Biren’s Shadow, Biren’s ‘Stories’

medium118852020On March 8, all routes in Manipur were to be opened for ‘free movement’, three weeks after central rule was imposed following CM Biren Singh’s long-awaited resignation. The plan was to send two state transport buses to Kangpokpi and Churachandpur districts.But a clash in Gamgiphai (Kangpokpi) saw security forces use force on protesters. A community organisation said of the 70 injured, 48 were women. Question is, why was there a protest? And why did police manhandle the protesters? It was but a demonstration of the unmeasurably deep rift between Manipur’s two major communities, and between a community and the state police — both a result of Biren Singh being allowed to remain in office for 21 months after violence erupted in Manipur in May 2023.The March 8 protest against free movement was to make a political statement and express dissent against what the hill communities consider a ‘peace’ forced upon the people, without any political settlement or acknowledgment of their sufferings or loss.Protesters were also apprehensive of — and insulted by — the decision of Federation of Civil Societies (FOCS), an umbrella body of nearly 20 valley-based civil society outfits, to ‘march to the hills’ the very same day. For, FOCS president who was spearheading the so-called Peace Rally is known for his remark that Manipur belongs to only Meitei and Naga communities.Thus, neither the protest, nor the distrust would have come as a surprise to anyone remotely aware of what Biren Singh left in his wake.People from both hills and the valley are tired of the conflict and hoped a change of guard would at least break the status quo of sporadic violence, and a people newly divided with every clash. Under Biren, it was almost two years of ‘acts of retaliation’ of one community against the other. Lynchings, sexual assaults, ransack and arson of homes, burning down of places of worship, public buildings, and villages, and displacements have resulted in demographic separation and polarisation of Manipur’s two major ethnic communities Meiteis and Kuki-Zo. The violence left over 250 dead and about 58,000 people forcibly displaced.Per Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, displacements in Manipur made up around 97% of all internal displacements in South Asia in 2023. Over 75% of these were within Manipur, and around 20% to Mizoram.On Dec 14, 2023, eight months into the conflict, the remains of 60 people were airlifted from two mortuaries in Imphal under the aegis of IGAR South and 22 Assam Rifles and flown to Kangpokpi and Churachandpur districts. Many of these people had been killed in the conflict’s initial days, in and around Imphal valley. Timely state intervention at that very moment would have saved lives and halted the escalation of violence.But Biren Singh was allowed to continue a certain politics that garnered and strengthened support of the dominant ethnic populace. He successfully instilled ‘fear psyche’ in Meitei masses with narratives created of ‘imagined outsider intrusion’, and depleted resources in Manipur, simultaneously pinning all Manipur’s problems — drugs, infiltration, land integrity — on hill communities.It’s why his resignation had been especially well-received by Kuki-Zo — an indication that Centre is being accommodative of their concerns and condition. In his resignation letter, Biren listed five issues for Centre’s attention. One, maintain territorial integrity of Manipur. Two, crack down on border infiltration and formulate policy to deport ‘illegal immigrants’. Three, continue the fight against drugs and narco-terrorism. Four, retain the stringent and foolproof revised mechanism of free movement regime with biometrics, and finally, expedite time-bound border fencing with Myanmar.Reality is, each of the above leads to more profiling of people and surveillance of particularly the hills. It silences the rights of people. The letter had not the slightest hint at remorse for the violence. It labelled an entire community a national security threat and branded people variously as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘narco-terrorists’ and ‘poppy growers’. This was necessary for Biren govt to justify its position on the violence — that it was a result of actions taken to check illegal influx from the open border with Myanmar and poppy cultivation by the hill tribes.Kanato G Chophy in 2023 wrote “scapegoating or highlighting the involvement of only a single community in the poppy cultivation and drug trade in Manipur is unfair since all communities (Naga, Kuki, Meiteis etc) have profited from the illicit trade in drugs for decades.”Manipur as a state became a political reality only after 1972. Kuki-Zos have inhabited hill stretches since before political borders were delineated. The idea of the ‘outsider’ became indispensable to identify the ‘citizen’, different from the ‘other’ — the Kuki-Zo.Removing Biren was a prerequisite for dialogue, but it does not make it any easier to erase ‘manufactured narratives’ that many in Manipur have bought into.The writer is Asst Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad