Let Biren Singh go for governance’s sake

YOU will be strung up in the temple courtyard and then burned!” This slogan by activists of the Muslim League in Kerala is one direct impact of the Manipur violence. Sure, it shows up the communal cauldron that Kerala has become and the direction its minority-centric politics has taken. But more important is the lasting impact of the deaths and rapes in Manipur on the national psyche. In Chandigarh and Thiruvananthapuram and all across the country, the Christian community, often accompanied by the clergy, is taking out processions against Manipur violence. Some Muslim League workers, though later sacked from the party and arrested by the police, want to wreak vengeance on innocent Hindus of Kerala.

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The communalisation of the Meitei-Kuki conflict is essentially a case of failure of governance.

Is this actually what the N Biren Singh government of Manipur set out for? Is this polarisation the outcome of a plan? Or is it just a simple case of double-engine incompetence and misgovernance? Either way, the BJP government of Manipur has lost all moral authority to remain in power. Biren Singh should resign and be replaced at the earliest. The longer the Central Government tries to rationalise the continuance of Biren Singh, the more convincing the polarisation argument gets, particularly in the runup to the Lok Sabha polls. But, unfortunately, the Centre is not merely legitimising the Meitei-Kuki divide, but also validating a Hindu-Christian rift and inviting derision from the Christian West.

Anybody who understands the ethnic politics of the North-East would know that the Manipur clashes are ethnic and not communal, though Kukis are Christians and Meiteis largely Hindus. The warring parties are clashing over their primary identities — Meitei and Kuki — for land. The Kuki Scheduled Tribe gets many benefits, including reservation in jobs and education, that are denied to the Meiteis; and this tribe also gets to keep the Meiteis away from its abundant land in the hills. It was judicial intervention in favour of Meiteis that triggered a march by Kukis which ended in monstrous violence, including the sexual assault whose video clips have now gone viral.

There exist 300 camps with tens of thousands of displaced people — mostly Kukis, but also Meiteis. It is this context that has been communalised by politicians for easy consumption for the rest of the country. Secondary Hindu-Christian identities have been superimposed over a clash of primary identities for political convenience. This is politically expedient for the BJP where it has influence, where the “Hindu khatre mein hain” (the Hindu is in danger) logic works. But this polarisation suits the Opposition better. It has conclusively turned the ambivalent Christians against the BJP in places where the latter was trying to woo them — for instance, Kerala.

However, turning Muslims against Hindus in faraway Kerala is not a good idea in the long term. In fact, it has only proven the communal complicity of the Opposition parties that have let loose extreme religious hatred in a state which has never elected a BJP or a Sangh Parivar parliamentarian (and even the Kerala Assembly has had only one BJP MLA in its entire history). So, the BJP’s presence or Sangh Parivar’s political influence is not a precondition for so-called secular politicians to play the communal card. They do it first, thereby ensuring legitimacy for the Sangh Parivar’s accusation of minority appeasement.

But the communalisation of the Meitei-Kuki conflict is essentially a case of governance failure. The clash could have been averted by timely administrative and police action. But the Biren Singh government tried to make the most of the conflict, leading to one of the worst scandals of its own making. The attempt now is to hunt down all those who have circulated the ghastly crime’s video clips that have embarrassed the Central Government — another attempt to shoot the messenger and thereby the Opposition that has justifiably turned it into a political issue. If this gangrape is not a political issue, what is?

A case from a neighbouring northeastern state needs to be retold in this context: two groups were at each other’s throats in Meghalaya in 2005 and a young IAS officer volunteered to head the district administration to bring the situation back to normalcy. “Bringing long-lasting peace to one of the most disturbed and violence-prone areas of India is the most significant achievement of my career. I volunteered to take charge as District Magistrate (at the epicentre) when the state of Meghalaya was affected by the long-drawn civil unrest and ethnic conflict between tribal communities,” wrote the officer in an essay submitted for his master’s degree programme at the Harvard Kennedy School.

This officer could achieve peace because he was a neutral arbiter who didn’t belong to either of the clashing tribes. This essential governance tool devised by our founding fathers is terribly missing in Manipur. All India Services (AIS) officers are meant to serve their cadre or state first and not seek sanctuaries in Delhi or elsewhere. A large section of the AIS officers of the Manipur cadre is being badly missed when the situation has gone out of hand. Administrative and political bias is the greatest cause of blind rebellion. When a mass of people believes that it will not get justice from a biased system, it would have no qualms about taking up arms, fighting and dying.

AIS officers are supposed to be unbiased umpires in times of peace and conflict. That police armouries could be raided with impunity and looted arms kept by the insurgents only prove the complicity of the local police force. Again, the question arises: where are the IPS officers of the Manipur cadre who should have prevented such an unprecedented breakdown in discipline? Those who beat the drums of good governance ought to understand that even the basic instruments of the government — impartial officers — are now nonexistent in Manipur. Let Biren Singh go for the sake of governance.