Matamgi Manipur

ETHNIC CHURNING: CHIKUMI STYLE (WITH A FORWORD FROM THE ARAMBAM SOMORENDRA TRUST)

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 19:11:00 +0530

A text of the 10th Arambam Somorendro memorial lecture by Pu Lalthlamuong Keivom, the first Indian Foreign Service officer from Manipur on 10th Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture held at Lamyanba Sanglewn, Konung Lampak on 10 June 2015).

Submitted by Dr Lokendra Arambam (Chairperson, The Arambam Somorendra Trust), E-pao posted this text originally in a five-part series between 11–26 June.

A Foreword from the Arambam Somorendra Trust

The Arambam Somorendra Trust is happy to introduce our deeply respected friend, Pu Lalthlamuong Keivom, the first Indian Foreign Service Officer from Manipur and a true son of the soil who shall deliver the 10th the Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture.

The Arambam Somorendra Trust on its regular mission to commemorate the death Anniversary of the late leader, had made humble efforts to disseminate through such lectures new vistas of information, share perspectives and engender debate amongst well-meaning citizens and neighbours about critical issues affecting contemporary Northeast India.

Pu Keivom’s choice of the 10th the Memorial Lecture entitled, “Ethnic Churning: CHIKUMI Style” is a subject not much known amongst the general intelligentsia environment in the river valley plains of Manipur for reasons perhaps best known to its inhabitants. Probably the heavy discourse on the issues of the Naga ethno-national movements had overshadowed any other historical awakenings, silent but effectively undergoing long laborious processes of rediscovery of ethnic selfhoods amongst other indigenous populations.

Like us they also had been experiencing critical ancient as well as contemporary human displacements resulting from forces of history, more particularly from imperial as well as colonial manipulations of spaces, peoples and history throughout the Indo-Burma region. The Arambam Somorendra Trust hopes the intervention of Pu Lalthlamuong Keivom along with young scholar representatives of different ethnic denominations would help reassure our audience on the realities of the diversity of identity locations and the adaptation to freshly challenging dimensions of modernity and its corresponding stresses, tensions and anxieties.

The state of Manipur happens to experience now a historical amalgam of rising ethnicities amidst the unredeemed environment of volatile social and economic disparities, ethnic divides as well as state and non-state violence under various forms of conflict and militarization.

With his inimitable and free flowing personal style, Pu Keivom traverses some 20-odd years of his international diplomatic career where his deeply humanitarian nature and primordial attachment to the place of his birth, the Sanaleipak or the Golden Country, had impelled his duties and services towards finding associations and connections, retaining vignettes of memories of interactions which would help expand the quest of the younger generation towards enriching the history of their ancestral land.

He then undertakes to grapple the epic dimensions of the history of the Zo people comprising of the Chin, Kuki and the Mizos where he, taking inspirations from his own discipline of history nourished by his alma mater the Dhanamanjuri College and later his stints at the Guwahati University along with personal readings of necessary socio-anthropological literature, he encapsulates in a brief narrative the entire spectrum of the demographic and diasporic placements of communities and tribes within the vast ecumene of econo-cultural types of rugged hill terrains and vast forest lands.

How colonial political and administrative manipulations of space and territories resulted to the geographic and environmental stratification which also effected clado-genetic segmentations and internal structural cleavages in the socio-anthropological revelations of clans and sibs within the ethnic structures themselves. What Pu Keivom helps to enquire into is the realities of imperial and colonial administrative restructuring Northeast Indian autochthonous societies and its historical impact on the domestic lives of ethnogens and their emotional, sentimental flowering of their identity formation.

Or whether this imagined recapturing of the primordial unities in spite of differences would impact on their own post-colonial histories. A dispassionate reinvestigation into the realities of ancient migrations, the search for human livelihood in various ecological niches, social and political formation of tribes and communities that shaped who we are and how we came to be what we are now and what next for our identities and their relations seemed to have underlined his frank, personal and truth seeking narrative.

Pu Keivom’s anxious worries are definitely the state of transformation in our indigenous communities and the highlander and the lowlander divide, which now seem to plague the existential realities of our multiethnic and multi-cultural polity. Without entering into hair-splitting arguments, he expresses the contemporary predicament of a spiritually dissonant reality of inter-community divisions which now shatters the idyllic image of the Golden Country of erstwhile Manipur he fondly cherished as the sacred place of his birth.

His honest lament at the loss of that land, the belongingness with which he cherished every moment of his chequered career, his sojourns and his interactions with various sections of humanity, the air he breathed, the food he ate, the sensuous atmosphere he interiorized into his nerves and veins that created a sense of place he nourished since his childhood have now been completely altered into a regressive state of a great fall of civilization. He now senses this in his own being.

His anger at experiencing this reality, his diatribe about all these mutually self-destructive exercises are morally legitimate yet painful, that he shares with all his sincerity and frankness of his character and temperament. Pragmatic in his philosophy and spiritually inspired by the compassion he developed as a lover of human dignity he bares his heart on this very special occasion.

Pu Keivom is perhaps right about his perceptions about the deep transformation that have occurred amidst indigenous neighbourhoods. Though many of our generations do feel yet hesitant to talk about this, Pu Keivom had sincerely expected us to ponder deeply and help to recover in our contemporary imagination the idea of the birth place and its role in our lives.

For many men of wisdom had spoken about the issue that geography is destiny, that we can choose friends but not our neighbours. Pu Keivom had thrown the ball into our court for us to delve deeper in the very critical dichotomies of identity and modernity and seek solutions that he offers to the crisis of the roots that affect our collective destiny.

Happy deliberations!

Ethnic Churning:
CHIKUMI Style

by LALTHLAMUONG KEIVOM

Part One: Introduction

Mr. President Pradip Phanjoubam, Chairman of the Arambam Somorendra Trust, Dr. Arambam Lokendra, my young colleagues Dr. Ngamkhohao Haokip, Dr. Sohiamlung Dangmei, Dr. Priyadarshini Gangte, my friend David Buhril, ladies and gentlemen.

It is indeed a privilege to be with you at Imphal to participate in the 15th death anniversary of the late Arambam Somorendra and pay my respect to him by delivering the 10th Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture.

I am very happy to be here in your midst for many reasons. Since 1964 I have hardly had any uninterrupted stay in Manipur except in 1971 when I came to Imphal for a six-month district training and was attached to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, the only DC we had at that time for the whole of Manipur. Though nobody ever noticed its significance, it was a reckoning landmark for me – the first Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer from Manipur and the first IFS officer in India ever sent to Manipur from Delhi for district training.

After spending four years in D. M. College (1959–63) and a two-year stint at Guwahati University (1964–66), I joined the Indian Revenue Service (1967–69) and finally switched over in 1970 to the Indian Foreign Service, the ultimate choice of service at that time. I had a record breaking 21 years uninterrupted (1976–97) postings in Africa, Middle East, Australasia, Asia and Europe during which I made only a few brief visits to my hometown Churachandpur with Imphal as the transit point.

The ugly sight of gun-toting security forces doubly armed with the dreaded Armed Forces Special (Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA), the endless checkpoints set up at every imaginable place by them with demeaning and despicable signs like "Check All Suspect All", the body-search and the command to undress at times, which I considered a cruel assault on human dignity, plus the virtual absence of electricity robbed all the charms of visiting home. Therefore, we tried to avoid visiting Manipur as far as we could. Our Sanaleipak had lost its sheen since long but never its hold on our family. It is where our roots began and no other soil on earth can substitute its sacredness.

Even though I have been practically away from Manipur for half a century, I have had the opportunity of bumping into many people and things associated with Manipur. They included the famous or infamous Dada Idi Amin of Uganda in 1978 in Nairobi (Kenya) who proudly told me that he had served in Manipur front during the Second World War. Talking about Kenya, one day, while on an official tour, I was strolling in the manicured Kericho Tea Garden, the world's single largest tea plantation and bumped into a prominent signboard showing the tea grown there originally came from Manipur!

G.W.L. Cane first introduced the plant in 1903 in Limuru and later in Kericho with thumping success. The photo I took that day is one of my proud possessions. A question that struck me that day was: why other people made so much money from our tea and not us? Perhaps that was the furthest our Manipur tea has traveled until the arrival of Ragesh Keisham who, in August 2011, launched another kind of Manipuri tea called CC Tea (Cymbopogon Citratus tea), a multi-purpose green tea based on lemon grass.

From Kenya, I moved to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) handling political and Islamic affairs. One of our regular exercises was to look after thousands of pilgrims who came for Haj and Umrah from all corners of India including Manipur. It is an open secret that a good number of pilgrims including some from Manipur "vanish" during Haj, staying back and eventually getting absorbed into Saudi society by hook or by crook. My wife and I had the opportunity to share dinner a few times with these diaspora Manipur Muslims during our stay in Jeddah. The most amazing thing I discovered was that all the families we came across were still speaking Manipuri and told us how much they missed and longed for their Sanaleipak! This was really food for thought to me. What could be the thing or things, longings and attachments that even their holy land could not compensate?

From Saudi Arabia, I moved to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand (1983–85). A few weeks after my arrival, Second World War Veterans held a big annual event and I was invited to attend the function. When the organizers came to know that I was from Manipur, the last theater of war, they were over excited as if I had just landed from another planet. They asked me to propose a befitting toast which I did on behalf of India and the people of Manipur. It was a very nostalgic moment and a memorable one to witness our tiny State suddenly coming alive "Down Under" out of the dust of their collective war memories.

Then a few days later, I had a visitor in my office, a young girl who wanted to undertake research on the last days of the British rule in Manipur. She happened to be the niece of Mr. G.P. Stewart, ICS and the last Political Agent in Manipur who settled in Nelson (South Island) after his retirement. Later, I invited Mr. Stewart and his wife and their niece for dinner at India House and also paid a return visit to their home in Nelson which he had proudly decorated with trophies and mementos from Manipur.

We exchanged several visits, chatting sometimes till the wee hours during which the names of Maharaja Priyobrata Singh and Major Khathing popped up frequently. Mr. Stewart married the daughter of W.L. Scott, also a Kiwi and the first ICS who served as Superintendent in the then Lushai Hills (now Mizoram). Scott's wife was a vivid photographer. She maintained treasured albums in which she meticulously catalogued rare photos of chiefs, important families and socio-cultural events from Chin Hills to Mizoram including some from Cachar, Tripura and Manipur. It was these albums that prompted their niece to undertake the research for her Ph.D thesis but unfortunately she had to abandon her dreams for lack of proper guide and reference material.

An extract (para three) of my letter of March 25, 1985 to Dr. Rochunga Pudaite in USA when I was Head of Mission in Wellington, New Zealand may best reflect the position:

One interesting person we have discovered is the last Political Agent in Manipur, Mr. Gerry Stewart, 79, who now lives in Nelson. Though a little short of hearing, he is still physically fit and intellectually alert. He and his wife came all the way to visit us two months ago. Mr. Stewart is married to the daughter of the first New Zealand ICS Officer, Mr. Walter Lawrence Scott (he was later knighted and died in 1949 as Sir Walter) who was Superintendent in the then Lushai Hills from 1919–22. His wife Beatrix Scott who died in 1971 at the ripe age of 94 left behind a 500-page memoir and a treasured album in which she meticulously catalogued photos of the Chiefs from the Chin Hills down to Lushai Hills. Even Mr. Stewart's wife Elisabeth left behind an exhaustive account of their stay in Manipur which gives you an insight into life in those days. I believe there exists here a sizeable research material of our area which I will try to dig out as much as time permits me to indulge in this extra-curricular activities.

Then in 1986 I came to our immediate neighbor Burma (later named Myanmar) still reeling under military rule since Ne Win (1929–2002) seized power in 1962. Movement was restricted and even casual contacts with relatives on social occasions were suspect. It was unwise to openly visit the so-called "Manipuri Basti" in Mandalay, the largest concentration of darkish Meitei population where they carried on their orthodoxy with unconcerned abandon and their language along with Burmese, the lingua franca.

Though deprived of political power or any say in governance, they seemed satisfied so long as they were able to carry on their tradition and orthodoxy without interference. I used to visit the Basti unnoticed whenever I went to Mandalay to study their condition but found that it was difficult, if not impossible, to interact with them as I did openly with the Chin-Kuki-Mizo community in Myanmar. They seemed unconcerned so long as they were able to carry on their adopted culture and religious rituals without hindrance.A good number of them lived in Rangoon but never showed up at events and shows organized by the Embassy.

When I compare the Pangals in Jeddah to the Meitei Hindus in Yangon and Mandalay, many questions popped up to which I have no answers even till today. The Pangal's attachment to his religion and the holy land and fulfillment of his dream was unquestionable. But his longings for and emotional and social attachment with the land of his birth remained embedded in him. The Mandalay Meitei to me seemed unaffected so long as he remained within his borrowed caste system which deprived him of his ethnic entity long before he came to surface on earth. I am sure many of us will encounter past unresolved issues and mistakes in our search for identity. It is suicidal to hang on to presumed and concocted myths, legends and stories which my very own community is fond of doing. I shudder to think of the heavy price they will have to pay in the future. It is like hanging on a ledge over an abyss.

The introductory part has become much longer than I expected but I still have another interesting story to tell before I jump into my subject. Soon after my arrival in Rangoon, I tried to find out the number of Indians incarcerated in Burma by visiting jails, especially the notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon, the biggest jail in Asia where they kept all prisoners awaiting repatriation by air. On one of my visits, I found a fair-looking and pleasant guy, a Meitei doctor, who was able to dabble in broken but understandable Chin-Kuki dialect.

He seemed well-informed, particularly on the history and literature of the country. When I talked to him in my broken and rusty Manipuri, he became suddenly withdrawn and sullen perhaps thinking that I was one of the military intelligence guys who had come to dig out information from him.

To cut the story short, after I came to know of his background, I told him that unless he agreed to my suggestion for his repatriation and assurance of his subsequent release after a few months, he would rot and die in Insein Prison. Later, the Embassy arranged an 8-member Manipur police contingent to fly to Rangoon and they escorted him back to Imphal by a special aircraft in line with his status. I have never seen him again since but hope that he is still up and about. I also still remember having repatriated three Mizo National Front (MNF) detainees from Insein Prison and two National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) detainees from Mandalay Prison to India during that period.

Why did I mention all these and for what? As a representative of India, it was my duty and responsibility to serve the interest of my country and its people to the best of my ability. What I am trying to say is that while performing your duty, your sense or feeling of being one with the subject or the object is a strong driving force which enables you to go many extra miles beyond your normal call of duty. Other factors apart, I believe that we all possess an ingrained sense of ethnic affinity, somewhat like a primordial consciousness of belonging to a common genetic root that generates a feeling of oneness. In short, it is having a soft corner for people with physical likeness in appearance over others with a different look. Adam's exclamation when he first saw Eve, "..bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" can best explain the position.

My last association with Manipur while abroad was hosting a Manipuri dance troupe in Italy when I was Consul-General of India in Milan. The troupe was led by no other than Dr. Lokendra Arambam who has now kindly extended this invitation to speak on the issue of identity, integration and national aspirations of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo peoples of the Indo-Burma region.

I thank him and the organizers of the Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture for their generosity in giving me this opportunity to return to the cradle of my education and to my motherland that nurtured me into what I am today. I really feel that my life has come full circle. German philosopher, thinker and writer Johann Wolfang von Goethe says, "There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings." I developed my wings from here, flew around the globe for more than two decades and have now come back to my roots.

Part Two: The Chikumi World

When my friend Dr. Lokendra Arambam unexpectedly telephoned and asked me if I could deliver the 10th Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture on the issue of identity, integration and national aspirations of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo (Chikumi) peoples of the Indo-Burma-Bangladesh region, I readily accepted the honour for two reasons. First, the event has to do with the Arambam family with whom I came in contact during my days in D.M. College and second, the topic is my pet subject. What never even remotely occurred to me, however, was that I would not be able to do justice to the memory of the departed leader as other invitees have done except raise some perennial questions which, unless we find the right answers, will continue to reverberate to the depth of our graves. These nagging questions will form Part Three of my lecture.

Chin-Kuki-Mizo Group

In the process of human evolution, we assume various names and epithets to identify ourselves from others. Nations collapse and new nations are born. Our attachment with the old and our hopes and aspirations for the future play a big role in shaping every individual and nation from stage to stage. We struggle not only for individual, family, community, ethnic and national survival but also towards achieving a world of perfection, for we are both biological as well as spiritual beings. We cannot escape from this eternal hold. And the rule of the game is never changed, which is - survival of the fittest.

Our ethnic group who inhabit the fringe hilly territories bordering India, Myanmar and Bangladesh covering about 60,000 square miles is one of the largest linguistic ethnic groups on Earth. We have two full-fledged federated states, Mizoram in India and Chin State in Myanmar. Those who settled in the mountain fastness of the Chin Hills after their Kabaw Valley settlement were called "Chins" by the Burmese which means people carrying bamboo baskets on their backs. Those who migrated further west to the coast of Bay of Bengal and came in contact with the Bengalis were known by them as "Kukis" and this terminology came to be used to identify this ethnic group living on the side of modern India.

Later, another group, headed by the Lusei (Lushai) tribe migrated and entered Mizoram at around 1700 A.D. Under their united hand, they gradually welded the various tribes inhabiting the present Mizoram into a homogeneous entity speaking a common Duhlian dialect which became the Lusei language and then gradually the "Mizo language" since 1972. The area occupied by them became Lushai Hills under the British rule and those living in it came to be known as "Lushais" (Lusei) and no longer Kukis.

When India became independent, the political leadership felt that "Lushai" being the name of one of the tribes amongst them, it would better serve the cause of ethnic harmony if the name were changed into a more inclusive term "Mizo", which for generations had become the generic term used in the community, to cover all the ethnic lineages. Hence, the term "Mizo/Zomi" are coterminous. In my writings, I prefer to employ a more inclusive term "Zo" to refer to the ethnic group. In the present emotionally-charged atmosphere, it may even be more appropriate to use the acronym – CHIKUMI (which collectively refers to Chin, Kuki and Mizo/Zomi).

Communities of this group now spread over Northeast India, westerly Chin and Rakhine States and the Sagaing Division of Myanmar and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (now Chittagong Division) of Bangladesh. The exact population of this group is not known due to various reasons. One of the factors is the remoteness of some parts of the region inhabited by them. Another reason is the constant churning of the ethnic political cauldron where every imaginable tribe or community has at one time or the other claimed and fought for a separate identity.In the process many got swallowed up by the more aggressive and organized groups from outside their parent community. For example, a sizeable community from the Zo ethnic group settled in Manipur has already declared themselves as Naga for political expediency and for sheer survival. Linguistic maps change with the change of political contours.

When the Linguistic Survey of India was conducted by the British Raj between 1894 and 1928 under the direction of G.A. Grierson, the Zo group was classified as Tibeto-Burman Family: Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups" under Volume III Part III. Therein, their total number was estimated to be between 6,00,000 to 10,00,000 which included 2,40,637 Meiteis. As per B. Lalthangliana's book "Mizo Chanchin", the Tibeto-Burman groups recorded in the 1901 census were: Tibetan 2,35,229; Himalayan 1,90,585; North Assam 41,731; Bodo 5,94,411; Naga 2,47,780; Kachin 1,25,585; Kuki-Chin 6,24,149; Burmese 74,98,794.

A memorandum submitted by the Mizo Union to His Majesty's Government in 1947 after the Lakhipur Conference in November, 1946 put the population (based on the 1941 Census) at around 5 lakhs. J.T. Vanlalngheta, author of "The Concise Learner's Dictionary of Mizo" (2010) puts the population at "about ten lakhs of people" excluding those akin tribes living in areas other than Mizoram who speak the Mizo dialect. Vumson puts it at about 2.5 million covering a contiguous region of about 60,000 square miles. LaltluanglianaKhiangte places it at 2.6 million. Taking into consideration biological growth factor alone, it may be safe to put the population of this linguistic group at around 3–5 million, one of the largest dialect groups on earth like the Hmongs (Miao) in China.

The Linguistic Survey of India mentioned above identified more than 40 Zo dialects of which the Duhlian-Lusei dialect now known as "Mizo language" is the most developed and understood and gradually and surely evolving to become the lingua franca of the Zo people. And considering her size of population, Mizoram perhaps is one of the most active States in India in publication of books, magazines and newspapers. Mizoram State on an average produces between 150–200 new books annually in addition to dozens of souvenirs, periodic magazines and daily newspapers churned out in Mizo and allied vernaculars by the people living outside Mizoram. The biggest linguistic cauldron in the Zo world is Churachandpur town in Manipur where as many as nine out of eleven major Zo dialects are spoken and understood along with Manipuri, Hindi and English.

Sinlung Tradition

Popular tradition of the Zo people holds that their earliest known settlement was a large cave with a big stone lid called Sinlung/Khûl somewhere in China. Conjecturally, the presumed ancestral homeland could have been located somewhere in and around the Stone Forest near Kunming in the Yunan Province of China during the Nanchao Dynasty. With the collapse of the Nanchao rule, many tribes fled its stranglehold, some heading southward like the Karens, the Siams (now known as Thais) and other kindred tribes and the rest towards the west like the Shans, the Burmans, the Kachins, the Arakanese, the Meiteis, the Naga group of tribes, the Zo group of tribes and many other tribes presently inhabiting Northeast India.

The first major dispersal from Yunan took place in the early 9th century A.D.and the second wave between 13th–14thcentury. The Burmans' first known settlement at Kyaukse near Mandalay was established at around 849 A.D. and then moved to Pagan on the eastern bank of the Irrawady River where the Burman King Anawarahta in 1044 A.D. founded the famous Pagan Dynasty. The modern history of Burma (Myanmar) began from that era.

The Zo ancestors, however, chose to follow the call of the unknown and continued to head further west into the Chindwin River and the Kabaw Valley then already under the suzerainty of the Shan princes (Swabaws), some of whose disparate groups later established the Ahom Kingdom in Assam. From there some headed southwest and spread over to the present Rakhine (Arakan) State in Myanmar and the Chittagong Hills Tract in Bangladesh.

But the major bulk of them continued to move westward, climbed the rugged Chin Hills and settled in its mountain fastness undisturbed by outside forces for a period long enough to establish their own pattern of settlement and administration, socio-cultural norms and practices, beliefs and rituals, myths and legends, folk tales, music and dances and many other customs and traditions which they handed down from generation to generation to the present time.

Zo Dispersal

It was during the settlement in the Chin Hills that the linear strata became more defined and clanism more emphasized as each clan and sub-clan moved and settled in groups subsequently resulting in the formation of new tribes and sub-tribes. In this way, the Zo group of tribes, clans and sub-clans speaking varied Zo dialects were born. As they spread out over different hills clan by clan and moved along, they became more and more isolated from each other and their loyalty concentrated more and more on their respective clans.

Consequently, they became fiercely insular, loyal to their clan only and fought each other to gain supremacy over others as well as to defend their lands and honor from intrusion by others. In the absence of a centrally controlled authority, inter-tribal rivalries and wars were common, leaving a trail of bitterness and hate. This was basically the condition when the British arrived and subjugated the Zo world and its people.

Role of the Colonial Power

Before the Zo people could realize what was in store for them, the British had already put their lands under different administrations. However, realizing the mistake and the need to set it right, the Chin-Lushai Conference at Fort William, Calcutta in January 1892 unanimously agreed, "It is desirable that the whole tract of country known as the Chin-Lushai Hills should be brought under one Administrative head as soon as this can be done."

To set the ball rolling, the Chin Hills Regulation was adopted in 1896 to regulate the administration of the Zo people in the Chin Hills as well as other Zo inhabited areas where the Regulation also extended. Two years later, in 1898, North Lushai Hills under Assam and South Lushai Hills under Bengal were amalgamated as one Lushai Hills District under Assam as proposed at the Calcutta Conference as a first concrete step towards the establishment of a common administrative unit for the Zo people. The proposal also included the eventual integration of Zo inhabited areas of the Arakan Hill Tracts into the Lushai Hills District.

For political reasons, the proposed unified administration was never implemented. The belated proposal of Robert Reid, Governor of Assam to create a hill province comprising of areas inhabited by the Mongoloid hill tribes in the region was also overtaken by the Second World War and its aftermath. The Zo people are, therefore, found today in Chin, Rakhine (Arakan) and Sagaing States in Myanmar; Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura in India and the Chittagong Hill Tracts and its adjoining areas in Bangladesh.

British rule had a tremendous impact on Zo politics. On the negative side, they divided the Zo inhabited areas under different rulers and reduced them to a miniscule. In fact, unpardonable damage had already been done in 1935. The passage of the Government of India Act, 1935 by the British Parliament, which completely separated not only Burma from India but also the Zo inhabited regions across the borders of the two countries, was the last nail in the coffin.

On the positive side, they established law and order that provided the Zo people an opportunity to consolidate in their respective areas and interact with each other more widely under a settled administration. Though the proposal to bring all Zo inhabited areas under one administrative head did not materialize, the introduction of the Chin Hills Regulation, 1896 and its subsequent extension to all Zo inhabited areas as mentioned earlier can be regarded as a partial fulfillment of the Calcutta Resolution.In fact, the Chin Hills Regulation and its extension to all Zo inhabited areas by the British could be construed as a tacit recognition on their part of the oneness and indivisibility of the Zo people as well as their desire to live under one roof.

Another important aspect of the British rule was the introduction of elementary education using the Roman script wherever the missionaries set foot. They followed on the heels of the British flag, won the hearts of the people through the Gospel wand and opened up new vistas and hopes. They produced a new kind of people who could not only read and write but think and reduce their feelings and knowledge into the written word. They became the elites and intelligentsia who played an important role in national rediscovery. They rendered in writing their past histories, myths and legends, folklores and folk-songs, customs and traditions which reminded the simple folks that they were a "nation" with an enviable past, a glorious history and culture and that they should rediscover themselves again.

Christianity and Zo-ness

A greater force in the process of Zo integration has been the Christian faith, which in 50 years turned Mizoram and many Zo inhabited areas into a Christian land. The newly zealous Zo converts took it as their privileged burden to tell the Good News to their kindred tribes and many volunteered to go to the unreached Zo areas to preach the Gospel. These apostle-like preachers carried the good tidings along with new Christian hymns in Lushai dialect, which the pioneer missionaries employed as a vehicle to spread the Gospel. As a result, Lushai dialect quickly developed into a rich language to become an effective instrument for spreading the Gospel and Zo integration.

The first Bible translation and many other pioneering publications among the Zo tribes were in Lushai that subsequently came to be known as "Mizo language", a language that became the link language of the Zo people. Wherever Zo preachers carried the Gospel and new churches were erected, they also implanted Zo-ness, thus paving the way for a re-unification. Therefore, next to their common ethnic root, Christianity has become the most important binding force of the Zo people. A Zo professing any other faith except the traditional religion (animism) is considered by the majority Zo Christians as not only a renegade but also an alien. Being a Zo and a Christian is like a coin with two faces.

The Call by Zo Integrationists

Let us now briefly examine the progress in the process of Zo integration. When we talk of a call for Zo integration, we do not necessarily imply immediate political integration of all their inhabited areas in exercise of their right to self-determination which is an inherent right of every human soul on earth.

The first step in achieving integration is the creation of an atmosphere congenial to the growth of emotional integration and a sense of oneness within the community. Therefore, the vision and focus of Zo integrationists has been first and foremost the promotion of emotional integration amongst the dispersed and disparate Zo tribes by constantly reminding them of
a) their common ethnic or ancestral root, historic homeland, myths and historical memories, culture, language, hopes and dreams
b) that their only chance of survival as an ethnic nation is to unite into a cohesive force under a collective proper name with a common dynamic language, and
c) if they do not heed the writings on the wall and continue to maintain fissiparous tendencies, they are digging their own graves and will soon be wiped off from the face of the earth without a trace.

To the Zo nationalists, these imperatives are not a matter of choice but a do or die thing. History is replete with such examples.

Ethnic Cores for Integration

A study of the history of nation formation, whether Western civic model or non-Western ethnic model, would clearly indicate that ethnic nation-states were normally formed in the first place around a dominant community or ethnie, which annexed or attracted other ethnies or ethnic fragments into the state to which it gave a name. In other words, it is the ethnic core or the dominant group that often shapes the character and boundary of the nation – for it is very often on the basis of such a core that states coalesce to form nations. The ethnic core or the dominant community with its myths of ethnic selection ensures ethnic self-renewal and long-term survival and this has been certainly the key to the Jewish survival in the face of deadly adversities.

This is also true in the case of the Zo people. After the Zo settlement in and dispersal from the Chin Hills, potential core clans or tribes appeared in the Zo domain from time to time like the Thado-Kukis, the Suktes, the Zahaus, the Kamhaus, the Sailos and others but none were as successful as the Sailo clan. Other core communities failed to make lasting impact for lack of cohesion, farsightedness and wisdom. For example, about 60 percent of the hill areas of Manipur were at one time under Kuki chieftainship but they left only a trail of internal divisions and failed to attract even their direct blood brothers, not to speak of their kindred tribes. In contrast, the Sailo clan wisely and with foresight stood united in the face of challenges and adversaries and soon the whole of the present Mizoram State fell under their sway.

They unified various Zo tribes under their rule, introduced a uniform code of administration and social and moral codes of conduct and mobilized the disparate tribes into one linguistic and cultural community conscious of themselves as a force with a historical destiny.

The outcome was that when the British came to subdue them, the Sailo chiefs won victory in defeat by carving out of their domain a separate autonomous Lushai Hills District named after their tribe. On this soil prepared by them consciously or unconsciously, Zo nationalism and identity began to grow slowly but surely. Though people from the Lushai Hills were then classified as Lushai, one of the Zo tribes, a majority of the inhabitants belonged to other Zo tribes such as Gangte, Hmar, Kom, Lakher (Mara) Pawi (Lai), Paite (Tiddim), Ralte, Thado/Haokip (Kuki), Simte, Vaiphei, Zou, etc., and amongst them they unmistakably addressed each other not as Lushai but as "Mizo" (a man of Zo or a Zo-man) and they used this terminology to cover all Zo descent.

Some writers have translated the term "Mizo" to mean "Hillman/Highlander" but this interpretation may not stand close scrutiny. The intrinsic meaning is believed to be much deeper and therefore, should not be deduced by attaching locative connotation to the term.

Whatever be the case, the term "Mizo" quickly gained popular acceptance in the Lushai Hills as a common nomenclature for all Zo descent. Consequently, the name of Lushai Hills was changed into Mizo Hills and when it attained the status of Union Territory and then Statehood, it became "Mizoram", a land of the Mizo or Zo people. This was the first time in Zo history that their land or territory had been named after their own given name.

It may be pertinent to mention here that nomenclatures like "Chin" and "Kuki" are derogatory terms given by outsiders to the Zo people whereas "Zo" is a self-given name that is dignified, honorable and all embracing. It now virtually stands as the collective name of the Zo descent.And Mizoram can claim pride of place as a land where every Zo descent is fully integrated in "Mizo". For example, Manipur South District known as Churachandpur District inhabited by Zo descents is in many respects more integrated with Mizoram and even with the Chin Hills than with Manipur. It's the ethnic magnetic pull that bridges up geographical barriers.

At the Crossroads

When India and Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947 and also Burma in the following year, the politically conscious Zo leaders of Mizoram were in a fix. They knew that Zo inhabited regions would be divided among three countries – a Buddhist country, a Muslim country and a secular but Hindu dominated country. By then, two fledgling political parties namely the Mizo Union and the United Mizo Freedom Organization (UMFO) had already been born with the latter in favor of merging with their kindred tribes in Burma, which they believed would ensure a better chance of their survival.

The original founders of the Mizo Union were staunch nationalists in favor of self-determination of some kind of which they were not clear. However, a few months after it was formed, Mizo Union was torn asunder by the machinations of highly ambitious educated leaders who came under the influence of the Indian nationalists. Resorting to populist politics, these so-called Mizo-Indian nationalists hoodwinked the innocent and unsuspecting peasant folks, captured the Mizo Union party leadership and presided over one of the most crucial moments in Zo history without a clear vision and agenda. The result was disillusionment that exploded in armed rebellion after twenty years. This was called the theMizo National Front (MNF) movement and for twenty years it spat out the fire of Zo nationalism and independence from the barrel of imported guns.

Whatever the differences in the visions of the political leaders of the day, they were always united in one agenda: Zo Integration. The Mizo Union representation before the President of the Constituent Assembly, inter alia, included amalgamation of all Zo inhabited areas to form Greater Zoram (Zoland). With this vision in mind, the Zo leaders, on the eve of India's independence, signed a declaration amounting to conditional accession to the Indian Union in which a provided clause was inserted to the fact that the Zo people would have the right to remain with or secede from the Indian Union after a period of 10 years.

The Mizo Union Conference at Lakhipur on November 21, 1946 which was attended by many Zo representatives. They resolved unanimously that all Zo areas in Burma and India including the Chittagong Hill Tracts would be amalgamated to form a Greater Zoram State. It is thus clear that the Zo re-unification issue has occupied the minds of the Zo leaders right from the time of India's independence.

The Big Bang

The most widespread Zo re-unification movement came in 1966 in the form of an armed rebellion spearheaded by the Mizo National Front (MNF). The main objective of MNF was to declare Zo's right to self-determination and to establish "Independent Zoram" for all the Zo inhabited areas. The movement rekindled national sentiments throughout Zoland and many young men from all corners of Zoland joined the movement and fought for Zo rights. Mizo Integration Council and later Mizo Integration Party were formed in 1970 with its headquarters in Churachandpur, Manipur. This party was the progenitor of Zomi National Congress (ZNC) born two years later and its offshoot Zomi Re-unification Organization (ZORO). Under the banner of ZORO, the First World Zomi Convention on Re-Unification was held at Champhaion May 19–21, 1988 which was attended by representatives from all Zo inhabited areas.

The armed struggle for Zo independence lasted 20 years and peace returned only in 1986 when Mizoram attained Statehood. This was preceded by the formation of Mizoram in 1972 when the status of Union Territory was granted by India. The birth of Mizoram was a big boost to the Zo peoples'quest for a political identity and a formal recognition of their existence. It was the first time in Zo history that a full-fledged State was named after its own given name. It was also for the first time that a core state had been established through and around which Zo reunification would eventually evolve and grow.

It will be pertinent to mention here that in fact, the first Zo State was born in the name of Chin Special Division in 1948 when Burma became independent. But being divested of power and funds from the start and in the absence of a dominant group who could weld the many Zo tribes into a single entity, the Chin State was never able to play the role of a core state. It has been a state torn by tribalism with a Babel of tongues to add to its woes. Their lingua franca has become Burmese and not a Zo language. It is interesting to note that, even here, the most understood Zo language is the "Mizo language" though actual speakers are small in number.

Present Scenario

The political dust kicked up by the MNF movement in 1966 settled with the grant of Statehood and the return of the MNF outfits in 1986 from their Arakan hideouts but the euphoria over the new status soon waned and evaporated. Soon, the heavily deficit Mizoram State began to bite the reality of governance. Corruption of all kinds and the spirit of insulation and intolerance seeped in. As it comfortably settled in its State cushion, the core State has begun to slowly abandon its role model as a forerunner of Zo integration and has become less and less accommodating.

Increasing intolerance shown to non-Mizo speaking Zo communities from within and outside Mizoram by the Mizo speaking community has ripple effects on the progress of Zo unification and put the process of integration in a reverse gear. Many Zo ethnic tribes have become disenchanted with what they regard as the arrogant display of linguistic hegemony by Mizo speaking people who, rightly or wrongly have apprehension that infiltration of other Zo dialects in Mizoram will act as a contaminating agent to the Zo unity instead of sustaining and strengthening it.

In an interview in November–December, 1998, a leading Mizo historian, B. Lalthangliana, when asked why various tribes which he claimed as Mizo were bent on establishing their own separate identity, admitted that when he was doing some research for his book on Mizo history, the Maras also known previously as "Lakhers" from Southern Mizoram came up to him and told him not to include their name in the list of Mizo groups. "Many Maras", he said, "still do not like to be called Mizo… Likewise, in the same manner, the Thado-Kukis of Manipur and the Paites have reservations. The Thado-Kukis, however, do not mind identifying themselves as Mizo…it is the Paites, in fact, who have distanced themselves away from the Mizo identity".

While Lalthangliana believed that the State of Mizoram would play a major role in shaping the evolution a greater Mizo identity, the post Statehood era has witnessed a mushrooming of armed ethnic movements within the Zo community where almost every imaginable Zo tribe especially in Manipur has its own armed outfit and carved out areas occupied by them as their respective sphere of influence and monopoly and barred others from entering into their area without permission. The most disturbing part is that they have turned the clock back, returned to the barbaric days of their headhunting forefathers, hunting each other and engaging themselves in frenzied self-annihilation. Mutual intolerance has increased which seriously hinders the progress of Zo unification.

Meanwhile, awareness of the danger of their position and the inevitability of their eventual demise unless they are united has greatly increased in recent years among the informed circles and integrationists.Zo integrationists are convinced that the best way tocontain fissiparous tendencies is to adopt cultural nationalism by increasing cultural contacts across the borders. One organization, inter alia, who has taken the lead is MizoZirlai Pawl (MZP), the apex students' organization.

Starting from 2002 at Churachandpur, Manipur, they have been organizing cultural festivals called ZOFEST at an interval of two years at strategically chosen locations in Zo inhabited areas and invited cultural troupes from across the borders. The last two Zofests were held at Darchoi (Tripura2012) and Haflong-Muolhoi (Assam2014). The contribution of ZOFEST in creating awareness and its impact in bridging the yawning gaps amongst the Zo tribes is immeasurable.

Of the recent activities of Zo integrationists, mention may be made of the role of Zofa Global Network (ZGN) who organized for the first time ZOFA Global Unity Festival2014 at Indo-Myanmar Border, Mizoram from November 20–22. The Festival was originally planned to be held at Tahan (Kalemyo), Kabaw Valley in Myanmar but had to be shifted in the last minute for logistical considerations.

Another activity by non-State players worth mentioning was the Third World Zomi Convention held at Churachandpurin October, 2013 which was attended by Zo delegates settled in 35 different countries. The first Convention was held in May, 1988 at Champhai on Indo-Myanmar border and the second Convention in June, 1991 at Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram.The show goes on.

Part Three: The Divide

From here, let me now turn to Manipur. The State is populated by groups of the Mongloid race who, for the sake of convenience, can loosely be classified as Meiteis, Nagas and Chin-Kuki-Mizo tribes (non-Naga tribes) with the valley Meiteis forming the majority (around 59 percent of the total population) but sequestered barely in 10 per cent of the total area of the land. The census returns of 2011 showed a population of 25,70,390 as compared to 2,84,465 in 1901 of whom 1,80,960 were inhabitants of the valley and 1,03,505 hill tribesmen. Until the introduction of a fanciful tradition in their history that caused an unbridgeable divide with ripple effects, all the groups commonly held that they originated from the east which was unmistakably matched by their physical, cultural and linguistic features.

The burden of the rest of my speech falls on this DIVIDE. I have no intention of going into the merits or demerits of the case. That will produce only endless futile debates. My main interest is to find out any feasible and implementable measure to bridge the fissures.

The biggest gulf I feel is THE VALLEY-HILL DIVIDE. This may look very elementary to some but it is not. The valley, inhabited by the Meiteis, had chosen not only to embrace Vaishnavism but also the mythical claim of being of Hindu descent and snapped off of their ethnic ties with the tribes surrounding them. They are to me the first lost tribe in Manipur followed some 200 years later by some members of the Chikumi tribes who embraced Judaism and migrated to Israel claiming they were one of the lost tribes of Israel!

I visited them in their new-found homes in Gaza and Jerusalem in 1993, all now bearing Semitic names. These converts now have an identity crisis in relation to us as we can no longer recognize them by their assumed names and titles just like a Singh can be any Singh, a Sardar, a Punjabi, a Bihari, a man from UP.

Let us summon our courage to face bravely the tragedies the Divide has wrought on the lives of people sharing this small space we call Manipur. The Valley is as ignorant of the Hills as the Hills are unconcerned of the Valley. We have virtually no social contacts or any contact as such except through Government and economic dealings, which generally invite negative impressions. While people living in the hill regions with racial feature similar to people of Southeast Asia hold that their ancestors came from the East, people of the same feature living in the valley diametrically hold opposite view as if to prove Rudyard Kipling doubly right.

