When the evening descends on the hills of Manipur, people do not return home as they do in the cities. They expect a continuation of the daily ritual, not the end of it—requiring cleansing. Time here has not been bound by obligation and necessities but by the rain and the sun that alternate every few hours. After the rain, a cool wind sweeps the hilly lanes, and a retinue of people begins their card games, the local version of Mahjong. One can hear the rustic tone of their laughter (a spurt), exposing the rascalry of some players, inviting a series of loud and synchronized laughter from the kids. These folks seemed to have made the game inclusive, something apparently impossible to do. Or so we think—we, people used to the divisiveness of the chance factor in a game of poker since The Mahabharata—division, sharing by force (with a veil of fair play) of women, and… land! But here were these people, living inconspicuously in a hilly village, laughing it all away…
“Duryodhana, why are you anxious?”
The biggest, all-pervasive concern that people have in India is unemployment. So much so that everything else veers out of sight, only the job remains steadfast, in focus. After all, focusing is a virtue long expounded in The Mahabharata through Arjuna, the central Pandava, who was known to keep his aims in focus invariably. Sure enough, Prince, our driver who drove us to Ukhrul on our Manipur trip, said, talking about the rebels, “These people cannot manufacture a matchstick by themselves, and are dreaming of a free Manipur!” with a decisive scoff. His outlook sounded borrowed, somewhat of an incantation that has more force than substance. Still, we refrained from asking him about the utilization of the “proto-industry” in Manipur—especially the indigenous handloom work that the Northeast (from an India-centric view) is known for. Why didn’t it flourish, as it should have, with a Nationalist government in power doe so many decades? But I couldn’t possibly have asked that question without betraying my position as an armchair political commentator on a holiday.
As the rain splattered on the car roof, it felt like the air was cooling down outside. Long in the distance, we could see cars moving at a snail’s pace along the winding hilly roads, because that is what distance makes of objective reality. Is Prince at a distance? Was it possible, considering he belonged there and must know what he wanted?
But then I floundered. Isn’t this the rhetoric, the same façade that liberal democracies put before our eyes? You must know—as an adult at 18 years of age—who has learnt history, history of the nationalist Congress party, which claimed the high-sounding values of Gandhi and the valour of Bose, without seeming to find any contradiction in the seamless pattern of the freedom struggle. History books that contain stories take people to a distance from where everything seems to have an inevitable pattern and the finer details that claim otherwise drift out of focus. In hindsight, Prince’s jealous anxiety seemed to stem from alienation. A double alienation at that. We remembered the sparkle in his eyes when he talked about his friends who live in the North Indian states and earn lots and party lots. But we refrained from asking him why he returned to Manipur then. We remembered that he had casually answered that question previously. He had to take care of his parents—but that concern does not plague those who are attracted by the disco lights and the revelry that ensues. Prince wanted to belong, we decided. And to belong, and still be on the same page as his friends, he would need a job, preferably a government one, find a suitable girl, marry, settle.
“I know how to play the game, while Yudhisthira is naïve”, said Shakuni.
“I know how to play the game, while Yudhisthira is naïve”, said Shakuni.
If all you need is a job, the game becomes easier. No questions asked—just a job that fetches enough money to keep your body and soul together. “Sure”, says Shakuni, “that’s doable because they don’t know what they are playing against!” Prince’s jealousy turned anxiety can easily be handled by a government—for the time being and to immediately gather more support from the people—people like Prince, people who were disgruntled by years of government negligence.
Shakuni knows how to play. He consciously identifies two warring factions. If they aren’t warring enough, he makes a conscious effort to make sure that they do. But his motive isn’t to favour one of these factions but to satisfy a desire that won’t stop haunting him until doused.
