MANIPUR BURNS IN TEARS

        MANIPUR

      BURNS IN TEARS

M anipur has a long history of ethnic rivalry among the three communities, the Meiteis, the Kukis and the Nagas. The hill tribes claim that valley people have cornered all the developmental works in the state as they enjoy political dominance while Meiteis allege that they are increasingly getting marginalised in their ancestral lanvd. Their population which was 59 per cent of the total population of Manipur in 1951 has now been reduced to 44 per cent as per 2011 Census data. More importantly, they cannot buy land in hill areas where tribals have

 has definitely calmed things down, and formation of peace committee comprising members of civil society to be led by the Governor of Manipur has also helped in restoring normalcy and instituting confidence building measures among the affected communities. One however, needs to wait and watch and see how a long-lasting agreement is reached that would be acceptable to all. It should be done at the earliest and is of utmost importance. At the time of going to press, on June 14 there was another outbreak of violence, one of the worst, in which 9 were killed and 10 injured and the official residence of the only woman minister was set on fire. As Manipur is a sensitive border state having national security implications, the political issues have to be resolved at the earliest.

          

exclusive rights and are forced to remain confined to the Imphal valley.The recent violence which spun out of control began on May 3, after the All Tribal Students Union Manipur (ATSUM) held a solidarity march in all districts opposing the recent Manipur High Court order, which had asked the Manipur State government to send a recommendation to the Centre regarding the demand to include the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes (STs) list.  

      According to police sources, an armed mob in the Torbung area of Churachandpur district attacked people of the Meitei community during the May 3 march. This led to retaliatory attacks in the Valley districts. Many shops and houses in Torbung were vandalised and gutted in violence that lasted more than three hours. For the next three days there was an outbreak of great violence and arson in various districts in Manipur, including Churachandpur, imphal East, Imphal West, Bishnupur, Tengnoupal, and Kangpokpi.         

     Following this, district magistrates were authorised by the Manipur government to issue shoot-at-sight orders. On May 4, as the violence escalated, the Centre

invoked Article 355 of the Constitution, an emergency provision that empowers the Centre to take necessary steps to protect a State against ernal aggression or innal disturbances. Convoys of Fucks belonging to the Army Assam Rifles, Rapid Action Fee, and local police personnel spread out all over the affected areas of the state to restore calm. Mobile data and broadband connections were suspended. Many were reported killed and hundreds wounded; and over 9,000 people belonging to the Kuki and Meitei communities and others were displaced. 98 people were killed and 310 injured. 1,988 homes belonging to Meiteis and 1,425 Kuki homes spread across 158 Meitei-dominated villages, 83 Kuki-dominated villages and 33 villages of mixed-population were burnt down or vandalised. These are official figures, actuals could me more. The Centre and the State each contributed Rs 5 lakh for the kin of those who lost their lives in the violence as part of a relief and rehabilitation package for those affected by the conflict. 

          Accord g to defence sources around 9000 people were rescued from vi-hit areas and given shelter. Buildings, homes, and other property, including vehicles, have been destroyed. Though violence was brought to a stop its after effects are visible across Manipur in the form of destroyed infrastructure and people running away from the state out of fear for their lives and more violence. Till May 15, around 7900 people fled the state and as per official figures 1400 people took shelter in Assam's Cachar district and 6520- in Mizoram. Chief Minister N. Biren Singh's plea for calm has proved futile. Suggesting that the violence was the result of a misunderstanding, Singh said that the government was taking all measures to maintain law and order, including requisitioning additional paramilitary fees. Central and State forces have been directed to take strong action against individuals and groups found engaging in violence. Indefinite curfew was imposed in the Meitei-dominated Imphal West Kakching, Thoubal, Jiribam, and Bishnupur districts, as well as in the Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi and Tengnoupal districts. Latest reports said that around 500 people belonging to the Kuki community have sought shelter at the CRPF camp in Lamphelpat in Imphal. In the Motbung area of Kangpokpi district, where the Kuki people have a significant presence, over 20 houses were set on fire. More than 1,000 people belonging to the Meitei community have fled the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district. Violent incidents also occurred in the border town of Morch in Tengnoupal district, where many Meitel houses were set on fire. Incidents of violence have also been reported from many yarts of the capital cty of Imphal, The immediate provocation for the ethnic arch was the demand for the Meitei comunity, to be included & list. But that is only a suplicit cause. The underlying miger, sinumering for a long time, is hoked out just to the government's clampdown on reserved and protected forests in the State's hill areas but also to the Kukis' feeling of being persecuted. Several Chin, people of the same ethnic group from across the border in Myanmar, have entered India, fleeing violence and persecution, and the government's tough stance against these so- called illegal immigrants has angered the Kukis, whose kin they are. 