We have produced a good number of impressive and self-gratifying books to prove how old our civilization has been. We proudly claim, as in Wikepedia of May 9, 2015 that "The Kingdom of Manipur was one of the many hundreds of kingdoms in the South and Southeast Asia. The ancient kingdom of Manipur dates back to 50 B.C. which includes the whole part of Nagaland, some parts of Assam and Mizoram. However, there is no data about the early history of Manipur, apart from legendary chronicles claiming that Ningthou Kangba, the first King of Manipur ruled from Kangla at Imphal in 33 AD. He is also known as Meidingu Nongdaa Lairen Paakhangba."

How could we produce such long history without any reliable data? Were the so-called accounts on which we base our claims like what Julian Barnes(A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, 1989) or Robert Scholes (The Fabulators, 1967) called "fabulations"? We need more realistic history books that the valley and the hills can share as the two communities have been existing together and not vice versa for centuries. No matter how much one dresses up our history with deceptive articulations, parallel history with conflicting accounts is always divisive and explosive.

Does Manipur, in both the geo-political and cultural-linguistic sense, stand only for people living in the valley alone? A routine reply by a person from outside the valley to the following queries will invariably elicit the same reply: Are you from Manipur? Yes. Are you a Manipuri? No. Are you a Meitei? No. Then who are you?

If I have to answer these questions, my reply is: I am Keivom from Pherzawl, Churachandpur District, Manipur, a Mizo-Hmar by tribe, Indian by citizenship, follower of Christian faith with a Protestant background, a diplomat by profession, thinker, writer, critic, poet, music composer, essayist, historian, linguist, translator, publisher, environmentalist, wildlife preservationist, secularist, a democrat, a nationalist and internationalist, Zo integrationist, non-vegetarian, whisky drinker, a pensioner, book and music lover and many other things. Like everybody, I have multiple identities.

But can I call myself a Manipuri or a Meitei? I look forward to a day when we can all share a common name irrespective of our belief and faith, for we are historically and ethnically the same people.

It is the inhabitants who turn a country into hell or paradise. We have the power to right the wrongs and vice versa. The valley-hill divide has to be bridged if we have to be effective in our dealings with others and within ourselves. To build up mutual respect and understanding, we need to have multi-layered forums like friendship associations at different levels, organize cultural and sports meets, exchange visits, excursions and guided tours particularly at school and college levels, seminars and workshops on matters and issues of mutual interest and benefit.

Mutual appreciation of our respective values and worth can come only after we lift our tainted or tinted veils that have blurred our visions for long. Guns,bandhs and counter-bandhs will not solve our problems. The much touted Look/Act East Policy of New Delhi can only be successfully implemented if the various ethnic groups sitting across the borders organize themselves and extend a helping hand instead of each one raising conflicting voices and imposing endless bandhs.

While people in the valley have done well in Law, Medicine, Engineering, Sports and Dance, which have earned them admiration at the international, national and regional levels, there are areas where the hill people are far ahead of them especially in the services. Perhaps more than 80 percent of officers such as IFS, IAS, IPS and other Central Services from Manipur State are from the hills of which Churachandpur District alone has contributed more than 50 percent. Today, you will find them in every Ministry in Delhi, including the President's Office and Parliament Secretariat.

Most of the Chief Secretaries of Manipur including the present one are from the Chikumi group and mainland India. All the retired and serving Indian Ambassadors and High Commissioners from Manipur are the hill people. The first direct IAS from the Scheduled Tribes in India was Mr. J.C.Nampui (1955 batch) from the Hmar tribe. The first direct recruit IAS from Manipur was Mr. KaikhokamKipgen (1965 batch) and the first IRS (Customs & Excise) Officer Mr. VumkhothangHangzo (1958 batch) was from the Paite community. There are many retired and serving officers from Manipur who hold the position of being the first from Manipur.

Because of the valley-hill divide, I wonder whether the majority know or acknowledge these facts, not to speak of keeping proper records, at least for the sake of general knowledge of our students about their State!

The Chikumi group with its diversities and internal conflicts has one thing in common, namely a desire to keep a close-knit community within their respective tribes so as to preserve and maintain their identity, culture and language. They organize themselves into associations, support each other in times of challenges and difficulties and zealously nurture ethnic cohesion within themselves.Delhi has a sizeable Chikumi population, each group running vibrant Welfare Associations and Fellowship Services, the backbone of their unity.

This is also the pattern in major cities in India, too, where they spread over and also even in USA and Canada where the diaspora Chikumis claim to have more than 30,000 refugee-immigrants apart from those in Yangon, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Israel has more than 3,000 Chikumi immigrants who call themselves B'nei Israel and speak Mizo along with Hebrew. Immigrants from Myanmar use Burmese along with their respective dialects and Mizo as link languages.

I have been living in Delhi since 1970 with one long interval and it has become my registered home after Pherzawl and Churachandpur. We live in East Delhi and my wife and I have become Delhiites. I have been Chairman of Unau Forum (Zo-ethnic Forum) representing all the Chikumi tribes from the Northeast since the year 2005. We have a sizeable Meitei population in Delhi, especially in and around our area but they do not seem to have organized associations except the Manipur Students' Association Delhi (MSAD) to facilitate interaction at least within themselves as other communities do with great vigor.

Every State from the Northeast have their respective Bhavans and each Bhavan reflects the State it represents and people living and visiting Delhi consider their respective Bhavans as their own and place of refuge. But Manipur Bhavan in Delhi or in major Indian cities does not seem to carry the unique image of other NortheastBhavans. This has been the general impression people have and I wish that it is not true. It is high time to study the factors that have created negative impressions and remove the viruses.

I trust and pray that the Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lectures will play a big role in removing hurdles in the path of understanding between our communities, bridging up the valley-hill divide and taking us to a new path – a path of freedom, of peace, of self-sufficiency, of communal harmony, of cultural resurgence and to Rabindranath Tagore's dreamland:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action.

Thank you one and all.

Notes & References

William Robert Ochieng' and Robert M. Maxon(eds.), An Economic History of Kenya, Nairobi: East African Publishers, 1992, p.120.
Vumson, Zo History, Aizawl: Published by the Author, 2011, p.7.
G.A.Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India Vol III Part III, 1904 (reprint 1967), pp. 2–3.
B.Lalthangliana, India, Burma and Bangladesh: A Mizo Chanchin, Aizawl: Remkungi, 2001, p. 147 (in Mizo language).
Memorandum submitted to His Majesty's Government, Government of India and its Constituent Assembly through the Advisory Sub-Committee by the Mizo Union on April 26, 1947 at Aijal.
J.T.Vanlalngheta, The Concise Learner's Dictionary of Mizo, Aizawl: Hlawndo Publishing House, 2010.
Op.cit.,Vumson2011, p.7.

ANNEXATION OR MERGER OF MANIPUR

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 22:23:00 +0530

By: Lt. Col. H. Bhuban Singh
(Text courtesy: Imphal Free Press 7 June 2015)

The following is an article by Lt. Col. H. Bhuban, author of the book “Merger of Manipur”. We are reproducing this article published in the IFP 15 years ago as a homage to the respected ex-Army officer, who was also minister under the Wahengbam Nipamacha Singh MSCP ministry, a state party which is now defunct. The maverick who is also known for his scholarly researches into the history of Manipur of the colonial period,breathed his last recently.

There has been a strong notion of recent origin in Manipur that the State became independent from midnight of 15 August 1947, when the suzerainty of His Majesty (of the United Kingdom) over Indian states lapsed and further that this independent status was lost from the noon of 15 October 1949, when Manipur got merged into the erstwhile Dominion of India. There is no denying that Maharaja Bodhchandra Singh was coerced into signing the Merger Agreement after long and tiresome parleys of four days (18-21 September 1949) at Shillong. In fact, he was virtually put under house arrest at his Redlands Palace, Shillong by a guard of Jat Regiment, on the pretext of VIP security. His plea that he did not need Army Security, since he brought his own guard of State Military Police, fell on deaf ears.

The strongest point of argument of Manipur independence theorists is that any agreement/accord/confession made under duress or pressure is illegal and untenable in the eyes of law. Hence, Manipur Merger Agreement signed by the Maharaja under house arrest was and is still untenable and unlawful, since Maharaja Bodhchandra Singh was coerced into signing it.

The main point of the Maharaja’s reluctance to sign on the dotted line was that he needed to go to Manipur to consult his people and apprise his government, since a constitutionally elected government existed in Manipur. He promised to come again to Shillong, soonest.

On the other hand, the pressure of Delhi on Shillong was that time for execution of Merger Agreements for the last three Princely States (Manipur included) was fast running out and that the Manipur Merger Agreement should be got signed immediately and now, and that the Maharaja should be allowed to leave Shillong. This hurry was necessitated because the Dominion of India was to become Republic of India on 26 January 1950, which was just four months away. There were lots of loose ends to be tied up like the number of parliamentary seats in Lok Sabha and in Rajya Sabha from Manipur, the status of Manipur after merger, the kind of administrative arrangements for Manipur in post merger period etc.

Obviously, Delhi was in a frantic hurry. The meeting with Governor Sri Prakasa on the first day, 18 September, ended abruptly, as the Maharaja got emotionally super-charged, when Nari Rustomji, Advisor to Governor unceremoniously and abruptly produced the Manipur Merger Agreement (first draft) for signature. The Maharaja was in the same plight as experienced by Dr. Ha’cha, the President of Czechoslovakia, when he was bullied by Hitler for signing the merger of his country into Germany, on the morning of 15 March 1939. Dr. Ha’cha fainted and Nazi leaders and doctors go panicky that he might die. It was possible that Sri Prakasa might have panicked or felt embarrassed.

On the second day, 19 September, despite an appointment, the Maharaja did not go to meet the Governor. On the contrary, His Highness informed Sri Prakasa of his intention to go back to Manipur. Thereafter, a ding-dong exchange of letters took place between Governor Secretariat and Red Lands Rajbari. Ultimately, by evening the Maharaja gave up his plan of returning to Imphal and agreed to meet the Governor on the next day (20 September) as proposed. Incidentally, it may be mentioned here that neither the Red Lands Rajbari nor the La Chateau Rajbari in Shillong had telephones.

In the evening of 19 September, one Sri Das Gupta, who was earlier Superintendent of Police, (whole of) Manipur, called on the Maharaja. He was, at that point of time, S.P. (CID) at Shillong. Das Gupta politely informed the Maharaja that if he did not agree to sign the Merger Agreement, the Dominion Government of India could and would make someone else as Maharaja, who would sign the Merger Agreement. So, the loss would be that of Bodhchandra, in person. Das Gupta was right because the Dominion Government of India as successor to the earlier British Government of India inherited all rights, privileges and obligations to Treaties/Agreements/Grants/Sufferances/Usages etc. and hence Maharaja Bodhchandra Singh could be removed on account of disloyalty to India and he be replaced by someone.

As per the Sanad granted to Churachand (father of Maharaja Bodhchandra) to be the Chief of Manipur State (after Manipur lost the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891), vide Government of India, Foreign Department Notification No. 1862 E, dated Simla, the 18 September 1891, it was clearly stated that ‘the Chiefship of Manipur State and the title and salute will be hereditary in your family and will descend in the direct line by primogeniture, provided that in each case, succession is approved by Government of India ................ Be assured that as long as your house is loyal to the Crown and faithful to the conditions of this Sanad, you and your successors will enjoy the favour and protection of the British Government.’ This notification was signed by H.M. Durrand, Secretary to Government of India. It is believed that Das Gupta told his story with tears in his eyes. Whether Das Gupta was planted by Rustomji or he acted voluntarily, being sincere to his old master, the Maharaja, it is difficult to say now. But the fact is, even acting as a double agent he was honest to both parties and stood to gain from both. The Maharaja trusted his advice and Nari was happy with Das Gupta’s performance.

The meeting at Government House, Shillong on 20 September was eventful in many ways. The entire battalion of the Jat Regiment was paraded inside the Government House compound. Policemen swarmed the area. The Inspector General of Police, Assam, in full uniform was displayed. His Highness realized the exhibited threat, but suppressed his anger and joked about the tamasha (show) to Nari. Perhaps because of the advice tendered by Sri Das Gupta, the Maharaja agreed to examine articles of the Merger Agreement in detail. The articles were again drafted and redrafted several times. Though the Maharaja did not commit anything, the meeting ended in a cordial atmosphere.

But time was running out and pressure of Delhi was mounting. Sri Prakasa was in a fix. He had known the Maharaja since August 1934, when he was young and Yuberaj as well. Bodhchandra was banished by his father for attempting to ascend the throne through the worship and grace of a sylvan deity, when the father, His Highness Maharaja Sir Churachand Singh KCSI, CBE, was away on pilgrimage to Nabadwip. Yuberaj Bodhchandra Singh spent about three years in exile under the patronage of Sri Prakasa, a nationalist politician of Benares, now known as Varanasi. The relationship between Governor Sri Prakasa and Maharaja Bodhchandra Singh was like that of a father and son. The Maharaja addressed Sri Prakasa as Baba.

Suddenly, the Governor decided to cash on this relationship and made up his mind to pay a lone and private visit to the Maharaja. Though he sent a note to Rajbari that he would come around 5 pm, he went earlier without escort and personal staff. When the Governor arrived at Red Lands Rajbari, the Maharaja was enjoying his afternoon nap. The Governor told the servants not to wake up the Maharaja. He waited in the Gol Kamara (round room). When Bodhchandra came in, His Excellency stood up and lovingly said, “Hai, Bodhchandra:”, not “Your Highness”. The Maharaja replied, “Haa, Baba”. Sri Prakasa continued “I have come as your Baba, not as Governor”.

Then, Sri Prakasa requested the Maharaja to send all his officers out of the room so that he could have a heart to heart talk. He told the Maharaja that New Delhi would not permit any delay. Sri Prakasa told the Maharaja that he was prepared to resign his Governorship, but a new Governor would forcibly affect the merger under terms and conditions more harmful to Manipur and to the Maharaja. The Governor said, “Mein bhig mangne aya (I have come to beg)”. Then the Maharaja agreed to sign the Merger Agreement. They stood up and embraced each other. The Manipur Merger Agreement was signed on the next day, 21 September 1949, and Manipur got officially merged into India on 15 October 1949.

Now, in a topsy-turvy manner let us examine if Manipur was, indeed independent at midnight of 14-15 August 1947. The Indian Independence Act, 1947 passed by the British Parliament on 18 July 1947, allowed the setting up of ONLY two independent Dominions in India to be known respectively as India and Pakistan. There was no room for a third Dominion. If any ruler wanted to be free, he would be inviting that blessed thing called’war’. Indeed, war was actually fought over Nizam’s Hyderabad, a war-like show of force was displayed over Junagadh (in Gujarat), a public outcry with an impending use of force over Travancore and an on-going, three times fought Indo-Pakistani War, over Jammu & Kashmir. In sum, the Instrument of Accession, 1947 and the Standstill Agreements, 1947 decided the fates of Princely States as regards which Dominion they had to join and the Merger Agreements were simply for transfer of administration from Native Rulers to the concerned Dominion, like Chief Commissioner etc.

As for me, I want to be citizen of the strongest nation of the world. I want to feel as proud as the Americans are now, or as the Chinese are beginning to feel, recently. Though I am no lover of Punjabis, but instinctively, I feel very thrilled when Jeev Milkha Singh does well in international golf circuit. The bond of love between Jeev and me are our Indianness. Similarly, I shed exhilarating tears when our Manipur contingent picks up medals in National Games. Let us all be good human beings and hope that we will soon belong to the greatest and most powerful nation of the world.

INDIA’S WAR AGAINST ITSELF

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 19:03:00 +0530

by Pradip Phanjoubam

(This article was first published in the Economic and Political Weekly and republished on the Imphal Free Press on 14 June.)

Delhi's chest thumping journalists have become mere stenographers of power, forgetting to ask questions and interrogate official narratives. A journalist from Manipur recounts the events leading up to and around the 9 June 2015 “surgical strikes” by the Indian Army against insurgents and explains the event in its contexts.

There is something very strange about the ongoing operations against the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, (Khaplang), NSCN-K, and other Northeast militants in the wake of the June 4 devastating ambush on a convoy of the 6-Dogra Regiment which left 18 soldiers dead and 14 more injured. All news of these operations, including the surgical commando strikes deep into Myanmar territory on June 9, emanate from New Delhi and are loudly relayed through the many 24-hour TV channels and columns by Northeast experts based in the city.

Virtually nothing of these is known in Manipur or Nagaland, where the operations are launched from. Even the state governments are left in the dark, as the chief minister of Manipur, Okram Ibobi said in a candid reply to a query from a journalist in the sidelines of an official function on June 11. “We have been depending on what is revealed to the media in New Delhi for information” he had said.

Maybe, the chief minister is being dutifully discreet, for these are supposed to be swift and secret operations, and at stake is the country’s diplomatic relation with Myanmar, but his act of discretion is appearing ridiculous amidst all the loud celebratory drumbeats and chest thumping in New Delhi. Some resourceful journalists and commentators are apparently even privy to the battle plans used by the elite strike forces, and the latest satellite imageries shared between Indian and Myanmar government authorities immediately before the operations were launched etc.

The other scenario is, if Ibobi’s government is actually being left in the dark, nothing can be more humiliating. Nothing can be a louder commentary on the Centre-state relations with regards to the North eastern states too. This should place even the AFSPA debate in a new perspective. Who can now say it is up to the Northeast states to do away with the draconian act merely by not extending the Disturbed Area Act in their states?

There are other unexplained points as well, and the longer these remain unexplained, the cloud over the surgical strikes will thicken.

One of these is, no clinching evidence of the two strikes, such as a picture of the destroyed camps, or those of dead militants etc, have ever been provided. If pre-strike satellite imageries were available to be shared with Myanmar government as some columnists were so sure they were, there should also be post strike satellite imageries of these destroyed camps too. Especially after the unending orgy of celebratory drum beats and chest thumping in New Delhi, the secrecy argument to keep them from public view can hardly be convincing now.

Furthermore, the Myanmar government is now denying there were strikes within their territory. They did not do so immediately, probably because they too were unsure, as the areas where the strikes took place have very thin Myanmar government presence. Up north in the territory where Khaplang holds sway, government presence is virtually nil which is precisely why Khaplang can provide safe sanctuary for Northeast militants. But in the past few days, quoting its northern army posts, Myanmar government is saying, quite definitively too, that the Indian operations did not spill into its territory.

On June 9, the local media in Manipur and Nagaland on their usual beats were also confirming these reports from their own sources, chiefly the police and local army spokespersons. The army sent out a brief press release in Imphal saying there were encounters along the international border during operations, but did not specify numbers of casualties or whether the international border was crossed.

Local newspapers also contacted police stations in the border area, and only the Chassad police station reported hearing sounds of gunfire exchanges from the direction of the border on the morning of June 9. Villagers of Bhaiko under their jurisdiction reported army helicopters landing near their village. Seventeen kilometres from this village is Ningsom village near which along the international border an encounter took place, but this was with cadres of the Revolutionary People’s Front, RPF, whose armed wing is People’s Liberation Army, PLA. This encounter has since been corroborated by the RPF/PLA in press releases to the local media with photographs of what they claimed were ammunitions left behind by their attackers. They denied casualties on their side as well.

Known rebel groups from Nagaland and Manipur have all clarified either through press releases or else phone calls to the press that they know of no such attacks on their camps. As it is, in the Kabaw valley most of them do not stay in camps, but in the townships, merging with the local populations and only reassemble when duty calls.

From Chassad and adjacent Kamjong hilltop villages, and further north Chinghai, you can see deep into the Kabaw valley and the Angoching range flanking the other edge of the valley. You can also see the Somra Tract in the north. At night you can see the flickers of lights in the townships and villages. This region is not altogether abandoned by the Myanmar security establishment. Understandably, Khaplang’s sway also does not extend here, and probably this is the reason why the Chandel ambush was not a sole NSCN-K mission. This being so, the surgical strikes by Indian troops and destruction of rebel camps here would also have come to be known within hours. And if there is anything burning it would be seen from Chassad police station too.

Up north where the Patkai Range watershed is the international boundary in the Nagaland-Arunachal Pradesh sector, the mountainous region east of the Patkai is more wild and out of reach of the Myanmar government. Two journalists from Assam who had two years ago trekked there to meet ULFA chief Paresh Baruah and Khaplang, confirmed this among others. If the surgical strikes had been in this region, it is likely to have missed official notice for long. From the reports so far however, this is not where the strikes were, at least not one of them.

There is yet one more area of cloud. The insurgents are not faceless people. They are in many ways prodigal children of families in Manipur and Nagaland, and their families are always in deep anxiety about their individual fates. Families do everything to woo their children back, and whenever there are news of encounters, they head for the mortuaries in town to identify bodies. Many mothers are known to suffer anxiety disorders. This is why insurgents are compelled to announce deaths of their cadres promptly, otherwise the families and communities of the dead fighters would turn against them. In the June 4 ambush, two militants, one Naga and another Meitei, also died. Within a day, they were both identified. If 15 to 100 militants had been killed in the border area of Myanmar on June 9, it is unlikely this would have remained unconfirmed through this channel by now, unless all 15 to 100 insurgents killed are from Myanmar.

This could also be if the borders are sealed watertight, but this hardly the case. This border, except in the Manipur sector where there are 38 boundary pillars erected in 1896, hardly have exact markers.

In the Manipur sector, the border was officially made in 1834. After ending Ava (Burmese) occupation of Manipur and Assam in 1826 at the end of the first Anglo-Burmese War and the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo, the Chindwin River was deemed the boundary of British protectorate Manipur, putting the Kabaw valley under Manipur. But in 1834, upon repeated complaints by Ava, and seeing that the valley could be much better administered from Mandalay (Ava capital) than Imphal, the British persuaded the Manipur king that a new boundary should be negotiated, and Capt. R. Boileau Pemberton as the Boundary Commissioner drew what came to known as the Pemberton Line along the foot of the “Murring Hills” on the western edge of the Kabaw valley. In 1881, this boundary was realigned by the then British Political Agent in Manipur, Maj. James Johnstone. The objective was to contain the then restive Chassad Kukis, against whom punitive measures were becoming difficult because they would claim to be domiciles of Burma when pursued by Manipur and vice versa when chastised by the Burmese (Alexander Mackenzie: History of British Relationship with the Frontier Tribes of Bengal). Maj. Johnstone’s line included the Chassad Kukis settlements in Manipur. In 1896, another British Political Agent in Manipur, Col. Maxwell, put 38 boundary pillars along this boundary which then came to be known as the Pemberton-Johnstone-Maxwell Line. In the Naga Hills sector, the Patkai Range watershed was considered as the boundary by the 1834 demarcation. The boundary between the Lushai Hills (Mizoram) and Chin Hills (Chin State in Myanmar) were demarcated in 1901 with minor readjustments in 1921 and 1922. The boundary between India and Myanmar was ratified by the two independent countries on March 10, 1967 in Rangoon.

Khaplang’s importance

The June 4 ambush has suddenly awoken the Government of India to the fact that it has to take every player in this conflict theatre on board for a comprehensive peace formula in the Northeast. There are now allegation that the current crisis is a result of a misconceived plan of some officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs to sideline the NSCN-K, so it can come to a settlement with NSCN-IM led by Khaplang’s rivals Thuingaleng Muivah and Isak Swu, both from the Indian side of the border. The GOI has been on a truce with both factions; with the NSCN-IM from 1997 and NSCN-K from 2001. The GOI has also been holding peace talks with the NSCN-IM but not with the NSCN-K, a fact resented by the latter.

The allegation is, the MHA engineered a split in the NSCN-K and patronised the faction opposed to Khaplang to ensure that the latter leaves the peace process with the Government of India. There are two reasons for suspecting this. First, Khaplang being a Myanmar domicile, it would have been out of the question for the GOI to think of reaching a political settlement with him. Second, the NSCN-IM wanted the Khaplang faction out of the equation. The MHA officials probably wanted to wash its hands off with Khaplang, leaving him to settle his scores with the Myanmar government.

Things, it is proving now, were never so straight forward. Khaplang, as the two Assamese journalists who trekked to his camp noted, is reverentially referred to as Baba, and is a very respected leader in his home grounds in the upper Sagaing Division of Myanmar, and his territory is today virtually a liberated zone where only his writs command respect. In an interview to the journalists he revealed he has an interest in the presence of many rebel soldiers of the Northeast, for the size of fraternal troops on his land is a deterrent for the Myanmar Army. His call for a united liberation front of Western South East Asia, therefore was readily accepted by all in his sanctuary. The MHA and the Indian intelligence should have read this possibility. Had they done so, they probably would not have gone so wrong in assessing the threat potential of Khaplang and writing him off so casually.

Embedded media

In the aftermath of the June 4 ambush and the surgical strikes by Indian troops within Myanmar territory, another reality has dawned. The days of the media as the tough and uncompromising interrogators of established authorities are on the way out.

The 17 deaths in the ambush was tragic, and there cannot have been anybody whose heart did not bleed seeing pictures of the families of these soldiers in Himachal Pradesh. In Manipur, there would not have been many who did not curse the attackers, except for the incorrigibly bitter who probably have had personal misfortunes at the hands of the security forces, a prospect not so uncommon or unimaginable in a land torn by conflict and subjected to oppressive laws. When the combing operations and manhunts for the militants began and Chandel district was sealed off by the Army, people waited in bated breaths praying that no collateral damages may result. Fortunately, nothing of this sort has happened to the extent known so far.

On June 9, there was the newsbreak emanating from New Delhi of the surgical strike by special commandos neutralising (the sanitised term for kill) “a significant number of militants”. Nothing abnormal so far; this is war and in a war, it is natural for combatants to fall, was the general reception of the news in the state. But from here on, the media in New Delhi, in particular the TV channels took over. The “significant number” began to have definite two digit figures. Some even pushed it to three digit figures quoting unnamed authoritative sources. Talking heads were rushed to studios and the mood everywhere was one of celebration. The blood thirst in the key words in the running headlines would have also made anybody shudder: ‘revenge’, ‘retribution’, ‘you hit us we hit back harder’. Many of these words soon became the adjectives for Manipur and Nagaland, making residents of these states uneasy and embarrassed, and on cooler reflections, furious.

In the evening of the same newsbreak day, when newspapers in Manipur also sat down to take stock of things, they had with them just two press releases from the PIB Defence Wing and the state police to depend on. Neither had anything that signified hot pursuit into Myanmar territory, so local papers wrote their stories accordingly, though the bolder amongst them used the stories from the websites of these TV Channels to make their stories juicier.

In all the TV shows, there was not a single voice that exercised or recommended healthy doubt which all students of journalism are trained to imbibe. Nobody questioned these sources, and instead simply joined the celebration – of deaths. This thought itself was gory, even if those killed were enemies. Gone was also the notion that insurgency is a tragic internal war, in the words of Sanjib Baruah, India against itself. If American journalists were accused of being embedded with their military in their invasion of Iraq in 2003, who can now say Indian journalists, in particular the frenetic TV channels are not guilty of the same objectionable practice.

ECONOMIC INTERPRETATIONS OF MERGER AGREEMENT: STRATEGIC POLICY SHIFTS IN DEVELOPMENT

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 1 Jun 2015 12:40:00 +0530

Dr L Krishnamangol wrote this article for The Sangai Express and Epao reposted it on 1 June 2015

There are many historical turning points in the evolution of the society and state of Manipur since ancient times. We can, therefore, imagine that there was “primitive communism” or primitive communal system in ancient times. And, the primitive communism is the earliest mode of production which is based on the common ownership of the means of production or the resources.

This system still continues in some parts of the hill areas of Manipur. And, the system corroborates the empirical experiences/evidences that were found in different parts of the world in ancient times or early period of human civilizations. Coming to the case of Manipur, it is well known that the historical development of the state revealed that Manipur was defeated/conquered by the British in 1891, and that, thereafter, it became a princely state prior to 15th August, 1947.

In fact, the historical development of Manipur further revealed that the princely state of Manipur which had been an independent kingdom for a long historical period (i.e. prior to the British rule in Manipur) was transformed or restored into the earlier status of independent kingdom immediately after the British had left the princely state of Manipur.

Thus, without any delay, the erstwhile independent Kingdom of Manipur further became an independent nation state or independent country. And, with the passing of the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1949, Manipur enjoyed the status of an independent country or nation. But there are still many critical questions which are still in the mind of the people(s).

1. In the first place, whether the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947 could fully take over the earlier sovereign power vested in the King?

2. Secondly, whether the MSCA, 1947 could establish/a real democracy (i.e. a real democratic form of government) in Manipur?

3. Thirdly, whether the Act contained or supported the vestiges of the erstwhile kingdom?

4. Fourthly, whether there were elements of force or coercion in establishing a democratic nation or country?

5. Fifthly, whether there were people who advocated the restoration of the earlier kingdom?

6. Sixthly, whether the Maharaja considered that the propitiatory right of the nation state or the erstwhile kingdom of Manipur belonged to the King as the kingdom formation took a long historical period under the kings?

In the above context, it would be beyond the scope or purpose of the present article to answer all the questions in the limited space. And, I may also have contextual constraints to answer all the questions. Again, I am aware that there are also many renowned persons and experts, who have their own knowledge and originality for these questions or issues. However, I have set out a few questions not to provoke many intellectuals, social scientists, experts and other groups, but to explore the reality and various implications including merits and demerits of the merger of Manipur into India.

I am aware that we could not reverse the course of history. But, there is no denying the fact that the past experience is helpful for guiding a country. And the whole premises of the insurgency movement or the underground movement is that Manipur was an independent country or nation while Budhachandra Maharaja, the then King of Manipur signed the Merger Agreement (i.e. Manipur Merger Agreement) on 21st September, 1949 without the consent of the people and the Council of Ministers for merging Manipur into India on October 15, 1949. These political and historical development, which revealed that Manipur was merged into Union of India (i.e. India) on October 15, 1949 is widely known and discussed.

However, the attempt to regain the early status of independence as per the Manipur State Constitution, 1949 has still become an unlawful activity under the Constitution of India (i.e. the Indian Constitution) as the Government of India and the Government of Manipur have repeatedly emphasised that Manipur was merged into India on October 15, 1949.

And, it is also difficult to establish judiciary body or appropriate bench of the court to pass judgement on the propitiatory right of the early independence status of Manipur. It is also difficult to reverse the historical and political development of state formation within the Union of India/India, or the Indian Union, as the country (India) has her own constitution, known as the Indian constitution.

And, all the “privy purses” of the erstwhile kings of the Indian states had also been granted. Thus, the principle of compensation or award had also been fulfilled for merging Manipur into India with all rights and privileges for citizens of the country under the Indian Constitution.

However, it is argued that the people of Manipur have failed to enjoy/get all the rights and privileges under the Constitution of India or the Indian constitution. Therefore, the critics have challenged the merger agreement in spite of the constitutional recognition given to the citizens of the state (i.e. the citizens of India). In this respect, the various implications or the interpretations of the merger agreement need critical re-examination.

1. In the first place, it can be pointed out that the decision or the action of the Maharaja revealed that the propitiatory right of the state (i.e. the erstwhile kingdom of Manipur) belonged to the King (i.e. the Maharaja himself).

2. Secondly, as already noted, the principle of compensation was applied or followed at the time of signing the Agreement.

3. Thirdly, as the Kingship was a tradition/institution of hereditary/heir and succession, the Maharaja had the advantage or got the opportunity to sign the Agreement in the midst of the political chaos and larger interest of the people to guard against any future external aggression or the war from the neighbouring and the foreign countries.

4. Fourthly, the Maharaja might have the vision to expand the democracy within the Indian Union and perhaps, he might not like to continue the feudal remnants or legacies that might be protected in Manipur. In this context, it is likely that he might have a vision of real democracy to provide freedom to the people, and dispel any fear of the people that might emanate or arise from the concentration of democracy.

5. Fifthly, in an agrarian society where the people were largely illiterate en masse (except a small section), the Maharaja might have taken the decision for integration of Manipur with the Indian Union as the people of the state suffered various forms of trauma and subjugation under the British rule. The decision of the Maharaja further revealed that the larger dimension and expansion of democracy at the Indian national level could protect and promote the rights, duties, responsibilities, public administration (i.e. governance), and socio-economic development of the people that could be obtained or reaped from the integration of the state (Manipur) with the Indian Union.

6. Sixthly, a critical look into the historical and political development of Manipur, which obtained at the time of Merger Agreement revealed that there was a better political and social climate for consolidation and integration of all the princely native states or the earlier kingdoms for a strong and unified India under the same political sovereignty, known as the Indian Union (i.e. India).

Thus, according to the merger agreement signed on 21st September, 1949 between Maharaja Budhachandra and the Government of India, Manipur was merged into the Indian Union on 15th October, 1949, which is now challenged by the critics and the armed revolutionary organizations as an “agreement” signed under duress or force imposed on the Maharajah.

Here, it would be interesting to note that, except under dictatorship or dictatorial rule, experiences have shown that sovereignty could not be easily parcialised, and perhaps remain as a symbol of “Independence” of a nation or country. Now, the question is : Why was Maharaja considered wrong in signing the agreement? Alternatively, why was the Maharaja blamed for signing the Agreement?

In any case, the Maharaja might, perhaps, face both the advantages and disadvantages of signing the “agreement”. However, it has been observed that he had taken the decision to sign the agreement on the basis that the King (i.e. the Maharajah himself) was not again conquered and that, in practice, the erstwhile kingdom of Manipur became an independent nation state immediately after the British had left Manipur.

And, this stage of historical and political development of Manipur could be described as the “Golden Age of Manipur” since Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 was passed and adopted for a popular government (elected government) of the independent nation or country of Manipur. In fact, there are a large number of intellectuals, scholars and other experts who have their views on the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947 and also on the status of independent country or nation of Manipur that existed prior to October 15, 1949. And, therefore, it is not the purpose of the present article to elaborate or repeat their views.

It may, however, be noted that the independent status of the Kingdom of Manipur or the nation of Manipur was lost when the Maharaja Budhachandra, who applied the principle that the Kingship was an institution of hereditary/heir and succession, and propitiatory right of the erstwhile kingdom of Manipur belonged to the King himself signed the Merger Agreement. This marked another historical turning point for integration of Manipur from a small independent nation state to the Indian Union or India.

Here, it would be essential to re-examine why the critics have still argued against the decision taken by the Maharaja in signing the “agreement”.

It is argued that the decision taken by the Maharaja in signing the merger agreement for merging Manipur into the Indian Union or India was wrong as Manipur was an Independent Kingdom or an independent nation for a long historical period before the British came, and after the British left Manipur, the Kingdom of Manipur had politically or automatically restored its/her early status of “independence” (i.e. the independent kingdom or the independent nation).

Thus, it has been argued that the merger agreement signed between the Maharaja and the Government of India was wrong as he (the King) had not taken the decision or consent of the people of Manipur and the Council of Ministers of the state in signing the agreement.

It is also their argument that the decision taken by the Maharaja was wrong as Manipur had (already) adopted and followed the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947 for the formation/constitution or election of a popular government after the British had left Manipur.

Thus, according to their views there are basically two main points which constitute the basis of their arguments that lend support to or that cause the armed revolution against the Government of India and also against the Government of Manipur. These two main points may be set out as follows:

1. First, it is argued that Maharaja (i.e. Budhachandra Maharaja who was the King of Manipur when the British had left the latter had no power or legal right to sign the “merger agreement” as the king of Manipur had lost the power of the King during the British rule in Manipur.

2. Secondly, it is also argued that the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947 had formally established a popular government (i.e. an elected government) of Manipur which continued to function or existed till the merger of Manipur into the Union of India (i.e. India) on October 15, 1949.

Thus, the merger of Manipur into India marked a turning point in the historical, political, social and economic changes, and development in Manipur. In fact, it (i.e. merger agreement) has larger dimension or implications of historical and political development in Manipur. And the process of economic development in Manipur also takes place with the process of political changes and development in India since Manipur was merged into the Indian Union/India on October 15, 1949. In fact, there is close relationship between the modern economic development and political development, which is generally known.

We may now conclude the brief article in the following ways.

1. It can be pointed out that there are still two opposite views, which sharply differ in their arguments on the merger agreement. And, coming to the case of Manipur, there is still a controversial issue, which lends support to the underground movement or insurgency movement in Manipur.

2. It is also observed that the Government of India and Maharaja Budhachandra had accepted that Manipur was an independent kingdom, which was also a princely state even prior to the departure of British from Manipur. Thus, both sides had not accepted “locus standi” of Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947.

3. In fact, the sequence of the historical events corroborate that there was politically free entry from Manipur into Indian Union (i.e. India), but there is no politically free exit of Manipur from India as the process of political and economic integration, and the process of modern economic growth and development of Manipur has already started and deepened in the state within the political and geographical boundary (i.e. territory) of India, which is now recognized as one of the largest democratic countries in the comity of nations.

4. Finally, it can be pointed out that the process of economic integration has strengthened democracy and development at different levels in most of the countries of the world. And the modern theory of economic growth and development also suggests that the economic integration from the local to the growth centre of the region, from the rural to the urban and from the region to the nation or the country, and from the country to the global economy can provide benefits of growth and development to the people in the country.

It is therefore, essential that there is the need for restructuring and reforming the various barriers to growth and development through effective institutional reforms, massive or adequate increase in public investments in various fields of development including eradication or elimination of poverty and unemployment, provision of basic needs, overall increase in the general standards of living of the people, reorganisation of the participation model/system of development, proper management of the new economic development system, etc. that need to transform the people to maximum level of development.

In fact, Keynes’ “maximum development” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “minimum government and maximum governance” can now be a new starting point for a new economics that needs to transform the country (India) including Manipur into a higher level of development or maximum level of growth and development.

MLA LOCAL AREA DEVELOPMENT FUND IN MANIPUR

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 18 May 2015 14:16:00 +0530

by Mohendro Nandeibam. This article was originally published by the People's Chronicle (http://thepeopleschronicle.in)

Big Community Hall and Small Community Life:
Can we think of 60 Production-cum Training Centres with Rs. 300 crore within 5 years?
Manipur should not and cannot claim a place of honour and respectability in the comity of sister states in the North-East, not to speak in the whole country, as evidently substantiated by the World Bank whose view, is “Non-Development” measured largely by the unchanged composition of products, unchanged factor-combination and unchanged technology. This is the dismal fate after 65 years of economic planning in the country. We could not undertake the exhaustive Investment Planning based on fair calculation of costs and benefits, merits and demerits and short term gains and long term loss. The recent trend of globalization and increasing liberalization has exposed the fundamental weaknesses of structural stagnation.

All these calculations explain the profound significance of Investment Planning; perhaps, as a beginning of Investment Destination. Economic Planning; Planning with a Vision and redefined objectives, ultimately boils down to the investment planning.

A careful examination of Investment Planning will tell you of a new culture of hard work, disciplined outlook, professional behavior and unity in approach and action. The simultaneous combination of Autonomous and Induced Investments could be a convincing strategy for modern development with larger Multiplier Effect. Perhaps, this is what Narendra Modi, Honourable Prime Minister of India, refers to as Democracy, Demographic Dividend and Demand. A disciplined economic democracy with a strong public law can certainly make headway with skilled manpower (demographic dividend) and ensure effective purchasing power with ever enlarging scope of employment.

Right now, Manipur is unable to pick up. The financial base is too weak. Fiscal self-reliance is a far cry. The technical base is also too weak. The managerial capability is equally weak. There is dearth of professional knowledge.

We cannot run even a small enterprise on sustainable basis. Development administration is just a new input. There is conceptual confusion between general administration and development administration. While Outcome Budget has been the guiding principle of development administration in most of advanced states, Manipur is scrambling with most conservative financial instrument known as Outlay Budget.

As a result the investment decision is either weak or wrong; and inter-sectoral linkage is missing. Sectoral harmony and convergence is a serious issue. Every year we are experiencing a new phenomenon of lop-sided investment.

An interesting case of investment is the MLA Local Area Development Fund in Manipur. The Honourable Chief Minister of Manipur who is also Minister of Finance could express his satisfaction and said, in his Budget speech:

“I am happy to inform the Honourable Members that the MLA’s Local Area Development Fund has been raised to Rs 1 crore for each MLA from Rs. 75 Lakh in the previous year. I hope the increased allocation will enable the Honourable Members to take up greater number of Constituency-specific development works” (page 7, Budget Speech, July 2014).

Yes, MLA Local Area Development Fund is important, but more important is the way the fund is utilized; and it must be guided by the standard of outcome.

1.      Did the Honourable Chief Minister of Manipur make an attempt to get an Assessment Report of the Funds used in the past?

2.      How do we address the intra-constituency development constraints?

3.      Is there any visible understanding between the MLAs to achieve a Common Goal? Do MLAs in Manipur have a vision of their own constituency? What do they really like?

