Healing process in Manipur will be long

A dark and blood-stained cloud of inter-ethnic hatred and pogrom-like violence has enveloped Manipur since early May, wherein the hapless citizens and residents of the state feel totally abandoned by both the Central government and the rest of India. Is there any light at the end of this very dark tunnel?

The worst-case scenario is where the state, constitutionally mandated to use force for the safety and welfare of the citizens, turns rogue.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah chaired an all-party meeting on June 24. Hopefully, some kind of consensus political intervention would be initiated by New Delhi to assuage the inflamed sentiments and improve the internal security situation. On current evidence, it appears that the fault lines between the Meitei and non-Meitei groups along identity markers based on ethnicity, language and religion have become intractable, and the healing process will be long and slow. Will fraternity ever return to Manipur?

In the strife-torn state, the violence and bloodshed, which erupted on May 3 (the proximate reason being a court order related to the demand to accord special Scheduled Tribe status to one ethnicity), has led to around 120 people being killed, hundreds injured and almost 50,000 residents being displaced. Many of them are now seeking shelter in relief camps.

The BJP-led state government has been accused of ineptitude in the discharge of its primary responsibility the safety and security of all citizens and residents of the state. What is even more damning is the accusation that the manner in which the state government used ‘force’ was less than objective and impartial. Reports from Imphal indicate state complicity and a selective orientation in the enforcement of law and order that was tacitly supporting the majority Meitei sentiment. Police armouries being raided in a ‘friendly’ manner is a case in point. Rumours and fake news are rampant and Manipur’s proximity to Myanmar heightens the anxiety about the involvement of external actors.

In relation to the state and the application of force, a foundational tenet was advanced by German sociologist Max Weber, who posited that in a normative framework, the state is the sole entity which has the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, and that this is essential for ensuring the security of the state and its citizens. However, the global proliferation of small arms and light weapons and the rise of potent non-state entities has resulted in the dilution of the efficacy of the state and its monopoly over the use of force. Furthermore, in many cases, the state has also been culpable of transgressing the lakshman rekha (the line of judicial and moral probity) due to ineptitude and/or turpitude, and this has very negative consequences for the internal security fabric.

In the Indian context, the Manipur violence, which is still simmering, represents a very serious deterioration of the internal security index of the country. On a scale of 1 to 9 where nine would represent civil war conditions one would index Manipur at 7 for the manner in which the internal security rapidly spiralled downward May 3 onwards and the state remained a mute spectator. The amber lights were flashing and Manipur was abandoned.

In a broad survey of post-1950 India and its internal security failures, the Manipur violence will join the Nellie massacre of 1983, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the post-Godhra riots of 2002.

In each of these tragic and shameful episodes, the state was unable or unwilling to ensure the safety and security of its most vulnerable citizens due to incompetence, indifference or tacit complicity. The worst-case scenario is where the state, which is constitutionally mandated to be the repository of force and to deploy it for the safety and welfare of the citizens, turns rogue and in a reprehensible inversion of the Weberian maxim the trusted guardian turns into a feral predator.

The horrendous enormity of the Manipur tragedy and the murderous vengeance it has unleashed are captured in a news report from early June. It reads: “On June 4, a seven-year-old boy named Tonsing Hangsing, son to a Kuki father and a Meitei mother, who was injured by a bullet, was burnt alive in Imphal, Manipur.” The details are heart-rending. The boy was hit by a sniper’s bullet when he was near a window in an Army relief camp and the desperate mother sought to move her son in an ambulance to the nearest hospital. The mother’s Meitei identity was no protection and it was reported that an irate mob set the ambulance on fire and the occupants were burnt to death.

Bemoaning the loss of his son and wife, an anguished Joshua Hangsing said: “The Meitei mobs did not spare them. Despite them being Meitei, my son was not spared. This is the first time I am seeing such a level of inhumanity.”

Highlighting the complete breakdown of law and order in Manipur, Lt Gen L Nishikanta Singh (retd) tweeted on June 15, “I’m just an ordinary Indian from Manipur living a retired life. The state is now ‘stateless’. Life and property can be destroyed anytime by anyone just like in Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, etc. It appears Manipur has been left to stew in its own juice. Is anyone listening?”

It appears that New Delhi is finally listening, but alas, after much bloodshed and destruction. At a time when India is being projected abroad as the ‘mother of democracy’, some of its children feel orphaned and very insecure.