Prince is a Meitei, a Manipuri community that lives in the plains. Now, if the Meiteis want government jobs, the Kukis, the Nagas and the Zos aren’t primitive agrarian people who do not know the utility of paper money. One must understand that the hill tracts of Manipur have been kept famished by the government for a long, and the reason that protests and free violence have not mostly erupted traditionally is that hunger becomes hunger when the knowledge of food is acknowledged by sight. Thanks to the internet, nobody is “backward” enough not to want jobs now, and with the Meiteis getting robust representation in jobs, and most importantly in the Legislative Assembly, a call for action is not anomalous. Whatever was keeping public anger from exploding clearly gave way when the Central Government decided to confer the Meiteis with the “ST” status. This step would mean a reserved category of “tribals” won’t feel isolated in their own land, a pet rhetoric of parochial parties and organizations. As tribals, would the Meiteis be able to stake their claim on tribal land? It is important to not forget that tribal land is mostly in the hills that have long been eyed by the central government as rich reserves of petroleum. However, these lands were inaccessible to them because of the talismanic Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980, which restricted the use of forests for “non-forest” purposes, which included the commercialization of the agricultural space with the cultivation of tea, coffee, spices, oil-bearing plants, and rubber, among others. This Act can also be viewed as an auxiliary of The Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960, which laid out the land laws for the non-hilly Manipur. A separate law was to prevail for the hilly regions. Furthermore, Section 158 of the same Act proscribes the transfer of tribal property by enmeshing it in bureaucratic procedures.
But times do not remain the same. During the mid-1980s- early 90s, the Indian Union witnessed tumultuous political scenes. The popularity of the Congress party declined, so much so that thenceforth it would only return to power with the help of a coalition (UPA). Simultaneously, another political power simmered in the background—a political force to reckon with, the Hindu Right Wing. Ever since it began having an influence on Indian politics, it has tried to procure land to serve its burning desire—to be subservient to Big Capital. The UPA government too went the same way as it had become the order of the day by 2007, with P. Chidambaram suggesting the army carpet bomb the tribals in Chhattisgarh. However, the Hindu Right Wing, which made its political presence felt with the BJP in power, succeeded where the Congress had faltered. Although Chhattisgarh is still unresolved, Manipur seems to be working out for them perfectly, with their friendship with their allies in need, the Meiteis, setting up the perfect alibi for the State.
When the BJP pledged their allegiance to Big Capital, they were quick on their heels with The Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland (Amendment) Ordnance, 2020. This was an amendment to the Act that was originally conceived in 2008 and amended again in 2014. The current version mentions that the “diversion” of agricultural land will be dealt with under section 20 of The Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960. Relevantly, the penalty mentioned in the same section for diversion is a mere Rs. 100. This is the crucial point where the MLR & LR can enter the hilly areas as a tunnel, a Trojan carrying liberalization, much like Article 370 in J & K.
We have seen rampant misuse of the law in the case of Kerala, where a similar Act was implemented in 2008, with people having deep enough pockets to build houses on paddy lands. While the press in Manipur is mostly a closed-door affair, one can only guess what defence this Act can provide against Big Capital, if it decides to encroach. Furthermore, the assistance of the Meitei-Kuki conflict will only ferret out the weak from their homeland. Keeping in line with its intentions, the government has now moved The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023 [1], and the timing could not have been more perfect as a shock doctrine. The Bill gives priority to “National Security” and makes ambiguous the definition of forests by saying that “forests” that are in the vicinity of a rail track do not qualify as forests! Whose interests will be served by such a clause? Interestingly, this feature of the Bill makes a mockery of the 1995 Supreme Court judgment on T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India [2].
In any case, the popular narrative is no more about the State at war with its people. Rather, the popular media at the behest of the Central government, projects the Manipur story as a conflict between two communities over Government favor. However, history tells us that people do not go to war when they are not given jobs. Rather, they go to all extremes to find a job, including leaving their homeland. The problem is upended when someone tries to usurp their homeland, their forests. That is when they go to war.