4.      What could be our guiding principle, either Expediency or Efficiency?

Let’s recall the hard fact of demoralizing experience of Mounting Rural Poverty (40 per cent) and Rising Unemployment in rural areas. Is it not rational and necessary to pay priority attention to the establishment of Production-cum-Training Centres, --- at least one in a constituency to achieve the twin objectives of Employment and Skill Development? Within 5 years Manipur can have 60 such Centres with Rs. 300 crore. Is it not a better Investment Plan?

In China and Korea Village Economic Enterprises did miracles. Production was stepped up. Work culture could improve tremendously. Economic security could be ensured through Employment, Participation and Involvement.

Investment of Rs. 60 crore a year in Manipur without any specific objective and vision may have destabilizing effect. Because “ money which is a source of blessings to mankind becomes a source of peril and confusion unless it is controlled”. Easy money creates havoc.

Well, to-day the Community Halls, constructed under the MLA Local Area Development Fund, stand empty without any productive activity. What about the change in Community Life? How far the colourful Community Halls have changed the Community Mind, Community Outlook and Community Temptation? If there are no signs of change, what is the meaning of Big Community Halls?

At best, it could be a luxury in the island of poverty. Our issue is the disturbing Culture of Poverty, not merely the problem of poverty. The workshops and work sheds are temples of the poor. The Training – cum- Production Centres in the remote areas could be a much better option of investment. The empty community halls convey empty messages. Is it not a nice case of gross misuse of scarce resources?

CONTEMPORARY MANIPURI SHORT STORIES

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 18 May 2015 12:55:00 +0530

This article by Nahakpam Aruna originally appeared in Manipuri as one of the chapters titled Houjikki Matamgi Manipuri Warimacha in her book Nongthangleima Amasung Taibang, which was published in 2001. It was abridged and translated by Dhiren A. Sadokpam in 2008. E-pao and Hueiyen Lanpao republished the article in May 2015.

The development of Manipuri short story passed through various stages linked by an organic continuum from its conception to the age of maturity and sparks. Despite the resistance to recognition of its contemporary form and the near rejection of the same by established littérateurs and critics, the embryonic genre emerged as a formidable literary corpus acquiring a life of its own.

In the twilight of the last millennium, the short story emerged as a potent and mature genre despite its late entry into the varied Manipuri literary traditions. The genre was shaped and chiselled in the early part of twentieth century. With the new education system launched by the British post-1891 and subsequent change in the political landscape, Manipur saw the proliferation of more recent Indian and world language literature.

Short story as a genre, however, was developed much ahead and independent of this phase owing to the Manipuri literature's proximity to strong currents in Bengali and Assamese literature. The changing political contours, social and economic state, stage of modernization and contemporary world literature have left not just an impinging reflection on emerging Manipuri short stories, but also shaped their thematic structure just like these changes shaped the novel in Manipuri.

Gazing through Manipur's turbulent social history, the development of the "short story" in Manipur can be incised into four chronological stages:

1. The period of conception (1932–1941),
2. The birth of the short story (1946–1960)
3. The stage of maturity (1960–1970)
4. The age of meirik (sparks) (1970–till date)

On closer scrutiny, the last stage can be further segmented into two sub-stages: (a) 1970–1990, and (b) 1990–till date.

Like the history of literature in most languages, development of short stories in Manipur was possible due to the introduction of periodicals and journals. Sabbarjit's Yumpanba (Marriage), Dr. Kamal's Brojendrogee Luhongba (Brajendro's Wedding), Krishnamohan's Laman (Obligation) etc. were the ones that imitated the structure of the short story and got print spaces in Manipuri journals during the first phase.

However, it is worth mentioning here that the first ever short story titled Ima Wa Tannaba (Discussion with Mother) was written by Khunthing Tangkhul. Most short stories from this phase have "love" and "romance" as the key themes. Short story writers mainly dealt with the issues of overarching dominance of clan, caste, class and community hostility and discrimination over an individual's choice of "lovers" and "partners" during this stage.

Most writings focused on the societal norms that not only governed but also put strictures on personal choice. Despite the content and the theme, the writings could not get closer to the exact "formal structure" of short stories as is known today. After most of these short stories appeared on the Manipuri journals of the pre-1947, it was Raj Kumar Shitaljit who wrote and published a book of short stories called Leikolnungda (In the Garden) in 1946, a year before the end of British Raj.

In the same year, Raj Kumar Shitaljit also published another collection of short stories called Leinungshi (Fragrance) and thus began a new era of short stories. Shitaljit can be credited as the father of Manipuri short stories for the strong foundation he laid not only in terms of "form" and "content" but also in the actual production of literary works closely associated with the short story genre.

R.K. Elangbam wrote his Chingya-Tamya (Foothills) in 1955. By 1958, when Elangbam published his Yumgee Mou (Daughter-in-law), the flow of short stories became more steady and smooth. Even during this phase, Manipuri short stories continued to depict the idealistic and romantic aspects of life and the tension between societal norms over inter community/clan/caste matrimonial alliances and individual choice.

Shitaljit adeptly handled these themes in his works like Inthokpa (Excommunication) and Naknabadagee (Owing to Proximity). In the early short story texts of Shitaljit, one can find criticism of the sheer hypocrisy of the Manipuri ruling elites without directly referring to them. Some of the works not only reflected the spiritual insolvency and unjustifiable norms of the society but also a voice of revolt against these practices.

R.K. Elangbam's work embodied a careful yet sharper textual picturisation of love relations between man and woman. The changing face of women in society was adequately reflected in Thajagee Ayingba Maithong (The Tranquil Face of the Moon). Apart from mirroring the dynamic changes in gender relations, one can also find descriptive narratives on the prevailing conditions of women of that particular period in history, particularly in late works like Kalenthagee Leipaklei (Earth Flower in Summer, 1979).

Struggle for survival sullied by the filth of the surroundings and purity of the inner self are imageries Elangbam constructs over women. However, the core of short story writings during this period were governed by romanticism and idealism; controlled by a filtered gaze, which in turn had a profound impact upon the smooth flow of a straight narrative.

The romantic and idealistic trend set by R.K. Shitaljit and R.K. Elangbam in their works were further allowed free and smooth run with the emergence of writers of repute like Maharaj Kumari Binodini, Nongthombam Kunjamohan, Kumanthem Prakash, Shri Biren, Hijam Guna, Elangbam Dinamani, Chitreshwor Sharma, Nilbir Shastri etc. in the 1960s. With a fertile ground already set during this phase, short story writing in Manipuri sprouted as a matured genre. It was also the phase of Manipuri short stories where the writers could pull themselves out of the rubric of romanticism and straight away deal with social realism.

The new turn was towards a portrayal of everyday social realities faced by the people. The tremendous changes and pressures experienced in the realm of political, social and economic life of Manipur in the post-1947 period did have a profound impact on the works of all these writers. In sharp contrast to the celebrative moods of independence from colonial rule and feudal monarchy, this was a phase of growing distrust propelled by the crisis in democracy and the all pervasive repressed anger and anxieties in society.

Witnessing the decadence that characterized public life and the growing economic disparity, the writers were catapulted towards these realities unlike the first stage where the spirit of romanticism triumphed. Most short story writers lamented the breakdown of traditional morality and the attempt to replace the same with materialistic values. Dominant themes were the fear and anxieties of the times, corruption in economic life, the widening gap in relationships and cyclic dilemma of the poor.

The breakdown of traditional morality and its effects were all tackled from different possible angles by writers like Kunjamohan, Prakash, Guna and Shri Biren. Kunjamohan's Wanomba (Seeking Favour) revolves around the character Priyalata who offers her flesh so nonchalantly to a senior government official so that her husband could get promoted to a higher rank. The story focused on how power and money can effortlessly subdue one's prevailing and practicing notion of honour and morality.

Prakash's works Manorama, Echa (My Child) and Mama (Mother) deal with the sensitive aspects of sexual taboo and illicit relations. While Prakash's works link the phenomena with distorted understanding of modernity, Kunjamohan links them to larger social issues. Kunjamohan succeeds in portraying the imageries of poverty stricken people without associating the style with extra sentimentalism best illustrated in his work Ilisha Amagee Mahao (The Taste of a Hilsha, 1973).

Inescapable fate of the economically marginalized are clearly sketched in his works. This particular phase in Manipuri short story writing is known for its matured artistic fulfilment. The narrative flow governed and controlled by self imposed restrictions became a thing of the past. The wave became closer to Western short stories in its form and style. Shri Biren's short stories Nanthokkhee, (Escaped) Masina Imphalgee Warini," (Tale of Imphal), Shegairaba Kurangpal (The Torn Skin) delineate close proximity to the emerging changes in the lives of the people that led to disruption in relationships as well as breaking of bonds.

These writings, however, were still markers of Manipuri new writings based on the imitation of the Western short story style. Despite the development, there were no perceptible changes in the narrative style of some writers and continued to have a smooth flow as mirrored in the works of M.K. Binodini and Nilbir Shastri.

The hallmark of Binodini's work lies in her ability to utilize mesmerizing and romantic language in short stories, and this in turn helped maintain a continuity of flow from the earlier works in the entire body of Manipuri short stories. Many of these writings also rescued the form from unprecedented qualitative decline. This particular stage also witnessed the beginning of using directness of communicative styles which were rarely deployed in previous works.

The age of meirik that followed the 1960s literary trend still continues to be one of the most prominent literary waves in Manipur. The short story experience of the 1960s was a result of many well known writers' coincidental convergence at one point from different literary directions and sources. In 1974, writers like Shri Biren, Ibomcha, Lamabam Biramani, Priyokumar, Laitonjam Premchand, Kishorchand, Ibohanbi etc got together under the leadership of Nongthombam Kunjamohan as the editor published a literary journal called Meirik.

The primary objective of the group were to reflect upon and express the changing face of society and its impact on the lives of the people, and capture the cumulative effect as a literary movement. It was a conscious movement. In their manifesto, they have succinctly spelt out why short stories should be written and for whom they should be published.

The writers of this period further broadened their social consciousness. The level of trauma and anxieties that have come to occupy their minds could not be sufficiently expressed in the form and style introduced by earlier writers. They made an attempt to truly reflect the struggle for survival, the crying pangs of the common people and the experience of their exploitative condition.

Out of these efforts, they resorted to a sharpened realistic portrayal of the society and came closer to realism. Another sketch of the times was the way how these writers went looking inwards rather than the outward gaze that was so imminently intrinsic to earlier works. Whenever there were inadequacies of the short story form while delineating their idea of social reality, they even went beyond the prescribed structural style of realism so as to create a new form that was compatible with the content.

Allegories, symbols, dreams, fantasies, folk elements, psychological perspectives were effectively utilized to create new revolutionary writing as a means of expression. The experimental movement that has been discussed here can be put into the following three categories:

(i) Experiment for experiment's sake in search of a new form
(ii) Ideas oriented narrative without a structured story line
(iii) The psychoanalytical perspective

The experiments that were initiated with the advent of meirik have now come to occupy a significant space in the 1980s. Every writer since the 1960s till date had experimented with various narrative styles in one or more stories keeping aside the idea of literary competitiveness. Without much diversion from the thematic or the ideational notion, this experimental movement incubated the writers for two decades between 1970 and 1990. Even if one encounters a variation in the current new Manipuri short story writings, it would simply be either an expansion or contraction of the core element represented by this movement or just the reincarnations of the same.

The problems and issues dealt by the earlier short stories but not so new in theme like dominance and subservience, tension between the rich and the poor, seer helplessness and despair of the marginalized, the breakdown of morality, etc are all reappearing in the new experimental writings.

Prakash's Wakat (The Plea), Kunjamohan's Kasturi Garrage, Biramani's Hanuba Amasung Yongyam (The Old Man and The Monkeys) and Huigee Rachna (Dog's Essays), Laitonjam Premchand's Shahing Chaba Amagee Wari (The Story of a Cannibal), Kamal Toijamba's Mithungsangee Hanuba (The Old Man of the Guest House) can be clubbed into this group. They have not yet gone far to the extent of doing away with the convention of characterization and plot making.

Biramani and Premchand have deployed folk elements to construct symbols and express the concerns of the contemporary times. If Biramani's writings edges on the spectacle, Premchand's work is an embodiment of love and pity. Kamal Toijamba's work Shaktam Machet Machet Mang Macha Macha (Patches of Images and Little Dreams, 1999) is a more advanced product of the Manipuri experimental writing in short story.

The state of uncertainties and turmoil prevailing in the region has also shaped the writer's conception and meaning of the political and origin of the crisis triggered by the same. Toijamba's Uchi (Mouse) and Pebetki Leibakta (In the Land of the Pebet) reflect this trend.

In an attempt to represent the unbelievable realities that have dogged the region, various imageries and symbols are being used without a supposed moral compunction. He sketches a dream/fantasy like sequence of a mouse that was rescued by a kind hearted woman. The mouse finally found shelter inside the woman's attire and played with unbridled freedom.

Abstract ideas as foundation of the story, possessing the features of poetry, narrative without a structured story-line since the launching years of meirik are some characteristics of works prominently being deployed by writers like Yumlembam Ibomcha and Lamabam Biramani. Ibomcha's works are known for their proximity to his own poems. He is at ease breaking the wall between short stories and poems and thereby enabling himself to walk to and fro over the thoroughfare he creates against the wall.

While keeping the thematic tradition, he draws a picture of the metaphysical while adopting a universal approach. Ibomcha and Biramani make attempts to truly reflect the anxieties set into motion by the massive strides in the development of science and technology and the feeling that mankind's space has shrunk; and the constant struggle to carry the load of thoughts over their heads while falling deep into the abyss along with individual modern sensibilities. Mode of expression is the poetic mood sans plots and characters.

They express their thoughts using only symbols and imageries as in Ibomcha's Ishing (Water), Gari (Vehicle), Sahar (City), Numitee Asum Thengjillakli (The Dusk Sets In) and Biramani's Lambi (Passage), Oon Henna Henna Tatharaklee (The Cascading Snow), Meethungshang (Guest House) etc. That Biramani has now stopped taking recourse to this style is a different story altogether.

Adept at composing poems, Ibomcha still has the ability to select consistent symbols and imageries for effective use in writing short stories. Due to overemphasis and overuse of abstract symbols and imageries in the same thematic content, there are times when certain level of confusion creeps into some of his short stories that make one difficult to differentiate between two ideas.

Elangbam Dinamani, who reserved the space for comedy and satire in Manipuri short stories, not only observes life's delicate balance but also becomes part of the experimental writers' caravan. In his, Kege Makhongda Certificate (The Certificate Under the Castor Tree, 1995), Dinamani mocks the social system for ignoring and disguising fundamental truth with a decadent culture masked by artificial glitter.

This artificial glitter to the writer is symbolically represented by the "certificate." His satirical take on the political culture has been amusingly effective. In Malem Achumba Numeet Palan (Observing World Truth Day), Dinamani infuses life into the iconic statue of the blind folded woman with sword and balance.

On a day when the world was observing the International Justice Day inside a hall, the lifeless statue turned into a living woman, and she was attempting to untie the piece of cloth wrapped around the head to obstruct her sight. She managed to un-knot and came out of the hall but was waylaid by the guards. She finally bribed the guards by giving her pair of gold ear-rings and escaped into the jungles.

In the world of Dinamani, where there is no space and time left for truth, symbolic outpourings are the last resort. In these crucial times, what we encounter is not only the turbulent experiences but also the efforts from within to negotiate and escape from the down sliding whirlpool of stormy thoughts that have come to imprison us. The inability to find an escape route can be best understood from the constant tension between the heart and the mind and this is amply demonstrated in many writers' psychoanalytical approach to short stories.

Yumlembam Ibomcha's works uses the concept of "sexual tension" as one way of penetrating through the humankind's minds. Two of his prominent works, Sunita Amasung Meneka (Sunita and Meneka) and Nong Ngankheedaba Ahing (The Never Ending Night), seeks to uncover the relations between man and woman, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters from a view buried beneath human subconsciousness and seems to indicate that human minds operate under an artificially constructed notion of relationships.

While R.K. Mani's Matam Amagee Senapati (The General of the Moment) paints all human beings as war weary generals who had fought, retreated, advanced, won and lost, Ranbir Sarungba's Bindudugee Wari (The Dot's Tale, 1997) is deeply engrossed in philosophical reflection. The primary task seems to be liberating the "self" trapped within repeated circles of lines drawing authority from the society.

The perspective of the "self" is examined, searched and identified by opening the floodgate of thoughts. In doing so, they have also magnified the irreconcilable tension between the inward mind and outward social norms that shapes the human nature. While, Ibomcha builds up his story as if there is a seamless flow of energy between dreams and reality, Ranbir charts a smooth path for human memory to walk along with the story.

There is also another trend in which short stories influenced by realism have effortlessly accommodated the closely guarded inexpressible desires. The effort to bring externally located narratives within the ambit of internal romantic idealism can be found in Sudhir Naoroibam's work Lei-ee Khara, Punshi Khara (Some Lines, Some Lives, 1998).

His Nungshitombi Amasung Ei (Nunshitombi and Me) is a story about a free spirited young girl who mingled with her age group without any normative pressures but gradually got entrapped into a cage walled by gendered rules which turned her into a meek bird. Sudhir's Nongmei (Guns) reflects how the weak change their perceptions and behaviours when empowered and made invincible. The contradiction between thoughts and actions that do not have a destiny are succinctly portrayed in his Marup Amagee Awaba (A Friend's Woes). He is comfortable externalizing the internal in a subtle manner.

The 1980s witnessed the emergence of a new direction in the thematic and thought process of Manipuri short stories. This was the beginning of the post colonial turn which laid extra emphasis on the ethnicity and cultural identity as the motif of the new trend. Turning away from the influence of the West or the seduction of the developed world, regional literatures in India began looking inwards scouting for indigenous sources.

In Manipur too, new crop of writers and poets stopped looking westward and ignored the ideals of modernism in search of the uniqueness in the constitution of nationhood. The peculiarity of the situation made the literary movement a little different from others in that they went beyond cultural identity to incorporate the strident political voices. The new writings are driven by the disillusionment of the people, hopelessness of over fifty years of taking part in India's democratic experience, disengaged politics of the day and new form of colonial exploitation.

The quest for rewriting history, search for the roots, the effort to chart out a path for new historical trajectory and the political echoes that reverberated all around impacted not only on poetry but also short stories. Beyond experiencing universal metaphysical issues and intellectual isolation, the young writers began exploring existential concerns of exploitation. Infused with the task of safeguarding identity and nurturing cultural tradition, they began probing into how their own people have been subjugated or exploited.

The trend gets reflected in Lanchenba Meetei's Meekapthokpada Manglaknaba (The Awakening Nightmare, 1989), Birendrajit Naorem's Amambadasu Anganbadasu (In Darkness and In Light, 1992), Arambam Memchoubi's Leiteng (The Ornament, 1992), Akhokpam Kholchandra's Amamba Atiyagee Makhada (Beneath the Dark Sky, 1995).

Towards the end of the 1990s, the thematic content in these young writers were driven by certain revolutionary zeal. They continued using the techniques of expression like the writers of the age of meirik but had something new to offer. In their effort to highlight issues that cannot be easily expressed through character and plot convention, they take recourse to a critically stylized form of writing to execute the same.

With Lanchenba's Nongyai Matungsida (After Midnight) and Ngaiba (The Wait), there has been a perceptible shift from the early phase of the age of meirik in both themes and perspectives with greater emphasis on expressive political symbols and imageries based on cultural rootedness. In Nongyai Matungsida, Lanchenba sketches the imagery of a Manipuri and his subjective anguish associated with the 13th of August and his feelings of seeing a map of Manipur veiled with cob webs hanging on the wall. This man sees the map as hung lifeless body of a woman raped and murdered. The shrill cry of the woman turns into a nightmare that wakes him up bringing him back into the reality dogged with actual turmoil. To the man, the map represents the motherland still languishing in pain and sorrow.

The entry of Birendrajit and Arambam Ongbi Memchoubi gave a proper shape to this trend. The will and courage to free oneself from political enslavement is vividly reflected in Birendrajit's writing. He takes freedom as a pre-requisite for human existence. A dream for freedom despite being not free is the highlight of his short stories. Memchoubi questions the prevailing political trend of the day fully equipped with engaging political consciousness.

Her writings reflect a continuous flow of patriotic spirit with a poetic spin. Equally at ease at composing poems, Memchoubi takes recourse to creating symbols, dreams and fantasies. In her work, Leiteng (Ornament), she raises a significant political question by recalling Khongjom Lan and bringing back to life the voices of those who gave up their lives for the motherland.

She depicts a picture where the fallen heroes resurrect from their graves and ask if the current decadent politics is worth the sacrifice they made. In another work Ahangba Pun (Empty Urn), Memchoubi goes on to give a severe critique of the insensitive and corrupt elites whose vested interests have over the ages impoverished Manipur personified as a mother carrying an empty urn with too little to offer her children. Located in the same trend, Khelchandra's Seennaidabasingee Kumhei (The Fest of the Jobless) brings out the intensity and gravity of exploitation in the new incarnate of colonial rule.

Another recurring theme many of these writers attempt to bring forward is that of cultural assimilation and resistance. They seem to reject the predominant notion of modernity and development by using allegories, symbols and folk imageries. There is a constant struggle to negotiate their understanding with the strong wave of modern sensibilities while spawning differing ideas. In the attempt to bring out their ideas of the realities and infuse the same to creative products, one cannot rule out the fear that it might impact upon the established art of short story writing.

The voices of the marginalized, poor and impoverished peasants, deprived segments of the society – all find their space in Manipuri short stories. Most writers have an inclination to represent their realities. Getting out of the phase of romanticism and idealism and coming closer to realism began with the advent of the age of Meirik.

The flow of this trend is still prevalent till today. In the multiple currents of themes in short story writing, the theme related to the marginalized voices occupies a significant space. It is also pertinent to study the different ways in the depiction of these voices. Writers like Biramani in their later works resort to realistic depiction after withdrawing from their earlier experimental approach.

Despite the struggle and hardship of the individuals, the over dominance of certain social symbols prohibits the marginalized to come out of their social strata. Priyokumar's Eekhoi Yumlonnaba (Our Neighbour) captures the widening gap between the rich and poor has even altered conventional kinship relationships into that of the purely economic categories of "lender" and "borrower."

His uniqueness lies in the strength to portray the unsung, unseen and unheard peripheral lives in the hills and dales of Manipur. He successfully mirrors the soulful voices of these people thus strengthening his social commitment that can be easily traced in his writings. The fragility of life in the face of ruthlessness of time and poverty is strikingly opposed by Sudhir in his Mei Changlaba Chek (The Brick in the Fire Ordeal). He tries to trace the power of resilience and the hope to assert even by individuals who are yet to be turned into baked bricks.

In recent times, the resounding echoes of gunshots have shaped lives into a state of turmoil. The outbreak of armed political violence in the valley in 1978, subsequent counter insurgency operations from 1980, and the impact of these two developments have left an indelible mark of fear in the minds of the common people. To live or to die are no longer determined by fate alone, and the challenge of life is to live with uncertainties.

Since these nightmares have become an inseparable part of our day to day existence, the same have become core themes of many Manipuri short story writers. Atrocities committed by state forces, the mayhem created by the tussle between state and non-state forces, violence committed by goons pretending to be defenders of the land have become significant issues.

Manipuri short story writers have also adequately represented similar nightmares in the hills. Ever since the fratricidal killings between two ethnic groups, the fire of violence rages on. In this game of death, women, children and the innocents are not spared just like the virgin green patches turning to ashes.

The sheltered and tranquil existence of the people has turned into shattered and anxiety filled life on the run. One can no longer lead a normal life. The unfolding of endless violence and the enactment of the same has given an air filled with the sound of crying children and wailing mothers. Heart rendering tales from on and off the battle fields have become recurring themes from the hills.

Priyokumar's Nongdee Tarakkhidre (The Rain that Failed), Premchand's Christmas Loiraga (After Christmas), Dr. Ch. Ningomba's Narakta Nantharakpa Swarg (A Heaven that fell on Hell) and Joseph Ki Macha (Joseph's Child), picturise the chaos and uncertainties of lives in the hills.

In the 1980s, there emerged a group of women writers who drew inspiration from various sources and perspectives. The range of writings focused from the sheer achievements of the women to the despicable and appalling conditions of the women in society. Measuring the status of women, their fall or grace, is largely shaped by traditional values that reinforces and safeguards the patriarchal morality.

These contentions have been challenged by contemporary women writers. Their writings reflect the pangs and angst of living through the world governed by the rules and boundaries set by a patriarchal order. The pain of performing the responsibility imposed by the social norms and prevailing moral code of conduct has been expressed with a sense of dissent.

This voice of dissent is found in the writings of young women writers like Kshetrimayum Subadani, Haobam Satyabati, Memchoubi, Khumbongmayum Bimabati, Binapani and Ningombam Sunita. Bimabati in her Yotlhingdugee Wangmada (Beyond the Shackles) expresses the anxiety of women on the loss of identity bounded by the norms of marriage under the over rated notion of "unity of souls."

Sunita's Mangalgee Maikeida (Towards Radiance), underscores the advantage taken by men of women's tenderness, and challenges male defined idea of purity and chastity. Subadani and Satyabati make an attempt to build an alternate morality not based on social parameters defined by men. Despite all the efforts, these writings are yet to form a significant collective voice in the Manipuri literary tradition.

A century old short story writing culture in Manipuri has now entered the corridors of the twenty-first century. Traversing back into the history of Manipuri short story tradition, one finds a wide range of perspectives, styles, experiments and execution forming a rich body of work that calls for further research, interpretation and scrutiny.

Manipuri short story writers have kept pace with their counterparts in India and other parts of the world not only in terms of the short story's quantitative strength but also its qualitative potency. However, there is a felt need to give extra rigor to a more insightful narrative structure keeping in mind the tremendous potential this literary tradition has imbibed.

‘MANIPURI THEATRE IN A DISAPPOINTING STAGE’: PADMASHREE KANHAILAL (An interview)

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Thu, 14 May 2015 10:59:00 +0530

This news story and interview was first published by the Imphal Free Press on 14 May 2015

Imphal: Padmashree Heisnam Kanhailal is the founder of the Kalakshetra Manipur, an institute that started the tradition for an alternative theatre and that distinguished the maestro from his peer. He is often described as the man who broke the new trend of theatrical expression in contemporary Indian theatre.

Since the inception of Kalakshetra in 1969, he has been continuing experiment with tradition for an alternate theatre. In the process his alternative theatre could be indentified with the live theatre that he ultimately conceived as the ‘theatre of the earth’.

Some of his remarkable experiments that redefine the conventional theatrical expression were the Nupilan (women's war against British) in 1978, Sanjennaha (cowherd) in 1979 with villagers at Umathel, a remote village in South Manipur. He also worked with the Paite community in Churachandpur district and produced Thanghou Leh Liandou in 1980.

In his first ever Nupilan production, Kanhailal gathered 100 market women of Imphal and inspired them to perform a non-proscenium act in an open air environment, re-enacting the confrontation of Manipuri women against the British soldier. The performance was performed at Johnstone School campus in the heart of Imphal and overwhelmed on lookers.

His journey through time to achieve what he is today was not an ordinary tale like many of those great artistes who have carved a niche for themselves.

He quit his government job in pursuit of his theatrical dream which was later realised through the Kalakshetra.

A rendezvous with the maestro

IFP: Congratulations on your recent achievement. What an incredible journey it has been from being a salesman at a Bata showroom in Imphal to winning the Padmashree and now the Mahindra Lifetime Achievement Award. When you look back, how do you think Manipuri theatre has changed over the years?
Heisnam Kanhailal: Indeed it has been a remarkable journey and very challenging too. I can see a lot of changes but not in not in a positive way but in a negative manner when we talk about the Manipuri theatre. It has been overwhelmed by commercialisation and it is at a very disappointing stage. What we are witnessing today is more of a salesmanship with less ‘artistic value’. The integrity of the word theatre is diminishing fast.

IFP: It is a well-known story that you were expelled from NSD for not taking leave of absence after due permission. How do you think packing your bags and moving back to Imphal impact your theater? And how did the setting up of Kalakshetra happen?
H Kanhailal: The NSD episode I should say was the biggest point of my career. Had it not been for that incident I could have been stuck with the conventional theatrical wisdom and there might not be Kalakshetra. The rejection and subsequent frustration had led to the discovery of my intuition. I gradually started to evolve from my experiences. The semi-urban environment of the life of Imphal back then, the nature and traditions that surrounded me gave a vision and nostalgia beyond the mundane world. In order to translate my vision I started applying on my theatre. However I needed a concrete base to device by plan which later came in the form of ‘Kalakshetra’. Many of my like-minded friends help me out in this venture especially my wife Sabitri who is one of the major collaborator as an actor.

IFP: You are seen as one of the group of alternative theatre directors who have embraced theatre as performed locally instead of being influenced by mainstream trends? How did this consciousness to move away from the mainstream happen? And how has this affected Manipuri theatre?
H Kanhailal: With regards to my alternative thinking I have already made myself clear. But, how much it affected the Manipuri theatre is the same as much as it has been in other part of the country.

IFP: What does the future spell for Manipuri theatre? Is it now possible to live by your trade?
H Kanhailal: Judging by the current trend as I have mentioned earlier about the ‘salemenship’ I feel that the future of Manipuri theatre is very bleak. The present generation has lost the track and it is too late to rescue it. But, it does not mean that all hope is lost if we sincerely put our effort the Manipuri theatre can be revive afresh in the next generation.

IFP: In your entire career have you ever come across a promising ‘Theatre Directors’ from the Northeast region?
H Kanhailal: Yes, indeed. In my entire career I have travelled many places with my Kalakshetra team. But, the dedication I see in some of the youths in Rabha tribal youths of Assam has amazed me. I have associated with the youths for 15 years now they have earned their name and ever expanding their own group. My followers like Sukracharjyo Rabha and Rayanti Rabha have been awarded Yuba Puraskar by Central Sangeet Natak Akademi, Delhi, are some name from the Northeast who can help spread my legacy.

IFP: What according to you is the play one should not miss this year?
H Kanhailal: There are few plays that I directed that I would like to suggest any theatre lovers to see like Pebet, Kabui Kei Oiba, Dag Ghar (Ranbindranath Tagore). But, if it comes to the one play one should not miss this year it obviously will be Pebet (1975) as it is still in demand. Our Kalakshetra team has been invited to perform it in Hyderabad later this year.

IFP: Can you please name some of your favourite actors?
H Kanhailal: My wife Sabitri, of course because she always has been a major collaborator of institute and the other one is Nasheerudin Shah. He is the only actor who is sincere enough when it comes to finding the artistic quality in an actor.

Denouement

H Kanhailal has conducted 15 major workshops in the last twenty years for the actors from different cultural backgrounds in the country. The workshops so far conducted were particularly concentrated on his actor training system for live theatre. Workshops were organized nationally and regionally in different locations both city and rural as sponsored by National School of Drama and other cultural institutions/agencies. Thus he could produce a great following in the country. Since last ten years he and Sabitri have been conducting workshops for the second year students of NSD every year on his system of acting.

He conducted short-term programmes on exposition of his system particularly for the young practitioners and academics. He could draw the academic attention of the young research scholars of the country and their participation in the practice thereof. He is the only theatre practitioner in the country on whose work young research scholars have been working for their MPhils and PhDs particularly from JNU, Jamia Milia Islamia, Assam University, Hydrabad University and so on. Since 2012 he has been training young practitioners from France, Sweden, America, South Africa, etc.

THEORIES OF CHANGE

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Wed, 6 May 2015 11:11:00 +0530

By Ilana Shapiro

Shapiro, Ilana. Theories of Change. Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: January 2005 <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/theories-of-change>.

Overview

Responding to tensions and violence between ethnic groups around the world, a growing number of non-governmental organizations have developed innovative programs and approaches to help resolve conflicts, prevent violence, and promote more cooperative relationships between groups. Each intervention program identifies and interprets the causes and conditions leading to ethnic conflicts, and sets a unique course that, if followed, should result in powerful change to resolve these conflicts. The diverse approaches they use often seek to address both diffuse tensions and specific conflicts, make short- and long-term changes, and influence those who directly participate in the intervention as well as the larger conflict situation.

These programs offer many success stories in transforming people's attitudes and behaviors, intergroup relationships, and social institutions and policies, yet few efforts have been made to recognize and compare the variety of theories of change that shape these interventions. This short essay provides a conceptual framework for articulating and mapping programs' theories of change - or the core, often implicit, assumptions about how change happens that that guide practitioner's intervention design. It briefly reviews a variety of theories of change for resolving ethnic conflict in light of scholarly research and theory -- particularly in the field of psychology.

Drawn from the literature on program evaluation, a theory of change refers to the causal processes through which change comes about as a result of a program's strategies and action.[1] It relates to how practitioners believe individual, intergroup, and social/ systemic change happens and how, specifically, their actions will produce positive results.

For example, a theory of change for a post-conflict healing and reconciliation intervention might suggest that sharing personal stories of trauma and injustice in small, ethnically mixed groups, combined with dialogue, personal reflection, and vulnerability to emotion, can lead to individual transformation. Small group processes help participants develop empathy, recognize common humanity, and build positive relationships across ethnic or group lines. These cooperative relationships are powerful engines for community and structural change. They can also help establish public rituals and symbolic actions that acknowledge group suffering, offer apology, and signify future good will to foster social healing and structural change.

In contrast, a theory of change for a conflict management initiative working on similar issues in the same region might focus on creating new forums that bring influential representatives of stakeholders together to explore a new analysis of the problem, develop cooperative problem-solving skills, and create joint action plans. These new forums, skills, partnerships, and joint action planning interrupt old, habituated patterns of conflictual interaction between individuals and groups and offer ongoing mechanisms for institutional and policy change.

In general, the theories of change have not been adequately articulated or described.[2] This precludes real evaluation of programmatic assumptions and activities, hinders efforts to test the relative effectiveness of different approaches under specific conditions, and ultimately limits the revision and refinement of both theory and practice. Used in combination with Argyris and Schon's (1974) overlapping work on theories of practice, examining programs' theories of change provides a useful framework for differentiating program approaches, promoting the appropriate selection and support of diverse interventions, and advancing research that both refines theoryand improves practice[3].

Programs often have complex and overlapping assumptions about the causes and effective responses to ethnic conflict, yet a comparison across programs reveals that programs name and frame both the problem and their response in distinct ways. Relatively few typologies exist in the scholarly and programmatic literature to describe these different approaches. For example, in his article, Creating the Conditions for Peacemaking, Ross reviewed the conflict intervention literature and identified six theories of practice for ethnic conflict resolution in international settings.[4] These included: 1) Community Relations, 2) Principled Negotiation, 3) Human Needs Theory, 4) Psychoanalytically Informed Identity Theory, 5) Intercultural Miscommunication, and 6) Conflict Transformation. His analysis compared these theories of practice along the dimensions of: a) the assumed nature and causes of ethnic conflict; b) program goals; c) effects on participants in the intervention; d) mechanisms for achieving effects; e) transfer or impact on the wider conflict; and f) similarities across theories.

Building on this framework, Shapiro conducted field research comparing theories of practice and change for fifteen programs that address ethnic and racialized tensions or conflicts in the U.S.[5] The typology emerging from interviews, observations, and reviews of program documents in that study included six different theories of practice and change: 1) Prejudice Reduction; 2) Healing and Reconciliation; 3) Anti-Racism; 4) Diversity/ Multiculturalism; 5) Democracy Building; and 6) Conflict Management. These theories of practice and change were compared along the dimensions of: 1) problem framing; 2) goals and intended effects; 3) theories of how change happens; 4) intervention framing; and 5) theoretical roots of the program.

This typology briefly highlights aspects of interventions addressing racial and ethnic tensions in the U.S., but further research is needed to describe and comparatively evaluate the range of theories of change in conflict resolution interventions outside of the U.S. (See Figure 1)

It is important to note that the theories of change in these typologies are not necessarily contradictory -- they may instead just draw upon different theories and traditions, highlight different aspects of the conflict, and emphasize different priorities for resolution. Typologies such as this one should not be used to confine or delimit any program, nor fuel debates over approaches. Instead, they provide an opportunity for comparative analysis that aims to stimulate further reflection and discussion about the evolving shape and development of this field and deepen understandings about the contributions of each approach.

Mapping Theories of Change

Theories of change can be identified either prospectively as part of planning an initiative or retrospectively as part an evaluative process. In either case, this kind of analysis requires both time and honest reflection from program leaders and practitioners. Because self-reports about change theories often do not surface more implicit assumptions, outside facilitators can help map these theories by observing interventions and analyzing program narratives.

Initial interviews with practitioners can elicit programs' theories of change as well as both the explicit and implicit logic of an intervention design. This includes how they: 1) frame the specific problems to be addressed; 2) frame their intervention goals; 3) identify processes through which change happens; 4) describe their strategies, principles and specific methods for intervention; and 5) delineate short- and long-term intended effects. Graphic representations and written descriptions of these practice and change frameworks can help clarify the relationship between categories. Figure 2 provides an example of how one program's theory of change might be mapped.[6] (See Figure 2)

After an initial mapping, facilitators should focus additional questions on clarifying ambiguous meanings, connections, and inconsistencies, as well as explore the reasoning that leads program leaders to their inferences about how change happens. Descriptions and mapping should be reviewed by program leaders often so that they provide detailed feedback to be used in correcting and refining the description.

Articulating theories of change often requires 'backward mapping' -- or identifying the intended outcomes of a program that often lead practitioners to their decisions about specific strategies and methods of intervention. The scope and specificity of a theory of change -- or the kinds of changes the program does and does not account for - vary considerably among programs. Researchers assert that good theories of change have at least three attributes:

1) they are plausible -- evidence and common sense suggest that the specified activities will lead to the desired outcomes;
2) they are doable -- the initiative has adequate financial, technical, political, institutional and human resources to implement the strategy; and
3) they are testable -- the pathways of change are specific and complete enough, with measurable indicators and specified pre-conditions, to track the progress in a credible and useful way.[7]

Theories of change should also specify short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. In addition, theories of change should outline intended effects that directly relate to participants in the intervention -- (e.g. development of empathy, new skills, and cooperative relationships among participants) -- and intended effects beyond the context of the intervention (e.g. creation of new conflict resolution education programs in schools; ongoing forum for bi-communal meetings) These goals often overlap with intended changes at individual, relational, and structural levels.

Beyond accurately surfacing and articulating programmatic theories of change, it is essential to review their quality by comparing them with empirical evidence or relevant case studies. For example, empirical evidence might not support program theories about cathartic expression or venting of emotion as leading to personal healing and attitude change. A critical review of program logic and assumptions can seem threatening to organizations and engender resistance where evidence suggests that programmatic conceptions are flawed. The quality review process is not designed to limit freedom or experimentation with new approaches to practice and change, but rather to better integrate research, theory, and practice.

Changing Individuals, Relationships, and Social Structures through Conflict Interventions

Some of the most prevalent distinctions in both the academic and programmatic literatures about theories of change center around levels of analysis - or whether change efforts focus primarily on individuals, intergroup relationships, or structures and systems. While many theories cut across levels of analysis and most programs work at all of these levels to some extent, program's theories of change often focus predominantly on one level as the starting point for initiating change.

Program Goals and Intended Effects

Goals and intended effects often serve as signposts, markers and a vision for programs' change efforts. In examining theories of change, the importance of process and content goals lie in identifying their specific connection to intended outcomes and mapping those proposed pathways of change. Programs' outcome goals usually focus on targeted change in a variety of arenas (e.g. policies and procedures, relationships, attitudes, knowledge or skills.) Figure 3 provides examples of intended effects emerging from research on intervention programs that address racial and ethnic conflict in the U.S. and are loosely sorted into the categories of analysis, alliance, and action.[8] (See Figure 3)

Change Theories

The following section briefly examines a variety of program perspectives on how change happens in individuals, intergroup relations, and social systems and points to some of the divergent theories of change that are prevalent in conflict resolution work. This review also examines theories of change in light of scholarly research and theory -- particularly in the field of psychology. While this short essay cannot provide a comprehensive review of the wide array of change theories, such a review would be useful for situating different programs and assist in developing a framework for appropriate use and evaluation of program assumptions and methods.

Practitioners often view themselves and their programs as change agents, and encourage participants to take leadership roles in their respective communities and organizations in fostering change. Intervention programs tend to have a relatively hopeful vision of change, grounded in optimism both about the opportunities for positive change inherent in conflict situations and about human capacities to change and learn. [9]

Changing Individuals

In promoting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral change, intervention programs utilize, though rarely explicitly, a wide array of learning theories prevalent in educational and therapeutic literatures.

