It needs fairly high amount of moral strength and conviction to look straight into the eyes of the rulers of the country and expose their lies and falsehood in the public domain.
Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Sunday last had said that nearly 40 armed militants involved in torching houses and firing at civilians have been killed by security forces since they began an operation to bring peace to the northeastern state beset by ethnic rioting.
But within 48 hours, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, on Tuesday, contradicted Singh’s statement and said the Manipur situation “had nothing to do with counter-insurgency and was primarily a clash between two ethnicities”.
The state and the central governments have come under severe attack from the people of Manipur, who allege that Narendra Modi’s political ecosystem is desperately trying to push the real reasons beneath the carpet and presenting a completely false and distorted picture of the violence that has been going on unabated in the state since May 3. Academics and intellectuals from the state have even been accusing the BJP and its top leaders of being responsible for engineering this nature of massacre.
Strangely enough, since the violence erupted, CM Biren Singh has been trying to project it as a clash between insurgents and security personnel. Even on Sunday he said latest clashes were not between rival communities but between Kuki militants and security forces, with the latter having killed nearly 40 armed rebels involved in torching houses and firing at civilians.
In sharp contrast, CDS Chauhan said: “Unfortunately, this particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counter-insurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities”. Obviously, now the question arises why has the Chief Minister Biren Singh been telling lies about the ground situation and also giving a bad name to the security forces. Whose interest is the Manipur CM serving by maintaining a blatantly false narrative about the ongoing communal conflagration? Or, is it a fact that the Manipur CM is not at all aware of the ground realities and his been uttering the words fed to him by the national BJP leaders, who from the beginning have been trying to falsely present it as an insurgency-related violence.
CDS Chauhan was quite assertive: “It’s a law-and-order kind of situation and we are helping the state government. We have done an excellent job and saved a large number of lives. The challenges in Manipur have not disappeared and it will take some time but hopefully, they should settle down.”
It is extremely sad that the Manipur chief minister has gone on record calling the Kukis “terrorists”. Little doubt that CM Singh has been trying to shield the dubious operations of the RSS and BJP in the region. A military expert put forth a question: “Is there any consistency in the central government, or do we have a complete collapse of any sense of political leadership at the top?”
There is no ambiguity that for last fifty years, the RSS has been cultivating the Meiteis, and in fact, succeeded in winning them over. Though the RSS has been strongly opposed to any Adivasi/tribal conversion to Christianity, it has converted a large number of Meiteis into the Hindu fold. These Hinduised Meiteis form the strong electoral base of BJP. The Kukis, mostly belonging to the Christian religion, are not willing to convert to Hinduism, and have been resisting the efforts of the RSS. Moreover, the Kukis reside in the hilly regions, and in the existing situation, Meiteis have been also striving to expand their residential areas. Recently, the Biren Singh government amended existing laws and facilitated purchase of lands by the Meiteis in areas exclusively reserved for the Kukis.
Kukis have apprised Prime Minister Narendra Modi of their problems, but he is least bothered to work out a solution. The military expert said: “This is nothing but vilifying a community and giving credence to the narrative of the Meiteis who have been calling the Kukis illegal immigrants. This is not expected from a chief minister of a state that is burning amid ethnic violence”.
While the majority Meiteis, who are largely Hindus, and the tribal Kukis, mostly Christians, have a long history of ethnic conflict, the latest clashes have acquired communal overtones only because of the nasty designs of the ruling BJP. Even the Congress shares similar views, and has blamed the BJP’s divisive politics for the Manipur turmoil. The Congress’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge has complained to President Droupadi Murmu about the state government’s failure to restore normalcy.
The BJP leadership alleges that Congress could not find a solution to the Kuki and Meiteis clashes in the past. They are correct. But they pretend to forget that the RSS and BJP used Meiteis clashes against Kukis to build and expand their base in Manipur. Anger of the people of the region against the machination of the BJP could be gauged from the fact that they vandalised the house of BJP MLA Khwairakpam Raghumani Singh at Uripok in Imphal West. His two vehicles were set on fire. Even BJP’s Kuki MLA, Vunzagin Valte, was attacked by a mob in Imphal last Thursday. Already four Kuki BJP MLAs, unhappy with the Biren Singh government, have quit various posts last month.
Unofficial sources claim that the ethnic clashes have so far claimed over 100 lives after a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in the hill districts on May 3 to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. The violence was preceded by tension over the eviction of Kuki villagers from reserve forest land, which had led to a series of smaller agitations.
Meanwhile, some Meiteis have justified the violence, claiming that it was the result of action taken by the state administration to check illegal influx from an open border with Myanmar; poppy cultivation by the hill tribes; and Kuki militant groups unleashing violence. Meiteis are also scared of the fast increase in the Kuki population. Kuki population has increased from 1% in 1901 to 29% in 2011.
BJP’s political ecosystem has already institutionalised politics of hate everywhere in the country. Now their lies and falsehood at the highest institutional levels are wrecking the lives of the poor Manipuri people. Home Minister Amit Shah’s Manipur trip to assess the situation doesn’t inspire much confidence either, since the Kuki DGP of Manipur is hardly taken into confidence on matters of serious law and order violation by rival mobs. (IPA Service)
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