Two recent Manipur-related events have demonstrated how dangerously touchy prolonged conflicts can make their stakeholders. The first was a statement made by the director-general of Assam Rifles, lieutenant-general Vikas Lakhera, during a
seminar at Manipur University last month. In his address, Lakhera said that 42,000 immigrants had crossed over from Myanmar since December 2024. He also said AR, which is in charge of the Indo-Myanmar border, has biometric records of all these immigrants.
Tellingly, there were two contrasting responses to the officer’s statement. Many Meitei organisations as well as the former chief minister, N. Biren Singh, took to social media proclaiming that their claims that there have been influxes of illegal people from across the border into Manipur have been vindicated. Singh also claimed that these immigrants were now in detention camps.
The other set, essentially Kuki-Zo organisations, presumed that Lakhera’s statement was directed at them and came out with a string of press statements in denial and called for a White Paper to prove the allegation.
Those who were at the seminar, or watched the video recording of the event, know that Lakhera did not use the adjective, ‘illegal’, while describing these immigrants; nor did he say that the crossover happened only in Manipur, or named Kuki-Zo tribes as those crossing over.
After two years of bitter conflict, people are evidently extremely touchy, making them prone to reading between the lines even at the cost of missing what is actually in print, to then jump to conclusions preconditioned by their sensitivities. The AR issued a clarification in the press, and the parties withdrew from their respective stances.
The second event is a little more concerning. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties came out with its own version of the causes and the consequences of the Meitei-Kuki-Zo conflict in a report that it pompously described as an independent people’s tribunal.
This report has stirred the proverbial hornets’ nest. Again, the responses came from two opposite camps. Amongst the prominent organisations that have praised the report publicly is the Kuki National Organisation, an umbrella group of 17 Kuki militant outfits now under a renewed suspension of operation agreement with the Centre and the state government. But Meitei outfits saw the PUCL report as a cover-up of the alleged involvement of Kuki militants in the conflict.
Some of the damaging allegations against it are as follows: the report did not take cognisance of photos and video clips showing the presence of armed Kuki militants taking part in the May 3, 2023 rally in Churachandpur against the demand by a section of Meiteis for inclusion in the scheduled tribes list; the report is also silent on why the Nagas, who also took out the same rally in districts dominated by them, did not join the conflict; it also implies that violence started in the valley and spread to the hills even though pictures and video footage that were viral on the internet hours before riots in some pockets in Imphal began point otherwise; it plays down the poppy cultivation menace as a factor behind the conflict and, instead, implies that this crop had the covert blessings of people in the administration; most of the report’s claims also echo past public statements by KNO’s suave spokesperson. The report does appeal for peace, but its many insinuations have made the appeal appear farcical to many.
Lakhera was able to put to rest the tension arising out of his statement with one clarification. But the PUCL will need much more to convince its critics that it did not cherry-pick data to ratify its preconceived picture of Manipur’s conflict.
Pradip Phanjoubam is editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics