Year-Ender: Revisiting Issues of Land and Indigeneity in Conflict-torn Manipur

The agenda of Meiteis demanding ST status intersect with a motley of actors occuping Manipur’s insurgent space.

Burnt remains of the godown of Manipur PHED Minister L Sushildro Meitei after it was set ablaze by a mob during the continuing ethnic unrest between Kuki and Meitei communities, at Chingarel in Imphal East district, on June 24, 2023.

(Photo: PTI)

After nearly eight months of the outbreak of violence in Manipur on 3 May, the dictum: ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’ continues to hold true.

With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes apparent that although the initial spark stems from the violent reprisal to the peaceful protest by tribal groups including Naga and Kuki-Zomi against the Manipur’s High Court directive to the state government to secure Scheduled Tribe (ST) recognition to the Meiteis, this conflict continues to pivot around contestations over control and access to tribal land and resources.

These contestations to control and have access to tribal land and resources began to take concrete shape a year after Jubilant Energy, the Netherlands-based oil and gas company, entered into a Petroleum Exploration License agreement with the Government of India in 2010.

The subsequent identification of 17 out of the 32 natural gas fields of the state in two Kuki-Zomi dominated areas of Lamka (Churachandpur) and Pherzawl districts and the discovery that they sit on the fertile Assam-Arakan basin whipped up the greed and passion of segments of the Meitei economic and political entrepreneurial class who overtime resort to integrationist and majoritarian agenda to actualize their ‘greed’ and reinforce their ‘relative deprivation’ vis-à-vis the Kuki-Zomi.

Political Mobilisations Around the Questions of Indigeneity

While scholars like Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler emphasised ‘greed’ as a key driver of ethnic conflicts elsewhere, the Manipur case also presents the reinforcing explanatory power of ‘relative deprivation’ that scholars like Ted Robert Gurr and Donald Horowitz have emphasised in their works. In the case of Manipur, the ‘greed’ factor therefore needs to put an equal premium on the longstanding grudge of ‘relative deprivation’ that the Meitei harbor against the tribals as extant land laws preclude Meiteis from permanently owning land over 90 per cent of the state’s areas which falls within the hill areas.

Given that the extant sub-state constitutional asymmetrical provision under Article 371C of the Indian constitution and land laws in the state erect institutional gridlock to circumscribe direct access to and control over tribal land and resources, the Meiteis arguably see ST status as the only viable institutional backdoor mechanism to either sidestep or dissolve this gridlock.

Not surprisingly, the Meitei demand for ST status landed up and was taken cognisance by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) sometime in 2013 as a result. After MoTA directed the state government to furnish an ethnographic study of the Meitei as a part of their established protocol to consider such demand, the latter dragged its feet. This prompted the Meitei Tribe Union to approach the High Court and secure its directive to the state government to take a call on its ST demand on 27 March 2023.

The interest and agenda of Meitei demand for ST status intersect with a motley of actors, interests, and agendas that occupy Manipur’s insurgent space. The opportunity structure opened up by heightened political mobilisations around the questions of indigeneity, Sanamahi (Meitei’s indigenous religion) revivalism, and restoring Kangleipak’s (Manipur’s old name) sovereignty could not have come out into sharper relief in the decade following 2010.

The Agenda to Revive Sanamahi

To be sure, the agenda to protect Manipur’s indigenous population and its territorial integrity was picked up by various Meitei armed groups and civil society organisations (CSOs) in the 1990s and until recently to principally target the Bihari and Marwaris, who were seen to pose demographic threats to the state. The agenda to revive and restore Kangleipak’s sovereign past during this time also overlapped and was reinforced with the agenda to revive Sanamahi, which was eclipsed overtime by the official acceptance and promotion of Vaishnavite Hinduism in the valley since the second decade of the eighteen century.

