Afflicted with multiple insurgencies for the past 46 years, Manipur is now the most violent State in India’s troubled Northeast, with all its nine Districts tainted with varying degrees of extremist activity.
The ethnocentric perversion, particularly of the Meitei insurgency, has, over the years, become more pronounced in the Manipur Valley and beyond. In their quest to project a pan-Mongoloid identity, the Meitei armed groups have moved beyond rejecting the Bengali script and the mayangs (outsiders settled in the Valley), and are now striking at the Hindi and Bengali speaking migrant populace in the State.
There are an estimated 50,000 ‘outsiders’ in Manipur, mostly from the States of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jharkhand. A majority of these are petty vendors and labourers. With the August 24, 2010, killing of a non-local by suspected militants at Wahengbam Ningol Chaibi in Imphal West District, one estimate reveals that the number of migrant workers and labourers who have been killed by armed insurgents in Manipur since February 2009 has reached 34.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, in its partial estimate (a preponderance of such cases go unreported, or are not uniquely categorized as casualties among ‘outsiders’) records that 74 persons have been killed and 13 injured in as many as 48 militant attacks on non-locals in all the four Valley Districts and three Hill Districts since 2001.
The violence unleashed against non-locals in the State has registered an irregular trajectory during 2001-2010 with sharp increase in the years 2008 and 2009.
Some of the major militant attacks (resulting in three or more than three killings) on non-locals in the State since 2001 include:
June 11, 2009: Four non-local labourers were killed and one was injured, when unidentified militants opened fire on them inside the Central Agriculture University campus at Iroisemba under Lamphel Police Station in Imphal West District.
May 11, 2009: Unidentified militants killed nine non-locals inside the Keibul Lamjao National Park at Khordak Awang Leikai area in Bishnupur District.
March 17, 2008: At least seven Hindi-speaking people were shot dead by unidentified militants at Mayang Imphal Hanglun in the capital Imphal. The victims were sellers of tobacco products, which were ‘banned’ by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
March 18, 2008: Unidentified militants killed seven Hindi-speaking labourers and injured two others. While five persons were killed at Thumbi foothill in the Kangla Sangomsang area of Imphal East District, two others were shot dead at Kakching in Thoubal District.
March 8, 2007: Five migrant workers were shot dead by unidentified militants at Ningthoukhong Kha-Khunou Patmang in Bishnupur District.
November 9-10, 2004: Suspected militants killed three non-local traders after abducting them from their rented house at Khurai Lamlong in Imphal East District.
June 14, 2001: Three non-local traders were killed by unidentified militants at Yumpok Wakhong in Imphal East District.
June 7, 2001: Five persons, including four traders from the State of Bihar, were killed by suspected People’s United Liberation Front (PULF) cadres at Kakching in Thoubal District.
On January 10, 2010, Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), Imphal West District, A. K. Jhaljit Singh, claimed the involvement of outfits like the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK), United National Liberation Front (UNLF), PLA and Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) in the targeted elimination of non-locals in Manipur. The assessment was based on confessions of two PREPAK cadres [arrested on
January 9, 2010], who were reportedly involved in lobbing hand-grenades and other terrorist activities, including the killin\g of non-locals. The ASP also had claimed that the serial gunning down of migrant labourers in Manipur over the preceding months was the handiwork of these groups, which had together decided to engage in such crimes to destabilise the Okram Ibobi Singh Government.
PREPAK and PLA, however, subsequently denied their involvement in these crimes. A statement issued by the PREPAK alleged that the arrest of its cadres by a combined team of the Imphal West District Police and Assam Rifles and charging them with elimination of non-locals, as well as linking other underground outfits to these crimes, exposed the ‘dubious character’ of the Okram Ibobi Singh Government in its effort to ‘please their masters’ at Delhi, and to create hatred between underground groups.
Nevertheless, on March 6, 2010, the Revolutionary People’s Front (RPF), the political wing of the PLA, set May 31, 2010, as the deadline for non-local people to leave the State.
In its statement, the RPF said that all those who came to Manipur after 1949 (the year of Manipur’s merger with the Indian Union) were considered non-Manipuris, and entry of outsiders to the State was illegal. T. Leisemba, ‘publicity secretary’ of the RPF, declared that living and working in the State by non-Manipuris had become ‘dangerous’ as ‘hatred’ among the residents was growing, and attributed the recent ethnic killings to this factor.
In addition to this, ‘oppression and murder’ since the late seventies by the Security Forces, and the introduction of ‘agents’ under the guise of labourers for ‘espionage activities’, had caused more hatred among the people of Manipur. Further, the Government had failed to protect the lives of non-Manipuris, so the RPF asked transporters not to bring in any more ‘outsiders’. It also asked the people not to rent out rooms or sell land to non-Manipuris, or allow them to head business houses in the State.
The outfit, however, said that it would allow the entry of non-Manipuri people for "temporary work", such as education-related activities, experts or scholars visiting on a temporary basis, tourists and sportsmen. "Entry of other non-Manipuris is prohibited for their welfare," it warned.
The RPF’s quit notice appears to have provoked a retaliatory response from its strategic ally from the country’s ‘mainland’, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). A member of the Tirhut (in Muzzafarpur District of Bihar) sub-zonal committee of the Maoists, Sher Khan, a resident of the State of Uttar Pradesh, who was in the Sheohar-Champaran region in Bihar to review the group’s organisational set-up, stated on April 20, 2010, that a CPI-Maoist delegation had visited recently Manipur, and found reports of the militants' ultimatum accurate.
Khan said, further, "We are with the labourers of Bihar and Jharkhand. If they are forced to leave the State, we will not remain silent on the issue."
Khan added that the CPI-Maoist would also issue an ultimatum to Manipuri students enrolled in different educational institutions in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, to leave these places by June 30, 2010, and people working in other organisations in the four States would not be spared: "We have clear stand on the issue. If ill-treatment being meted out to Bihari labourers is not stopped immediately, we will decide other course of action also."
Khan stated, further, that the decision to issue a counter ultimatum to the residents of Manipur to leave Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal was taken at a meeting of Maoist leaders of the four States on the Bihar-Nepal border.
The CPI-Maoist, however, subsequently tried to hush up the possible inner contradictions unfolding in its current strategy to rope in the ‘peripheral’ armed movements in the Northeast, and quickly disowned the counter ultimatum issued in its name.
A statement put out by the outfit’s Bihar-Jharkhand-North Chhattishgarh Special Area Committee ‘spokesperson’, Gopal, declared that the counter-ultimatum was the ‘handiwork’ of intelligence agencies, aimed at creating ‘confusion and distrust’ among the people of Manipur and India, and to ‘slander’ the image of CPI-Maoist, which supports the movement of the Manipuri people for ‘independence’: "It is a just movement and the people of Manipur are making great sacrifices to achieve it. We respect it. We support the movements of various nationalities of India for self-determination/ independence."
Meanwhile, the Hindustani Samaj of Manipur, an association of non-locals in the Northeastern State, sent a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on April 15, 2010, complaining that the State Government had done nothing to ensure the safety of the non-Manipuri people, despite the RPF’s deadline to quit their work places.
"As many as 32 non-Manipuris have been killed by militant groups in the State since January, while the RPF has asked transporters not to transport non-Manipuri people into the state," Nareshwar Kumar, President of the Hindustani Samaj, wrote, "In some areas, these elements are visiting the houses of non-Manipuris and threatening them to leave.
As a result, there is a panic among non-Manipuris." The distress letter, however, has failed to elicit significant response to put an end to the plight of the targeted groups in Manipur. Since then, at least four non-locals have been killed in three militant attacks in Imphal West and Imphal East Districts in the Valley and Ukhrul District in the Hills.
These attacks coincide with a Press Statement issued on July 30, 2010, by the RPF ‘publicity secretary’, T. Leisemba, reiterating that RPF had earlier asked non-Manipuris to leave Manipur before May 31, 2010, ‘for their own safety and welfare’; but the deadline had passed.
The statement further declared that the RPF could no longer be held responsible for any untoward actions taken up against the non-Manipuris, and actions would also be initiated against those who were found giving shelter to the non-Manipuris.
The ethnocentric radicalisation of the Meitei identity has secured traction along the multiple faultlines in the State that have entrenched the myriad violent sub-national movements in Manipur. The steady xenophobic excesses in this theatre are just another index of the failure of counter-insurgency strategies, and the callous complacency, indeed, complicity, of politics in the State.
(The writers are Research Associates, Institute for Conflict Management )
(The view expressed in the article is of the authors and not India Blooms News Service)
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