Cognitive Change:

- Insight and Awareness: Many practitioners talk about the importance of individual insight or the "aha" experience of discovery in raising awareness and changing attitudes. They also use a variety of tools and methodologies to surface unconscious attitudes and behaviors with the understanding that awareness allows for critical thinking and choice.[10]

- Learning: Programs consistently invoke a wide variety of educational approaches to learning. For example, practitioners frequently elicit participants' existing knowledge in an effort to build upon it and facilitate encoding of new knowledge. They also introduce new information in unthreatening contexts (e.g. analysis of a conflict situation different from the one parties are in) and encourage participants to transfer that learning to their own contexts.[11]

- Cognitive Space and Permission: Practitioners use a variety of methods to establish and encourage a "safe environment" that provides permission for parties to entertain and experiment with new ways of thinking and relating to each other.[12] This cognitive expansion and permission allows for more complex understandings of the issues, other parties, sources of conflict, and possibilities for resolution.

- Cognitive Reframing: Programs also use strategies to facilitate cognitive reframing or reorganization. This often takes the form of confronting individuals with information discrepant [or contradictory to their expressed views, attitudes or self-image to induce cognitive dissonance and create opportunities for reframing and re-organization].[13] In addition, practitioners often reframe parties' narratives in more neutral or integrative terms to help redirect negative perceptions away from individuals and groups and toward objects, symbols or ideas.[14]

- Emotional Change: While most programs recognize that strong emotions are an inevitable part of ethnic conflict, they exhibit a range of views on the role of emotions in individual change efforts.

- Emotional Control: Drawing on rational actor paradigms, many programs view the expression of strong emotions during an intervention as an unavoidable obstacle to resolution that needs to be effectively controlled or managed. When personal emotions can be effectively controlled, parties are better able to make more rational situation assessments and decisions for resolving conflict.[15]

- Catharsis: Other programs view the expression or discharge of emotion (e.g. yelling, crying) as an opening or a catalyst for individual change. In keeping with cathartic therapies, practitioners believe that surfacing and expressing emotions can release frozen psychological processes, patterns of thought and behavior, and aspects of the self to facilitate healing.[16]

- Emotional Literacy: Yet other programs view emotions as internal messengers about individuals' needs and concerns. These programs focus on helping participants read and interpret their feelings as a form of emotional literacy, promoting self-awareness.[17]

- Emotional Contradictions: Some programs focus on the importance creating emotional contradiction in participants to evoke change. Mirroring cognitive dissonance processes, where parties develop empathy for members of groups that they have generally disliked, the emotional contradiction facilitates reassessment of convictions.[18]

- Behavioral Change: A wide array of theories are invoked to promote behavioral change and learning during interventions. A few of these are mentioned briefly below.

- Modeling and Social Learning: Most programs draw implicitly from social learning theory in emphasizing the importance of modeling and imitation in behavior change.[19] For example, practitioners often mention 'walking the talk' or invoking Ghandi's precept to 'live the change we seek to create' in providing a model of behavior for participants during an intervention.

- Rehearsal: Invoking behaviorist theories of change, practitioners often create repetitive opportunities for participants to practice or rehearse new skills and behaviors. Constructive feedback about performance, the introduction of successively more complex skill sets, and positive reinforcement also facilitates behavioral change.[20]

- Adoption of Innovation: Programs specifically aim to create a reassuring environment to promote adoption of innovative conflict resolution ideas and behaviors. This sometimes involves appealing to an "innovator", "pioneer", or "leader" image that people have about themselves. Alternately, when changes are presented as inevitable or already adopted by many, such appeals may tap into a need for belonging.[21]

- Learning by Doing: In keeping with a wealth of social psychological research demonstrating that action is an effective pathway to attitude change, programs often encourage participants to interact cooperatively and use conflict resolution skills even when they are in deep conflict. Learning by doing invokes cognitive dissonance processes that encourage participants to shift attitudes so that they better align with their behaviors.[22]

- Motivation: Many practitioners discuss the importance of fostering feelings of self-efficacy, empowerment, responsibility, and hope in participants to increase motivation for future, constructive action.[23]

- Changing Relationships: Practitioners who focus on changes in intergroup relations often assert that networks, coalitions, alliances, and other cooperative group relationships are key in promoting both individual and social change.

- Contact Hypotheses: Consonant with the contact hypothesis, many intervention programs try to establish cooperative, equal-status interaction between participants from different ethnic groups.[24] Programs often focus on identifying common ground and working toward super-ordinate goals. In addition, many interventions try to garner support for their work from local authorities to attract participants, improve the implementation of agreements, recommendations, or action initiatives resulting from the intervention, and otherwise enhance the impact of the work. These efforts are designed to help break down prejudices about the 'Other' and build cooperative relationships (cooperative approaches to conflict) across groups that can result in cooperative action.

De-categorization and Re-categorization: In addition, mixed-ethnic group interventions that are organized around a social identity other than ethnicity (e.g. gender, age, professional group, etc.) can highlight common identities that cut across ethnic lines. When interventions can decrease the salience of ethnic identity and enhance the importance and collective esteem for other, cross-cutting facets of identity, participants can begin the processes of de-categorization and re-categorization that help build interethnic relationships.[25]

Personal Stories: In keeping with research on shifts in small-group processes, many practitioners recognize the importance and persuasive power of sharing personal experiences or stories in transforming relationships between people.[26] Personal anecdotes often entail significant self-disclosure and indirect emotional appeals. Practitioners suggest that these stories serve to enhance empathy, promote perspective-taking and integrative complexity, and draw connections across racial and ethnic divisions.

Acknowledgement, Mourning, and Forgiveness: Psychodynamic theories of group change suggest that an essential ingredient of healing and reconciliation involve group processes of acknowledgement, mourning and forgiveness. Explicit acknowledgement and acceptance of moral responsibility for past events that victimized the other group, along with assurances that similar events will not happen in the future can activate a response of forgiveness that releases, on a deeper level, resistance to completing the mourning process and moving forward into problem-solving for a better future.[27]

Social Change

While social change is at the heart of many conflict resolution interventions, practitioners rarely reference classic social change models such as dialectical processes, progressive or evolutionary processes, or cyclical models. Many practitioners discuss Kuhn's model of paradigm shifts and the role of their interventions (and the conflict resolution field as a whole) in facilitating paradigmatic shifts in understandings of conflict, international relations, and peacebuilding.[28] In recent years, conflict interventions seem to draw more from chaos and complexity theory in understanding dynamic systems as a complicated web of mutually influencing relationships rather than more mechanistic models of isolated causes and effects.[29] For the most part, however, intervention programs draw primarily from a variety of planned change strategies where theories of the person, and the connection between individual, relational and structural change, vary considerably.

- Conflict Resolution as a Vehicle for Social Change: There is much discussion in both the academic and practitioner literature about conflict resolution as an important vehicle for social change and the role of interveners in either fostering social control (status quo) or social transformation.[30] Most ethnic conflict interventions have explicit goals of creating some form of social or systemic change, though their pathways for change differ considerably.

- Empirical-Rational Approaches: Some practitioners implicitly base interventions on assumptions of rational, self-interest focusing on providing the right information, education or training to allow people to change of their own volition; ensuring the right people are in the right place to bring about needed, practical changes; clarifying or reconceptualizing "the problem" to enhance overall understanding; and promoting visioning to stimulate creativity and "best-case" scenarios.[31]

- Normative-Re-educative Approaches: Many others in the field focus on the socially constructed nature of conflict and the non-cognitive resistances and supports for change such as cultural values and norms. Perhaps the most widely used approach in current conflict interventions, these efforts focus on working collaboratively with parties to identify problems and facilitate solutions. It aims to improve problem-solving capacities, forums, and mechanisms within a system, and foster new attitudes, values, skills, and norms for interaction among people who make up the system.

- Power-Coercive Approaches: At times, practitioners also focus on the role of moral, political and economic power to address asymmetries and injustices in conflict situations. For example, they work with disempowered parties to introduce nonviolent action strategies and foster local peace movements. Social justice and peacebuilding is also promoted through institutional, legislative, and policy change as well as influencing or changing leadership or power elite. Because they often create change through processes of confrontation and conflict enhancement, however, these strategies are used more circumspectly for certain conflict stages or conditions.[32]

- Critical Mass: Drawing implicitly on diffusion of innovation theory, many practitioners discuss the importance of developing a 'critical mass' of individuals who have adopted constructive conflict resolution knowledge and skills in initiating positive social change. When this critical mass of individuals exists, change spreads rapidly and crystallizes to become self-sustaining in society.

- Ripple Effects: In understanding how small-group conflict interventions can create large-scale social change, many practitioners discuss the impact that participants can have on those within their personal and professional spheres of influence. Often referred to as a ripple effect or transfer effect, program's suggest that the individual and relational changes that occur during small-group interventions will have ever-widening circles of impact as participants take their new learning back into their respective communities and organizations.

- Overcoming Resistance: Although their methods practically address such issues, practitioners rarely focus explicitly on the importance and difficulties of dealing with resistance to change. Lewin's model of unfreezing-movement-refreezing is useful in focusing on the processes of overcoming resistance to change such as basic conservative tendencies and system justification.[33]

Some divergent understandings of planned social change relevant to current ethnic conflict interventions are briefly discussed below.

Leadership (leaders and leadership)

Program theories differ considerably in identifying who should lead change. In keeping with Lederach's model of leadership and intervention approaches, practitioners generally recognize the importance of working with a variety of kinds and levels of leadership. In practice, however, they usually choose to initiate their interventions at one particular level. For example, practitioners focusing on work with local community groups, grass-roots organizations and community leaders often discuss the role of civil society and social movements in fostering social change. Practitioners using 'middle-out' strategies recognize that mid-level leaders are a natural bridge for influencing both top and local level leaders. Finally, practitioners working with top-levels of leadership, suggest that although these interventions are constrained by political pressures, they are invaluable in creating practical agreements and symbolic gestures that directly impact policy, institutions and public perceptions.

Reformation vs. Transformation

Programs differ in whether they view change as reformation or adaptation of basically effective social, economic and political systems, or as the transformation of existing systems of relations into something very different. Some programs focus on the utility of conflict interventions for reaching agreements acceptable to all parties and averting the immense costs and destruction of violence. For example, some practitioners addressing racial tensions in the U.S. view existing political, legal and economic systems as basically effective and primarily aim to make practical adjustments and additions to help improve the functioning of these systems.

In contrast, others focus on deep-rooted problems embedded in the historical evolution of current social, political, and economic systems and view racial or ethnic conflict as the inherent by-products of such systems. Transformation, rather than mere adjustment, is required to effectively address these issues and their roots, and inclusive processes involving the cooperation of all stakeholders are invoked to help create new systems.

Changing Structures vs. Changing People

Programs also seem to differ in whether they believe the starting point for change is with individual attitudes and behaviors, or with social structures such as institutions, laws, and policies. Some suggest that transformed individuals take leadership roles in creating structural change, while others suggest that directly changing institutional policies and practices should lead to the transformation of individuals who live and work within them. While there is general consensus that both are needed and there is a reciprocal relationship, intervention strategies tend to target different starting points for change.

Similarly, many programs share a popular assumption that awareness and attitude change leads to behavioral change in individuals. Like psychoanalytic theories, this view suggests that when people become aware of a problem and can understand its causes and dynamics, they can make choices to change their behavior or situation. For example, creating a new analysis or understanding of the causes and dynamics of a conflict can lead to important behavioral changes that facilitate conflict resolution. In contrast, others suggest that changing people's behaviors by creating new social norms, laws, and institutional will ultimately be more effective in changing people's attitudes. Individuals' attitudes and intergroup relations will conform to the new structures and behaviors required by those structures. This view draws on the old community-organizing adage, 'where the feet go, the head will follow.'

Future analysis should examine these divergent theories of change in light of existing research to assist in evaluating different approaches. Where existing evidence is inconclusive, new empirical studies that test these discrepancies should be conducted to help improve understandings in the field.

Challenges in Articulating and Differentiating Theories of Change

Clearly articulating a program's theory of change can be difficult because of normal variations and inconsistencies within programs. For example, individual practitioners often interpret aspects of program theories differently which manifests in considerable variation in program implementation. In addition, there are often inconsistencies or incongruities between what practitioners say they do (espoused theory) and what they actually do (theory-in-use).

Interventions are also subject to a host of practical and contextual factors that variably shape theories of change, such as the amount of time participants are willing to commit to the program; a program's access to parties in the conflict; financial resources available for the intervention; practitioners' background and areas of expertise; and the specific contexts and conditions of the conflict. Finally, most programs take a pragmatic approach to intervention design, focusing on 'what works' rather than aligning themselves with any one particular theory of change. Because real-world interventions usually do not represent a "pure form" of any theoretical model, and strategies are often eclectic, overlapping, and evolving, it can be difficult to capture true programmatic differences and compare efforts across interventions.

Conclusion

Despite these challenges, understanding the wide variety of theories of change in current conflict resolution interventions is very useful in helping to:

- Recognize the shared or complimentary elements of intervention initiatives which can promote cooperation and coordination among programs and approaches.

- Identify contradictory or competing assumptions and theories useful in testing the relative validity of different approaches or in differentiating the conditions under which each might be most useful.

- Foster stronger links between theory and practice by surfacing the underlying theories of individual, relational, and social change that shape practice.

- Foster reflective practice and conscious choice among practitioners that expands the range and creativity of intervention options.

Relate the often disconnected discourse and knowledge in this field (e.g. between academic disciplines; between scholars and practitioners; between domestic and international efforts) in order to better communicate with stakeholders, funders, policymakers and others.

Distinguishing the assumptions about change that shape current interventions is important for refining theory, improving practice and ensuring the appropriate use of interventions. At the same time, the distinctions between approaches to change among intervention programs often reflect a different emphasis or focus rather than deep divisions. Acknowledging these differences is useful in comparing program approaches, but should not distract from the larger shared beliefs about the need to change destructive forms of intergroup conflict that unites this field.

References

[1] Weiss, C. H. (1972). Evaluation research. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Fulbright-Anderson, K., Kubisch, A. & Connell, J. (Eds.) (1998). New approaches to evaluating community initiatives, vol. 2. New York: The Aspen Institute.
[2] Center for Assessment and Policy Development. (2000). Anti-Racism Evaluation Initiative. Unpublished manuscript. Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
[3] For a discussion of the relationship between theories of practice and theories of change related to ethnic conflict interventions see Shapiro, I. (in press) Mapping Theories of Practice and Change. In Fitzduff, M. and Stout, C. Psychological Approaches to Dealing with Conflict and War, Praeger.
[4] Ross, M. (2000). Creating the Conditions for Peacemaking. Available online here.
[5] Shapiro, I. (2002). Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here.
[6] Shapiro, I. (2002). Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here.
[7] Connell, J. & Kubisch, A. (1998). Applying a Theory of Change Approach to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives. In Fulbright-Anderson, Kubisch, & Connell (Eds.) New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives, Vol 2. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Available online here.
[8] Shapiro, 2002, op. cit.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Davis, T. (2001). Revising Psychoanalytic Interpretations of the Past, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82
[11] Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
[12] Fitzduff, M. (1989). From ritual to consciousness -- a study of change in progress in Northern Ireland. New University of Ulster. Doctoral dissertation (48-2995).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Galtung, J. & Tschudi, F. (2001). Crafting peace: On the psychology of the TRANSCEND approach. In Christie, D., Wagner, R. & Winter, D.N. (Eds.) Peace, Conflict and Violence. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
[15] Adler, R. S., B. Rosen, and E.M. Silverstein. (1998). "Emotions in Negotiation. How to Manage Fear and Anger." Negotiation Journal 14, 161-179.
[16] Nichols, M. & Zax, M. (1977). Catharsis and Psychotherapy. New York: Gardener Press.
[17] Steiner, C. (2000). Emotional literacy. New York: Avon Books.
[18] Fitzduff, op. cit.
[19] Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
[20] Driscoll, op. cit.
[21] Rogers, E. (1995) Diffusion of Innovation. New York: Free Press.
[22] Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[23] Bush, Baruch R. & Folger, J. (1994). The Promise of Mediation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
[24] Allport, Gordon (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
[25] Vanbeselaere, N. (1991). The different effects of simple and crossed categorizations: A result of the category differentiation process or differential category salience. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.) European review of social psychology, Vol. 2, (pp. 247-278). Chichester: Wiley.
[26] Carstarphen, B. (2002). Shift happens. Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. Doctoral dissertation
[27] Montville, J.V. (1993). The healing function of political conflict resolution. In D. Sandole & H. van der Merwe (eds.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice (pp. 112-128). New York: Manchester University Press.
[28] Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[29] Gleich, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York; Viking.
[30] Scimecca, Joseph (1993). Conflict Resolution: The Basis for Social Control or Social Change? In D. Sandole & I. Sandole-Staroste (Eds.) Conflict Management and Problem-Solving (pp. 30-33) New York: New York University Press.
[31] Chin, R. & Benne, K. (1976). General Strategies for Effecting Changes in Human Systems. In Bennis, W., Benne, K., Chin, R. & Corey, K. The Planning of Change 3rd Ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. 22-45.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Sciences. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Kelman, H., Gordon, B. & Warwick, D. (Eds.) (1978). The Ethics of Social Intervention. New York: Halsted Press.

WHY PRICE TAGS ON GOVERNMENT JOBS: STATE SO UNFRIENDLY TO LIVELIHOOD EFFORTS IN MANIPUR

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Wed, 6 May 2015 10:48:00 +0530

This article by Amar Yumnam was originally published by E-pao.net on 5 May 2015. The writer is a professor at Department of Economics, Manipur University.

The whole world knows that there is a price tag for every government job in Manipur. It is also known that the government is practically the only employer of people looking for jobs in the formal sector. With the very slow expansion or rather stagnancy for employment opportunities in the informal sector, the job in government is the only hope and aspiration of the people – youths, and parents of the youths.

Simultaneously it is also the envy of all those youths and parents of youths who do not have any space in the quantum of employment in the government sector. This has been the reality– governance trajectory and social dynamics - of Manipur for not years, but decades with the quantum reflected in price tags rising without limits.

Globally, the mid-1980s completed the trend of realization of government failures instead of the conventional thinking that it is only the market that fails. The government is neutral and objective whereas the market is driven by the selfish motives of the individuals – this was the religious belief of development workers. The global research on development, poverty removal and social justice established by mid-1980s and beyond doubt at that that Milton Friedman has been right all along. Friedman had been saying all along that government is never objective and consists of self-aggrandizing individuals.

While mistakes in a market would not be cumulative, mistakes committed by the government would tend to get cumulative because the state defends the government; in fact, the government performs all its activities in the name of the state only. This protection allows the government to keep on committing anti-people and anti-nation activities and all in the name of the state.

This would continue without correction and the individuals performing the duties of the government would continue to flourish without any correction mechanism coming forth; while in the market any mistake would emit signals as reflected in the price, there is no such thing in the case of the members of the club performing the government functions. Manipur is an exemplary example of government failures and the accumulation of the cost of those failures.

There is a locational advantage in this phenomenon; the peripheral location allows that the club members of the government can continue with their business unconcerned by the rest of the world and the political voice of the people as well too weak to be cared for. Now the question is: how do the club members sustain this phenomenon for decades?

While the whole world are witnessing drastic changes in the transformation of the character and quality of government - India is not an exception to this -, why is it that the club members of the government are able to sustain their activities with the same characteristic components in the case of Manipur? This is where we need to have a deep look into the character of functioning of the government in Manipur.

The governance in Manipur has all along worked only on the principle to ensure that the only means to assured livelihood and growth remains only through joining a job in government by hook or by crook in the real sense. This has been worked through two functionalities. First, the government has so assiduously worked over the decades to see to it that the means to livelihood do not get expanded in the non-governmental sector by imposing prohibitive political costs.

Second, the government has all along behaved almost like a controlling authority than as an effective regulator. Regulation is such a foreign word to the governance mechanism in Manipur. Say control, all the members of the club (read government) would jump out as competent and committed athletes.

Here it would be interesting to quote what Claude Levi-Strauss writes in the very first paragraph of his book Myths and Meaning: : “Although I am going to talk about what I have written, my books and papers and so on, unfortunately I forget what I have written practically as soon as it is finished. There is probably going to be some trouble about that.

But nevertheless I think there is also something significant about it, in that I don’t have the feeling that I write my books. I have the feeling that my books get written through me and that once they have got across me I feel empty and nothing is left.” While Levi-Strauss writes for a very positive outlook to the whole issue of his expression of ideas to the world, paraphrasing him in connection with behaviour of the club members of the government in Manipur is interesting.

It is as if they see all their actions as stand- alone actions with no links with the past and no concerns for the future; the present is all that matters. But the present is defined only by what serves self-aggrandisement; rent, rent, and rent, and production and productivity are irrelevant. This absence of sense of regulation, enhancement of livelihood opportunities, and encouragement of production orientation of the government of Manipur has a latest manifestation in how the pre-office hour market is controlled and suppressed in Imphal.

Day in and day out, we would find both the government and the society it serves shouting their respect to our women and womanhood in Manipur. But the character of controlling approach rather than regulatory approach has always got the better of the governance thinking as it serves the purpose of sustenance on non-expansion of livelihood opportunities outside the purview of government and rent-control exercises of the club-members. There is a temporary market-shed in the Bir Tikendrajit Road. Everybody knows this place is a symbol of dirt, mud and what not.

Given the fact that, the activities undertaken in this market shed are the only ones to honourably sustain a family for all the participants. It may be that the government wants to work towards making the participants subservient to government forever. Second, for the last few weeks, we have been observing the strength of the provincial law and order maintenance force in full play in absolutely stopping the women of Manipur selling their little products on the roadside in the wee hours of the morning.

Now all these women are only those putting in all their efforts to make a living for their family and to maintain their children. Remember, we are yet to experience a policy intervention of the government to enhance livelihood opportunities either in the valley or in the mountains.

Further, the tax-payers do not contribute their share to have the police personnel employed to curb the activities of the people endeavouring hard to earn a livelihood. Well, the time is now for the government to recover from nonsense and evolve towards enhancing livelihood opportunities of the people. It is not control but regulation. Please see what is happening around the world in both thinking and policy. Please do not force the people to bear the cost of governance incompetence forever.

NORTH EAST: THREAT OF BEING SABOTAGED BY THE INDIAN BUREAUCRACY

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 10:20:00 +0530

By Amar Yumnam, Source: Imphal Free Press

The North East has come to engage the Indian psyche for sure. This is a very positive fall-out of the Prime Minister’s twin approach emphasising the need for enhancing the relationships with South-East and East Asia and the imperative for evolving a growth momentum for the region. This naturally has had both global and national implications. The neighbouring countries in South East and East Asia are already taking keen interest on the issues, potential and challenges facing the North East. Such an interest by a significant group of countries has naturally to have wider spill-overs. Now the European nations and the countries in North America have started taking more extensive interests in the region than ever before. The national implication is that the administration is hard-pressed to attend to the urgency.

Here it may be of use to note the hallmarks of Modi as distinct from the previous one in his position. Modi manifests commitment in whatever he feels imperative to engage. Further, he is also a man with no desire to wait if not compulsively warranted; he exhibits strong diligence to work for achievement in real time. The political leadership’s commitment to cause development to the region has necessarily impacted on the functioning of the bureaucracy in India. Unlike earlier, the Indian bureaucracy now displays eagerness to know and evolve policies for the region. This is where the problem arises.

Before I would like to recall what John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge has written in their 2014 book titled ‘The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race To Reinvent The State’. What they write about the Chinese approach in the introductory chapter itself is very telling: “BURIED IN A SHANGHAI SUBURB, close to the city’s smoggy Inner Ring Road, the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong appears to have a military purpose. There is razor wire on the fences around the huge compound and guards at the gate. But drive into the campus from the curiously named Future Expectations Street and you enter Harvard, as redesigned by Dr. No. In the middle stands a huge bright red building in the shape of a desk, with an equally monumental scarlet inkwell beside it. Around this, spread across some forty-two hectares, are lakes and trees, libraries, tennis courts, a sports centre (with a gym, a swimming pool, and table-tennis tables), and a series of low brown dormitory buildings, all designed to look like open books. CELAP calls all this a “campus” but the organization is too disciplined, hierarchical, and business-like to be a university.

The locals are closer to the mark when they call it a “cadre training school”: This is an organization bent on world domination…The students at the leadership academy are China’s future rulers. The egalitarian-looking sleeping quarters mask a strict pecking order, with suites for the more senior visitors from Beijing. And as with other attempts at global supremacy, there is an element of revenge. Thirteen hundred years ago, CELAP’s staff remind you, China set up an imperial exam system to find the best young people to become civil servants. For centuries these “mandarins” ran the world’s most advanced government, but in the nineteenth century the British and the French (and eventually the Americans) stole their system—and improved it. Since then better government has been one of the West’s great advantages. Now the Chinese want that advantage back…When the leadership academy was established in 2005, President Hu Jintao spelled out its purpose: “To build China into a modern and prosperous society in an all-round way and to develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, it is urgent for us to launch large-scale training programs to significantly improve the quality of our leaders.” Rather than focus on indoctrination like the party schools, CELAP and its two smaller sisters in Jinggangshan (CELAJ) and Yan’an (CELAY) have been designed to be practical places. The talk is of leveraging your skills, strengthening your global mind-set, and improving your presentation abilities. It is all meant to complement what goes on in the party schools. But the fact that CELAP is based in Shanghai while the central party school is in Beijing adds a competitive frisson. When one trainee in Pudong explains that the party school focuses on “why,” while CELAP looks at “how,” there is no mistaking which question he thinks is more important to China’s future. If CELAP had a motto, it might be Alexander Pope’s couplet, “For forms of government let fools contest/What’er is best administer’d is best.”

Driven by the desire to “best administer,” about ten thousand people a year attend courses at the school, nine hundred for the first time. Some arrive ex officio: If you are a bureaucrat who has just been put in charge of a state-owned company, a governor who has been given a province to run, or an ambassador en route to a new posting, you are sent to Pudong for a refresher course. (As a thank-you, the ambassadors are supposed to send the library a book to symbolize their new posting. The man who sent The Rough Guide to Nepal has some explaining to do.) More generally, a course at the leadership academy has become a prize to be pocketed by any ambitious bureaucrat. Every Chinese civil servant is expected to have clocked three months of training every five years, or about 133 hours a year. Courses at CELAP are oversubscribed by a factor of three, with most of the candidates drawn from the ranks of deputy director generals, the fourth-highest rung in the Chinese system…The two most common questions, says one teacher, are “What works best?” and “Can it be applied here?” A typical course is divided into three parts, with lectures soon giving way first to fieldwork, with the mandarins sent out to study something that could be useful, and then to discussion about how to apply it. The subjects vary from the relatively small, such as the most convenient way to demolish houses for infrastructure projects, to the monumental, such as designing the most equitable pension system. The appetite for ideas is rapacious: ideas from local businesses (there are two hundred field-study centers in the Yangtze River delta, including a mini CELAP campus in Kunshan city); ideas from various national universities; ideas from Western management thinkers.” We should also recall here that the inimitable Milton Friedman was the person who gave training to the selectively best Chinese bureaucrats on the market economy before the country went for market-oriented policies. Now compared to this, the Indian bureaucracy is a very status quoist organisation; being so they are necessarily very arrogant too.

This status quo oriented personnel are now trying to reorient themselves in the policy making for the North East, perhaps in a more compelled way consequent upon the wishes of the Prime Minister rather than spontaneous volition. This is very evident from the emerging characteristics of the bureaucrats, both serving and retired, of the way they labour hard to make themselves relevant and authoritative on the North East. The status quoist mind-set is complemented by three other features very strongly. First, the level of knowledge and understanding of these personnel as regards issues and realities of the North East are a suspect. But they would not hesitate in revealing their capacity to think about interventions and policies for the region. This is despite the fact that their knowledge and understanding of the region do not go beyond the status quoist knowledge and understanding of the larger Indian scenario sans the North East. Second, these personnel do not read and ipso facto do not know the latest global thinking on issues relevant for absorbing lessons and implications for the region. Third, it is a reality that geography, institutions and demography of the North East are a continuum with the South East and East Asia while they are discontinuity with the rest of India. This implies that the understanding of border has to be contextualised instead of the usual way of meaning boundaries. This also implies that the suspicion usually associated while viewing neighbouring foreign countries is not applicable to the people of the region. Indian bureaucracy as of today is possessed by an incapability to instil these qualities. But they have the capability to sabotage anything about the North East. Unfortunately there are signs of this happening.

ARMED FORCES (SPECIAL POWERS) ACT 1958: DISGUISED WAR & ITS SUBVERSIONS

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 18:26:00 +0530

by A Bimol Akoijam & Th Tarunkumar
Originally published by the Manipur Research Forum (www.manipurresearchforum.org) in their journal Eastern Quarterly (http://www.manipurresearchforum.org/index.php/pub/eastern-quarterly)

AFSPA reveals that it is an act of legitimizing the involvement of the military in the domestic space, and that it does not supplement but supplant the 'civil power'. Continous enforcement of AFSPA and deployment of troops under the Act convey the presence of the might of the Indian state to the people and is reminder of militarism that has subverted the democratic institutions.

The three-month-long popular agitation (from July 11, 2004) in Manipur for the repeal of the Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA) sparked off by the death of a thirtytwo year-old woman, Thangjam Manorama, 'in custody', has highlighted in unambiguous terms the anti-democratic and oppressive character of the Act. While the agitation has forced a grudging admission that there is a need to 'replace AFSPA with a more humane Act that addresses the human rights aspirations of the people', the Government of India continues to hold insistently that humanizing AFSPA must not be at the cost of 'national security'. Towards this end, the home ministry of the Government of India has constituted a committee to review AFSPA and recommend whether the Act needs to be replaced by a new Act or be amended (the mandate as perceived and advertised by the review committee).

Straitjacketed as the mandate is, the implementation is beset with procedural problems. For instance, how will the review committee decide whether AFSPA needs to be replaced or amended? What are the principles on which the review committee would rely to make a considered judgment either way? Will it be on the basis of the charter of human rights adopted by the United Nations or the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution?

Adherence to the letter and spirit of either the UN charter of human rights or that of the Indian Constitution would seem to be counter-indicated as both are suspended by the operational sway of the AFSPA in Manipur in particular and the Northeast in general. Moreover, while the mandate of the review committee is spelt out in terms of either replacing or amending the Act, its guiding spirit is to find the middle ground between 'human rights aspirations of the people and security needs'. Thus, a nominal realignment of the AFSPA in line with selective democratic/human rights is the likely outcome of the review committee exercise.

Need to Rethink the Premise

But such a patchwork solution is unlikely to reconcile the two opposite world views juxtaposed over the continuing sway of AFSPA, whether in its current form or in an amended/replaced version. So long as the basic premise that allows such an Act to exist is not examined, it would continue to justify the unjustifiable—two different standards of democracy in the same country spawning unstated association of a people and region (Northeast) as a lesser category. Leaving AFSPA's premise unchallenged also gives leeway for ruthless subversion of the basic foundation of society and polity in Manipur.

AFSPA is presented as an instrument 'in aid of civil power' (Section 3 of the Act) to 'suppress' 'armed revolt' or 'armed insurgency' in the Northeast. And it was supposed to be a 'temporary measure'. But over four decades of its existence has shown up all the stated claims ('in aid of civil power', 'suppression' of 'armed revolt' or 'armed insurgency' and 'temporary measure') as false. By legitimizing the use of military in internal affairs of the state, beyond what are already provided in the Criminal Procedure Code and the emergency provisions of the Constitution, AFSPA seeks to supplant civil authority with a military authority in the administration of the domestic space. This is an inevitable spectre because the hierarchical command structure of the army; the simultaneous acquiring of powers by its personnel under the Act, and immunity provided to military personnel (with or without AFSPA), the 'armed forces' under AFSPA is bound to operate separately or independently of the civil authority. Revisiting the nature of the state, how it conceptualizes spaces and violence within those spaces, and its implications will reveal the full import of these observations.

State: Its Violence and Imagination of Space

The modern state positions itself as the only legitimate authority to use absolute violence. Republican and democratic ideals seek to mediate and control the State's claim and capacity to use (coercive) violence by shifting sovereignty to the people. One crucial aspect of the effort to domesticate the violence of the state is the refashioning of its basic instrument of exercising (coercive) violence: the soldiers of the state. In most modern states, this instrument of coercion and violence is bifurcated into the police and military, and both are placed under the command of the people through their representatives. While the police are used to enforce law and order within the state, the military is left to deal with the business of war and to defend the state from external aggression.

The domestic space, where the police operate, is a highly differentiated space. Its inhabitants, i.e. the citizens, are conceptualized variously as normal, abnormal (insane), adult and minor, criminals, etc and their acts and intents are judged accordingly. Statutory principles lay down elaborate conditions (e.g. presumed innocent till guilt is proven, the principle of using 'minimal force' when necessary, etc.) for dealing with the domestic space. In short, republican and democratic principles and institutions seek to protect citizens from the violence of the state within the domestic space.

In contrast, the space where the military operates is less differentiated in that the enemy—largely seen as combatants and hostile or potentially hostile populations—inhabits it. Therefore, reading the intent and acts are also relatively undifferentiated; hostile intent is primarily assumed when the military enters alien and hostile space. Employing whatever necessary force to destroy and neutralize the enemy is the basic operative principle of the military. The hierarchical command structure and regimented ethos of the military are linked to this essential role of the military, namely, the business of war.

This compartmentalization of the military to the business of war does not exclude their involvement in the internal affairs of the state. They can be called in during 'emergency' situations to assist the other institutions (e.g. police). But such involvement of the military in internal affairs of the state is carried out strictly under the will of the demos and that, too, only as a temporary measure. In case, the military asserts itself in the inner space of the state without the sanction of the demos, it is a military coup de'tat; and when the military is involved continuously in internal affairs of the state or such involvement is legitimised by the state, it constitutes a military rule. Such situations represent an assertion of state's violence over the countervailing force of democracy, a violence that is rare in and inimical for a liberal-democratic state.

AFSPA &'Counter-Insurgency': Military to Militarism

Even a cursory reading of AFSPA reveals that the Act is an act of legitimizing the involvement of the military in the domestic space, and that it does not supplement but supplant the 'civil power'. The military character of the Act is reflected in more ways than one. To begin with, AFSPA allows 'use of armed forces' defined as 'military forces and the air forces operating as land forces' and 'any other armed forces'1 of 'the Union' (Section 3) in the domestic space. Section 2 (c) of the Act also clearly shows the close affinity between AFSPA and those laws governing the military such as the Army Act (1950). It reads, 'all other words and expressions used herein but not defined in the Air Force Act, 1950, or the Army Act 1950, shall have the meaning respectively assigned to them in those Acts.'

Subsequent sections of the Act unmask the military paradigm involved in the Act, and they unambiguously show that the Act instead of aiding, subvert and supplant the civil power. For instance, what constitutes the 'disturbed and dangerous condition' for an area to be declared a 'disturbed area' is not defined at all (Section 3). All that is required is to declare an area as 'disturbed area'. It is as good or bad as declaring war; once it is so declared, what it means is clear. In fact, the principle of war is unmistakable here. Just like declaring war, once an area is declared as 'disturbed area', the personnel of the 'armed forces' simultaneously acquire powers to use 'force as may be necessary', based on their 'opinion' and 'suspicion', to effect 'arrest without warrant' or 'fire upon or otherwise use force, even to causing death' (Section 4).

The nature of power conferred upon the 'armed forces' is quite in tune with the military paradigm. For instance, unlike assumption of innocence of a 'suspect' or 'accused' in the domestic space, hostile intention of the inhabitants of the alien and hostile space is taken for granted for the military personnel. Thus, the 'opinion' and 'suspicion' of the commanding officer of a military formation serves as the basis for exercising the powers to 'fire upon or otherwise use force', which he thinks is 'necessary', not only to 'search' any 'premises' or 'destroy' any 'shelter' and 'structure' but also 'arrest' or 'even to causing death' (Section 4). The presumption of hostile intent as the legitimate basis for the 'armed forces' to take action, characteristic of a war zone, is highlighted when these powers can also be exercised for acts that are 'likely to be made' or 'about to (be) commit (ted)' (Section 4)! Besides the nature of the power conferred upon the armed forces, the fact that commanding officers are given the power to judge and execute action on his own only proves that the Act is based on the business of war. In a 'war situation', any officer 2—irrespective of whether he is a Commissioned, Junior Commissioned or Non-Commissioned Officer—leading his men in the field has to be the judge as well as part of the body that executes his judgments. In the context of 'maintaining law and order' within the domestic space, the same person or body cannot be the judge as well as the one who executes the judgment.

Moreover, the soldiers' operational space, i.e. 'alien and hostile', is a relatively undifferentiated space and it does not require elaborate conditions and procedures as in the case of the differentiated domestic space. Hence, unlike other Acts (including the erstwhile POTA) which provide explicit conditions and elaborate procedures running into pages, AFSPA is hardly a one-page Act with six sections! All that the Act requires is to restate the assumption of taken-for-granted hostile intent (based on 'opinion' and 'suspicion') of the inhabitants of the alien and hostile space ('disturbed area') to exercise the power to eliminate, destroy or neutralize the latter (Section 4).

AFSPA does not have any provision for interrogation and/or gathering evidence. Nor is it like any other so-called 'special laws' meant to 'facilitate' trial or 'enhance' conviction rate. It is plainly an instrument of war empowering the military and forces operating under it to eliminate, neutralize and destroy the enemy or 'suspected enemies', which more often than not practically include everybody residing, in the 'disturbed area'. Enough instances are there to show that civilians in a 'disturbed area' are also inherent targets under the Act.

That civilians are at the receiving end of the Act should not surprise anyone. Because even in peace zones, for the military the space inhabited by civilians constitutes the 'other' where regimes and rules different from those of the military (such as the Army Act, 1950) regulate life. When one superimposes that 'other' with a 'cultural other' (as in the Northeast), 'otherness' of that space is bound to be accentuated. Additionally, when one declares a disguised 'war' by terming that space as 'disturbed' under AFSPA, one is completing mapping of the space not only as an alien but also a hostile space inhabited by enemies and (potentially) hostile population. That is why attacks by 'insurgents' are 'retaliated' with indiscriminate firing and killing of civilians, including women and children, by security forces. In short, these instances are intrinsic to the 'use' rather than 'abuse' of the Act.

The envisioning of the 'disturbed area' as an alien space comes in a subtle yet powerful way in Section 6 of AFSPA. It reads,

No prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the powers conferred by this Act.

This Section protects the security personnel operating under the Act from legal suits while inversely restricting the possibility of 'judicial remedy' for citizens in the 'disturbed area'. The underlying logic is the need to protect, and also not to 'demoralize', the soldiers who are fighting a 'war' for the Union.

prosecution under the laws of the foreign lands where they are fighting a war on the state's behalf. With a schizophrenic imagination of itself, the Indian state reinvents the principle of 'extra-territoriality', and seeks to protect the 'armed forces' of the Union who are fighting a 'war' in an alien and hostile frontiers!

In constitutional terms, a state where AFSPA is being enforced is a domestic space, and 'law and order' is a state subject. The position should invest the state government with the authority to take action against law-breakers, including those engaged in maintaining 'law and order'. But the 'armed forces' are not part of this scheme; they are fighting a 'war' on behalf of the Union and therefore they have to be protected from prosecution under the civil and criminal laws. Thus, Section 6 of AFSPA not only treats the constituent state and its inhabitants as 'alien' territory and people but also makes its government redundant. In this matter, the executive of the state is almost treated like a 'proconsul' who cannot be fully trusted and given the authority to prosecute the soldiers of the Union.4

It can be argued that, if exigency demands, the state can always promulgate an ordinance to use its military to deal with that exigency. But to convert such an ordinance into a regular law is to introduce an illicit military structure and ethos in the democratic polity and structure of the state. When that Act, which bestows powers to commit violence going far beyond what is legitimately permissible in a domestic space, is continuously enforced in an area, it sets into motion the process of reproduction and appropriation of the military structure and ethos by other instruments of the state (the paramilitary and police) as well as civil society itself. Ultimately, it leads to a complete subversion of the basic foundation of society and polity, as in Manipur.

