministers, soldiers and diplomats celebrating India’s Vishwa Yoga Gurudom while discussing the conservation of the world ecology and green fuel.
Truth be told the world is in denial about the real suffering and pain caused by bad political judgment and corporate greed.
World bodies and groups of several nations stand by listlessly while the corporates and autocrats loot and pillage the earth, and dismiss the plight of the impoverished. Periodically, cosmetic global meetings to solve global issues. But instead of holding the powerful accountable, emissaries of leaders who arrive to participate in these meetings in their private jets are hosted by organisations such as the UN.
Isn’t it odd to talk about AI, yoga, and also make various deals for military hardware, amid the clinking of glasses and back-thumping bonhomie? What chance do tribal leaders from a tiny state, and their memorandums listing the pain of millions of poor and oppressed, have of being heard during such an atmosphere of cheer where billions worth of military hardware is being bought and sold?
Once upon a time, India’s minorities were led to believe that being a minority group would not matter in a secular civilised republic we were all creating. That the beast of racial secessionism that Pakistan had succumbed to had been tamed and driven under ground by secular democratic India.
The people accepted that they may attach little importance to their religious identity because they were all proud Indians. But over time, some others may not turn out be so idealistic. We forgot that the beast banished underground could actually be coaxed into re-emerging when power hungry politicians and corporate interests set the ethnic, linguistic, and religious faultines in motion.
What is happening in Manipur is not just another freak show in a remote corner. The dynamics of intense fear and loathing among various communities had been exacerbated during the state elections. And, the Assam chief minister may be fulminating against the former US President Barak Obama’s polite but clear warning to India about the hidden threats of violent ethnic break-ups within, but given the situation in Manipur, his words of caution seem wise and deserve serious consideration.
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.