‘Yudhisthira, you must not pawn yourself when you’ve got a woman left (to pawn)’
In a war, traditionally, it is the women who are at stake, along with the land. Time and again, the woman-mother has been imagined to be the metaphor for the nation. It would be nothing more than puerile if it stopped at that. However, the mother is someone whom the worthy son must protect. The woman/mother can be degraded in a perverse fetish to humiliate the husband/son. When a recent video surfaced on the internet depicting two tribal women being paraded naked in Manipur, the entire political game of the Centre-Right displayed this fetish. It was highlighted on the front page of The Telegraph how it took 79 days for the Prime Minister to react to the incident.
The degradation and brutalization of women are not new in Manipur, and the name Thangjam Manorama is still fresh in our minds. However, in 2004, it was the Meitei women calling out the Indian Army for appropriating The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958), more notoriously known as AFSPA, against the PLA (People’s Liberation Army). The narrative was still the State vs. a people’s front that fought tooth and nail against the ghoulish neoliberal policies of the State. However, two decades later, the State launched a full-fledged pogrom against the tribals of Manipur by clearly giving a free run to the Meitei militants [3]. The consequence was not unlikely at all, and yet, such a step [4].
All these repressive measures by the state are appalling to common sense, but then why isn’t there a popular outrage against the subsequent governments that have left no stone unturned to subvert any attempt at self-determination by the people of a state? That part of the country that binds the land together into a Nation-State. It is ironic that a “mother” who has been freed from the clutches of the rapacious colonial power now holds its sister captive in a bizarre family drama where the sharp-tongued in-laws are replaced by the gun-wielding military. However, again, the popular consciousness has not been allowed for decades to harbour any idea of a state existing outside the purview of the “Nation” for fear of sacrilege. Nobody wonders why, as the noted scholar Partha Chatterjee points out in his The Truths and Lies of Nationalism, why Yemen is not a part of the Indian Union after the latter asserted its sovereignty in 1947, even though it was a part of the Bombay Presidency! Of course, culture is what binds a country together, the counter-argument would follow. However, can culture be unitary and uncontested? Is culture homogenous and not governed by any sort of power hegemony? In other words, is culture devoid of the upper class and upper caste-dominated rules and regulations codified as tradition?
Coming back to the idea of the Nation as a mother, we can hardly miss how the people have been moulded in the fashion that the Fuhrer would have loved. It is a Hitler-era combination of unquestioned allegiance and participation in a bigger idea of a Great Nation, which the people have not only been subscribing to but also vilifying those who do not. Obedience to the Nation-mother also means not being able to lay full claim on the Land-mother—ridiculous as it sounds—the farmers, the rightful sons of the latter were villainized by the popular media for not subscribing to the Right-Wing goal of taking the nation to the uncountable-zeroes suffixed to the total worth of the economy! But talking about the failure to provide for the people is a negative thought, which should not be harboured during a mission, a war, a never-ending war, whether it is against an invisible virus or the poor, said at the risk of a tautology.
However, the Mother, irrespective of who can lay claims on her, the husband or the son, is the most glorified and appropriate entity that there is. This idea is a shift from the original idea of the Fatherland, as the dynamics of a Nation-State are different and the idea of the goal that is to be set must have immediate food for thought, present in the rank-and-file’s head even when he is resting—the Mother! The dignity, the modesty, the life of the Mother that he serves but cannot have the kindness of is at stake.
