Will Manipur Ever Be Normal Again?

“My dream and only hope for my people born and unborn

That one day in Manipur the new sunrise equally shines on all people

Without any shadowed of opportunity across the hills as in the valley

To the peaceful coexistence where all people feel home safe and secure

To the days when our freedom fighters are honored as National heroes

To the sanity where we see one another as neighbors; not as foreigners

To the days where people are helping instead of hurting

And filled all hearts with humility and humanity as one Manipur.”

This poem ‘My Dream For A Future Manipur’ was written by Shongminthang Haokip, a member of the Kuki tribe in April 2021. I do not know who the poet is but from his words we can perceive how he is pained by the divisions within Manipur. He dreams of a time when “we see each other as neighbours not as foreigners.”

This is the basic grievance of the Kuki people living in Manipur; the other communities have looked at them as “outsiders” as people who came from Myanmar. And this is what the Chief Minister Biren Singh has also been emphasising all through the days before the violence and even during the violence.

We have seen the way the fear of the “outsider” has been used to whip up fear and consolidate votes. As far as the Northeast is concerned it started with the Assam movement against foreigners, that time it was the influx of the Bangladeshis.

The movement took on a communal turn, from being against outsider it became against the Muslims and all Muslims in Assam were called outsiders and later termed as “illegal migrants”. The whole drama of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) resulted in More than 19 lakh of the 3.29 crore applicants in Assam were left out of the final NRC that was finally published in 2019.

The survey had been done under supervision of the Supreme Court, took five years and cost ₹1,220 crore. The excluded people were called doubtful citizens included members of the family of a former President of India, as well men who had served in the Indian army. Many are still languishing in detention centres waiting to prove their citizenship.

Now the Meiteis are demanding that a similar exercise take place in Manipur. The influx of “outsiders” into Manipur includes migrant workers from other parts of India; it also includes Nepalis, some who came before the Manipur state joined the Union.

However, this time the target of the anti-outsider campaign are people who are clearly refugees fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar which has been under Military rule since February 2021. Manipur shares a border with two regions of Myanmar, Sagaing Region to the east and Chin State to the south. The people living in these areas share ethnic, historical and social ties with the Kuki-Chin-Mizo group of tribes living in Manipur and Mizoram.

From the time of the military coup the Myanmar refugees have been coming across the border to flee from the Myanmar Junta. Their villages have been bombed.

The Myanmar people have been resisting the onslaught of the Myanmar military and now the Myanmar Government in exile has an armed wing. However, the National Unity Government of Myanmar has said they were not interfering in the internal affairs of India.

The whole problem has got complicated by the directions given by the Central Government which has taken a stand that all these people coming from Myanmar are to be treated as illegal migrants and not refugees. In the latest incident in which 718 Myanmar citizens crossed into Manipur’s Chandel district. Of these there were 209 men, 208 women and 301 children. The Assam Rifles have been told to “push back” the refugees.

It is this attitude of the Central Government that has compelled the local Kuki-zo people to give shelter to people from Myanmar and even to hide them. The Assam Rifles is doing door to door surveys and accusing these refugees of coming to indulge in poppy cultivation and accusing the Kuki citizens of India as being “outsiders”.

Mizoram government and the people have refused to obey the Central Government and said that they would welcome the refugees from across the border. The Mizos have built basic shelter and offered the refugees basic humanitarian aid.

The simple solution could have been to allow the refugees to enter and hand them identity cards which would entitle them to some basic humanitarian aid as well as keeping a register of the refugees which would ensure that they could not settle permanently or buy land.

The problem of Myanmar refugees has been used by the Manipur Government and the Centre to whip up a fear of the outsiders and build a narrative to include the Kuki Indian citizens as outsiders.

The violence against the Kukis by the dominant Meitei community, especially by vigilante groups and backed by the police and state has resulted in unspeakable acts of cruelty and barbarity. Many Kuki women have been raped, men beheaded and villages burnt to cinders.

To say the Kukis too have committed atrocities is to be blind to the fact that the Meiteis were backed by the state and the Manipur state has been backed by the Centre. No one has yet explained how more than 5,000 arms were “looted” from the police stations and why they have not been recovered.

The Chief Minister said he would ensure that the perpetuators of the rape of the two Kuki women but failed to mention the fact that the two women were handed over to the mob by the police or the police failed to protect them from the mob.

The incident in which the two Kuki women who were stripped and paraded naked was preceded by a fake video in which a Meitei woman was shown being raped. The question is how such a fake video was circulating when there was an internet ban. And that was not the only case of fake videos being used to instigate violence against the Kukis.

No one can predict how this will end and when Manipur will return to normalcy. The Kukis have said they cannot live with the Meiteis and want to live under a separate administration. This is not a new demand, but this time Mizoram has come out openly and backed the demand. Kuki-Zo-Chin demand for a “Kuki Homeland,” “Kuki State,” “Autonomous Territorial Council” or “Separate Administration” either within Manipur or by integrating with neighbouring Mizoram.

However, their demand raises the question of the definition of what constitutes a Kuki homeland. It is here that the Kukis will be met with opposition by the Nagas and Meiteis because their map of the proposed Kukiland includes land claimed by the Nagas as their ancestral land.

There have been deadly clashes between Nagas and Kukis over land. There have also been conflict between Thadou Kukis and the Paites (included within the same Kuki-Mizo-Zo group) over land and then there has been the conflict between the Meiteis and the tribal people (which include both Nagas and Kukis)

The refugees coming into Manipur and Mizoram have to be provided with humanitarian aid and registered as refugees. If the military rule in Myanmar continues for long they would have no option but to settle in the Northeast. The refugees from an earlier time who have been recognized as refugees by the UNHCR and have even got resettlement offers are not being given exit visas because the Central Government says they are all illegal migrants.

Unless there is a clear policy towards the refugees coupled with an attempt to develop an alternative to identity politics by both the State and the people the future will see even more deadly clashes in Manipur and in the rest of the Northeast.

Nandita Haksar is a human-rights lawyer, teacher, campaigner and writer. Views expressed are the writer’s own.