It bears noting that AFSPA does not only allow but also legitimises use of the military and its institutionalization in the internal affairs of the state. For instance, historically the Indian army had already moved into and started operations in the Naga Hills in March 1956, two and half years before AFSPA was enacted. But despite continuous enforcement of the Act and deployment of the military, in concrete terms insurgency has spread and thrived in the Northeast. This begs the question: What has the military been doing all these decades and how has AFSPA furthered counter-insurgency? Such questions, along with subversion of democratic institutions and principles through prolonged and continuous deployment of the armed forces under AFSPA, raise questions of militarism i.e. a 'phenomenon by which a nation's armed services come to put their institutional preservation ahead of achieving national security or even commitment to the integrity of the government structure of which they are a part,5 which goes far beyond the idea of the military or use of military per se in counter-insurgency.'

Interestingly, it was observed that American troops deployed and engaged in actual combat in the recent Iraq war primarily came from the American soil, not from its military bases in foreign countries. In this sense, the 'American network of (military) bases is not a sign of military preparedness but of militarism'.5 In a similar sense, continuous enforcement of AFSPA and deployment of troops under the Act seem to serve as a reminder of a 'presence' rather than 'combating' the insurgency per se in the region. The columns of 'armed forces' during 'combing operations' and troops patrolling the streets, towns and villages have not restricted the activities of the insurgents who are as active as, if not more than, they were twenty years ago. But these movements and activities of the 'armed forces' definitely convey the presence of the might of the Indian State to the people. This reminder is also communicated in frightening dimensions by the so-called 'excesses' in which men, women and children are killed in 'retaliation' to attacks on the 'armed forces' by the 'insurgents'. More than being cases of 'human rights abuses', those 'excesses' for which no accountability can be fixed on anybody are reminders of the militarism that has subverted the democratic institutions and ethos in the Northeast.

The devastating impact of militarism on the society and polity in Manipur is in a way understandable because it has the dubious distinction of having the longest experience with that militarism in question.

September Assault on Democracy & the Colonial Legacy

To most people, 9/11 conjures up images of hijacked aircrafts hitting the twin towers in New York and the crumbling of the World Trade Centre. But not many are aware that there was another 9/11 assault on democracy, the tragedy of which is not abrupt but incremental and prolonged. On 11th September 1958, the President of India gave his assent to a legislation enacted by Parliament to make it a law—the Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Act, 1958! It was not an attack on democracy carried out by 'terrorists' on a 'suicide mission'. It was an act of subverting democracy and unleashing State terror on its own population by the largest democracy in the world!

Like this unknown 9/11, not many are also aware that subversion of democratic institutions and principles in the Northeast by the militarism in question had begun long before the army was sent to the Naga Hills in 1956 and AFSPA enacted in 1958. That militaristic subversion of democracy began incidentally again in the month of September 1949!

Following the decision to 'take over' Manipur, the newly independent Dominion India effected the Merger Agreement with the Maharajah on 21st September 1949 through a militaristic manoeuvre without the sanction of the democratically constituted Manipur Legislative Assembly. Subsequently, an Indian army battalion arrived on 12th October 1949 in Imphal, and the first Legislative Assembly in entire South Asia constituted through an election based on universal adult franchise was unceremoniously dissolved on 15th October 1949 when the Merger Agreement came into force. From a state with its own constitution and a democratically constituted Legislative Assembly, Manipur lapsed into 23 years of rule by New Delhi through Chief Commissioners and Lt. Governors with no direct democratic accountability to the people. Manipur thus has the dubious distinction of being the greatest victim of democratic subversion represented by the September legacy6 in the Northeast. Therefore, its experience of the subversion can be an eye opener to the democratic subversion that AFSPA represents in the region.

The use of the military in Manipur was by no means a unique case in the 'integration' of erstwhile 'princely states' into the Indian Union; the 'police action' in Hyderabad is a case in point.7 However, what sets the case of Manipur apart from the rest was the unique democratic character of Manipur, and the modus operandi employed by the founding fathers of the world's largest democracy to extract the Merger Agreement from the Maharajah of Manipur by disregarding the very democratic institutions and principles with which they were trying to reconstruct the post-colonial Indian State.

Military intervention in Hyderabad was a result of the Nizam's reluctance to join Indian Union and violence of the Razakars and communist insurgents or in Kashmir it was due to, amongst others, intrusion of tribal militia from across the border. In contrast, reasons cited for the decision to 'take over' Manipur are revealing: Manipur is a 'border state' and 'backward'8 and therefore a 'strategic necessity'! Curiously, the phrase used by V.P. Menon, the 'arch manoeuvrer'9 of the integration policy, is not 'integrate' or 'integration' but 'take over' of Manipur.10

The preponderance of strategic thinking married to the implications of 'backward(ness)' (while effecting Manipur's merger) is what we know today as the 'stick and carrot' approach that defines policy towards the region. The 'stick and carrot' approach is thus not an insurgency specific response but one rooted in the very imagination of the region and its people. To attribute such an approach—an understandable policy for imperial masters to follow towards 'intransigent' colonial subjects, but a reprehensible one for a democratic country to adopt towards people it claims as its own—to insurgency in the region is to obfuscate the historicity of the underlying principles. And so will the underlying premise of AFSPA also reveal its historical reality beyond its seemingly obvious raison d'etre: insurgency.

Given that AFSPA is essentially an Act envisaged for the Northeast, there is something about the region that allows the envisioning of the region as an 'alien and hostile' space. And that something is the typical 'absence' of the Northeast in the imagination of the Indian 'nation state'. This 'absence' primarily informs policy towards the region. The presence of this 'absence' can be sensed in the way the first act of militarism in the Northeast, the Merger of Manipur, is registered in the post-colonial history of the Indian State.

In his book, 'Integration of Indian States', Mr. V.P. Menon went into details, with separate chapters running into pages, not only on 'police action' in Hyderabad but also that of Junagadh and Travancore-Cochin! Curiously, he not only disposed off Manipur in hardly a page but also got the merger date wrong! The book is silent about the Assembly or what had happened in Shillong between September 17 and 21, 1949 or the decision to send the army to Imphal, etc. It is not size or distance or Pakistan factor that led to trivialization of such a critical historical rupture as the Merger of Manipur. Junagadh (3,337 sq. miles) is less than half the size of Manipur at the time of Merger (8,628 sq. miles) while not only Travancore-Cochin is far away from Pakistan but also from Delhi by over 2,800 km. In contrast, Manipur is almost adjacent to the then East Pakistan and China, and 2,400 km from Delhi! In terms of size, distance or a democratic or strategic challenge, Manipur's merger thus could not have been told in one page. But Mr. Menon did. And in doing so, he is reflecting the mind that 'imagines', in Benedict Anderson's11 sense of the word, the Indian nation into existence.

It is an imagination with a crucial 'absence' that continues to make its presence felt in the absent history of the region and maps where Northeast is marked as a 'blank space'12 in school (history) textbooks! This absence accounts for ignorance—even of informed people like historians, political scientists and bureaucrats—in the country that Manipur had an Assembly in 1948 or the widespread misperception that all northeastern states are 'carved out' of Assam!

While, at a conscious level, myths of insurgency, strategic consideration, distance, and size compensate this 'absence',13 at unconscious and subconscious levels the 'absence' is compensated by twin imageries of the national self: the benevolent self who patronizes the 'backward', 'exotic tribal' and people with 'colourful dances and handicrafts' of the Northeast, and the valiant patriotic self (typified by soldiers and people's identification with them) who fights 'enemies' and 'terrorists' in the alien and hostile Northeast trying to 'maim' Mother India! This is the psycho-cultural fantasy that shapes policy towards the region and assuages any sense of guilt and inadequacy that Indian national consciousness may feel due to 'absence' of Northeast in its imaginaire. Embedded in the deeper recess of the Indian state's political culture, this powerful fantasy connects with the inherent primordial fear of the Indian national self: 'disintegration'.

'Disunity' as a factor that led to British rule over South Asia had been a part and parcel of the awareness of nationalist awakening since 19th century. The trauma of Partition at independence accentuated the anxiety of 'disunity'. Emergence of Communist regime in 1949 in China heightened the sense of persecutory anxiety once represented by 'castrating Muslim plunderers' and 'bad-British colonial mother'. Thus, long before insurgency became the defining characteristic of Northeast, referring to the land of nationalist Gopinath Bordoloi, and political leadership of Manipur who swore by Gandhi and demanded 'integration' of Manipur, Sardar Patel wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru,

The people inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India. Even the Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro-Mongoloid prejudices.14

Disowning Indian nationalists in the region who were presumably as passionate about the idea of India as those from Indo-Gangetic plains or South of the Vindhyas, Sardar Patel formed this judgment on 7th November 1950. There was no armed or unarmed 'secessionist' insurgency then in Manipur or Tripura or Mizoram (then Lushai Hills of Assam) or Assam. Moreover, much before the voice of 'secessionism' was heard from Assam or Manipur, the call for Dravistan in the South came in the 1950s and 1960s. Movements in Manipur and Assam became clearly visible only in the 1980s; so did those of Sikh 'secessionism' or movement in Kashmir. This being the case, why does the lack of 'loyalty' tag appear a 'truism' for people in the Northeast while the same cannot be ascribed easily to Tamils or Sikhs, or Kashmiris?

The answer lies not in the proclaimed fact of 'secessionist' insurgency in the Northeast but in the 'absence' of the region (including in its civilizational term) in the deeply rooted pro-Indo-Aryan (and to some extent Dravidian) imagination and its narratives of the Indian 'nation state'.15 In fact, it is the racially grounded pro-Indo-Aryan prejudices that create an oriental out of the Northeast while constructing an Indian 'nation-state' in the image of the occidental.16 It is this 'orientalized' consciousness that allows the narrative of the 'revolt' that started in a small corner of the region (Tuensang and Naga Hills) in the mid 1950s to inhabit the entire Northeast. The same 'orientalized' consciousness also envisioned the Northeast as an alien space warranting AFSPA for close to five decades.

While nationalism has become 'the avatar of orientalism in the later colonial and post colonial periods',17 the post-colonial state in South Asia has also inherited many aspects of the preceding colonial state. Interestingly, the 'unbroken continuity' between the colonial and post-colonial aspects of the state vis-à-vis the armed forces are conspicuous in the way the Northeast is being envisioned. In the 1930s, describing the 'permanent mark' left by the colonial presence in India, British historians Edward Thomson and G.T. Garratt wrote,

Whatever the future may hold, the direct influence of the West upon India is likely to decrease. But it would be absurd to imagine that the British connection will not leave a permanent mark upon Indian life. On the merely material side the new Federal Government [Government of India recognised under the 1935 constitutional arrangements] will take over the largest irrigation system in the world…some 60,000 miles of metalled roads; over 42,000 miles of railways…scholastic institutions…a great number of buildings.... An effective defensive system has been built up on its vulnerable Northeast frontier, it has an Indian army with century-old traditions, and a police force which compares favourably with any outside a few Western countries.18

That the imagery of a 'vulnerable' region called the 'Northeast' (frontier) came together in the same sentence as that of the 'Indian army' and 'police force' as part of the 'permanent mark' left behind by the colonial presence is prophetic. Except for the fact that the post-colonial Indian state claims the region and its denizens as part of 'we the people of India' while simultaneously insinuating them of having 'no established loyalty to India' from almost day one of the republic, the colonial imagery of the region continues in the post-colonial Indian state. AFSPA, a reinvention of the colonial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance promulgated by the British to suppress the Quit India Movement, is an uncanny reminder of the continuing colonial legacy. Sadly, it is this colonial legacy that is obfuscated by the post-colonial nationalist discourse of all hues—and recently invented fashionable discourse on 'terrorism'—of the political class and intelligentsia. The tragedy and decades of suffering of the people in the region are the direct results of that obfuscation rather than 'foreign hands' or '(dis)loyalty' of the people in the region.

In fact, the bipolarity of an alternate swing between an aggressive and a patronizing posture that marks policy towards the Northeast is an outcome of an internally rather than externally located threat emanating from the schizophrenic condition of the Indian 'nation'. Through militarism, the state is trying to secure a sense of (national) security for this schizophrenic 'national' self; it is a response born out of the inability to come to term with its multifaceted persona (e.g. the 'absence' of the Northeast in the 'national imagination') and its corresponding sense of insecurity. It is the political culture rooted in the above psychological dynamics that drives the above bipolarity and also rationalizes and defends AFSPA till date. Unfortunately, this madness continues to subvert the basic foundation of a civilized democratic order in the Northeast and in a way also critically threatens the very future of these societies.

Road to Sanity

It is a suicidal act when a democracy seeks to protect itself by giving in to a militaristic paradigm. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC with his army, it marked the beginning of the end of the two-centuries-old Roman Republic. Similarly, observers like Chalmers Johnson,19 former CIA analyst and political scientist, point out that the United States is also on a similar journey with its inability to reverse the military paradigm after the end of the cold war; the military-industrial complex and financial burden of running and maintaining nearly a thousand American military bases across the globe are sure recipes for self-destruction. In the US, huge election expenditure has already made mockery of the American ('dollar') democracy by disenabling most people from effective political participation. While there are some concerns in India to avoid such a trend by incorporating election codes on finance, there is hardly any concern on the threats to democracy from a militaristic thinking. However, given its diversity, poverty, and the culture of using military against itself, the largest democracy in the world has more to lose than to gain from such a policy.

Today, the political class and the democratic republican Government of India cannot have a policy towards the Northeast that is not dictated by the military and security agencies. It is a sign of republican democracy becoming subservient to the military-bureaucratic security complex. It started with the 'distant', a psychological more than physical, Northeast but the inward journey of the same thinking has begun to creep deeper into the so-called 'mainstream'. TADA/POTA are reminders of the trend that is threatening to subvert the basic foundations of a liberal-democratic polity. Inability to reverse the militarism could very well mark the beginning of the end of the Indian republic.

Security of a state can never be guaranteed by the might of the military; it has to have a basic foundation in equality, respect and trust amongst its diverse population, particularly in the post-imperial democratic order. That being the case, it is time for a review of the basic ideology and politics towards the Northeast rather than a review of a piece of legislation called the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. The challenge of reversing the militarism and a review of the said ideology and politics towards the Northeast should lead to taking immediate steps to remove the Act for good from the statute book.

Notes & References

1. Paramilitary forces like the Border Security Forces, the Assam Riffles, and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

2. Rooted in a mistaken premise, most critics of AFSPA lament that the power is given to an officer of a lower rank, i.e. Non-Commissioned Officer. However, one does not wage a war only with the formations of platoons or companies or battalions or brigades. In war situation, especially that does not involve large number of men and materials, the Non-Commissioned Officer plays an important role as he commands a section—the smallest formation of the Indian army. Unlike the task of making complicated choices under many restrictions in a differentiated domestic space, in a war situation this officer is more than capable of making the decision to exercise the powers conferred upon him under AFSPA. Thus, the problem is not the officer but the Act that allows the army to engage in a 'war' in the domestic space against citizens inhabiting it.

3. See Johnson, 2004.

4. The massive public protest against AFSPA, sparked off by the Monorama incident, in Manipur reveals such a relation between the Union and the constituent States. For instance, at the height of the crisis, the Chief Minster had to fly to Delhi more than once to 'consult' and take 'advice' from the authority in New Delhi. It is not unnatural for him to do that; neither the 'armed forces' of the Union are accountable to him, nor has he, as the authority in charge of maintaining law and order in his State, the power to initiate legal actions against the alleged offenders (personnel of the 'armed forces'). Instead, the Government of Manipur, with or without advice from the authority in Delhi, turned against the very aggrieved people of his own State and tried hard to suppress the protests. Trapped between being a 'representative' of his people and that of the power that can decide his fate albeit located miles away from his State, he took the 'risk' of lifting the Act from some parts of Imphal (admittedly against 'the strong advice of the Centre'). The central authority responded with patronizing words and veiled threats (read 'President's rule'), saying that the Chief Minister was 'working hard', and 'we (Union Government) won't let him down' as long as he did not go against 'national interests'. This dependent relation that smacks of the relation between an imperial power and its 'proconsul' is promises of more money and more troops from the Centre.

5. Johnson, 2004, p. 24.

6. Incidentally, since 8th September 1980, the whole of Manipur has also been under AFSPA.

7. See Menon, 1956, p. 4.

8. Menon, 1956.

9. Menon, 1956.

10. Menon, 1956.

11. Anderson, 1983.

12. It is a reminiscence of how the Europeans used to mark the world beyond Europe as 'blank spaces' as lands inhabited by history-less people.

13. Here one might also note that electoral dynamics is an important aspect in the working of a democracy, which is defined primarily by the ideas of procedural democracy and majoritarianism, in the post-colonial politics of the Indian State. However, the number of legislatures (Members of Parliament) from the region as an explanation for the 'neglect' of the region by the Government of India or the media or its absence in the historical discourses of the country etc. acquires a similar mythical character in that the number of MPs from Assam do not necessarily mean that Assam ensures a better conspicuous presence in the 'national mainstream' than those states with lesser number of MPs such as Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Kashmir.

14. It is letter written on 7th November 1950. See Das, 1974, p. 338.

15. Perhaps, Tagorian and Gandhian conceptions of the Indian nation do not carry this absence but the visions of these two thinkers have already been clearly marginalized as Indian nationalists reproduced a nation-state of a European variety. See Nandy, 1993.

16. Ironically, it is the Germans whose Indologists gave the foundation for the westward looking self-definition of the Indian 'nation-state' also produce the Aryam racism of the Nazis which looks at Indian as impure Aryans. It is also all the more ironical that the Bengalis, the community whose part in the modern Indian renaissance is crucial, have Indo-Mongoloid as one of its roots.

17. See Breckenridge and Veer, 1993, p. 12.

18. Cited by Chatterjee, 1994, p. 15 (Italic added).

19. Johnson, 2004.

Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Breckenridge, Carol A. & Peter van der Veer. 1993. 'Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament'. In Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (eds.) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament; Perspectives on South Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Chatterjee, Partha. 1994. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Das, Durga. 1974. Sardar Patel's Correspondence (1945-50), Vol. 10, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House.

Johnson, Chalmers. 2004. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Menon, V.P. 1956. Integration of the Indian States. Madras: Orient Longman.

Nandy, Ashis. 1993. The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self. New Delhi: OUP.

Rustomji, Nari. 1971. Enchanted Frontiers: Sikkim, Bhutan and India's Northeastern Borderlands. Bombay: Oxford University Press.

Shandilya, Charan. 1998. Sino-Indian Relations: History and Politics, Reality of McMohan Line, India-China War of 1962. Ghaziabad: Surya Art Press.

RELOOKING CIVIL SOCIETY

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:26:00 +0530

By Pradip Phanjoubam, Imphal Free Press, 16 Dec 2014

That the huge expanse of the non state sector generally termed as the civil society is not always civil is axiomatic. In Manipur this ought to be obvious. The blockades, bandhs, strikes and many other disruptive activities, often for very sectarian causes emanate from organizations assuming the mantle of civil society vigilantes. The truth is, it is not just in Manipur, but the civil society in the entire northeast is badly fractured and ethnically riven and may not be quite what the term is generally understood to be. The term civil society itself presupposed certain shared democratic values and qualities regardless of religious and community affiliations and these values are what have been relegated into the background in our context. Hence when we talk of students’ community or youth or women, in more ideal situations, there ought not to be any need for prefixing these understandings with community and religion specific qualifications. This however has been far from the truth in the northeast, and Manipur has been no exception in the regard. There is hence very little prospect to generalize the problems and prospects, and in fact the very status of the various civil society organizations in the northeast.

A few examples will illustrate this point. When we say students or youth or women communities, the nomenclatures themselves ought to have been self explanatory. The reality however is quite different in the Northeast where every ethnic community forms its own students, youth, women… organizations, each with very different and more often than not sectarian agendas to pursue. Often again these pursuits of the different “civil society” work at cross purposes, accentuating, rather than solving problems. In Manipur such clashes of sectarian agendas are all too often. The almost entirely different objectives of organization such as the United Naga Council, the United Committee Manipur, All Manipur United Clubs Organisation, the Kuki Inpi Manipur etc, to name just a few, should suffice to make this point clear. The scenario would virtually be the same if we were to list the various students’ organizations, or women’s organizations in the state. As rule, except for a very few, all civil society bodies here are coloured by ethnic tints. The general understanding of the term becomes split into numerous smaller ethnic specific organizations. Contrast these with organizations on the other extreme of the civil society panorama such as the International Red Cross Society, Reporters Without Frontiers, Amnesty International, Medicine Sans Frontiers, Rainbow Warriors etc, just to have an idea of the direction civil society organizations in our own midst are heading.

There are indeed ethnic specific problems which are best understood by the individual communities, so a degree of community leaning cannot be avoided. But by and large, there must be a general thread that binds all civil society bodies to more broad-based identities. Our youth must be able to identify, empathize and sympathize with the national and international youth movements. Only when this happens can a reverse flow of the same sentiments become possible. The need of the hour then is for an effort to reconstruct our civil society. Let us sit down and analyze where we have gone wrong and then seek to correct our mistakes. We must put our civil society movements on the track that will integrate us to the mainstream of humanity. We must open up the channels to communicate and share with the rest of humanity, and by this very process of sharing, mitigate our own burdens. The ethnic identity upsurge being what it is, we know it is not going to be by any standard easy to go about doing this, but it is one of those very vital and urgent issues at hand we cannot shy away from. It is also the only way we can make our civil society civil in the true sense of the words.

IS DISCRIMINATION A REALITY?

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Tue, 9 Dec 2014 11:39:00 +0530

by Kishalay Bhattarcharjee and Ashish Ranjan
Originally published by the Imphal Free Press on 7 Dec 2014

With frequent reports of alleged racist attacks in Delhi and the National Capital Region, Reachout Foundation perceived a lack of comprehensive data on the nature of alleged discrimination against people from Northeastern India in cities like Delhi. Our emphasis thus has been to generate comprehensive and defensible empirical data on the extent and variation of racist attitudes and experiences, in order that they could inspire or guide anti-discrimination policies.

The main objective of the present survey is to understand the extent and scope of ethnic/racial discrimination perceived by people from India’s Northeast living in Delhi-NCR. The targeted population for the survey were people from all the eight north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura who are currently living in Delhi and the NCR (Ghaziabad, Noida and Gurgaon). The respondents were selected using mixed sampling techniques of probability and non-probability methods. The targeted sample was of 1000 respondents across thirty different locations in Delhi and the NCR.

Is discrimination a reality for those individuals from the Northeast who are living in Delhi? While we can’t say for certain whether or not these individuals have been discriminated against, the study reveals that slightly more than half of respondents perceived as such.

What Are The Kinds Of Discrimination?

The study reveals that majority of respondents who felt discriminated said that they faced ethnic or racial discrimination. 67 per cent respondents said that they were the victims of ethnic/racial discrimination while 4 per cent claimed gender discrimination and 3 per cent said they were discriminated on basis of their religion. 11 per cent respondents did not express any opinion on this.

Males and females reported along similar lines when it came to the basis of discrimination. Both females and males identified their ethnicity as the greatest determinant of discrimination. Ethnic/ racial discrimination exist among 77 per cent of male as compared to 74 per cent female respondents who think that ethical/racial discrimination is what they have experienced in their stay in Delhi-NCR.

If we see the gender division for admission of facing discrimination we find that women are the worst victims of discrimination though the gender ratio is not much different.

If we look at the educational background of those who experienced discrimination, two aspects emerge. First, the achieved sample overwhelmed with the educated respondents and found such a small portion of individuals who received lower level of education.

Second, of those who endured discrimination, 90 per cent of them were either undergraduate or post-graduate and they claimed that they have faced discrimination of some sort. The table below indicates that how people from different levels of education have faced discrimination.

If we consider the profession of the respondents, students are more likely to report having experienced discrimination. Their proportion is very high as against other groups. Among those who have faced discrimination, 60 per cent were students followed by people engaged in private enterprises and private services. Government employees are the least who admitted to have faced discrimination.

Although the difference among the victims of discrimination are very different in terms of their profession which also depends on their number in Delhi, but across the various professions the opinion is more or less the same. The graph (Figure 6a) displays the percentage of individuals who reported experiencing discrimination by profession.

Of those individuals who were surveyed, the greatest percentage (60%) reported they had been discriminated against were between the ages of 22 and 30. Forty percent were below 22 years of age, and 11% were over the age of 40.

How Is The Situation In Delhi In Terms Of Discrimination?

The situation in Delhi regarding racial/ethnic discrimination is most worrying at least for the Northeast people. 74 per cent respondents said that Delhi is the most unsafe place in terms of ethnic discrimination. Only 8 per cent felt that it is the least worrying place regarding ethnic discrimination while 18 per cent did not express their opinion about it. The table below indicates the different opinions regarding this.

The survey reveals that both male and female respondents are on the same page when they talk about the issue of discrimination in Delhi. The graph below depicts that three fourth of male and female respondents said that the problem of discrimination in Delhi is most worrying. The number of female is little higher than the male.

Locations Where Respondents Reported Experiencing Discrimination:

Knowing where individuals reported having experienced discrimination can help us target advocacy work around those locations. The majority of respondents who reported experiencing discrimination experienced it either at a restaurant or sporting or public places (27%). These locations were followed by 24 per cent at the educational institutions and 23 per cent during buying or renting of houses.13 per cent of them said that they faced discrimination at their work place and 7 per cent people informed that even police did not treat them equally.

Response To Discrimination:

Most of the respondents who faced discrimination did not give any response on the question about what measures they took when they faced this problem. The worrying statistic is only 4 per cent of the victims of discrimination reported it to the police. While only 4 percent reported the discriminatory act to police, 24 percent shared their experience with a friend or family member. The experience of being discriminated is so embarrassing to them that only 18 per cent of them informed their friends but not their families while 12 per cent did not say anything to anyone. The graph below shows the people in Delhi who faced discrimination and the measures they took after experiencing a discriminatory act.

The findings of the survey reveal that more male are indifferent about this issue than female. However, the data suggests that more males decline to answer this question than females. 44 per cent of males did not respond as compared to 34 per cent females.

Most of the males just shared their experiences with their friends but not with their family. Far more females as compared to the males have discussed it with their family and friends. 35 per cent females have reported about being discriminated to their family and friends but haven’t informed to the police as compared to 19 per cent of male respondents.

Rajya Sabha (Indian Parliament) on 19.02.2014 regarding “Discrimination against People from NER” the government provided number of cases registered in Delhi during the last three years by people from the Northeast. In 2011, 27 cases were registered against a total of 59249. In 2012 there were 50 cases against 60367 FIRs and in 2013, 73 cases were filed against the total number of 86564. Since there is no specific data on the number of people from Northeast India residing in Delhi, one cannot establish the population ratio and infer the proportion of cases registered by people from Northeast from this data.

Perception About Themselves

The main reason for discrimination against them was their ethnic origin. 63 per cent of the sampled respondents asserted that they faced discrimination due to their ethnic origin. Amongst them who asserted discrimination due to their ethnic origin, 15 per cent of them said that they faced it very often or many a times while 48 per cent said that they faced discrimination due to their ethnic origin only some times. While only 24 per cent said that they were never discriminated due to their ethnic origin. The graph below indicates this story.

One of the most worrying trends is that the respondents feel they are being looked upon with suspicion. Only 41 per cent said that people never treated them with mistrust. Most of the respondents said that there is trust deficit between them and other ‘Indian people’. 12 per cent of them have very negative feelings about this issue and they claimed that often people do not trust them. 31 per cent of them said that people suspect them some times while 16 per cent of said that they hardly ever came across such kind of issue.

Identity is very important in our lives. But it can be humiliating if we are addressed by offensive names/ terms. 56 per cent respondents say that they were addressed by offensive names. Around 20 per cent claim that people used offensive words to identify them. While 37 per cent said they have faced such slur only sometimes.

They may be victims of discrimination themselves but they recognize that discrimination happens with others as well. The data suggests that when they came across ethnic groups being discriminated, most of them said that they did take measures to protest. More than 80 percent respondents say that they have gone out of their way to help others. Among them 54 per cent said that they helped them while 31 per cent claimed that they have spoken against the offence. 12 per cent respondents did not say anything on this issue while 3 per cent said they would walk away in such a situation.

The Causes Of Discrimination:

The major cause for discrimination that emerged from the survey was prejudice and lack of awareness about the Northeast people. 64 per cent respondents said the reason behind discrimination is the lack of understanding/ awareness about people from the Northeast. 13 per cent claimed that it is the indifference towards people from the Northeast by others that lead to discrimination against them. While 20 per cent said that the major cause of discrimination is lack of interaction among the people from Northeast and others.

There is not much difference between male and female respondents regarding their views on the causes of discrimination. Both male and female think that prejudices and lack of understanding against people from Northeast are the major causes for ethnic discrimination. Similarly there is not much difference between male and female who think that indifference and lack of interaction are the main causes of the discrimination.

Awareness About The Law And Procedure:

Only 40 per cent respondents know of a department set up by the government that can help the ethnic groups facing discrimination while rest 60 per cent do not have any idea about this kind of set up which could be of some help to them.

Way Forward:

The most positive response is that most people hope that discrimination will be eliminated. They feel that the government and social bodies will be integral in addressing the problem of discrimination. 35 per cent of them said that government would be the most important driver in this while 29 per cent think that social workers would be the best suited to solve the problems. 17 per cent respondents said that ethnic groups themselves have to play a part to reduce discrimination. 19 per cent people could not say anything on this.

What Would Be The Best Way To Handle The Problem Of Ethnic Discrimination?

The respondents think that education is the most preferred way to handle this problem.

68 per cent respondents chose education as most effective vehicle, while 18 per cent consider that only regulation and laws can solve it. 10 per cent said that setting up more social organization would be helpful to deal with this issue. Rest 4 per cent did not express their opinion.

What they think about Delhi?

Delhi can be free from discrimination. At least 47 per cent respondents have hope that this city can be free from discrimination in the future while 30 per cent have negative feelings regarding this and they think that it cannot be free from this attitude. 21 per cent do not have any concrete idea whether Delhi would be free from discrimination or not.

MANIPUR IN DECEMBER 2014

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Tue, 9 Dec 2014 11:31:00 +0530

A collection of five editorial columns written by Pradip Phanjoubam for the Imphal Free Press in the last two months of 2014

Enterprise or Sloth

It will come as no surprise that there is an exodus of young aspiring professionals away from the state. In a way this is good, for if and when they return, they will bring back new skills and outlooks. But there is also a fairly good chance that a majority of them will not return, for at this moment, job prospects befitting their skills and aspiration are virtually nil. Nor is there a climate for them to want to return and build enterprises from scratch. It is in this sense a very critical period for the state. Push matters a little farther and things can reach a point of no return, where the best talents leave permanently to find their fortunes elsewhere. If however the state does not allow the situation to drift beyond the critical point, who knows, in the years ahead, it may be time for a new renaissance, when the prodigals begin heading home. At this moment though, the picture is rather grim. As for instance, few jobs outside those offered by the government are worth today’s wage standards, and the government job sector is super-saturated. Selection tests for a few dozen state civil servants, or lecturers, once or twice a decade, cannot come as any consolation to the ever growing number of job seekers. There are no signs that the situation can improve in the near future either. The government neither has the resource to create more direct jobs, nor the will or imagination to foster the growth of employment outside itself. All it can do, and has been doing, is to blame the bad law and order situation for its failures. Nobody can deny this is a factor, but it is precisely the government’s duty to ensure the rule of law exists, and it can best begin by practising what it preaches.

The rule of law is another story, but the immediate challenge is about creating jobs and since the capacity of the government to employ has a definite ceiling, it will have to look at the private sector. For this sector is multidimensional with practically the sky as the ceiling. An article by journalist Michael Hasting, comparing the resurgence power of Vietnam and Iraq, is interesting in this regard. Hasting covered both the Vietnam War and Iraq War. While still on assignment in Iraq, he visited Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) for a story that compared to two wars. Forty years after the war, Vietnam is bouncing back. Its economy is buoyant, everybody is raring to go and win his share from it, and in the process contribute his share too. In comparison, forty years hence, he is not hopeful Iraq can emulate the same feat. Individual entrepreneurship was always very strong in Vietnam, unlike Iraq which was for too long hooked to easy petrodollars. Vietnam’s economy was built around the enterprising spirit of its people, as well as the skill and discipline of its labour force. By contrast, Iraqis in general have come to be addicted to subsidies, so that in times of crisis, such as wars and their aftermaths, while Iraq had nowhere else to look for resurgence, Vietnam could draw strength from within and pick itself up much sooner. Moreover, unlike Iraq which is dominated by a revenge culture, Vietnam was much more practical and outward looking. Even in the midst of the bitter war against America, it was never bitter toward Americans, so much so that Ho Chi Minh was supposed to have written a letter during the war to the American President, Lyndon Johnson, that Americans would be welcomed back as friends after the war. And Americans are now indeed rushing back to Vietnam, not to make war but as tourists and businessmen.

The uneasy thought is, Manipur seems to be much closer to Iraq than Vietnam. It is possessed by a culture of revenge and bitterness. It is also almost completely dependent on government subsidies. Private entrepreneurship has been dwarfed, and at best it is about dishonest government contract work or else, with the exception for a few, has not risen above retail trade, which promise money perhaps, but no creative contribution to the economy. Its education system is in the pit, incapable of producing quality skills or knowledge. Parents who can afford the cost look away from the state increasingly for their children’s education. These children may not feel inclined to return when they come of age, and they are not at all to blame. Shouldn’t a rethinking process begin? Shouldn’t the government be thinking of evolving policies to nurture back to health the general entrepreneurial spirit?

Surviving Chaos

It is unlikely the multidimensional conflicts in Manipur would go away immediately. This is in spite of so many other conflict-ridden places in the neighbourhood going through a healing process. Sad as the case may be, it is essential the people assert their will to keep the place afloat and away from insanity. This will entail keeping all the essential survival qualities of a society intact. Above all, it will be an absolute necessity for the place to continue honing its competitive skills and spirit in pace with developments outside. This is not an easy task even in normal times, and will definitely be uphill for a place immersed in conflicts. But, there is no other way than to do it, if survival as a society is important. Surely, none of us want the state to be reduced to impoverishment and despair beyond recovery. The apprehension that such a scenario may become a reality in our state is very immediate, considering it is slipping in many spheres of activities needed to keep an economy going. Its education is in the pit. Most of the thousands of graduates churned out by our colleges and universities are today employable only by the government which grades qualification standards for jobs by academic degrees alone, and not by the market worth of skills candidates possess. Because the market has remained stunted thus, job seekers with worthy skills probability would leave the state for greener pastures elsewhere. In the absence of a government with substance, or more importantly moral authority, policy matters continues to be decided from the streets. All these say very little for the shape of Manipur’s not so distant future. The vision of a weak and vulnerable people left to fend for themselves amidst the blinding rush of the competitive world, cannot fail to eerily haunt anybody who dares to imagine what Manipur’s destiny might be, given our present situation.

There is no doubt the place has done well in sports and performing arts. But these may actually be a direct consequence of the violence and conflicts that have enveloped our society. In fact, to use a Freudian interpretation, they may actually be the manifestation of the same violence, but in a sublimated way. The angst within the soul that has been the driving force behind all of the violence may actually also be the materials that form the building blocks of our sports and arts. But in enumerating and evaluating the achievements of a society, there are things that go far beyond. The erstwhile East Germany and the Soviet Union were sporting powerhouses and havens for the arts. Their failure to survive should be evidence enough these are essential but hardly enough. So let the state not rest content with the laurels earned in these fields alone. There will have to be more, much more.

One needs only to look around to discover how many people are actually absolutely incomeless even in the state capital. The traditional family structure has been providing the cushion to absorb the devastation this could have caused. The welfare state that our polity is supposed to be by definition, even if it is a begging one, has also helped. If not anything else, it has been providing close to a lakh direct government jobs, justifiably or not, with hansom salaries, which have been managing to keep the fluidity of our markets, artificially or otherwise. The question is, how much can the family system and the welfare government buffers keep the place from imploding under the surmounting pressures? At this moment, remove these buffers and there will be very few props on which the economy can stand on. Hence the insurrection and the political uncertainty as an excuse for the chaos must end. Whatever the outcome of the conflicts, at the end of it, the people must still have the legs to stand on, and this can happen only if they make the extra effort to prevent the economy from grinding to a halt in the meantime.

Price of Development

Can development be without price? Much as anybody may wish it, this cannot be so. Hence, the more realistic and pertinent question should be, what kind of price is worth paying for any development project. The basic principle in any walk of life – that of minimizing the losses and maximizing the gains, should very well apply here too. Just as in the law of physics which says matter (or energy) can neither be created nor destroyed, development, or for that matter anything else, can be snatched out of nothing. Only God knows how to do that and we are sure He would not be keen to demonstrate. Jokes apart, development must have to be a rational negotiation process in which we weigh the pros and cons of all projects envisaged, and then lean our decisions towards the arguments that are honestly weightier. Often this logic is abandoned in all our ongoing debates on the issue.

The need to pursue this debate has acquired a sense of desperation in our situation. Just the consideration of the example of the acute power shortage in the state should suffice to demonstrate this. We note though that the situation has improved, not on account of availability of more electric power but because of better management which has prevented wastages as well as theft. Leave the question of why this was not done earlier for the time being and let us return to the original contention. On the one hand we have not enough electricity and on the other we also often put up non-negotiable oppositions to electricity generating hydel projects. It is true these projects will command a price but shouldn’t the debate be also about how heavy the price would be and how worthy it is to pay the price. If we foreclose the issue and say we should not pay any price at all, whatever the circumstance, then we should also not be complaining the scarcity of electricity, and in fact the absence of the fruits of development in our lives. We do not have to sell ourselves and our future just for the sake of development, but all the same, we must also have to be prepared to pay some price at least if we want development. As the saying goes, you cannot make an omelette without breaking the egg. Hence if you think it is absolutely wrong to break the egg then don’t even imagine how the omelette can be relished. The effort then must be to seek the right balance between what we end up paying and what we end up getting. To extend the aphorism of the egg a little more, the debate must be about taking care not to cook the goose that lays the golden egg just for one sumptuous meal, but also not to unnecessarily deprive ourselves of the simple delight of an omelette meal. As practical optimists, we believe there is such a balance. Maybe a series of small dams rather than a mega high dam is the answer?

Take another case. Other than electricity, tap water is also in acute shortage in the state. In rural areas, since there are still clean natural sources of water, the problem although bad, is not as desperate. But in the urban areas, say for instance Imphal, what would the people do without treated water. Luckily, there are some very well maintained community artificial water bodies which are an important substitute in times of extreme scarcity, but the problem can only grow in the days ahead. Under the circumstance, imagine what would have been the scenario if the Shingda Dam were not there and Imphal did not receive even the existing supply of tap water. Perhaps, Imphal with its ever growing population would not have been liveable at all by now. Here is, right in front of our eyes, what we may say is a successful, life supporting, small dam, and yet so many still insist on opposing any mention of dams. Of course, even in the case of small dams, the question of compensation and meaningful resettlement of affected population, if any, must be addressed seriously and adequately.

Enforce Work Culture

The Manipur government is estimated to have a work force of about 80,000 employees. If the government was run as an efficient private enterprise, with strict adherence to costs balancing benefits, it is also estimated that the work load on these 80,000 employees could have been optimally handled by 30,000 or so. For that matter, in the past we have seen how the responsibilities of the entire team of ministers and MLAs were easily shouldered by an executive body as small as three during spells of Presidents Rules, of which the State saw many and far too frequently until the introduction of the Anti-Defection Law. Ironically, in terms of physical presence in office, the government may be doing with only 30,000 employees actually working as they are expected to and paid for, at any given time. The absenteeism, late arrivals, early departures, unscheduled lunch breaks, numerous unwarranted tea breaks etc., in government offices, are testimony. “I saw him around a while ago,” is today a standard answer at any government office, when someone go looking for a staff for some work. In the districts and sub-divisional headquarters, especially in the hills, this would be much worse. As a recent report after a media tour of Tousem sub-division in the Tamenglong district indicated, absenteeism here could be as high as 90 percent. In these places, governance is becoming a receding memory, and it is unbelievable to read in this age that simple illnesses as dysentery and viral fever can still be life threatening. Few or no government offices are manned, all government facilities, including health infrastructures, are in advance states of decay, government schools have only ghost teachers, and as a result without students as well. The list can go on. A good percentage of the 80,000 work force constitute of these ghost employees, listed in the payrolls, but perpetually missing from their places of work. Yet few do enough to bring about a change precisely because everybody has come to have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the limbo of non-governance.