Parallels with the Fuhrer regime become pertinent when the land laws of a state are tweaked in an inconspicuous manner under the guise of the Conservation Bill 2023. The said Bill grants the Central Government the right to define and have discretion on the use of forest land, which although overtly means the construction of eco-parks and its likes, might take a covert turn toward industrial ventures. How does this Bill affect Manipur and its “Land-mother”? The answer is Petroleum. Like the agrarian policies were a basis for the bigger, industrial dream of a war-destroyed Germany, the Manipur of 2023 probably stands witness to history. If the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India had so far been protecting tribal land, and there had been hitherto no way for the centre to bypass this “obstacle”, they once again play the card they play best, religion. The ST status to the Meiteis does effectively make them Hindu tribals. So, should they succeed in breaking up the chunks of land that the Tribal Heads now own, there is nothing that stops them from showing themselves as people who are committed to the Economic Dream that the government has been selling. Although the pan-India farmer unrest rejected that dream, what has not succeeded somewhere else might not have to fail in Manipur! What had been the work of the vocational army of Hitler’s Reichserbhofgesetz—to make efficient use of the land so that industrial Germany is well fed—transforms as the Meitei collaborators of the Central government buying tribal land (and thus breaking up the Land into a thousand shards of small, efficient holdings) to further the dream of the Centre to be the best ever crony of Big Capital. Although the Kukis still stick to the benevolent-feudal system where the Tribal Head still has ownership of land making such a possibility difficult, one cannot underestimate the slithery way in which liberal bourgeois ideas trickle in. With subsequent generations, as the feudal ideas become weaker and a Nationalist grain takes its place, will the land issue not become easier to handle for the State? The road is not smooth, one has to concede, with the opium cartels operating in cahoots with certain independent armed fronts, but the “war on drugs” Indian Edition has already been launched (this time the US is the inspiration) to alienate the Kukis as a people [5]. Once such military operations are popularized, the onus would then be with the people of hilly Manipur to prove to the rest of India that they are not lesser Indians. Moreover, the exercise with the Naga tribes would be easier for the government because they already have a sort of individual liberty regarding ownership sanctioned by the village chiefs.
The problem remains that the left has largely been silent on the entire episode, except for a few individuals, resulting in a ‘win-win scenario’ for the State. The continuous ideological decline that the mainstream lefts and communist parties have been going through for the past decades has unprecedentedly disrupted the people’s struggle against the bourgeoise state and helped the latter to champion all its boorish neoliberal agenda. And Manipur is not an exception!
The situation has worsened so much that the judiciary had to interfere and grant a woman lawyer, who was on a fact-finding mission in Imphal, protection from arrest. The only hope is a mass organization against the shameless act of violence going on in Manipur, the genesis of which might already have taken place with the Kuki and Zo women’s forum taking a stand in Delhi [6]. If these resilient women can pull off another Shaheen Bagh, there’s some hope that the future can be salvaged.
But right before the evening descends on the hills of Manipur, the school children come down the serpentine hilly roads; their red uniform make them of the same kind as red ants that dream of the clouds but fear the rain. As our car scuttled toward the airport, I could think of nothing else but what these little ones would make of matchsticks, by the time they grow up, and understand love. Will the little girls light another candle at the mass, and return as part of a procession in their brilliant phaneks and scintillated minds indolent of new love; their minds hovering down the hilly streets that take unexpected turns into another tribal neighbourhood that has the bust of Babasaheb portrayed as Jesus the liberator? Or would they produce their own matchsticks and light hundreds of thousands of them to find a way on the windy, rainy Manipur nights patrolled by the army? As we get down at the airport, Prince asks us to visit again, as he does to all his tourist clients. The temperature in Manipur has been steadily rising, he finally remarks.
References
- https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-hornets-nests-in-the-forest-amendment-bill/article67128669.ece
- https://indiankanoon.org/doc/372706/#:~:text=In%20T.N.,of%20ownership%20or%20classification%20thereof.
- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipur-imphal-easts-itham-ends-army-leave-seized-weapons-8684862/
- https://www.telegraphindia.com/north-east/seven-year-old-boy-mother-relative-burnt-alive-in-ambulance-in-outskirts-of-imphal/cid/1942840
- https://scroll.in/article/1050773/poppy-in-the-hills-why-manipurs-civil-war-is-being-linked-to-narcotics-trade
- https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/kuki-zo-womens-forum-organises-protest-in-delhi-demands-separate-administration-for-tribals-in-manipur/cid/1955140