As these cultural and political projects began to unravel in the 1990s in the form of a boycott of Bollywood films, the official promotion of Meitei Mayek (script) in preference over Bengali script, the targeting of Mayangs (labels used to refer to ‘mainland’ Indian ‘outsiders’), a routine boycott of India’s Independence and Republic days, the ideas, interest and agenda of various armed groups, civil society actors and the state government(s) got blurred.

It is within this larger institutional ecosystem that frontal CSOs like the Meitei Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee and the Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System (JCILPS) gained political traction. Thanks to the vigorous effort of JCILPS since 2010-11, the Inner Line Permit (ILP) System was restored in the state on 1 January 2020 after a gap of 70 years. Plausibly, even as ILP is seen to insulate the state from exogenous demographic threats, the target of demographic threats makes an inward and aggressive turn, especially since 2021.

This is where a melange of actors and organisations including the Haomee Federation, Kangleipak Kanba Lup, Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity, Meitei Leepun, and Arambai Tenggol selectively and indiscriminately target the Kuki-Zomi by forging disparate sets of narratives including ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘narco-terrorists’, and ‘encroachers’ on the state’s ‘reserved’ and ‘protected’ forests. A longitudinal comparison of the social media posts of these organisations with influential political leaders including the Chief Minister interestingly overlap and remain almost indistinguishable.

On 'Demographic Threat' and the 'Drugs' Factor

As depicted by the relevant data, these narratives are deeply contentious and should be seen as a convenient ruse to camouflage the ‘greed’ and ‘relative deprivation’ of the integrationist and majoritarian minded-Meitei entrepreneurs to have direct access to and control tribal land and resources. Firstly, the state’s sub-committee headed by Letpao Haokip identified barely 2187 ‘illegal immigrants’ who were forced to flee in the wake of a military coup in Myanmar in February 2021. The decennial population growth rate of Kuki-Zomi dominated districts of Chandel (17.9) and Churachandpur (19.9) between 2001 and 2011 stood favourably when compared with the state’s average of 24.4 percent.

If demographic threat were the real concern, Senapati with over 241 percent decennial growth rate would have been the target. Invoking the 1850s as the timeline to define who is ‘indigenous’ to Manipur and target the Kuki as ‘illegal migrants’ on the contention that ‘Khongjais’, a segment of the Kuki, migrated to Manipur around this period is oblivious to the presence of the Kuki in the valley areas prior to this — a point borne out by the Cheitharol Kumbaba (the Meitei royal chronicle). This is also deeply problematic as ‘indigeneity’ has never been accepted by the Indian state as a ‘legal’ entity and the basis for protective discrimination.

Secondly, none of the two dozen-odd Kuki-Zomi armed groups are proscribed as ‘unlawful’, a label used by the Union Home Ministry to categorise ‘terrorist’ group(s) which pose a threat to ‘national security’ and ‘integrity’ of the Indian state under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. On the contrary, eight Meitei armed groups in the valley areas are proscribed. Again, all the major communities in the states are involved in the 2438 drug-related cases in the state recorded from 2017-21. While the Meitei Pangals (Muslims) account for the highest number of 1067, the Kuki-Zomi, Meiteis, and others follow suit respectively with 824, 367, and 180. Selective targeting of Kuki-Zomi as ‘narco-terrorists’ therefore smacks of xenophobia and provides a convenient pretext to push an integrationist and majoritarian agenda.

Thirdly, the blanket declaration of Kuki-Zomi as ‘encroachers’ who are deemed to be forcefully evicted without following established procedure became deeply contentious, especially in light of the March 2021 resolution of Hill Areas Committee (HAC)—a statutory body under Article 371C which is composed of 20 elected Assembly members from the hill areas—to declare ‘null and void’ any direct application of the provision of the Forest Act, 1927 by the state without vetting the same to it.

Keeping these contextual bearings in mind, one learning experience of the past eight months of violence in Manipur is that indiscriminate use of narratives to promote partisan interests may not always reflect the complex ground realities and may only provide a ruse to camouflage integrationist and majoritarian agenda in ways which justify the perpetuation of violence.

(Kham Khan Suan Hausing is a Professor and Head, of the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)