For the government, there can be no excuse. It has no choice but to extend its administration to all parts of its territory without fail. If its employees are refusing to obey its transfer and posting orders, there cannot be a more shameful indication of the government’s irrelevance. The government must also however listen to the sincere amongst its employees on what their problems are. Many of the complaints we have heard have to do with the lack of basic amenities, to the extent of water and food supplies running out at some of these outlying posts. At least these basics must be ensured to expect cooperation from employees. Not all outposts are as bad though, and so it calls for the government to identify the genuine from the fraudulent complaints to take up appropriate and justifiable action to rectify the situation, without fail. There is yet another angle to the story. In inculcating work atmosphere, the responsibility is not just that of the employees or the government. A good part of it must also rest on the local population. They must make employees from other parts of the State posted amidst them feel at home and want to stay. Perhaps another way the government can make its job easier is by suitably changing its recruitment rules. It could for instance grade the difficulty of its outposts, and make it compulsory for all employees to accumulate a certain number of points on the difficulty scale before he or she can qualify to opt for a posting of choice. Of course, it goes without saying that the government must first ensure that “difficulty” does not mean braving starvation death and physical harm. In this regard, it must be said the government’s stated move of making it mandatory for specialist doctors to serve a stipulated tenure in hill districts, is laudable. This administrative logic must be extended to other government departments too.

Beauty of Coexistence

The chief minister, Okram Ibobi’s appeal for coexistence, and by implication denouncing separatism, in his speech at the closing function of the Sangai Festival with none other than the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi as the star audience, brings back a thought IFP has often dwelt on in these columns. In a crux, he had said Manipur will not allow dismemberment of its territory even by an inch but will welcome coexistence not just in Manipur but with all in the neighbourhood. Appeals for peaceful coexistence have become commonplace today. That these appeals should at all become necessary is an indication that there are forces pulling the fabric of coexistence apart. There is another often heard appeal today and this has to do with tolerance. However, because of the multiplicity of connotations associated with the latter term, we are a little suspicious of this appeal. Although we are aware of the well intended spirit, there are other meanings, conscious or otherwise, inherent in the appeal itself. For one, tolerance presupposes that the object to be tolerated is offensive in nature. The equation sought hence is never one of equality, but of a superior entity putting up with an inferior counterpart even if this means having to make do with inconveniences, keeping in view longer term self-interests. The question becomes in this way reduced to making a choice for the lesser of two evils. Tolerance has another nasty connotation. It can portray a picture of passivity and inactivity. It can be taken to mean insensitivity and the lack of a natural sense of rights and justice, hence the failure to claim them. Some very often asked questions will illustrate: How can the people of Manipur tolerate corruption or violence the way it has? How can Manipur tolerate non performance by its governments the way it has?

We therefore prefer the word coexistence. The term first of all is value-neutral and there is no implied meaning of inequality buried in it. It suggests an equal partnership, where the different communities exposed to each other by circumstances of geography, economy and politics, live in a free interplay of ideas and customs. In Manipur, as in any other multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religion societies, such a formula will have to be the only route to lasting peace. The foundation for peace must be laid in a salad bowl scenario, where each ingredient remains distinct, but in their totality give themselves a new collective identity and personality. Adjustments, not tolerance, will no doubt become necessary to make sure the vital agenda of governance is given smooth passage. There will have to be, for instance, laws and norms applicable to all, just as all must be deemed to be equals before these same laws. But while an integration process cannot be overt, there will come about unseen, unobtrusive forces that initiate a meltdown of the different ingredients: The compulsions and bonds of economics being the most powerful of these. The salad bowl will then, at its own pace, begin to resemble a stew pot precisely at the marketplace which must have a lingua franca that no one can claim as their exclusive, a common currency, ethos, value system etc. Each ingredient will still retain their individual identities, but each of them would have acquired some of the tastes and smells of the other ingredients in the same stew.

Both these models of integration are beautiful. The individual can be beautiful but it is the collective which can transcend the ordinary and be in the realm of the grand. To push the analogies of the salad bowl and the stew, surely a single ingredient dish can never be as appetising as the multi-ingredient salad or stew. We can say the same of the society too. Isn’t cosmopolitanism beautiful? Isn’t the way Imphal is evolving beautiful too? So many different communities, bringing in so many different colours, flavours, skills, religions, cultures... And when they all come to be the ingredients of a composite identity of the place, that’s when a new beauty, greater than the sum of its parts, will emerge. Of course, this integration must be allowed to happen at a pace the social organism will be able to absorb and internalise without detriment to itself. In this light, the current demand for an immigration regulatory mechanism should not degenerate into xenophobia but remain as an effort to ensure this optimum pace at which cosmopolitanism evolves without causing social tensions.

CORRUPTION: NEXUS OF POLITICIANS, BIG CONTRACTORS, SUPPLIERS, BUSINESSMEN AND BUREAUCRATS

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Fri, 7 Nov 2014 12:26:00 +0530

By Dhanabir Laishram
Source:
The People's Chronicle (thepeopleschronicle.in)
Manipur Times (www.manipurtimes.com)

In India people have been disillusioned with UPA I and UPA II. Under the economists Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission (all are famous economists) the country is facing uncertainty, fail to control price rice and confusion. Administration has collapsed. Rampant corruption is running the nation. The 2G scam, commonwealth Games scam, Adarsh housing colony scam are no bigger than the Coalgate scam where the Prime Minister is allegedly involved. The CBI is investigating the Coalgate scam under Supreme Court’s supervision. Miraculously and most unfortunately, 157 files related to Coal scam is missing. Where have the files gone? Coal ministry is not missing, office of coal ministry is not missing, Government is not missing, and then why the files are missing? Ironically the Prime Minister was the in charge of coal ministry in between 2006-2009, where all related files could not be found. The opposition has complained that – ‘to save the prime Minister files were kept hidden’. It is most unfortunate for a largest democratic country that record of the office is deliberately kept out of reach. This is indication of highly corruption in the country. Even in case of the state, some of the offices were burnt down in order to make missing of such files. Manipur is also one of them. What are values of RTI if the necessary files might be missing?

Corruption is an olden predicament in the world. Every society faced from the evils of corruption in one form or the other. Corruption in the administrators both permanent and political executives have become a common phenomenon in every developing country, and India is not an exception to it. Political corruption cannot be studied separately from bureaucratic corruption, since the two phases are closely associated and, at a certain point, are cause and effect to each other. To embark upon the issue of corruption is also a difficult task. This is recorded by Kautiliya in his treatise of public administration dating back to fourth century B.C. He observed in his Arthasastra that:

Just as it is impossible not to taste the honey (or the poison) that finds itself at the tip of the tongue, so it is impossible for peoples in the government or government servant not to eat up, at least, a bit of the king’s revenue. Just as fish moving under water cannot possibly be found out either as drinking or not drinking water, so government servants employed in the government work cannot be found out (while) taking money (for themselves).

Corruption has a variety of meanings:

According to David H. Bayley, corruption is a general term covering misuse of authority as a result of considerations of personal gain, which need not be monetary.”

In the view of Jacob Van Klaveren, “Corruption means that a civil servant abuses his authority in order to obtain an extra income from the public.”

As defined by Robert C. Brooks, corruption is: “… the international misperformance or neglect of a recognised duty, or the unwarranted exercise of power, with the motive of gaining some advantage more or less directly personnel.”

J.S. Ney’s definition of corruption is very clear and includes every aspects of a corrupt act. He says “Corruption is a behaviour which deviates public officials from the normal duties. This includes such behaviour as bribery (use of reward to pervert the judgment of a person in a position of must); nepotism (bestowal of patronage by reason of ascriptive relationship rather than merit); and misappropriation (illegal appropriation of public resources for private uses).”

In India, lawmakers and legal experts have avoided for defining corruption. The bible of anti-corruption laws, the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1947, contains no definition although its definition of “criminal misconduct” in relation to civil servants appears to be quite comprehensive. Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code covers a vast territory dealing with erring public servants but it also fails to define corruption. To quote, “whoever, being or expecting to be a public servant accepts, or obtains, or agrees to accepts, or attempts to obtain from any person for himself or for any other person any gratification whatever other than legal remuneration as a motive or reward for doing or forbearing to do any official act, or for showing or forbearing to show, in the exercise of his official function, favour or disfavour to any person, or for tendering or attempting to render any services or disservice to any person, with the Central or any State government or Parliament or legislature of any state or with any local authority, corruption or government company referred to in Section 21, with any public servant as such, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”

Mr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India also said that the states acting as tax havens for illegal money were reluctant to share information as they were aware of the extent to which their economies had become geared to the flow of illegal capital from the poorer countries. Fifty-three per cent of the countries said to be least corrupt by Transparency International are offshore tax havens, where most of the corrupt money goes. The tax havens include New Zealand, ranked as the least corrupt country. Singapore ranked number five, and Switzerland, ranked number seven.

World Bank estimates of cross border flow of money from illegal activities and tax evasion is around $1.5 trillion, of which $40 billion is bribe paid to government servants in developing countries. Tracing, freezing, confiscation and repatriation of stolen assets is a cumbersome process because of differences in legal systems, high costs in coordinating investigations, inadequate international cooperation and bank secrecy laws.

Thus money come to the states is with full of care and debates. The debates are taken place as in between two devil advocates but more than that money was in the tax haven. This is your India.

In Manipur also corruption poses a serious development challenge. Its effects on state’s politics, administration, and institutions are enormous. It has become a way of life. It erodes the institutional capacity of state government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and public offices are bought and sold. At the same time, corruption has also undermines the legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and tolerance.

Corruption in elections has also been a key issue in the state. Elections are a much fanfare like festival in Manipur. Different political parties show their strength, try to get more attention by creating fuss about small things. Although, Election Commission and its representatives are keeping watchful eyes on the activities of parties and their candidates, the idea is to prevent unethical practices like bribery, intimidation and also a misuse of office and power. Unfortunately, these are not working. Moreover it led the situation more and more critical. If immediate corrective measures are not taken seriously by all concerned, the future of democracy will be more and more faded. In short democracy seems to be giving and taking of money not giving and taking of powers.

The economic trajectory being followed in the state is also one which necessarily embroils the entire political class in “corruption”. As we all know that the economy of the state has gradually been transformed on neo-liberal lines. But how is corruption linked to current economic trajectory? Neo-liberal reforms have made values pervasive; the force with which corruption has entered our public life has accordingly multiplied. The logic of free-market economy makes the political class the most significant practitioners of corruption. The point is that the entire discussion of the spreading neo-liberal values, the passion for money-making, the intrusion of commoditization into every sphere of life, all of which are integrally linked to our current economic trajectory, has receded into the background.

Now the main issue is accumulated discontentment among the masses from 1949 when the chief commissioner administered the part ‘c’ state Manipur to today’s Government. During that time all the head of departments of the offices were from outside Manipur. Shri Baleswar Prasad, the then chief commissioners & Lt. Governor and other officers, who didn’t injected the ideas of national character to the people of Manipur. Instead he taught corruption, bribery, favouritism and nepotism. The details of the corruption cases had been publishing in every issue of the Manipuri Monthly magazine “Lamyanba”. These were also highlighted in the Manipuri dailies like the Simanta Patrika, the Khollao, and the Prazatantra etc. There were seven such cases against Shri Baleswar Prasad involving Rs 950; Rs 44,800, Rs 5,000, Rs 70,000, Rs 1,30,000, Rs 40,000 and Rs 1,50,000 respectively. One could find three such cases also against Shri Kalyan Sundaram, Secretary (Finance) and Head of Department, Manipur State Transport involving Rs44, 000, Rs 40,000, Rs 7,000 respectively. ( Lamyanba, October 1969pp 23,26, Nov. pp 28-29,1970 issue, For Shri Kalyan Feb,1970 issue pp 25-28, April pp 27-29, May pp26-29). These had made a discourteous shock to the Manipuris. Even today Manipur State Transport can’t exist because of malpractice and corruption taught by outsider’s officers. The same culture was spreading throughout all the departments of Manipur.

What could the Manipuris do in these cases? The executives were the emissaries of the central Government. Even there was large-scale reaction from educated youths that Shri Prasad tried to misappropriate nearly one crore of Rupees of Public money by making a grand massive mobilization of many battalions of the C.R.P.F and Assam Rifle. This new method of corruption was done in the purchase of all necessary equipments of these forces. The same attitudes, believes and emotion are deeply rooted to our bureaucrats and his subordinate staffs.

The same trend was followed by Moirang Koireng, the first Chief Minister of Union Territory of Manipur. Koireng and his congress party was charged by the people of that time that they were for the big landlords, black marketers, profiteers and capitalist not for the poor people. One member of Legislative Assembly tabled a photograph showing Shri M. Koireng and some other Congress MLAs took drinks (Alchohol) with big Marwari businessmen (see Defection in Manipur p 19). During his time there was no security of life and property in the hill areas. There was food scarcity due to weak policy of Koireng Government. In the State Trading some five thousand mounds of rice were lost. They didn’t supply sufficient food to the people. They also failed to enforce the procurement policy of food as they wanted to protect the black marketers. Moreover there was no good constructive plan of Agriculture.

Due to failure of crops harvesting for three consecutive years the people had no food for two meals a day. In 1965 hungry students marched to the CM and Chief Commissioner demanding for supply of food grains. There was police firing over the students hunger marchers and five persons were killed as a result of the firing. Prices of all commodities rose unchecked and people could not afford to consume even the basic needs. There were allegations of corruption everywhere in every Government offices. All loans were alleged to have been given to congress workers and relatives of the Ministers.

With the heavy burden of unemployment, economic backwardness, exploitation by big business class, denial of Manipuris at the top ranking post in the administration, Foreigners problem, political culture of non value base politics, and problems of rampant corruption, Manipur attained fully fledged statehood in January 1972 by the maximum efforts of the people   and all the political parties of Manipur after 23 years from 1949. During the periods of Md. Alimudin, Yangmasho Shaiza, R.K. Dorendra, Rishang Keising, Ranbir Sana, Nupamacha, Radha Binod were so busy in the game of Music and chair for political powers. Maximum of them could not utilize money for the economic development of the masses. They always returned a huge amount of money to the centre from their plan allocation. It indicated the incompetence of Ministers and officials. But during that times, there were schools without roofs and walls, even no common medicines in the government dispensaries, the roads were not maintained and no supply of foods in the hill and remote areas of valley.

In 1982 some of the opposition members tabled Rs 7, 89, 80,128.64 alleged to be misused by the government Rs 1,33,72,250.00 in Medical Department, Rs 4,84,11,580.82 in Electricity, Rs84,90,985.00 in Industry, Rs 7,98,220.55 in Civil Supply and Rs 79,06092.27 in Education. That means corruption was more and more rooted in the administration of each of the successive governments.

In order to ensure speedy economic development of Manipur, the state government had approached to the centre to provide enough funds for improving all the small roads of hills and all the high ways of Manipur eg. From Imphal to Moreh, Imphal to Jiribam, and Imphal- Aizawl roads. But still all of them are in worsening condition. Some industrial units were also opened in Manipur i.e. Manipur Electronics, Manipur Spinning Mills Corporation, Khalsari Sugar Factory, Silk reeling and spinning factory, Mini cement factory of Hundung and Manipur Agro Industries corporation Ltd. Besides, there were paper mill and Mechanised Dye House. But today all of them are gradually vanishing from people’s sight. Even today’s government didn’t have a single bus plying as city Bus in Manipur.

In short Manipur is characterized by ineffective, unaccountable and corrupt government. The TII-CMS India Corruption Study 2007 and 2008 found that Assam and Nagaland have an alarming rate of corruption. The study described Meghalaya and Sikkim as very highly corrupt states, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur as highly corrupt states, while Mizoram and Tripura are having moderate level of corruption. Interestingly, the survey also found that bribes are being given not to gain any personal benefits for unlawful activities but rather for services legally guaranteed to the citizens through the public institutions. For example, respondents paid bribes to get a bed in the hospital and to avail diagnostic service and for medicine. The same goes for getting a new electricity connection, rectifying a faulty meter, for installation and maintenance of hand pumps, repair of water pipe and regularization of unauthorized connection. Police are paid for filing a complaint and for issuing of character certificate. Even, movement of files from table to table in the government office has been charged a sum amount like Rs 50 to Rs 100.

These are the parts of the history of the Government of our and your Manipur. Recently, you have heard that one officer of PWD Dept, was also beaten up by one MLA and shooting of advocate general by Minister. That means there is conflict between permanent executives and temporary executives. In that situation how they can have span of control, unity of command, cooperation and coordination in their administration. In other words, the main issue is that without integrity within the political society how one could expect partnership with civil society. Nevertheless we have better to see the India’s initiatives for good governance partnership with civil society and how it could be applied to Manipur.

Now the question is that have we made them to remain as it has, because of that we need to see some of remedies of corruption. Before that some of the causes could be mention here:

1.         Lack of national character, which can’t be injected by education and training in the mindsets of the civil servants.
2.         Irregularities of salaries.
3.         Collection of funds through officials.
4.         Poor public opinion.
5.         Unwillingness of the people to complain against corrupt officials due to lack of education, right to information act and genuine desire on the part of better placed people to eliminate corruption.
6.         Ineffective action against corrupt officials.
7.         Double standard of conduct, one for the officials and another for the politicians.
8.         Political leaders didn’t try to bring corrupt officials to book because they seem to involve more than them.
9.         The tortuous and costly judicial procedure.
10.       Charging huge amount of money in case of employment

This can be discussed under the following headings:

Historical Causes: In the Manipur society, intrinsic social values are really commendable. People possess national characters like hard working, sincerity, punctuality, discipline, sacrificing spirit and firm determination. But all are vanished when they were ruled by alien forces like British and India. It seems to them as shifting of ownerships by force. So from the very beginning they didn’t give positive response to the rulers. In the latter part it becomes culture. Basically in the colonial administration, all superior and important positions were filled in by British and outside people and they were paid handsomely. Lower post was offered to Manipuris. Salaries to these posts were very low. So they indulged in corrupt practices.

Environmental Causes: The next important cause of corruption in Manipur is people’s mindset in the fast urbanization where material possessions, position and economic power determine the status and prestige of a person in the society. Since salaries are low and inflation is unabated, poor civil servants fall easy to corrupt practices in order to keep status in the society.

Economic Causes: In Manipur, usually, government didn’t pay salary in time, it is so irregular. Even some of the departments didn’t pay salary more than one year. Many numbers of casual and contract employees are serving in office. So, inadequate remuneration and rising cost of living is probably one of the most important causes of corruption. Another notable factor is that in the market of globalization each of the individual is compel to buy any commodities sold out in the market. Such economic necessity has encouraged those who had the opportunities to succumb to temptations.

Feeble Reaction of the Masses Against the Corruption: In Manipur one may find strong public opinion against human rights violation and anti people policies but maximum numbers of our people have no tendency to fight corruption instead they offer bribes to get their illegitimate claims accepted. For employment they are thronging to ministers’ quarters and bribe for their son and daughters even for relatives.

Inadequate Laws to Deal with Corruption: Indian Penal Code and other laws which deal with corruption cases are outmoded and provide insufficient penalties. It takes too much time to get a corrupt official punished under the laws. Summery trials and stricter punishment should be awarded to end corruption. So laws will have to be changed accordingly.

Undue Protection Given to the Public Services in India: Article 311 of the Indian constitution which provides protection to civil servants, as interpreted by our courts, makes it difficult to deal effectively with corrupt public servants. Reluctance of higher officials to take disciplinary action against corrupt officials due to their collusion with them has further aggravated the situation.

Collusion of big Contractors, Suppliers, and Businessman to Serve their Individual Interest: Big contractors, Suppliers, Businessman grease the palms of civil servants in order to get undue favours from them. Sometimes they share a portion of their ill-earned profit with the government servants.

HINDUSTAN TIMES SERIES ON AFSPA

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Fri, 7 Nov 2014 11:52:00 +0530

Manipur’s horror:
When Operation Bluebird struck terror
Rahul Karmakar, Hindustan Times Senapati, November 05, 2014

Pius Varay ducks instinctively whenever a child pops an empty Tetra Pak carton or a motorcycle misfires. The sound is a traumatic reminder of soldiers firing in his village of Oinam in Manipur 27 years ago.
The 36-year-old Varay may be the youngest survivor of Operation Bluebird, a brutal counter-insurgency operation launched by paramilitary soldiers in July 1987, but the scars still remain.

According to an Amnesty International report, many men were maimed, tortured and women raped between July and October 1987 after the military launched the operation following an attack by National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) rebels on Assam Rifles’ Oinam outpost. The rebels killed nine soldiers and escaped with 150 guns and 125,000 rounds of ammunition.

Operation Bluebird was ostensibly aimed at catching the rebels and recovering the firearms. But activists say the soldiers ended up exacting revenge on the innocent people of Oinam and 35 surrounding villages for more than three months. The villagers were also forced to make food for the soldiers for 65 days until they exhausted their granaries.

As a nine-year-old student of Oinam Government High School, Pius was spared the torture of what activists call the “Holocaust” of India. But security forces made him talk because he was among those the rebels ordered to carry the stolen guns to a forest hideout.

“Most of us sang, but the rebels shifted before the Assam Rifles located their camp. The officers just did not believe we could cover the distance across a harsh terrain and return home in a night. We had it bad both ways,” Pius says.

Nearly three decades on, many people in Oinam are still struggling to cope with the trauma of one of the darkest episodes in the revolt-hit state’s history. Several villages were turned into virtual prisons during this period as security forces, armed with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958, allegedly unleashed a reign of terror in the area.

Human rights activist Irom Sharmila has been on indefinite fast for 14 years to demand the repeal of the archaic law, which gives security forces wide powers to shoot-at-sight, search and detain anyone suspected to be involved in the armed revolt in Manipur. The military says the law is necessary for it to tackle insurgency.

Church deacon Ngaoni Shangne, now 94, says the Amnesty report understates what happened in Oinam in Senapati district, 95km north of the state capital Imphal. The village was hit by the Japanese invasion during World War 2 and Shangne, who the Japanese used as a porter, thought the worst was over when the war ended.

He was wrong. He recalls the second horror saying, “We were made to carry 50-kg loads from one village to the other without food or water. Some men were hung upside down and thrashed while women were buried up to their necks. Pregnant women, kicked and abused, were made to deliver in the field as the soldiers watched.”

Some village headmen were blindfolded and executed with their hands tied behind their backs. Naga rights groups put the number of deaths at 27 but the official figure was 15.

Oinam was made out of bounds for local authorities too. Manipur chief minister Rishang Keishing wrote of how excesses committed by Assam Rifles paralysed the civil administration in a September 1987 letter to Union home minister Buta Singh. “The deputy commissioner and the superintendent of police were wrongfully confined, humiliated and prevented from discharging their official duties by the security forces,” he said.

The legal fight to bring the Assam Rifles personnel to book ended in March 1992 without the final hearing. One of the judges was transferred after recording thousands of pages of arguments from the petitioners and Assam Rifles. He has not been replaced, nor has the date of the next hearing been set in these 27 years.

“If this country cannot provide justice, God will,” says 57-year-old Bluebird survivor Shangvao Rong. “They (the soldiers) will die too, hopefully not like the way they made our brothers and sisters die.”

Death scored thirteen:
Why Irom’s fight against AFSPA is in 15th year
Rahul Karmakar and Sobhapati Samom, Hindustan Times Imphal, November 05, 2014

Elangbam Amul slaughters chicken for a living. He attacks the fowl as if he has a score to settle. Maybe he sees his father’s killers in those broilers, his childhood friends say.

The past for Amul, 39, is a blank. But everyone else at Heirangoithong on the outskirts of Imphal remembers what happened to his father, Elangbam Laljit, on March 14, 1984.

That afternoon, CRPF personnel emptied their guns on some 3,000 civilians watching a match at a local volleyball ground. The shooters were aware that members of other forces — Manipur Police and Border Security Force — were playing the final of a premier volleyball tournament.

The panic-stricken spectators were virtually trapped. The ground was flanked by an elevated road to the west, the river Nambul flowing along a gorge to the east, the local youth club building to the south and a bridge across the river to the north.

The CRPF, a probe panel said later, fired randomly at the locals to avenge the death of a colleague. A group of militants had earlier snatched the rifles of nine constables standing guard near the volleyball court and shot the tenth before melting away.

Laljit, a state secretariat employee, had son Amul on his lap as he sat on the roadside gallery that sloped down to the volleyball court. He caught a volley of bullets that brought the match to an abrupt end, but ensured his son was safe.

“Three bullets hit me on the legs and right hip. Before passing out on two tiers of bodies, I saw Amul screaming two-three feet away, his face splattered with his father’s blood,” Kshetrimayum Ojit, a mason who was 17 then, says.

When he came to in the hospital that evening, Ojit discovered he was one of 31 wounded, some never to walk properly again. Laljit was among 13 dead, including 10-year-old Soibam Dhanabati who shielded a younger boy to earn a bravery award posthumously.

“Heirangoithong is a classic case of how the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 gives security forces the licence to kill and how, besides taking the lives of innocents, it shatters the survivors and traumatises scores like Amul,” Imphal-based human rights activist Babloo Loitongbam says.

Activist Irom Sharmila, known as the Iron Lady of Manipur, has been on hunger strike for the last 14 years to demand the repeal of the controversial law which gives security forces sweeping power to shoot-at-sight anybody suspected of being involved in the insurgency in Manipur.

Amul — it was fashionable in Manipur then to name a healthy child after the Gujarat-based milk products brand — was never the same again. The incident erased his memory and his ability to study.

He works at a chicken shop where the money isn’t much. But, locals say, it is more honourable than the `2.5 lakh the family of each massacre victim and `1 lakh every injured received as compensation 25 years later.
“We fought for more but this is how the government values lives,” Ng Premkumar, who fought the case, says.
Kongkham Nipamacha, 68, secretary of an organisation that observes a memorial function at the massacre site, had taken voluntary retirement from the BSF before that fateful day.

“As a weapons training instructor, I knew the CRPF personnel used poison-tipped Yugoslav bullets. Justice will be done only if the lead actors in Manipur’s Jallianwala (Punjab, 1919) are punished,” he says.
For the moment, locals want the government to prevent the volleyball court from being turned into a community hall and restore Heirangoithong as the nerve-centre of volleyball.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE NORTH EAST AGENDA: TIME FOR REVOLUTIONARY PRAGMATISM

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Tue, 7 Oct 2014 16:53:00 +0530

This article by Amar Yumnam was originally published by the Imphal Free Press on 6 Oct 2014

India’s policy (read as the Central Government’s policy) towards the North Eastern Region (NER) of the country has undergone three phases. First, there was the period from the start of the Planning Era to the end of the 1980s. This was the period when the principle of not doing anything except militaristic-perspective-based interventions was honoured. The second period starts from the beginning of the 1990s when the Look East Policy (LEP) became a coin for international political announcements and the so-called border trade agreement was also signed between India and Myanmar. This second period has been the most pretentious one so far as the policies towards the NER are concerned. This period gave an overt picture of being concerned with the development concerns of the region. But this was nothing more than a bluff as the underlying principle of the first phase was adopted with no content of body and soul to the supposedly new overtures. In fact, this period had the cruelty of abandoning the innocence about the region in the first phase and replacing it by a pseudo concern for transforming the region. This second phase has just been ended with the completion of the recent visit to Japan by the Indian Prime Minister and the signing of the Tokyo Declaration by the leaders of the two countries. We are now in the third phase of the NER policies of the government of India.

The charm of the latest phase lies in the replacement of the policy-bluffs so far by genuine concerns for development of the NER. This is borne out by the fast pace of unfolding policy dynamics. Well, the region was the main focus of the recent Tokyo Declaration of the two leaders. This has now been followed by a Roundtable Discussion on the NER in the context of the emerging India-ASEAN relationships. In the few policy discussions I have had the fortune of attending and in so far as they relate to the region, the latest is very different. In the two-day Roundtable almost all the member countries of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) were represented by their Ambassadors right from the start of the discussion till the end on both the days; except the Philippines and Myanmar, whose Ambassadors were represented by their deputies due to unavoidable reasons, the remaining eight countries were represented by the Ambassadors and High Commissioners themselves. What all these imply is that the seriousness of the new Prime Minister of India on the development issues of the region is now appreciated in the entire South East and East Asia.

Here I would like to focus on some issues about the connectivity being thought about and the model of this in order that the beauty of the new turn in policy perspective is converted into a strength for ushering into a path-breaking development dynamics in the NER. The changes in the highest echelon of national policy formulation can be made meaningfully and inclusively fruitful only when accompanied by regional level involvements for convergence to the new changes. While quite often issues are raised as to what the region has to present herself for trade, I would like to put two points immediately. First, global development history tells us that once a linkage has been established and scope for opportunities emerged, it has always been the role of entrepreneurs to smart the line of progression; development has never been along dotted lines anywhere. When the CNN was first started in the USA, it was dubbed by the people as the Chicken Noodle Network. When Lee Kuan Yew started on a new development path for the absolutely small country, Singapore, the world never believed that the country would emerge from underdevelopment. Second, at least we know for sure that Manipur offers the world to enjoy the organic Moon and the organic Stars every night if there are no clouds.

Now issues about the connectivity with the South East Asian countries. Let me emphasise here the new global understanding of the significance of connectivity. In the earlier rounds of globalisation, connectivity was simply connecting Point A with Point B for facilitating the movement of merchandise items. But today it goes much beyond this. Now technology flows, knowledge flows, ideas flow and even culture flows along with the movement of merchandise and people on these connectivity routes. Further, in this age of competition and efficiency, speed is also paramount. It is exactly on these dimensions that we need to be alert, conscious, conscientious, and involved. In the context of the NER we know how the poverty of connectivity and poorness of development transformation have been the characteristic so far and thus a strong foundation for widespread resentment. This demands a pragmatically relevant approach to the development of connectivity in the NER such that the resentments are not nurtured or allowed to bounce back with a gusto in the future. This means that the new infrastructure for connectivity should possess the qualities of facilitating fast and furious. The new infrastructure for connectivity should also reflect the latest technology with an inherent capability for adoption of new technologies as they emerge. The new infrastructure for connectivity should also be converted into a reality at a pace vastly different from the one which had characterised the LEP so far.

Now how can we go about on these? This requires understanding the reality of the region. I would call as geographic non-linearity the topographical slopes of ups and down. But the new infrastructure for connectivity should be able to take care of these non-linearities in order to meet the contemporary demands of speed and competence. In other words, there is the imperative for creating linear infrastructure for connectivity. The best example in this is the infrastructure for connectivity being created in Western Yunnan right now. Further, Manipur has been deprived of being present in the railway map of the country for the last seven decades. The logic of propriety and justice demands that any railway connectivity being created today should possess convergence capabilities when the latest technologies for railways reach India sooner than later. But unfortunately, as of now, the new infrastructure for connectivity being envisaged and implemented in the region does not satisfy any of these principles of justice and requirements.

This is exactly where I would expect the provincial government to rise to the occasion and press for the needs in order that nation-building is facilitated and the grudges of deprivation are not allowed to transform into new formulations. The provincial government should now transform herself from an “occasional partner in life” (a phrase borrowed from a latest book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge titled The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race To Reinvent The State) to one which legitimately earns the confidence of the people. Time to be pragmatic. Time for big decisions. John Maynard Keynes once complained when change was in the air thus: “We do not dance even yet to a new tune.” Manipur in particular and the NER in general cannot afford such an atmosphere to prevail and sustain.

AT THE RIMS, IMPHAL, WHICH RESULTED IN THE BOMBSHELL DROPPED BY THE CENTRE

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 17:02:00 +0530

Yambem Laba wrote this article originally for The Sangai Express and Epao posted it on 24 September 2014

A visit to the director's office at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal is akin to visiting an ultra high security zone. You go past unarmed guards provided by an agency and then you enter a fortified area complete with sandbagged posts manned by the CRPF wielding automatic weapons. Past that you are greeted with signs that read "Visitors not allowed beyond this point" and then you get to the ante room and find Manipur Rifles personnel armed with AK-47s — the personal security detail of the director. The aura of the institute being an advanced centre for medical sciences seems to have been lost somehow.

It is now a premier centre for medical sciences and draws students from across the North-east region save Assam. It celebrated its 43rd foundation day on 14 September and has so far produced 2,904 doctors and 1,053 specialist doctors. Today it has 418 undergraduate students, 414 postgraduate students, 161 BSc nursing students and 95 pursuing a degree in dentistry on its rolls. It also has 24 different departments dealing in subjects as diverse as anatomy and otorhinolaryngology and provides service and care to patients who flock to fill the 1,071 beds available. Last year, it catered to 43,317 in-house patients while another 299,178 were treated as outdoor patients.

Initially, it began as the Regional Medical College funded by the North Eastern Council but was converted into a Centrally managed institute under the Union ministry of health and family welfare in 2007 with a board of governors headed by the Union health minister as chairman and the Manipur chief minister as vice-chairman. Its executive council is headed by the Union health secretary as chairman and its director as member secretary. With such a vast infrastructure and an even more impressive management set-up, one would be coerced into thinking that all is and has to be well with its affairs. On 14 September 2010, Professor S Sekharjit Singh was appointed its director of by the UPA-II set-up in Delhi.

Then on 25 August the bombshell arrived from Delhi in the form of an order signed by a deputy secretary in the Union health and family welfare ministry which stripped Sekharjit Singh of his post and Professor Chongtham Arun Singh of the Department of Orthopaedics was asked to take charge as director until further orders. The drama began unfolding bit by bit, revealing murky business at the RIMS where Singh and his caucus functioned much beyond the Hippocratic oath.

First, he refused to recognise the Centre's order stating that a director cannot be removed just like that and he bolted his door and bolted. The Centre then advised Dr Arun Singh to take police help, break open the door and assume charge, which he did the next day. Sekharjit Singh then attempted to take the help of the judiciary and moved Manipur High Court, but Justice N Koteshwor turned down his appeal for a stay on the dismissal order. Then he, accompanied by his son and daughter, both medical doctors, left the state and has not been heard of since.

In the meantime, the CBI had earlier registered a case against Sekharjit Singh on charges of corruption relating to irregularities in the purchase of dental chairs and other misappropriations. On 23 May this year, the CBI furnished the FIR copy to the District and Sessions Judge, Manipur East, and earlier it had also earlier registered a case against Dr L Fimate, Sekharjit Singh's predecessor.

Then the CBI, which hitherto in Manipur had only been dealing in murder cases, decided to go a step further and raided the official quarters of Sekharjit Singh and nine other places, including his wife's and daughter's houses. The seized items included documents, laptops and computers that were said to have revealed a wealth of information but the most damning of all seems to be a letter alleged to have been written by Sekharjit Singh's wife to the president of Manipur's BJP unit asking him to return the Rs 1 crore paid earlier to forestall the impeachment move and the CBI raids. This amount seems to be a pittance for a man said to be owning three houses in Manipur and others in Guwahati, Kolkata, New Delhi and Bangalore and is said to have paid Rs 4 crore to the personal assistant of then Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad for his appointment as RIMS director.

But what Sekharjit Singh did goes much beyond the records on the CBI files. For instance, he recruited 121 nurses against 71 sanctioned and advertised posts. The bribe fee was said to have hovered around Rs 15 lakh each for the first 71 and Rs 25 lakh apiece for the remaining 40. And although he tried to get post facto sanction for the 40 seats from the executive council, he failed but they continue to be on the rolls and received salaries till date. He also managed to turn the RIMS into a hotbed of corrupt contractors, most of them said to be relatives of his wife.

He went on a spree of digging drains and constructing walls all around and even stripped the wooden planks of the Gymkhana, paved it with cement and again installed teak flooring — all on contract. He also decreased the retirement age of the heads of departments from 65 to 62 years to enable his wife to head the department of anatomy.

When the Nursing College was established, he appointed her principal and when protests arose he made her the advisor of the college, overriding the principal. What was shocking was the manner in which he treated 47 men and women hired as daily wage workers who were being paid a paltry Rs 3,000 a month. The women were utilised by his wife as domestic help and have not been paid for the last five months while their salaries had been withdrawn. And often it was his wife, referred to as "Madam", who would dole out their salaries at her residence — not in cash but in the form of Amway products for which she is today a platinum card holder agent.

According to Chongtham Bijoy Singh, who resides in the village adjoining RIMS and had spent the last three years chronicling Sekharjit Singh's misdeeds, the man was trying to behave as a despot and his wife, Damayanti, acted as if she was a reincarnate of Imelda Marcos.

Professor Chongtham Arun Singh acknowledged to The Statesman the public perception of RIMS being in the centrestage of corruption and added that while he did not know how long he would be holding the office, he pledged to bring about transparency in all spheres of life at RIMS, which, he hoped, would mitigate the apprehension of the public in days to come. For now, his morning walks have been rendered impossible because of the bevy of security guards detailed for his protection.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN UKHRUL: HEIGHT OF FRAGILITY

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 1 Sep 2014 10:28:00 +0530

This article by Amar Yumnam was originally published in 1 Sep 2014 issue of the Imphal Free Press

Any loss of life due to actions by any agency, whether state or non-state, is painful. No effort should be spared to avoid such kind of an outcome. Death is never a reversible event and so should never be externally imposed on any soul. This principle should be respected by both the state and the non-state entities. Otherwise, the state or the non-state agency would emerge as the Enemy of the people. Something like this keeps on happening in Manipur. In other words, Manipur has been in a cycle of fragility for the last half a century. There would be moments when things seem improving but would be back to the same turmoil situation sooner than later.

Before I proceed, let me explain what do I mean by fragility in the Manipur context. First, Manipur has consistently failed to provide minimum economic infrastructure so that the people can indulge in meaningful efforts for livelihood in a facilitating context; the state has not developed the capability to facilitate people’s endeavours for productive activities. Second, the state in Manipur has constantly displayed the lack of a reliable capacity to uphold the rule of law. Third, Manipur as a polity has failed to produce political leaders who can inspire, fire the imagination of the people, acquire the trust of the population and thus command respectability in actions.

The tragedy of fragility anywhere in the world is that in most cases the fragility gets alternated with conflicts. This has exactly been the case in Manipur. While there are political and economic reasons (I would not count cultural as significant) for this cycle in Manipur, I am afraid if this has been made structural by the institution of state here. This fear is borne out strongly by what is happening in Ukhrul now. We know for sure that for the last nearly a decade Ukhrul has been moving in a robust way towards stability and convergence with the overall polity of the land. This was indeed a welcome development after decades of incorrigible violence and instability, particularly as the atmosphere was anti-state politically and territorially. This trend was about to take roots spatially and politically when the latest developments have taken place. Instead of positive political and economic interventions getting evolved and implemented, we now see a situation where the provincial law enforcing forces have claimed lives. This speaks volumes of the dogged failure of the state agencies to learn lessons from the earlier rounds of the cycle of fragility. What is even more disturbing is the likelihood that the state agencies thrive in a context of the sustenance of the fragility. When I say state agencies, I would definitely imply, a la carte Milton Friedman, the people manning the agencies of the state. A broad picture is now emerging in bold frame that these people manning the state agencies rather commit to see to it that the disturbances continue. The deep and widespread corruption everybody talks about might be most convenient to indulge in an atmosphere where the fragility of the state is salient. The recent culmination in the killing of two persons by the law and order enforcing agencies should be fully owned up by them. While there could be excuses and arguments that the town and surrounding areas have been under tension for some time, the shooting to dead is unpardonable; this action betrays the incapacity of the state to learn lessons from past events and absolute lack of governance capability to face crises positively.

Now let us trace back the fragility indications Manipur has encountered in recent years. I would take up three. First, the Malom incident which produced Irom Sharmila. This happened when the scenario in Manipur was moving towards decline in conflict and as if the fragility cycle was not going to be repeated. Second, the Manorama incident. This also happened when the similar developments were taking place in Manipur. Now comes, the third example of the current happenings in Manipur. Whenever the fragility indicators show signs of improvement, we have always had a state, in both union and federal sense, which would see to it that the situation goes back to the instability scenario. This has happened so many rounds in Manipur that in most likelihood the institution of state has made the fragility structural in the polity of Manipur. The democratic process has not given us political leaders who can inspire people and lead the state out of fragility towards stability and development. But the fragility seems to have ensured the personalised and individualised success of the people manning the state agencies to follow tricks of personal aggrandisement with full immunity. This is how the fragility has been made structural in governance in Manipur.

Now the state has emerged as the biggest problem of the state in Manipur. Bringing a change in this scenario would necessitate altering the character and orientation of governance in Manipur. How to bring about this change is a million dollar democratic question in Manipur. Fragility has too long been allowed to characterise the political economic feature of Manipur, and this has to be changed sooner than later. The state should always be an evolving institution and never one thriving in conditions of fragility at the cost of the common people.