   Manipur Chief Minister's

                 

tough stance against what he calls encroachment of reserved and protected forest areas in the hills of Manipur by tribal communities stems from various causes, including the fact that many acres of land in the hills are being used for poppy cultivation. The government sees its crackdown on forest areas as part of a bigger war against drugs, but it is also guilty of using "drug lords" as a blanket term against all Kuki people. Secondly, there is serious pressure on land in Manipur. As populations increase in the tribal villages, they tend to spread out into surrounding forest areas, which they consider their historical and ancestral right. This is contested by the government. Simultaneously, the Meitei, who live in the valleys, ar angry because they are not allowed to settle or buy land in the hill areas, while tribal people can buy land in the valleys. The government has no real policy about how it plans to recognise new villages. Nor is there any transparent forest policy m Manipur. This has led to resentment even within its own

party. On April 12, Paolienlal Haokip, a BJP MLA a Kuki himself, questioned the sudden revenue and forest survey undertaken in the Churachandpur- Khoupum Protected Forest in Churachandpur district, which was designated a protected forest in 1966. In a letter dated April 12 addressed to Biswajit Singh, Minister for Power, Forest, Environment, and Climate Change described the forest survey as a matter of great public anguish andi perceived injustice. Haokip said that he had recently pointed out in the Assembly that the State government's nullification of the orders of an earlier Assistant Settlement Officer (ASOT excluding certain villages from proposed protected forest areas was wrong. He wanted to know how the State government coul nullify the orders of an ASO, the statutory authority under th Indian Forest Act of 1927 to sett any claims of pre-existing righ on land in the absence of a Forc Section Officer (FSO), a post the... is currently vacant. Haokip added that the delay in processing clain cited as a reason, was the fault the authorities concerned and of the landowners. He added that. cannot be a reason for annullie any order that excludes lar claimed by the forum of trig chiefs from the protected for area. He also pointed out tha there were no survey records with the State government, it proved that the Govt. Gazette declaring the Churachandpur-Khoupum forest area as a protected area was flawed and therefore void. He went on to request that further surveys be stopped until there is clarification in the issue. 

 

              Despite the above letter and other tribal people's protests, Manipur's Chief Minister remained unfazed. The day before Haokip's letter, on April 11, at least two of 26 houses were demolished inside the Langol Reserve Forest. On February 21, 2023, residents of K. Songjang village in Churachandpur were evicted after a Google Maps image showed no settlement in the area in 2020. The eviction came after the forest department issued a notestation in November 2022, derogaising 38 villages in the Churachandpur and Noney districts, claiming they fell within the Churachandpur- Khoupum protected forest. The notification said that the permission for settlement was granted to the villages by an officer who was not qualified to do so. But according to the Kukis, the 38 villages, with a population of over 1,000 people each, have existed for the last 50-60 years. The Kuki Inpi Manipur or KIM, the apex body of the Kukis in Manipur, alleged that Biren Singh's statement about the issue was false and intended to divert attention from the dissent of the tribal community against the''authoritarian rule'' in Manipur 

                  The anger within e Kuki community against what sees as its "selective targeting y the BJP-run State government appears to have spilled over dung the current protest march as well, leading to the violence. The Centre has backed Singh's stand. During a recent visit to Manipur, Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, asserted that the 1927 Forest Act became a State subject after Independence but that after the 1976 Amendment, forest land came under the jurisdiction of both the State and Central governments. The State government retains ownership of is forest and was solely respol for protecting reserved and peered forest land, he said.  On March 10 itself, masswere held across hill districts. Thousands of Kukis protested the BJP-run government's so-called selective targeting of Kukis. They had raised slogans against the eviction ofsidents from K. Songjang village. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF), a recently formed conglomerate of tribal groups, which includes the Kukis, had called for the rallies. On March 11, the State government retaliated by withdrawing from the ongoing tripartite talks. It withdrew the Suspension of Operation (SOO) agreement with two armed political groups, the Kuki National Army and the Zomi Revolutionary Army, accusing them of inciting protesters during the rallies. The SoO agreement is a ceasefire agreement that the Central and State government signed with the two conglomerates of tribal armed outfits in the hills, the United People's Front and the Kuki National Organisation, in 2008.                                                                  The  kuki National Army and the Zomi Revolutionary Army are both part of the Kuki National Organisation. These are all armed organisations. KIM had asserted that the rallies were a result of public discontent over the "extreme disregard" by the government of the Scheduled Hill areas and of Articles 370 and 371 C of the Constitution, which applied to Manipur. The organisation said that it took exception to the Chief Minister's terming of the rally participants as "encroachers,  poppy cultivators, drug smugglers, and illegal immigrants". Given the existing tensions in the State, the High Court order asking for a government recommendation to grant ST status to Meiteis was seen as provocative. Even among the Meiteis, there is opposition to it. Their history asserts to the Meiteis being a settled agricultural community for over 2,000 years. Invoking Article 355 in the State also seems a rathe extreme response, and points to other motivations for the Centre to keep the tension simmering in Manipur. The excessive build-up of security forces in the State: purportedly in response to the violence, might be indicative of a larger game plan that is more likely related to Manipur's status as a border State. 

          Even though the situation is still tense in various area of the state, it improved since Union Home Minister Amit Shah's four- day-long trip to Manipur between May 29 and June 1. Shah announced a judicial committee headed by a retired high court judge to probe the violence in Manipur. A special CBI team will investigate six specific cases that hint at a conspiracy behind the conflict.

       This has definitely calmed things down, and formation of peace committee comprising members of civil society to be led by the Governor of Manipur has also helped in restoring normalcy and instituting confidence building measures among the affected communities. One however, needs to wait and watch and see how a long-lasting agreement is reached that would be acceptable to all. It should be done at the earliest and is of utmost importance. At the time of going to press, on June 14 there was another outbreak of violence, one of the worst, in which 9 were killed and 10 injured and the official residence of the only woman minister was set on fire. As Manipur is a sensitive border state having national security implications, the political issues have to be resolved at the earliest.

                

                     Subasish samal