FREEDOM FROM AFSPA AND NOSE FEEDING

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:36:00 +0530

Editorial , The Sangai Express
August 20, 2014

The Court of Sessions Judge, Imphal East has passed a landmark judgement today, the 19th of August 2014, and it would remain an outstanding milestone in the history of mankind’s struggle against controversial laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA which has its genesis in the British colonial era.

Irom Sharmila is one universal name which symbolizes common man’s struggle against repressive laws enacted by ruling elites even though she is known more about her crusade against the AFSPA.

For 14 long years, she has been fasting. The Sessions Court verdict says that Sharmila shows no intention of committing suicide either by way of continuous fasting or other means.

Thus first ingredient of the offence punishable under Section 309 IPC, i.e to commit suicide is lacking. The Court’s verdict reads, “The petitioner (Irom Sharmila) be released from custody, if not required in any other case”. This is a highly significant judgement fraught with many political and legal implications.

The Court which represents the country’s judiciary in the particular case, through its verdict, is directly or indirectly upholding Sharmila’s struggle as well as the mode of struggle.

The Court’s observation that Sharmila has no intention to commit suicide is without any doubt. But one question arises. Is the phrase ‘fast unto death’ not applicable or misplaced with regard to the Sharmila’s struggle? Sharmila has been fasting since 2000 with breaks of only 24 hours or so between one release order and next formal arrest.

Indeed she has been fasting for the last 14 years and yet she has no intention to commit suicide. This may sound paradoxical or ironical to casual observers. But the truth is, there is no inherent incompatibility in this observation.

The underlying message behind Sharmila’s unprecedented marathon fasting is that she is committed to battle against laws which in her view are repressive, more precisely AFSPA till the end. The Sessions Court has ordered for her release but there are many higher Courts and only time can tell how things would unfold.

Switching to Sharmila’s subject of struggle, one would say AFSPA is one factor which separates the North East region and Jammu &Kashmir from other parts of India apart from other divisive factors like topography, geographical location etc. These are natural barriers but AFSPA is an artificial one, that too a legacy of the colonial era.

No doubt, AFSPA is enforced only in areas declared ‘disturbed’. But what one finds hard to digest is New Delhi’s understanding of ‘disturbed’ area.

Whereas North East and JK have been declared ‘disturbed’ since many decades back, they could not see any disturbance in the Red Corridor where Maoists are virtually controlling swathes and swathes of territory. Very much has been talked about AFSPA and an intense debate is still going on.

Yet the Ministry of Home Affairs is in no urgency to review the infamous AFSPA. “At present there is no such proposal (for repealing AFSPA). If the situation so warrants that areas be declared as disturbed, the same is done. This is examined/assessed periodically”.

These were the exact words of Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju. Kiren Rijiju made this statement in the Lok Sabha on July 22 this year. It was often argued that impunity was given legal and political sanction or institutional support in Manipur with the imposition of the Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act 1958.

Apart from Sharmila, people of Manipur and Kashmir, demand for repeal of the Act emanated from all UN Treaty and Charter based bodies, Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee, Administrative Reform Commission and Ansari Report on J&K, etc.

Yet the Government of India still feels that AFSPA is essential for North East and Kashmir.

By restricting AFSPA only to these regions, the infamous Act has been imbued with sectarian and discriminatory colours as many observers commented while some others went to the extent of calling AFSPA racist.

Hopefully, the Sessions Court verdict may generate another round of debate and culminate with Irom Sharmila’s freedom, freedom from both AFSPA and nose feeding.

--------------------------------------

BREAKING NEWS
UNLF derides GoI's assurance
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, August 20 2014: Referring to the Government of India's submission to the Supreme Court that any security personnel found guilty for fake encounter would be dealt with sternly, the proscribed UNLF has lambasted the same assurance as some empty promises.

A statement issued by the outfit's director in-charge M Sak Hen alleged that the head of the incumbent Government Narendra Modi was involved in many cases of fake encounters in Gujarat between 2002 and 2007.It cited the cases of Isharat, Sorabudin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati.

The Chief of Army Staff Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag was involved in killing three Manipuris.

Given their track records, people of Manipur have nothing to expect from the Government of India led by the likes of Narendra Modi and Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag regarding delivery of justice to fake encounter cases.

Fake encounter, extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearance and AFSPA are all tools for subjugation of Manipuri people and they have been enduring the alien rule for the last 65 years since Manipur was allegedly annexed into the Indian Union.

To the people of Manipur, all these words like democracy, Executive, Legislature, Judiciary and Media (mainland) mean the same thing.

It has been more than 10/20 years since the Operation Blue Bird, Heirangoithong Killing, Tera Keithel Firing, RIMS Massacre, Tonsem Lamkhai Killing and Malom Massacre but no trial has been conducted and justice remains an illusion.

Even as different enquiry commissions including the Upendra Enquiry Committee which investigated into 27 different cases categorically stated that all these cases were fake encounters, none of the guilty security personnel has been punished till date rather they have been honoured with different awards and promotions.

Acting on a PIL filed by EEVFAM and Human Rights Alert to investigate into 1528 cases of extrajudicial killings committed by security forces, the Supreme Court constituted retired Justice Santosh Hegde Committee and it probed into six cases involving killing of seven persons.

The commission, after investigation, reported that all the six cases were fake encounters but the Government of India has been overlooking the same report.

As such, people of Manipur have nothing to expect from the alien rule.

Even as Irom Chanu Sharmila has been fasting for more than 13 years demanding repeal of AFSPA with the support of many human right groups, apart from Jeevan Reddy Committee's recommendation to repeal the Act, the Government of India has been paying little heed.

The Government of India has shown little concern even after more than 1500 civilians were killed in fake encounters, 24 women raped and 19 civilians were made victims of forced disappearance, asserted the outfit adding that this was a manifestation of the Government of India's racism and discriminatory policies.

"The only way to free ourselves from all these repressive measures, violation of civil and political rights is to wage massive and collective liberation movement", the outfit concluded.

More: Pradip Phanjoubam writes on AFSPA as India’s Democracy Test, 21 Aug 2014, Imphal Free Press

AFSPA AS INDIA’S DEMOCRACY TEST

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:59:00 +0530

This article by Pradip Phanjoubam was originally published as an editorial in the Imphal Free Press, 21 Aug 2014

The extremely haughty manner in which the NDA government dismissed the finding of the Justice Hegde Commission which was mandated by the Supreme Court of India to look into the very serious allegations of fake encounters in Manipur is to say the least, alarming. It seems to confirm the widely held apprehension that under the new government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there is a real danger of the executive assuming too much asymmetrical power for itself, even those which should rightly belong to the judiciary and legislature. It may be recalled the Justice Santosh Hegde Commission had come out with the startling report that of the random cases of alleged fake encounters he picked up for examination during his enquiry, he discovered to his consternation all of the allegations had convincing evidences. To this the Centre simply said the procedures adopted by the Justice Hegde Commission for the enquiry was flawed. It also virtually said there had been no fake encounters in Manipur, and had there been even one, the responsible security personnel would not have gone unpunished, saying, as quoted in a report by The Times of India which appeared on August 17, that "the Union government shall not tolerate even one false encounter and shall not spare anyone guilty of false encounter, but at the same time, it is necessary to ensure that no innocent security personnel is harassed for an official act performed in good faith and without any mala fide intention." It may be recalled, the Santosh Hegde Commission was appointed on the direction of the apex court following a public interest litigation, PIL, filed by two NGOs, namely ‘Extra-Judicial Execution Victims Families Association of Manipur’ and ‘Human Rights Alert’ which alleged there had been at least 1,528 extra-judicial killings in the course of the last 30 years in Manipur.

The matter is alarming because the Centre’s reply was not in any way about providing counter evidences to prove the allegations wrong, employing prescribed procedures of democratic adjudication, but was more akin to simply issuing an official fiat which audaciously called a judicial commission flawed and its findings untenable. In other words, it is placing its own knowledge and understanding of a given grave criminal situation, arrived at from reports of its own executive functionaries, above those of a judicial commission. This is despite the fact that the writers of these executive reports are often the accused in the cases under scrutiny. How can an accused be made the judge of the case if justice deliverance is the objective of the entire exercise? A lot many intellectuals in the past had argued with optimism that India’s democracy has too many safeguards for any single party, much less individual, to endanger. Among these safeguards that they cited were the independent institutions of democracy, such as the judiciary and free media, and therefore this surprising trifling of a judicial probe’s findings must strike as disturbing to any believer in democratic India.

This is not to say all judicial probes must be held as sacrosanct. Behind the judiciary too are humans and as humans they are equally prone to mistakes, weaknesses, biases, incompetence, prejudices as anybody else, including not the least the men behind the executive. The opinions and verdicts of the judiciary too can be, and must be, challenged whenever they are seen not to be in the cause of ultimate justice, but there are accepted ways of making these challenges. Simply dismissing a judicial commission’s report as unacceptable must therefore be seen as an aggression on democracy itself. The Union government, or for that matter the State governments, are perfectly within their rights to defend any law they make, not just the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA. The Centre does precisely this on this instance, justifying the AFSPA as an extraordinary means to counter an extraordinary situation. Some of the arguments may even be hard to refute. But the reminder we want to flag here is that in this defence, it cannot also be its own judge. Such a collapsing of powers into a single hand happens only in a dictatorship, and when this happens, all believers in the virtues of democracy have a right to ask if they are not being led into a dictatorship. The executive wields the guns of the State, but the sublime beauty of a democracy is that the power that flows out of the barrels of the State’s guns, is not in the sole control of the direct wielder of the guns, but jointly held as shared responsibility of the various pillars of democracy. This beauty is what is being shaken by the Centre’s unceremonious rebuff of the Judicial commission’s report.

It would however be unfair to level this allegation of the executive demolishing the other pillars of democracy to the NDA government alone. The UPA government under Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh was in many ways only marginally better. The Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission which recommended radical changes to the AFSPA, in particular making the AFSPA accountable to civil law by abolishing it and incorporating much of its provisions to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, UAPA, is just one prominent example. Although nothing was overtly stated to humiliate the commission and its findings, the UPA government too simply chose to kill it by ignoring and deliberately forgetting its existence altogether. Historically speaking, though it is too early to say anything for certain, we may not be altogether wrong to hazard the guess that the biggest challenge to Indian democracy may ultimately turn out to be how the nation and its rulers handle the AFSPA issue.

ETHNIC GROUPS IN CONFLICT IN INDIA’S MANIPUR

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 17:39:00 +0530

This essay was written by By Dr. Amarjeet Singh (http://southasiajournal.net/2014/02/ethnic-groups-conflict-indias-manipur/) for South Asia Journal (http://southasiajournal.net) on Feb 19, 2014 in its Issue 10 - Winter 2014 edition

Abstract
The political aspirations of Manipur’s main ethnic groups: Kukis, Meiteis, and Nagas, are at loggerheads over the political future of Manipur. On one side, the Meiteis who live in the central low-lying plain want a country of Manipur with full sovereignty, and on the other, both Nagas and Kukis, who live in the hills surrounding the plain, are in favor of the reorganization of Manipur into three parts so that they can control certain territories outside Manipur. The Nagas call their homeland Nagalim, while the Kukis call their homeland Kukiland. If Nagalim and Kukiland are carved out of Manipur into two new states of India, Manipur will lose large part of its land. But, this will not go unchallenged since Meiteis are determined to preserve the integrity of Manipur and its territory, while the Nagas and Kukis are at loggerheads as their territorial claims overlap. In this context, the central aim of this essay is to examine how and why the three ethnic groups view Manipur so differently, and the political assertion of ethnicity into issues that produce conflict. In doing so the essay examines the significance of location and distribution of ethnic groups in sustaining and compounding politicization of ethnicity and conflict.

Introduction
Manipur was formerly a princely native state during British colonial rule, in which the Meitei kings had enjoyed considerable autonomy as long as they respect the colonial interests. Manipur lost its autonomy after its merger with India in 1949, and 23 years later Manipur became one of the states of the country. It is located in the northeastern part of the country. It shares land border with Myanmar, and with the India’s states of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Assam. Manipur is made up of two geographical regions: the hill and the plain (valley). Manipur is inhabited by ethnic groups broadly classified into Meiteis, Meitei-Muslims, Nagas, and Kukis.[i] The last two are concentrated in the hill areas, while others are concentrated in the plain areas. Most Nagas and Kukis are officially recognized into 29 scheduled tribes[ii] owing to their social and economic backwardness. Hence, they enjoy the benefits of reservations in jobs, education, and welfare programs. Since Meiteis and Meitei-Muslims are considered more advanced they are not recognized as scheduled tribes, and further they are restricted by law to purchase and own real estate and other land in the hill areas while the members of scheduled tribes can buy and own land anywhere in Manipur. Manipur has been witnessing armed conflict between the government and several insurgent groups, and the conflict between ethnic groups over the demand for the creation of new states within India’s federalism or independence from India. These conflicts have resulted in a number of flashpoints that have gained both domestic and global attentions.

Manipur as seen by Meiteis, Nagas, and Kukis
Manipur is a multi-ethnic place in which different ethnic groups have lived in harmony. In recent times the relationships between them have dramatically changed. Now, Manipur stands an example of a severely divided society. Ethnicity has occupied the center-stage of local politics. It finds expression into education policy, land policy, employment, cultural policy and development plans.

At the outset, many Meiteis alleged that Manipur had unwillingly joined India after coercing their king. Thereafter, it was directly ruled by the central government, and the bureaucrats who came to Manipur from other parts of the country were not trusted by the local population (Rammohan 2005: 155). Subsequently, they launched a movement resisting the merger which further transformed into an armed conflict. Twenty three years after the merger Manipur became a state of India in 1972. But, it failed to end the conflict. The movement is confined largely to the Meiteis. In addition, the Meiteis wanted to promote their language, Meiteilon. It is not only the language of the Meiteis, but is used for internal communication in the state. It was recognized in 1992 by the central government, and included in the eighth schedule of India’s constitution.[iii] As a result, they wanted to introduce Meiteilon in school education and administration. This has become a concern in the relationship between Meiteis, on the one hand, and Nagas and Kukis, on the other.

On the other hand, in order to materialize the formation of Nagalim, the Nagas wanted to detach part of Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh, and integrate to the adjacent state of Nagaland. The movement is presently spearheaded by National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM), an insurgent group. According to them, Nagalim occupies land area of about 120,000 sq km. It also claimed that Nagalim was historically an independent country of the Naga people. The NSCN-IM alleged that Nagalim was divided, during the British colonial rule, into two parts in which one part was allocated to India and another part to Burma (Myanmar). The portion of Nagalim allocated to India includes Nagaland and part of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur, while the portion allocated to Myanmar constitutes part of Kachin and Sagaing division. The demand for Nagalim intensified after NSCN-IM signed a ceasefire agreement with the central government in 1997. Although the Nagas wanted Nagalim to be a country with full sovereignty, India’s nonnegotiable position has forced them to focus to the integration of Naga-concentrated areas of India into a state within the framework of India’s federalism.

Finally, the Kukis also wanted to integrate the Kuki-concentrated areas of India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh under one homeland known as Zale’n-gam. The Kuki National Organisation (KNO), the insurgent group advocating Zale’n-gam, contended that Zale’n-gam comprises part of Assam, Tripura, Nagaland, and Manipur in India, part of Sagaing in Myanmar, and part of Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. It also claimed that prior to the advent of British colonial rule Zale’n-gam was an independent nation. The movement is not so active, and also confine to Manipur where the Kukis constitute a large ethnic group. In addition, the Kukis have been demanding the formation of a state to be known as Kukiland within the framework of India’s federalism. The proposed state covers more than half of Manipur’s land, viz. Churachandpur and Chandel districts, and part of Senapati, Tamenglong, and Ukhrul districts. The supporters of Kukiland have resorted to agitations in order draw the attention of the central government. Related to this, the Kukis also wanted the elevation of Sadar hills of Senapati district into a district. In this regard, they have resorted to strikes. The demand has been strongly opposed by the Nagas. Take, for example, for about three months (August-October 2011), the Kukis blocked all traffic along the highway that passes through Sadar hills forcing the Manipur government to conclude an agreement to elevate Sadar hills into a district, but the promise remains unfulfilled. The Nagas claimed that Sadar hills have been historically an integral part of Nagalim. They alleged that the area was given to the Kukis in order to act as a buffer between Meiteis and Nagas (Shimray 2001: 3677).

Thus we understand that the three ethnic groups have widely divergent political interests. What has gone wrong? There are no easy answers. However, in developing countries like India there are some commonalities. Atul Kohli (1998: 9) has asserted that the “state-society traits” of developing country democracies have significantly contributed to the political conflicts. The reasons: (a) their cultural conditions do not readily mesh with the imported model of democracy; (b) considerable state intervention is inherent in the overall design of “late development” but this structural trait generate problems when democracy is introduced; (c) democratic institutions are weak in most follower democracies; and (d) the introduction of competitive elections and mass suffrage amidst weak institutions generates more pressures towards more equal distribution of power in society. Rajat Ganguly (2009: 49) underlines four sets of causal conditions which have combined in different ways to produce ethnic conflict in India. They are: (a) the fear that assimilation could lead to cultural dilution and the unfulfilled national aspirations; (b) the process of modernization; (c) the unequal development, poverty, exploitation, lack of opportunity, and threats to the existing group privileges; and (d) the political factors such as endemic bad governance, anti-secular forces, institutional decay, and vote-bank politics. Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel (1986: 3-4) underlines four basis propositions for ethnic mobilization. They are: (a) urbanization increases contact and competition between ethnic populations; (b) expansion of industrial and services sectors of the economy increase completion for jobs; (c) development of peripheral regions or the discovery of resources in a periphery occupied by an ethnic population; and (d) processes of state building (including those following colonial independence) that implement policies targeting specific ethnic population increase the likelihood of ethnic collective action (quoted in Barton, 1998: 224).

Ethnic groups use ethnicity to make demands in the political arena for alteration in their status, economic well-being, civil rights and educational opportunities are indeed engaged in a form of interest group politics (Brass 1991; 19), and can sometimes constitute “a kind of implicit bargaining, even if the participants do not think of their actions in such terms” (Barton 1998: 222). For Brass the key factor creating ethnic consciousness is not emotional or psychological, but political, and ethnic mobilization focus on territory, resources, and power (see, Basu 1998: 248).

The territory occupy by the ethnic group is crucial to the formation of ethnic identity. In broader term, identity is “people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people they are, and how they relate to others” (Hogg and Abrams 1988: 2). Identity can be a source of pride and joy but it can also kill (Sen 2006: 1-2), and many of the conflicts are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity (Sen 2006: xv). Identity is a powerful ingredient in the development of nationalism and ethnic conflict. There are five distinct types of identity: ethnic and religious identities, political identities, vocations and avocations, personal relationships, and stigmatized groups (Deaux 2001: 2). James Manor (1996: 461-462) identifies five different types of identities in India: religious identities, linguistic identities, tribal’ identities among the adivasis; tribal identities among people in Himalayan or Northeast areas; and (e) Aryan and Dravidian identities. Ethnic identity leads to political action, and when ethnic identity is highly salient, it is likely to be the basis for political mobilization (Gurr 2002: 6). The salience of a people’s ethnic identity is due mainly to three factors: the extent to which they differ culturally from other groups with whom they interact, the extent to which they are advantaged or disadvantaged relative to other groups, and the intensity of their past and ongoing conflicts with rival groups and the state (Gurr 2002: 68-69). The incentives that prompt political action by identity groups can be categorized into three main types: resentment about losses suffered in the past, fear of future losses, and hopes for relative gains. The relative importance of each these factors depends on a group’s changing position in relation to other groups and to the state (Gurr 2002: 69). According to Paul Brass (1991: 347) the ethnic group formation involves three sets of struggle. The first set of struggle takes place within the ethnic group itself for control over its material and symbolic resources, which in turn involves defining the group’s boundaries and its rules for inclusion and exclusion. The second set of struggle takes place between ethnic groups as a competition for rights, privileges, and resources. The third takes place between the state [nation state] and the groups that dominate it, on the one hand, and the populations that inhabit its territory on the other.

The subsequent sections of the essay analyze the ethnic movements––those of Meiteis, of Kukis,[iv] and of Nagas––so as to understand how and why they view Manipur so differently, and the significance of the location and distribution of ethnic groups in sustaining and compounding the conflict. According to Milton J. Esman (1975: 392) the proportion and the quality of conflict and cooperation depend on the relative resources at the disposition of each group. The resources are demographic (relative numbers); organizational (degree of mobilization and capacity to put resources to political uses); economic (control of finance, means of production or trade channels); technological (possession of modern skills); locational (control of natural resources and strategic territory); political (control or influence over the instrumentalities of the state); and ideological (the normative basis for group objectives). In addition to these objective determinants of power, the quality of inter-communal relations depends on the congruity or disparity in goals between those who control the state apparatus and the leaders of the constituent groups. If the goals are the same, the outcome is likely to be consensual. If the goals are incompatible, the consequences will be tension and conflict, and the outcome will be determined by the relative resources controlled by the parties. This introduces to a third determining factor––the conventions, rules, procedures, and structures, the institutions for conflict management. Without such institution there can be no predictability in intergroup relations and no framework for channeling group demands or for regulating outcomes. Likewise, the clustering of factors that cause conflict in Manipur is so diverse. The situation is such that the political dominance of majority Meiteis can be challenge by the Nagas or Kukis because location and distribution of ethnic groups matters.

The United Committee Manipur, the group which opposes Nagalim, remembers the June 18th 2001 as “Great June Uprising Day” in honor of 18 strikers killed in Imphal in 2001 while demonstrating against the extension of the ceasefire between the NSCN-IM and the Government of India to Manipur. To make matters worse, the state government of Manipur had declared June 18 of every year as the “Manipur Integrity Day” in 2005. It was done in memory of 18 strikers killed in Imphal. The Manipur’s legislative assembly had adopted several resolutions against the division of Manipur into different parts. The Meiteis had threatened to revive the movement for the restoration of the pre-1949 political status of Manipur in case Government of Indian failed to protect Manipur’s land.

Opposing the declaration of June 18 of every year as “Manipur Integrity Day,” the All Naga Students’ Union Manipur (ANSAM), a student group, set ablaze government offices and imposed curfew on a main highway connecting Manipur with rest of India for 52 days (June 19 – August 11, 2005). During those days, the good-laden trucks were prevented from entering Manipur, and hence the prices of staple goods sharply risen due to their shortage. To show their distrust to state government of Manipur and Meiteis, the Nagas sought to registers private schools situated in their areas of concentration to the Nagaland Board of Secondary Education, the agency responsible for the conduct of final examination for class X in Nagaland. It was summarily rejected by the government of Manipur. In 2010, Th. Muivah, the NSCN-IM leader, who wanted to visit his birth place in Manipur’s Ukhrul district was debarred from entering Manipur by the government of Manipur. Muivah’s supporters came out to protest in large number, in which two strikers were killed in police firing at Mao, the town located along Manipur-Nagaland border. In addition, the United Naga Council (UNC), the apex body of Nagas, has started a campaign to severe all political ties with the state government of Manipur. The UNC wanted to set up an “alternative administrative arrangement” for Nagas of Manipur. The UNC maintained the Nagas have suffered social, economic, and political deprivations. Interestingly, those Nagas who have settled down in the plain region were not impressed by such campaign. Further, the Naga People’s Front, the political party that runs state government of Nagaland, has entered the electoral politics in Manipur. It is clearly a Naga party, its membership open only to the Nagas. In the legislative assembly election held in 2012, it tried to woo Naga electorates on the issues of protecting the land of the Nagas, expediting the political talks between the Government of India and the NSCN-IM, and establishment of an alternative administrative arrangement for the Nagas. It won from four territorial constituencies.

The animosity between them is so profound that a small incident can turn into a big issue. The alleged assault of a Meitei film actress by a NSCN-IM insurgent at the town of Chandel in 2012 led to a series of strikes in Meitei-concentrated areas demanding appropriate action against the alleged culprit. However, the state government of Manipur couldn’t take any action. Although the ceasefire between the NSCN-IM and the Government of India is officially limited to Nagaland, but in practice it extends to all Naga-concentrated areas. The Meiteis alleges that the central government of deliberately appeases the Nagas, and hence has compromise the interests of other ethnic groups. As pressure mounted from the Meiteis, the state government of Manipur sent leaders of various political parties to Delhi to put pressure on the central government to take action against the said insurgent. On the other side of the divide, the Nagas accused the Meiteis of blowing a small incident out of proportion. They claimed that the incident was a matter of discord between two individuals.

Further, the state government of Manipur wanted to upgrade Moreh, the town located along the India-Myanmar border, into a municipality in order to accelerate infrastructure development there. The town has been a major trading center between India and Myanmar. The proposal was seen by the Kukis as a “meticulous game plan” to suppress their rights. They wanted the town to be governed by district council, not by the state government of Manipur. Interestingly, the Meiteis overwhelmingly wanted Moreh to become a municipality.

Nonetheless, the Nagalim and the Kukiland are opposed to each other because of their overlapping territorial claims. If the proposed Nagalim is unacceptable to the Kukis, the proposed Kukiland is also unacceptable to the Nagas. Both sides accused each other of claiming more territories as integral parts of their ancestral homeland. Both sides claimed to be the first settlers in the disputed territories. The claims and counter-claims have reenergized the conflict since not much is available about the history of Nagas or Kukis. To my mind, they are resorting to what Anthony Cohen (2000: 153) calls inventing history for themselves. The Nagas claimed that the Kukis were recent immigrants who came from Myanmar, an allegation refuted by the Kukis. A Naga scholar states “Kuki community is found scattered in all hill districts of Manipur, but a larger population is concentrated Churachandpur. District like Senapati, Chandel, Ukhrul and Tamenglong belong to the Nagas” (Shimray 2001: 3675). Th. Muivah, the NSCN-IM leader, also claims “We Nagas are not living in anybody’s territory; we are in our own territories. It is a fact, so the question of claiming [any territory] does not arise.” By contrast, a Kuki scholar states “Even though written records of the history of the Kukis started primarily with the advent of the British, Cheitharol Kumbaba, the court chronicle of the kings of Manipur, and the Pooyas, the traditional records of the Meitei people, include some accounts of Kuki people which date back to 33 AD. This means that the Kukis has been living in Manipur and other north-eastern states since prehistoric times” (Haokip 2013: 254). However, Lucy Zehol, an anthropologist at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong states, the Nagas and Kukis are recent arrivals, nearly two hundred years ago compared to Meiteis, who are the old inhabitant (Zehol 1998: 40). Ethnic violence between them occurred in the 1990s. It was a major violent conflict based on ethnic lines which have greatly changed the social equations of Manipur. It has resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives and damage to private and public properties. Several thousands have been either temporarily or permanently displaced. It started over establishing and perpetuating control over Moreh town (see, Oinam 2003). In the aftermath of this incident new insurgent groups were formed to safeguard the interest of the Kukis.

Both Meiteis and Kukis accuse the central government of giving undue favor to the Nagas. They said that the government did not take action against the Naga insurgents despite knowing that they indulged in illegal acts. The Kukis allege that their interests are not been heard. Take, for example, despite the Kuki insurgent groups and the government decided to temporarily suspend military operations against each other since 2008, the political talks had not taken place.

Location of Ethnic Groups in Politicization of Ethnicity
Conflicts in Manipur tended to center around land. Land is a valuable asset and a source of identity. Due to its economic, social, and emotional importance, land is also an important source of power. Perceived threats to security, livelihoods or identity can mobilize people to engage in conflict (United Nations 2012). However, apart from land, there are other causes of conflict. Land is often used interchangeably with territory. Territory is land that has been identified and claimed by a person or people. Its contents include terrain, flora and fauna, resources and human inhabitants and their ways of life (Knight 1982: 517). The territory is the product of human agency, and this agency is usually referred to as territoriality (Penrose 2002: 278-279). The concept of territoriality encompasses not just geographic space but also mechanisms of authority and rights. Territory is a crucial component of ethnicity because the ethnic group is usually attached to a specific territory. Territorial attachments and people’s willingness to fight for territory appear to have much less to do with the material value of land and much more to do with symbolic role the land plays in constituting people’s identities and providing a sense of security and belonging (Walter 2006: 288). Thus the territory lies somewhere between nature and culture, in a dual dimension that is both material (geographic) and ideological (Mellac 2010: 123).

The spatial distribution of ethnic groups can affect both the capability and the legitimacy of how ethnic groups mobilize for political action. The spatial distribution has four broad settlement patterns: concentrated majority, concentrated minority, urban groups, and dispersed groups. The concentrated groups live almost exclusively in a single region. They are either minorities (less than 50 per cent) or majorities (equal to or greater than 50 per cent). The urban groups are those concentrated in one or several towns or cities while the dispersed groups are those whose members are scattered across many regions. According to Monica Toft’s study the urban groups are endowed with the highest capability for political action followed by the concentrated majorities, while the capability of the concentrated minorities are indeterminate and the weakest for the dispersed groups (2001: 9-10). Intermixed groups are less likely to be in a state of all-out war than those that are territorially separated from one another. Territorial claims and self-determination claims are more difficult to invoke when groups are widely dispersed and intermixed with each other. In such situations, group mobilization around issues such as civil or group rights and economic access is likely to be more prevalent (Reilly and Reynolds 1999: 15). According to May Lim et al (2007: 1541-42) “highly mixed regions do not engage in violence, and neither do well-segregated groups … In highly mixed regions, groups of the same type are not large enough to develop strong collective identities, or to identify public spaces as associated with one or another cultural group. They are neither imposed upon nor impose upon other groups, and are not perceived as a threat to the cultural values or social/political self-determination of other groups. Partial separation with poorly defined boundaries fosters conflict. Violence arises when groups are of a size that they are able to impose cultural norms on public spaces, but where there are still intermittent violations of these rules due to the overlap of cultural domains. When groups are larger than the critical size, they typically form self-sufficient entities that enjoy local sovereignty. Hence, we expect violence to arise when groups of a certain characteristic size are formed, and not when groups are much smaller or larger than this size … Geography is an important aspect of the dimensions of social space.”

Territory is invariably tied to the ethnic group’s identity. Control over territory means a secure identity (Toft 2001: 3). Ethnic groups will seek to rule territory in which they are geographically concentrated, especially if that region is an historic homeland. They will show little interest in controlling territory when they are either widely dispersed, or are concentrated only in cities. For ethnic groups, territory is often a defining attribute of a group’s identity, inseparable from its past and vital to its continued existence as a distinct group (Smith 1986: 22–31). The territory becomes a homeland because members of an ethnic group share similar obligations for its protection and because it defines who “we” are (Goemans 2006: 27). The territory that specifies group membership is defined by four focal principles: natural frontiers, common culture, prior historical formation, and cartography (Goemans 2006: 232). Thus a homeland is a special category of territory: it is not an object that can be exchanged, but an indivisible attribute of group identity. This feature explains why ethnic groups rationally view the right to control their homeland as a survival issue, regardless of a territory’s objective value in terms of natural or man-made resources. Homeland control ensures that a group’s language can be spoken, its culture expressed, and its faith practiced (Toft 2001: 6-7). Territory is accepted as a “source of conflict” and a “facilitating condition for conflict” (Diehl 1991). The first approach sees geography as a source of conflict because territory is an indivisible issue, which makes disputes over territory likely to escalate into violent conflict (Fearon 1995). Geography can be the motivation for fighting. It can also provide opportunities for fighting in civil war. Lichbach (1995, 159) emphasizes geographic proximity as an important factor that fosters coordination. In doing so the essay examines the significance of location and distribution of ethnic groups in sustaining and compounding politicization of ethnicity and conflict in Manipur.

With land area of 22,327 sq km, Manipur consists of two geographical regions: the hill and the plain (valley). The hill region occupies about 90 per cent (20,089 sq km) of the land while the plain region constitutes just about 10 per cent (2,238 sq km). There are differences in land use patterns between the two regions. In the plain region, settlements account for more than 10 per cent of the area whereas for the hill region settlements account for less than 1 per cent of the area. Agricultural land in plain region is more than 40 per cent of the area, while for the hill region it is less than 2 per cent.

The hill region is predominantly inhabited by the Nagas and the Kukis, while the plain region is predominantly inhabited by the Meiteis and the Meitei-Muslims. The Nagas reside the mountains of north while the Kukis reside in the mountains of south (see, Arora and Kipgen 2012). The permanent cultivation is prevalent in plain region while terrace and jhuming/shifting cultivation is practiced in the hill region. Thus, ethnic groups occupy a distinct territory in Manipur.

Manipur has a population of about 2.7 million (2011 India’s Census). The plain region is home to about 62 per cent of the total population, the rest, about 38 per cent, live in the hill region. As a result, the plain region is thickly populated with a density of about 733 persons per sq km as against 54 persons per sq km in the hill region. Meiteis and other non-tribal groups constitute about 66.57 per cent of total population. The Nagas constitute about 18.7 per cent, while Kukis constitute about 15.71 per cent (1991 India’s Census). They are officially recognized as the schedule tribes, and 92.4 per cent of the scheduled tribes’ populations live in the hill region, the rest (8 per cent) lives in the plain region (2001 India’s Census). Meiteis and Meitei-Muslims are denied the benefits given to the scheduled tribes since they are considered more advanced.

There are various types of land ownership. In the hill region, most land is managed and used communally according to the traditional practices, while in the plain region land is privately owned. In order to bring about uniformity in distribution of land, the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960 was enacted by the India’s parliament. But it is effective only in the plain region only. The Act prohibits the transfer of land belonging to the scheduled tribes to the non-scheduled tribes like the Meiteis. It says, “no transfer of land by a person who is a member of scheduled tribes shall be valid unless––(a) the transfer is to another member of scheduled tribes; or (b) where the transfer is to another person who is not a member of any such tribes, it is made with the previous permission in writing of deputy commissioner provided that the deputy commissioner shall not give such permission unless he has secured the consent thereto of the district council within whose jurisdiction the land lies; or (c) the transfer is by way of mortgage to a co-operative society.” The purported reason is to protect the land owned by the scheduled tribes from encroachment by the non-scheduled tribes. With the passage of time, it has become a bone of contention between the scheduled tribes and the non-scheduled tribes. Since the Meiteis and the Meitei-Muslims are not recognized as the scheduled tribes they cannot buy and own land, and permanently settle in the hill region whereas the Nagas or the Kukis being the scheduled tribes can settle in the plain region. As a result, the hill region is exclusively reserved for them whereas the plain region is open to all. Thus, the land-and-people relationship is extremely unequal (see, Oinam 2003). This is unacceptable to the Meiteis and the Meitei-Muslims, however, the Nagas and the Kukis want to maintain the status quo. The Nagas and the Kukis fear that if the Meiteis and other non-scheduled tribes are allowed to buy and own land in the hill they will lose the ownership of their traditional land. And yet, they are worried that the state government would try to amend the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms Act, 1960 legislation to cover the hill region.

There are 60 territorial constituencies in the legislative assembly of Manipur, in which the plain region is divided into 40 constituencies and the hill region into 20. All the 20 hill constituencies are reserved for the scheduled tribes, while the rest are unreserved. The 20 hill constituencies virtually belong to the Nagas and the Kukis, and that of the plain region to the Meiteis with the exception of one or two by the Meitei-Muslims or Nepalis. Therefore, if all the Meitei legislators come forward they can easily form a government.[v] The Nagas and the Kukis allege that they are under-represented in the legislative assembly, and little efforts have been made by the successive governments for the development of the hill region (see, Suan 2009). They contended that since hill region occupies 90 per cent of the land it shall get more constituencies.

Again, Manipur is landlocked practically without inland waterways and railways. It is connected to the rest of India by few highways, the narrow roads with sharp curve. The highway that passes through the adjacent state of Nagaland is Manipur’s lifeline, its major link route to outside world. Other highways are very narrow roads. Almost all the essential goods such as fuel, food, petrol, diesel, and medicines are imported from outside. A large number of vehicles bring essential goods through these highways. The Nagas and the Kukis used to impose frequent indefinite curfews along these highways to mount enough pressure to seek the redress of their grievances. The blockade of these highways has been the most common and effective method to put pressure to bear on the government, but affected the livelihoods of many people due to the acute shortages of essential goods. It is useful, in this context, to recall the 52-day-long (June 19 to August 11, 2005) blockade of the main highway imposed by a student group in protest against the Manipur government’s decision to declare June 18 as “State Integrity Day” in honor of 18 strikers killed while protesting against the extension of ceasefire between the Government of India and the NSCN-IM to Manipur. To provide relief to the people, the Indian Air Force was pressed into service to airlift medicines and other essential goods to Manipur from Guwahati, Assam’s capital.

The Nagas demand for Nagalim and the Kukis demand for Kukiland have the tactical support from the adjacent states of Nagaland and Mizoram. Manipur shares border with Nagaland on north, and Mizoram on south and south-west. The Kukis and the Nagas inhabit both sides of the border having close cultural affinities. The Naga movement first started in Assam’s Naga Hills (today’s Nagaland) in order to achieve an independent state of the Naga people (see, Das 2007). It has spillover effect on Manipur since the former is the home of the largest component of Naga people outside Nagaland. When the British Raj decided to free India the Nagas had sought to set up a country, but they were integrated with India. In the early 1950s, the Naga intellectuals of Assam proposed to set up an administrative region comprising of Assam’s Naga Hills and Tuensang Frontier Division of North-East Frontier Agency (today’s Arunachal Pradesh). The Government of India accepted the proposal, and Naga Hills-Tuensang Area came into existence in 1957. In 1963, it was elevated into a state of India known as Nagaland. But, many Nagas rejected Nagaland for not integrating other Naga-concentrated areas of Manipur, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh to Nagaland. The “contiguous Naga inhabitations” fall into Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh (Shimray 2000: 3007). The Nagaland legislative assembly had also urged the Government of India to bring all the Nagas of India together into a single political entity. The Naga insurgents also wanted to bring all Nagas of India under a homeland known as Nagalim. The integration of Naga-concentrated areas in Myanmar with those areas in India is not on their agenda at the moment (see, Chasie and Sanjoy 2009). Further, the two-decade long “Greater Mizoram” movement came to an end after Mizo (Lushai) Hills of Assam became the state of Mizoram in 1987. It has had a great influence on Kukis of Manipur since there wanted to unify Kuki-Chin-Mizo groups of people inhabiting part of Manipur, Assam, Tripura, and part of Mizoram (Suan 2009). Many Kuki young people from Manipur joined the movement (Chaube 1999: 213), but the formation of Mizoram betrayed them (Kipgen 2006). But the Meiteis are against Nagalim and Kukiland because the Meitei kings had ruled the former kingdom of Manipur that extended to the hill areas (Zehol 1998 & Suan 2009). The Meiteis alleged Manipur is the homeland all the ethnic groups of Manipur. Hence, they are against its division.

Further, the majority of the Meiteis have been converted into Hinduism since the 18th century while the majority of Nagas and Kukis have also been converted into Christianity since the early part of 20th century. After embracing Hinduism, the Meiteis considered themselves as members of a higher status group, and considered others inferior people. Thus, the relationship gradually turned into a relationship characterized by subordination-superordination, and inferiority-superiority (Saha 2005: 233-234).

Meiteilon is not only the language of the Meiteis, but is used for internal communication in the state. Since it is one of the 22 schedule languages of India, it has to be promoted by the government. Every state of India has one or more official languages, and being the principal language Meiteilon is Manipur’s official language. The Meiteis wanted to consolidate the language and its written script. The written script, Meitei-Mayek, was replaced in 18th century by the Bengali script after the advent of Hinduism. Down the line the Meiteis realized the blunder, and wanted to revive the script. After Manipur became a state of India in 1972, the Meiteis wanted the teaching of the language in the schools. In 1977, the legislative assembly of Manipur adopted a resolution to accord Meiteilon, in addition to English, as the official language of Manipur. Thus, the Manipur Official Language Act, 1979 mandated “Manipuri language written in Bengali script” as the official language of the state. In 1983, the state government introduced Meiteilon as a compulsory subject in all schools in the state. In addition, the Meiteis wanted to substitute the Bengali script by the Meitei script. However, it has not been easy because the Bengali script has been in used for writing for more than 200 years. The Meitei script was formally introduced in class I and II level from 2005. However, the Nagas and the Kukis have been accusing the government for trying to impose Meiteilon upon them. “The languages of the dominant non-tribals are being forcibly imposed upon the minority tribals. Manipur often witnesses a tug-of-war among dozens of tribal languages versus the dominant Meiteilon. The language problem in Manipur began during the early 1980s when the state government tried to introduce Meiteilon as a compulsory subject in class X. But the issue was settled by keeping Meiteilon as an option for the tribal in lieu of additional English or state’s recognized tribal languages. But the tussle continues with the insertion of Manipuri in the eighth schedule in 1992. The problem of language has immense political implications. The language problem in Manipur creates or worsens ethnic tension in the state” (Shimray 2000: 3007-08).

The Meiteis are in favor of lifting the restriction that debarred them from buying and owning land in the hill region which they as “discriminatory.” But, the Nagas and the Kukis said that allowing the settlement of the Meiteis in the hill region would further marginalized them. Some Meitei groups have urged the Government of India to declare Manipur a “Hill State” and follow uniform laws throughout the state. They have also started mobilizing public opinion in favor of the recognition of Meiteis as scheduled tribe.

Conflict Management and Conclusion
The government has contributed to the conflicts through its action and inaction. The Hill Areas Committee of Manipur Legislative Assembly was constituted in 1972. It consists of all members of the legislative assembly who represent the hill constituencies. Theoretically its mandate is to oversee planning, implementation, and monitoring of development activities in the hill region of Manipur. But, it has been ineffective. Further, in order to grant limited home rule powers to the hill areas, the Indian parliament enacted the Manipur (Hill Areas) District Councils Act, 1971. Accordingly the hill region is divided into six autonomous districts each having a district council (18 elected and 2 nominated members). The elected members are elected on the basis of adult franchise from the territorial constituencies of the district. Six district councils were constituted in 1972.[vi] Each council has limited executive and financial powers. The executive powers are the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges and other public buildings; the establishment, maintenance and management of primary schools, dispensaries, markets and fairs; the supply, storage and control of water for agricultural purpose; the preservation, protection and improvement of livestock and prevention of animal disease, public health and sanitation; the management of any forest not being a reserved forest; the regulation of the practice of Jhum or other form of shifting cultivation and the like. Although the district council does not have legislative powers but it can recommend legislations on certain matters concerning scheduled tribes such as the appointment or succession of Chiefs, inheritance of property, marriage and divorce and social custom. The council’s financial powers include levying taxes on profession, trades and employment; on animals, vehicles and boats; on the entry of goods into the market for sale; on the maintenance of schools, dispensaries or roads and the like. The first elections were held in 1973. But, the councils soon became defunct. As a result, the elections could not be held. After a long period of neglect the government of Manipur realized the need for reviving the district councils, and hence the elections were held in 2010. The government has devolved more powers and functions upon the councils.

To conclude, different ethnic groups of Manipur are resorting to political mobilization to gain more political power, cultural autonomy, control over territory, economic security, and development (Bhagabati 2004: 9). But, their political aspirations are fed by a belief that adequate political power is a necessary condition for retaining their ethnic identity. In themselves, these aspirations are legitimate. The difficulty arises when the ethnic identity is connected to the demand for separate homelands. But it is important to emphasize that on account of the ethnic heterogeneity it is virtually impossible to divide Manipur along ethnic lines. It is impossible to accept that there are ethnically homogeneous areas that can be aggregated into either Nagalim or Kukiland. But the ethnic conflict makes Manipur a dangerous place. At the same time, the government’s conflict management has not been effective.

Dr. Amarjeet Singh has been studying the ethnic diversity and conflict in Manipur for well over a decade. He is an associate professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University’s Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research.

Endnotes

[i] Neither Nagas nor Kukis are homogeneous, contain different subgroups of people.

[ii] The India’s constitution has special concern and commitment for the well-being of the scheduled tribes who suffer as a group due to their social and economic backwardness and relative isolation.

[iii] The eight schedule of India’s constitution provides formal and constitutional recognition to dominant regional languages in the spheres of administration, education, economy, and social status.

[iv] They are sometimes referred to Kuki-Chin-Mizo or Zo. There is lack of unanimity in the nomenclature itself. .

[v] Manipur send two members to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the India’s parliament), and one member to the Rajya Sabha (upper house). Each region sends one member to the Lok Sabha.

[vi] Chandel Autonomous District Council, Churachandpur ADC, Sadar Hills ADC, Senapati ADC, Tamenglong ADC, and Ukhrul ADC.

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TANGKHUL SOCIETY UNDER SIEGE?

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:07:00 +0530

by Yenning
Source: The Sangai Express, E-pao, Hoi Polloi And Mundanity
Via an article posted on July 20, 2014

Clamping of prohibitory orders under CrPC 144 over Ukhrul town consequent to the killing of Ukhrul Autonomous District Council (ADC) member Ngalangzar Malue on July 12, 2014 has been interpreted by the frontal organizations of Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) especially the United Naga Council, Naga Mothers' Union, All Naga Students' Association Manipur, Naga Women Union and Naga Hoho as a "systemic policy of sabotaging and jeopardizing the Nagas of Manipur through muscle power and military might". And such a move is taken by the frontal organizations of NSCN-IM as akin to keeping Unkhrul town under siege.

While any person who respects the ethos of liberal democracy, who takes a vehement stand against the Armed Forces Special (Powers) Act and who firmly believes in the universal principles of human rights would condemn the siege of Ukhrul town by the state police forces, it would also be worthwhile to recall that the Tangkhul society has been under siege since the split of NSCN into the Khaplang and Isak-Muivah factions in 1988.

It becomes inevitable for Muivah to keep the Tangkhul society under siege in order to achieve its Manipur project and thus, committed the highest number of crimes against its own people, and killed the maximum number of Tangkhuls during "peace time". "More than 400 criminal cases were recorded in the hill districts, maximum of them in Ukhrul district in the past 15 years since the NSCN-IM signed the cease fire agreement", was what Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam stated in Manipur Legislative Assembly on July 18, 2014.

Just as no condemnations have come forth regarding the assassination of Malue from the Tangkhul society (other than the politically motivated Naga Mothers' Union who also demands release of the killers of Malue), in the past, too, there have been no condemnations. Is it the Tangkhuls' failure to come out of its tribal moorings or is it the fear of reprisal that would put them to similar fate and the very fear psychosis that has paralysed its body politic is something that only the Tangkhuls can answer themselves.

Is it the fear of UNC and other frontal organizations of NSCN-IM more than the armed-wielding cadres of the outfit that has put the Tangkhul society into such a fate?

But what is noteworthy is that these have only resulted into fragmentation of the Tangkhul society on traditional lines such as the North, South, East and West. Demands for speeding up of the peace process between the Government of India and NSCN-IM and demand for an immediate alternative arrangement for the Nagas (including Tangkhuls), therefore, can be deduced as the only ways to prevent further fragmentation of the Tangkhul society and maintain status quo of the western Tangkhuls over the rest of Tangkhuls as well as the odd 15 Naga tribes of Manipur who were coerced to be affiliated with UNC Manipur or the Naga Hoho.

From the Politics of Denial and Difference to the Politics of Defiance

For many organizations that has a political vision, such as NSCN-IM, which once dreamt of a sovereign Nagalim, denial of life is a political act. People can be eliminated simply because the individual does not follow its diktat or that individual has a different vision and thus, she or he is a potential enemy of the party. One of the most memorable political assassinations committed by the Naga rebels was the killing of Yangmaso Shaiza in January 1984 simply because late Shaiza, the first Tangkhul Chief Minister of Manipur stood for the territorial integrity of Manipur.

And unlike Th Muivah, the former CM worked towards bringing unity among all communities. People fondly remember the secular Shaiza. When the NSCN-IM killed him, the larger Tangkhul society was a mute spectator. Many other Tangkhuls were eliminated from a mere drug addict to an official of the Government or a business man. As Manipur Naga People's Front (MNPF) has rightly claimed Ngalangzar Malue was the 11thvictim of the crime carried out with the directives of the "Western Tangkhul NSCN-IM leaders" during the ceasefire period. Out of the eleven victims, seven were Tangkhuls and none happened to be a Western Tangkhul.

Other forms of denial can include commanding a person to give up his job or work, claim over one's property and wealth, forced eviction of a person from one's place of birth, denial of crimes committed and denial of history and collective memory itself. Denial mode is a compulsory element of the politics of difference and any organization which indulges in such a kind of politics would take every measure to make it vocal and loud.

Generally, it begins from the subjective level (take for example the Tangkhul as a subjective corpus of the larger Naga society) and then moves on to the objective level (Manipur as an objective political entity). In this understanding, denial has to begin within the Tangkhul society wherein the Western Tangkhuls are projected as the role models who carry on their shoulders the political vision of the Tangkhuls. Those who do not walk the line are obviously eliminated or neutralized. And the politics of difference is organically linked towards further validating the political goal of NSCN-IM.

At the objective level, we have witnessed how the politics of difference is being circulated. Of course, lives (of non-Tangkhuls )have been taken away, too. But more significant is the very nature in which certain organicity and lore of the past are denied by the NSCN-IM and its slavish stooges. Take for instance, Naga historiography denies the organic link between the Meeteis and Tangkhuls or for that matter the very word Manipur is projected as a colonial power who subjugated the Nagas.

None mentions how both the communities have suffered together "the birth pangs of the past and many an ordeal of survival sharing a common destiny against heavy odds" as is symbolically expressed in the Mera Haochongba celebrated annually in Manipur. How in that moment of bliss, ecstasy, togetherness and semi-divine happiness, the participants of the festival hardly find their languages different or any other antecedent a barrier. Further, the birth theory that the Tangkhuls and the Meeteis are brothers is lost in the politics of denial and difference circulated by NSCN-IM and its stooge intellectuals.

The other obvious experience of denial and politics of difference is the very way how UNC Manipur, the Naga apex body of the South Nagalim, since its formation on February 8, 1981, has been circulating communal propaganda blaming every evil and misfortune suffered by the Nagas to the Manipur Government. The sole task of UNC has been to malign the Manipur Government and instigate other communities so as to make them finally vomit with crime. Of the more than thousand press notes released by UNC, none is without a communal tinge.

Communal propaganda of UNC has not stopped even after the formation of the Joint Liaison Committee (between Nagaland Naga Hoho and UNC Manipur) in 1996, which finally led to the formation of Naga Hoho on March 11–12, 1998 at Zunheboto. Fortunately enough better sense has prevailed and political maturity among the Manipuris has prevented a direct confrontation with UNC. Denial and politics of difference is an ongoing process. However, achievement of UNC or NSCN-IM within the Tangkhuls or the Nagas has been minimal precisely because individuals by nature are political and endowed with the power to reason. Such a form of politics can be taken to be absurd. Nevertheless, it seems intelligible to the ones carrying out the vendetta.

Silence is political. One need not necessarily conclude that one's silence has given victory to another. However, silence also has its own pitfalls. The confidence one achieves through the politics of denial and difference makes the protagonist to move to the next level of politics i.e, the politics of defiance. And precisely, this is what had happened to Ngalangzar Malue and his death. Of all the crimes committed by NSCN-IM only one has been solved and given punishment under Indian Penal Code. This is the case related to the brutal murder of Dr. Thingnam Kishan and his other two colleagues. Others remain "unsolved" and "unpunished". Defiance also takes place in other spheres such as rejection of rule of law, imposition of illegal taxes and extortion and others. And in fact this form of politics has been possible because Government of India is solidly behind NSCN-IM.

Does the Government of Manipur have the Will to impose its Will?

Call it stupid, lack of moral fibre or even political killing, the murder of Ukhrul ADC member Ngalangzar Malue on July 12, 2014 came at a moment when the slavish stooge of NSCN-IM was having an upper hand over the Government of Manipur and in fact dictating the terms of engagement as far as the alternative arrangement for the Nagas of Manipur are concerned. But it appears at the moment the killing has turned the table around and appears as if NSCN-IM has thrown away the baby of opportunity along with the political bath water.

As UNC has grimly admitted, the killing has given the Government of Manipur the opportunity to reclaim its lost space and authority (sic. militarization) in one of the Naga dominated hill areas of the state. And if the readings are correct, Ukhrul is just the beginning, state action is likely to follow suit in other districts such as Senapati, Tamenglong and Chandel in terms of deployment of state police forces or commandoes in the popular jargon.

And such opportunities are rare ones, and the Manipur Government is bound to grasp the opportunity with iron hands. But militarization is not the answer; the more important issue is making its rule of law writ large in the hill areas of Manipur. However, the question still remains: does Government of Manipur have the will to impose its will and free the Tangkhuls from the shackles of fear and servitude?

An Extract: INDIA’S PEACEBUILDING BETWEEN RIGHTS AND NEEDS: TRANSFORMATION OF LOCAL CONFLICT SPHERES IN BIHAR, NORTHEAST INDIA, AND JAMMU AND KASHMIR?

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Mon, 7 Jul 2014 16:06:00 +0530

This is an extract of a paper of the same title, written by Sandra Pogodda* & Daniela Huber**, accessed from Academia.edu on 7 July 2014. It has been grouped into two parts to focus on the context of Northeast India.

Part 1 Northeast India

Northeast India is a term first coined by the British colonists who developed the concept of a ‘north-eastern frontier’. It consists of the ‘seven sister’ states of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Tripura. The diversity of the population is reflected in the fact that it includes 75 major ethnic groups and sub-groups with 400 languages and dialects.

Thirty percent of the population belong to tribes. George T. Haokip (‘On Ethnicity and Development Imperative: a Case Study of North-East India’, Asian Ethnicity Vol.13, No.3, 2012, p.222.) differentiates three faultlines in the conflict: tribals versus the state, tribals versus non-tribals and tribals versus other tribals. Conflicts revolve around matters of identity (such as language, ethnicity, tribal rivalry and migration), economic factors (such as control over local resources, access to water), and political issues, most importantly a widespread feeling of exploitation and alienation from the Indian state. The latter was fuelled by the state-led extraction of natural resources, which violated environmental rights and displaced whole communities but failed to benefit the local population.

In the Northeast, insurgents’ assertion of identity and ethnicity are only focal points for the local population’s grievances over its marginalisation, disfranchisement and deprivation. In the absence of adequate physical infrastructure and access to water, an unusual increase in transnational immigration and the subsequent competition over natural resources have been perpetuating a vicious cycle of violence. Local insurgencies were met with heavy-handed security campaigns by the Indian army and paramilitaries such as the Assam Rifles. Between 1992 and 2006, the conflict resulted in more than 16,000 casualties (52 percent of whom were civilians), in addition to the large-scale use of kidnappings, rape and the destruction of property by the security forces as well as violent insurgent groups. Human rights violations by Indian security forces often went unsanctioned by the Indian state due to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Despite their particularities, the conflicts above show many similarities: they are fuelled by a combustible mixture of underlying grievances ranging from economic and political marginalisation to alienation from the state or between societal groups. In all those cases the conflicts have morphed over time, drawing in new actors and reshaping their political agendas, which renders a clear distinction between conflicts over identity, power and resources impossible. Hence, the Indian central government had to develop a conflict resolution approach that spans a variety of different conflict contexts. This presents this paper with a dilemma as well as an opportunity: Given the complexity of the conflicts in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, the analysis below will not be able to cover these conflicts in their entirety. However, by examining specific state interventions in localised manifestations of these diverse conflicts, we will try to distil the essence of an Indian peacebuilding strategy as the central government’s response to a wide range of local conflict issues and dynamics. In terms of its institutional development India’s current peacebuilding strategy can be traced back to colonial interventions and the resistance against them, revised and refined through exposure to a range of local conflicts.

Over time the state responses developed into a multi-pronged strategy, combining heavy-handed security measures with the promotion of socio-economic development, statebuilding, local participatory governance and decentralisation, as well as support for civil society. In terms of security policy, India seeks to train and modernize the security forces, as well as to train and reintegrate detained militants. Local political participation was enabled through the establishment of directly elected local governance bodies - the Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) and the Autonomous Hill Councils.

Socio-economic peacebuilding initiatives, by contrast, range from improving local physical and service infrastructure, to establishing a legal framework for the recording of land rights, providing basic health care and education, connecting remote villages, land reforms, and promoting income security. NGOs are contracted in the fields of development, health and education, in order to ensure some degree of grassroots involvement in the execution of peacebuilding strategies. Hence, in broad terms the design of the Indian peacebuilding approach seems to mirror the liberal peace, even though there is a variation from it in terms of a bigger focus on developmental strategies, as well as of distributive measures in areas such as land reform, income security and job creation. A closer look into the context-specific human rights and material needs policies in the subsequent section will provide a more differentiated picture of the Indian peacebuilding approach and assess its impact on conflict transformation in local spheres of everyday life.

Part 2 The Indian Context

In contrast to Western-centric scholarship, which argues that there is ‘no realistic or preferable alternative to broadly liberal approaches’, a vanguard of critical peace and conflict scholars has started to ‘look outside the mainstream of international political traditions, discourse, and operational modalities’ for innovation. This paper has tried to consider, whether India’s internal peacebuilding strategies could present such an alternative. However, despite a few hopeful developments, the authors remain sceptical about both: the innovative content of the Indian approach in comparison with the liberal peace, and the effectiveness of Indian peacebuilding in terms of sustainable conflict transformation. India’s peacebuilding approach does include redistributive policies and, in general, a developmental strategy that tries to address local needs in contrast to the liberal approach.

Nonetheless Indian peacebuilding remains largely faithful to the central pillars of the liberal peace in several ways: its security-heavy statebuilding strategy and its belief that local political participation under the provision of political and certain moral rights is bound to provide the basis for sustainable local conflict resolution. Rather than constituting an alternative to the liberal peace, the Indian peacebuilding approach crystallises the benefits as well as dangers of the liberal approach for the transformation of local conflict spheres. India’s introduction of local mechanisms of participatory governance has proved an effective tool only where input legitimacy (free and fair elections) has been matched with output legitimacy (real transfer of power to the local level). In the fiercest and most persistent conflict contexts though, such as Jammu and Kashmir output legitimacy remains lacking.

As a consequence, new conflict dimensions have been added to already existing ones. This illustrates that a pacification strategy, which prioritises security over local rights and needs carries no potential for conflict transformation. Without society- wide access to justice the pursuit of conflict transformation in Jammu and Kashmir through elections is likely to have a limited effect: elections could facilitate some degree of socio-economic equality between different societal groups, while state-society relations remain plagued by conflict. As the cases of Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and Northeast India illustrate, local self-determination can facilitate as well as obstruct conflict transformation. The outcome depends largely on the sequencing and management of the implementation process.

The Indian process of decentralisation highlights the complex interaction of rights and needs in peace processes. For all its advantages in terms of generating local consensus on conflict resolution and transformation, decentralisation raises expectations which may reignite old or fuel new tensions if frustrated. Hence, as soon as institutions of local participation are established they need to be endowed with the political and economic resources to end marginalisation and satisfy individual and community needs. By granting people political rights and subsequently stalling the transfer of financial means and power required for needs satisfaction, people’s perception of their own marginalisation might harden and thereby fuel rather than mitigate conflict dynamics. Under such circumstances local elections could have the unintended side-effect of importing conflicts into the family sphere.

Furthermore, where local populations failed to be consulted in decisions on development approaches, human rights (especially land and environmental rights) have often been violated as a consequence. This has alienated local communities and ignited new conflicts between them and the state across all three conflict cases. Women’s associations, by contrast, have been crucial in transforming local conflict spheres in some cases. Hence, Indian state institutions’ strategic alliance with women’s associations constitutes one of the most promising elements of the current Indian peacebuilding strategy. Here, the state succeeded in tying its own conflict transformation strategy in with effective peace initiatives at the grassroots level, while also promoting gender equality as an important component of socio-economic justice. Thus, it is notable that the Indian peacebuilding strategy had similar impacts and suffered from similar shortcomings across all three conflict cases, their differences notwithstanding. Indeed, many of the problems identified in this article compare to issues raised in critical research on Western peacebuilding approach in diverse conflict contexts, notably the problem of insensitivity towards local needs and cultures. In India, the tide could be turning though. Notwithstanding the shortcomings elaborated above, India’s peacebuilding approach has undergone several phases of strategy development and experimentation: an early period of brutal modernization and oppression, which has caused new state-society conflicts; a phase of trying to placate the demands of collective identities through ethno-politics, which reinforced ethnic identities and thus inter-group tensions; the latest phase though seems to be concerned with issues of wider equality, social justice and an attempt to reverse historical processes of marginalisation as a strategy of conflict transformation. If the Indian state manages to sideline the continuous elements of the previous two phases (and the elites which support them), its peacebuilding approach might have the potential to promote an emancipatory peace in everyday life in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir as well as the Northeast.

* Sandra Pogodda is a lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of
* Daniela Huber is a researcher at the Italian International Affairs Institute.

Read the full article India’s Peacebuilding Between Rights and Needs: Transformation of Local Conflict Spheres in Bihar, Northeast India, and Jammu and Kashmir?

NATION AND STATE-BUILDING, SELF-DETERMINATION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

noreply@blogger.com (All Kaps) — Sat, 5 Jul 2014 10:47:00 +0530

The full text of the 9th Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture which was held on June 10, 2014 at Manipur Dramatic Union, Imphal and delivered by Prof. Dr. Kamarulzaman Askandar* of the Universiti Sains Malaysia

Text from e-pao.net

Introduction

Mr. President Dr. Debabrata Roy, Chairman of the Arambam Somorendra Trust Dr. Arambam Lokendra, my friends Pradip Phanjoubam and Dr. Immanuel Varte, ladies and gentlemen.

It is indeed a privilege and an honour to be in Manipur to participate in the 14th Death Anniversary of late Arambam Somorendra and pay my respect to him by delivering the 9th Arambam Somorendra Memorial Lecture.

Let me take you to the world of the Southeast Asians who are close to the people of this region. We are living in the year 2014. Malaysia is still struggling with the nation-building process, even if she gained her independence in 1957 and has six years to go to achieve her Vision 2020 of becoming a developed nation. Many people in Singapore, most of whom are descendants of migrants themselves, are complaining that the city-state is being over-run by 'unacceptable' new migrants. Hate speeches on the internet, blogs and discussion rooms show the intolerance of many citizens against peoples brought in to do things, which normal Singaporeans would not do.

Indonesia being the largest country (with the highest number of ethnic groups) is not spared and has to constantly remind its population of the Bhineka Tunggal Ika – 'unity in diversity' concept and prevent another Timor Leste from being created within its boundaries. The Aceh war of independence is over. But self-determination issues are still being discussed between the capital Jakarta and the province Aceh. Timor Leste on its part is still very much struggling not only with nation-building but more importantly in the state-building process and survivality.

Thailand has not only the 'colourful' yellow-red power struggle to contend with but also one of the longest running self-determination struggles in the 'far' south involving the Malays of Patani fighting for peace, justice and resolution of the conflict punctuated with almost daily doses of shootings and bombings. These are happening under the shadow of uncertainty permeating the future of the nation amidst question of survivality of the monarchy.

All these, though, pale in comparison with the situation in Myanmar – a nation going through a phase of 'guided transition' in its transformation from war to peace; towards the direction of a 'national dialogue' and constitutional reform which promises an end to their problems, if they can pass through the quagmire of the peace process with the 14 ethnic-states demanding self-determination, justice, and peace. Then, in this country, there is also the need to overcome the dire situation of the Rohingyas, one of the most if the not the most persecuted ethnic groups in the world today.

The Indochinese sub-region is not spared as the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are still trying to overcome the sufferings and legacies of their fight for independence and the pains of this struggle. All have suffered a lot and nationbuilding has been a painful and laborious process. They have the advantage though of 'determined' leaderships not willing to compromise on their goals.

Lastly, the Philippines, too, went through difficult times in overcoming the pains of nation-building with groups in the southern part of the country mounting their own demands for a separate nationhood based on their identity and history. Together with the Patanis of Southern Thailand, the Bangsamoros of Southern Philippines claim the prize for being the longest running self-determination struggles in the region, going back about 400 years when they first fought against the Spanish invaders, to be followed by the Americans and Manila in subsequent years. However, while the Patani struggle rages on, the Bangsamoros have been involved in peace processes since the 1970s to secure peace for their region, culminating in the 2012 Framework Agreement for the Bangsamoro (FAB) and recent Comprehensive Agreement of the Bangsamoro (CAB) signed between the Philippines Government and the torchbearers of the Bangsamoro people, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

As peace can finally see the light of day in Mindanao, it is good to reflect upon the question of why it has been so difficult to attain peace in Southeast Asia. Why the issues that have caused these conflicts, which have their roots in history and are legacies of colonialism, have been so difficult to resolve. And finally, what lessons can be learnt from these examples. In this memorial lecture, I will argue that these struggles are part of the legacy of colonialism and unfinished decolonisation processes in the Southeast Asian region, and to finally resolve them would be tantamount to putting the final touches to the picture of peace in the region.

Nationhood and Self-determination

A nation-state is a State that is dominated by a single, majority or dominant nation. This is in contrast with the 'state-nation' which is reflective of most of what we have in multi-ethnic societies today – a State with many nations. The fond dreams of many nationalists and national liberation movements have been to create a nation-state where a national identity is forged via the consolidation of interests and identities at the end of a long struggle for independence. Whatever differences that they might have during the process of achieving independence, the outcome should be one that celebrates a particular national identity such as a Malaysian identity, a Singaporean identity, a Burmese identity, a Filipino identity and so on. The belief is that a national identity will enhance cohesiveness and make it easier for the fledgling nation to move forward as one.

While differences are acknowledged and even celebrated (tolerated?), they are constantly monitored for potential problems and ways are constantly being searched to bridge the gaps. The State for a newly independent nation is used as the instrument, tool or apparatus not only for ruling the country but also for forging this national identity. Power in the system is lodged with the dominant group or groups giving them the advantage over others. In many cases, the dominant group will try to impose its own characters onto the nation. Even if the original intention was to embrace the existing diversity, the outcomes at times would differ. For example, despite the 'Unity in diversity' slogan in Indonesia, the national identity is closely associated with the Javanese culture. This in return is also translated into national development resulting in uneven development between Java and the other islands. Outer islands and regions then complain about the uneven development between the islands, with Java being the most developed island in the country.

Malaysia started out as country that celebrated diversity, too, but minorities have registered their grievances complaining about preferential treatment given to the Bumiputera group, despite arguments saying that these are needed to correct socioeconomic imbalances between the different ethnic groups. Singapore too celebrated diversity in the country, even designating the four main spoken languages as the national languages of the country. The national anthem is sung in the Malay language. But it soon became clear that English is the main language sidelining the local languages and that the majority Chinese group would be dominant in all aspects of this small city-state.

Centralisation of power within the systems in the countries of Southeast Asia added more problems. Almost all the countries, with the exception of Malaysia, prefer the centralised or unitary mode of government. Power is concentrated in the capital and resides with the dominant group. Decision is made on the basis of national interests and sovereignty lies with the State, not the people. The bureaucracy is not only for administering the implementation of national policies but also acts as a tool to consolidate powers of the national government.

This is the flaw of many decolonisation processes.

The struggle for independence between the colonies (except Thailand) and their colonial masters is soon transformed into a struggle between the new sovereign nation and the newly independent peoples. The struggle is also between proponents of State's rights and the collective group rights, which was then illuminated into a struggle for self-determination. This is especially evident in countries that harbor groups that have vehemently resisted inclusion into this new state-nation in the aftermath of an independence struggle.

The existence of such groups is not a surprise in a situation of multi-ethnicity in a new State. Among the reasons that have been given for their existence include the history of self-rule in the past; a history of antagonism with and struggle against the dominant group which can include too a history of violent actions against them; a clear ethnic or religious identity that differs the aggrieved minority from the rest of the country and especially the dominant majority ruling the country; uneven social, political and economic development between the centre and the periphery, and between the majority and the minority; and existence of kin groups across the border in adjacent countries.

Self-determination Struggles as Unfinished Decolonisation Processes

This section will look at some examples of self-determination struggles from around the region.

Thailand

Thailand is the only country in the region that has never been colonised. In fact Thailand or Siam as it was known before was the one that terrorised neighbors in the region. One such former neighbour was the Malay Muslim Sultanate of Patani in what is now known as Southern Thailand. The Patani Sultanate was invaded by Siam in 1786 and vassals were installed to rule the area on behalf of the King in Bangkok.

The annexation of Patani was formalised with the London Treaty in 1909 between Siam and the British. This treaty gave international recognition to the annexation of the Sultanate. The five provinces, which were annexed into Siam, were a Muslim majority area. Thus, they were clearly distinct from the rest of the country and are now becoming a minority group in a country dominated by the Buddhist Thais.

Phases of anti Thai movements were carried out. Initially, the royalist elites led the movement, which was followed by the Muslim Ulamas and finally by broad ideologically-based pro-independence groups. The last category consist of several groups such as the Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO), Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN – National Revolutionary Front), Islamic Front for the Liberation of Patani (BIPP), the Bersatu, and many others.

These groups, most of which were established in the 1960s are still present to this day, having increased their prominence and the intensity of the conflict since 2004. Demands have been on achieving independence for their region, and to a lesser extent autonomy, self rule and the control of development in the area. A peace process was started in 2013, facilitated by Malaysia, but was derailed by the instability and eventual collapse of the Central Government in Bangkok and infighting within the Patani groups.

The Philippines

The Bangsamoro of Southern Philippines is a Muslim minority group living in a country dominated by the Christian Filipinos. Bangsamoro is divided into 13 ethnolinguistic groups and are spread out throughout the mid and western Mindanao, as well as in the smaller islands of Sulu, Basilan, Tawi Tawi and Palawan. They have fought the Spanish invaders since the 17th century only to be included as part of the Philippines by the Americans in the late 19th century and eventually by Manila.

Comparatively underdeveloped and poor, the Bangsamoro people also lost their land to land-grabbing activities and trans-migration programs supported by Manila. They now constitute only about 25 percent of the island population and are concentrated in the middle and western parts of the island.

The Mindanao Independence Movements in the 1960s gave way to a more organised liberation movement in 1970 led by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). An Islamist faction broke out of the MNLF in 1977 and became MILF. These two became the major movers of the self-determination struggle in Southern Philippines.

While the MNLF started negotiating with Manila in 1976, culminating in the Final Peace Agreement (FPA) of 1996, MILF started their talks with the government in 1997. Indonesia represented the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the MNLF talks, while Malaysia facilitated the MILF talks.

The MNLF talks resulted in the creation of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which consisted of five provinces and a city. It was a failed experiment with autonomy for the MNLF.

MILF signed a few notable agreements - the most important being, as mentioned above, FAB in 2012 and CAB in 2014. CAB laid out provisions for a new Bangsamoro Basic Law, power and wealth sharing between Manila and the Bangsamoro, and what they termed 'normalisation' of relations.

The conflict is poised to be resolved with the creation of the Bangsamoro Government and parliament scheduled for 2016. This will be the climax of the self-determination struggle of the Bangsamoro people of Southern Philippines.

Aceh

Aceh used to have its own Sultanate ruling over the Acehnese people. The Acehnese fought against the Dutch valiantly during the colonial period and are proud to say that they have never lost their independence to the Dutch. After the independence of Indonesia in 1949, Aceh was incorporated into the new nation under promises of Islamic solidarity and nationhood.

They were also promised a province of their own and self rule within Indonesia. The promises were not fulfilled resulting in the first phase of Aceh self-determination struggle in the 1950s led by the Ulamas. The conflict ended when they were given special autonomy status and freedom of religion in the late 50s.

The second phase of conflict was more secular in nature and started with the formation of the Free Aceh Movement in 1976 to fight against economic and political injustices. The war was bloody and protracted and ended only in 1998 when President Suharto was ousted.

Aceh then went on a couple of phases of peace processes, a military and civil emergency, a tsunami, and finally a peace agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two sides facilitated by the Crisis Management Initiative of Finland. This MoU was then translated into the Law on Governing Aceh (LOGA) of 2007 to structure and guide new relations between Aceh and Jakarta.

Among the notable new arrangements are the reverse in the formula for wealth sharing from 30-70 to 70-30; the constitutional amendment allowing for the formation of local political parties in Aceh; and the enhanced decentralisation and autonomy formula for Aceh including consultation with the Acehnese on any decisions affecting them. Conflicting issues, however, continue to linger amidst accusations of abuse of power, neglect and incompetency of the current Acehnese administrators, lawmakers and leaders, most of whom were former combatants in the long self-determination struggle in Aceh.

Myanmar

Myanmar is currently undergoing a process of limited transformation and 'guided transition' after being in political isolation for many years. The problem in Myanmar is symptomatic of a problematic decolonisation process that has never been properly addressed. The current on-off ceasefire agreement with the 14 ethnic nationalities in the country shows just how difficult a nation building process is and can be.

The 1947 Panglung agreement could have paved the way for peace with at least some of the minority ethnic groups but was never fully accepted and implemented. The result has been the continuation of pre-independence era issues of nation and state-building, compounded by internal struggle for power and dominance within the country.

Further, it has resulted into military domination and oppression as well as violation of civil and political rights of the people, the continuous bloody self-determination struggle of ethnic minorities and persecution of other ethnic minorities, most notably the Muslim Rohingya population in the Rakhine state.

Pressures from outside including ASEAN 'constructive engagement' and sanctions from many countries has resulted in the 'softening' of the military approach and the opening of Myanmar to outsiders, including investors. This year's ASEAN Civil Society Conference organised in Yangon in March drew about 3000 people all demanding change and faster transformation of Myanmar, albeit under the watchful eyes of the State.

It is accepted that Myanmar needs a constitutional reform to resolve the existing problems, and this would only come about after a national dialogue and successful peace process with the ethnic minorities. While all these are being planned, the self-determination struggles of the minority ethnic groups continue.

Challenges in Resolving Self-Determination Type Struggles

The continuous existence of self-determination type struggles in the region shows how difficult it is to resolve these conflicts. The use of weapons and violent means on all sides only compounded the problem even more. Over the last 50 years, only Brunei has peacefully become independent in 1984. Even Singapore's independence from Malaysia in 1965 was preceded by violent riots in some cities on the peninsula.

Timor Leste's independence was preceded by an armed struggle of the Timorese people against Indonesian domination and was only made possible by international pressures on Indonesia in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis in 1997. All in all, decolonizing and becoming an independent nation is never easy. Even after independence the problems continue as has been noted in the previous section.

Lingering issues continue during the power struggle between the new ruler and the newly ruled groups demanding self-determination. Some challenges and lessons learnt from the cases in the region include the following.

Power Struggle between the Centre and Periphery

Becoming a new State entails recognition of sovereignty by the international community, including admission into the United Nations. More importantly, and prior to that, this recognition has to come from within. There has to be recognition of State sovereignty by the people being ruled. The people in most cases just follow the lead of elites in giving blessings to the new State. The elites then in turn commandeered support for the creation of the new State through a liberation movement, a referendum, a 'social contract', even an armed uprising. The act of State creation then goes through various phases, including the handing over of sovereignty of the people to the State and giving the State the mandate to rule over the people.

Unfortunately, the process also involved manipulation of the majority and even the State to ensure that territories are included and groups pacified and persuaded to join the new State.

Take for instance 'social contract' between the Malays, Chinese, and Indians prior to independence of Malaya in 1957; the formation of Malaysia in 1963; the London Treaty of 1909 between Siam and Britain; struggle for independence of Indonesia in late 1940s and Panglung Agreement of 1947 in Burma, etc.

The power struggle between the centre and periphery that resulted after independence show the dissatisfaction between the State and the people, especially those forced or manipulated to be part of the new State. This in turn would be translated into movements to support self-determination aspirations of the aggrieved populace in the affected regions. The questions asked include the legality of inclusion and the question of sovereignty – sovereignty of whom over whom; sovereignty of State over the sovereignty of the people or likewise; and the question of indivisibility of the State.

Multiplicity of Actors

An important part of the problem is the multiplicity of actors involved on all sides. In many cases, there are simply too many actors involved and this has compounded the problem of finding a solution that can help pacify the interests of all. In the case of Myanmar, the needs of more than 100 ethnic groups have to be addressed. Even the current ceasefire agreement with only 14 groups is very complicated. In the Patani struggle of Thailand, there are multiple actors on both sides – on one side the politicians, military, royal family and on the other side the PULO, BRN and BIPP, etc. Similarly, there are multiple actors in the Bangsamoro struggle – government, military, MNLF, MILF, Abu Sayyaf, etc.

All actors have stakes, interests and needs in the conflict. The question then involves not only addressing the issues and answering the questions but also how to balance these multiplicities of needs and interests. The question also involves the sincerity of the elites (for whom and for what?) and the issue of representativeness – how much do they actually represent the grievances and aspirations of the people.

Strategy and the Use of Weapons by the Actors

The next issue involves strategy and the use of weapons by the actors. When the selfdetermination movements turned into an armed struggle, it elevates the conflict to another level. On the movement side, this is to address the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and a necessary precursor to future talks. They need to be taken seriously and in their minds they will not be taken seriously until they can show that they are capable of inflicting pain on the other side. On the side of the government, this is an affront to the State's sole monopoly of the usage of arms and need to be put down.

Oft times, too, the State does not wait for armed uprising to happen and take unilateral action to violently suppress the movements. This in turn usually will result in likeminded actions on the other side even if there was no real intention to use this strategy. Cases in point would be Aceh, Mindanao and Patani. Prolonged use of this strategy usually results in the creation of a culture of violence which is very difficult to put down. The issue needs to be addressed though if resolution is to be achieved.

Difficulty of Finding Solutions Bilaterally

A problem with self-determination struggle is the difficulty of finding solutions bilaterally. The positions of the sides are usually too entrenched for them to move on.

Third party interveners can help. The problem is convincing the parties that they need this help, especially the government sides of the conflict. De-colonisation issues and unsolved problems connected to these issues are seen as internal matters that should be resolved internally.

Furthermore, we are talking about the sovereignty of the nation and the reputation of the State. The State would feel more comfortable if the process of finding the solution is one that they are in control of. Third parties are accepted if and only if they subscribe to the principles of the sovereignty and indivisibility of the State. Cases in point – Aceh, Bangsamoro and Patani. But when they are invited, these third parties have shown that they are not only capable of helping to improve the situation, but in many cases becoming crucial components for alleviating the violence, implementing agreed actions, guaranteeing and monitoring decisions made and so on.

Models of Ruling

When we try to settle once and for all the problems of decolonisation, especially in regards to self-determination issues, we have to take into account not only the points mentioned above but also the models of ruling that is capable of pacifying the needs and interests of the sovereign people. In general, there are three models of ruling as given below.

First is the 'simple majoritarian rule of ruling'. It refers to elimination of all kinds of differences to become one. Centralised and unitary form of governance will be representative of this one coupled with insistence on nation building based on the majority dominant tradition in the country such as Thailand. This is not a good model and has given rise to many self-determination struggles by groups that feel the need to preserve their identities and collective rights.

Second model is the 'complex representational model' that will guarantee justice and equality. This includes the model of federalism, even decentralisation which is being touted as a lesser form of the federal system in the unitary model i.e. Malaysia and to a certain extent Indonesia in its current form. The same model is also being mentioned as a possible solution to the Myanmar problem.

Third is the 'Hybrid model'. In this model, certain parts of the country are ruled by one model while other parts of the country are ruled by different models. It includes the autonomous or special autonomy model being used in some provinces of countries like Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. This is also the current preferred solution to the problems in the Bangsamoro – the State within a State model created by the Bangsamoro peace process. In many cases, the State did not start out with this form after independence.

The failure of the chosen model points to the need to adapt existing form of governance to one that will address the demands of the aggrieved populace. Further, failure of the models will result in civil war. On the plus side, however, it might even result in alternative forms of government. Who knows, maybe we will get a new model that caters to the special needs of the region coming out of the selfdetermination struggles in this area.

Conclusion

Self-determination as reflected here is not a dirty word as bandied by those in power. It is not something that was created for frivolous reasons, but something that has come up because of unfinished business in the decolonisation process of a nation. It represents collective rights of a distinct group of people and is a driver of genuine democracy.

It is, thus, a form of conflict resolution because it envisions a solution to the problem through the restructuring of relationships, modes of governance and addressing real needs of the people. For it to be successful though, it needs to be translated into action and into actual new relations, guided by a new arrangement, constitution or structure. When this happens, you will see peace in the region. These are the lessons we have learnt from the challenges of decolonisation in Southeast Asia. They might be of use to friends here in the Northeast part of India.

* Prof. Dr. Kamarulzaman Askandar is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is the Coordinator of the Research and Education for Peace at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (REPUSM). He is also the Regional Coordinator of the Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network (SEACSN). He sits on the board of many international networks including the Southeast Asian Human Rights Network (SEAHRN) and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). He is active in peacebuilding and conflict transformation activities around the Southeast Asian region and has worked in Aceh – Indonesia, Patani – Southern Thailand, Mindanao – Philippines, and Myanmar. He has published many articles and edited books on peacebuilding in these areas.