Manipur News

Are peace talks in the northeast destined to remain a process until finally the process itself becomes the goal? This is a question which cannot miss any serious observers of the region. The answer seems to be in the affirmative, not merely from watching the Naga peace talks, but also the entry of so many other groups in Manipur into this process, in their case without any clear cut route charted out, or even the blueprint of what might be the ultimate solution, known. In fact, for many of the groups entering the fray now, it was never very clear what they were fighting for when they were fighting, unlike say the Nagas who were never in any doubt what they wanted from the time the elite leadership amongst them from the then Naga Club met the Simon Commission when the latter visited Nagaland in 1929. It is also unimaginable these latter groups would be able to come up with any credible, tangible goals, justified by the history or the present, now that they have supposedly stopped fighting. And yet the juggernaut has been set rolling and the “peace process” would carry on, perhaps for a decade, or even several decades, by which time a generation or two would have changed guards, and whatever little tangible goals that can be said to have yoked these disparate groups together would have been lost sight of.

From the state’s point of view, maybe this is a solution in itself. If this indeed is the case, then it would be much more fitting to refer to these peace talks as “peace offensives” rather than “peace initiatives”. In an oxymoronic sense, such a “peace” would become a “war” strategy. We would say this is a legitimate strategy too – that is, legitimised by war. Ultimately, the object in a war, be it open or cold, tepid or by proxy, is to win. But even if it is legitimate under the sweeping war philosophy encapsulated by the terse and familiar phrase: “everything is fair in love and war”, another vital question would continue to haunt. It may be legitimate, but does this necessarily guarantee success? It is for this than for any other reasons that we have reservation about the present push. After a settlement has been reached, would the larger problem of insurgency be solved conclusively, considering also the fact that the “peace offensive” still fails to impress many quarters that matter. After seeing how the state government treated the few dozen militants who it managed to wean away from the rebel camp, the prospect of convincing more of the benefits they can reap from hanging up their jungle boots and saying farewell to arms would have receded even farther away. There is a little more to be said on the “peace offensive”. Probably the new initiatives, especially of enlisting some factions of a hopelessly splintered underground group operating in the valley area, was meant as bait to lure bigger fish. Those with some experience in angling (and many of us are as children with our improvised fishing devices), would know it fully well that when the bait becomes too obvious, particularly when the menacing hook is not covered entirely by the bait, no fish would bite. We are sure those who fashioned his new initiative would know this too. Our hunch is, nobody seriously waging the insurrection war would bite this bait. And like it or not, the chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and here are the obvious weak links of this strategy. Rather than a strategy, what we propose in its place is the offer of an open-minded and open-hearted parley that laid a premium on a solution honourable to all parties involved.

But this “process as end” story is a doubled-edged sword which can cut either way. If “peace talks” are doomed to be reduced to this, insurgency itself is trapped in this same syndrome. This juggernaut too is become a perennial self-sustaining process which follows its own unique logic. The constant fights over government contract jobs by these non state players through their proxies, the need for harsh diktats to ensure public compliance to their agendas rather than voluntary participation etc, are some symptoms of this decay corroding away the soul of the insurrection. Under the circumstance, if the “fish baiting” games are to be abandoned, the “one-up-man ship” war games too must end. What is called for is a one to one discourse, which can give way to more hard-headed dialogues to finally pave the way for a negotiated settlement.

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IMPHAL, July 27: KIYC defeated YOSC by 1-0 in today’s match of Imphal East Super Division football league held at YOSC Khabeisoi. Nawaz Khan scored the lone goal for KIYC.

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IMPHAL, July 27: UPSA defeated RAU by 4-1 goals in today’s match of Imphal East 1st Division held at KOSC ground, Khabeisoi.

The goal scorers of UPSA were Raju and Amarjit while Bikash scored the lone goal for RAU.

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The question of identity and ethnicity tends to seep into every discussion on practically any social issue in Manipur today. True enough, nobody can deny there is very much a crisis of identity in the state and this will be confronted every time somebody is asked what his understanding of the term Manipuri is. Does the term denote a culture, a domicile status, ethnicity or a language? On the last proposition, there ought not to be any dispute. The term does signify a language. But it is in any attempt to interpret it beyond the confines of the language it represents, that we begin skating on thin ice. The postmodernist approach to the problem of identity as elucidated by French Philosopher, Michel Foucault, as an IFP editorial briefly touched on sometime ago, should throw valuable light. Foucault, author of such classics as “The Birth of the Clinic” was basically reinterpreting the extremist feminist movement in Europe of his time and the Marxist class based social structuring. However, the logic he arrives at in his analysis of these issues should be quite comfortably applicable in the ethnic situation as well. Very briefly, Foucault diagnoses the problem of the traditional understanding of identity to be in its being necessarily linked to power. The assumption has always been that there will always be a binary opposition between the strong and weak with the strong grabbing all power, and this power equation would be linked up or else colour the identity issue. Hence there would be the male-female, proletariat-bourgeoisie, oppressor-oppressed dualities and within these broad categories there would also be a numerous and progressive sub-fragmentation of categories: hill-valley, tribal-non-tribal, Meitei-Mayang and so on, so that the identity question becomes an extension of these concentric circles of power struggles. In Foucault’s model, power politics and identity are de-linked. He even flags the idea that there is nothing intrinsic and permanent about identity and that it is a free floating, perpetual negotiation with the ever evolving social reality.

Let us try applying the postmodernist scale and indulge in a little deconstruction of some of the traditional understanding of identity in our situation. As for instance, if we de-link the term “Manipuri” from its traditional ethno-political connotations and then view it through the postmodernist prism, what would it mean? Would it still be ethnic specific? The same approach may be employed in trying to understand the term Indian, and indeed a lot many liberals have been doing just this. It is also true that there have been counter currents to such approaches to the issue. An analogy perhaps will place the proposition on firmer grounds. The contrast between the term “Manipuri” or “Indian” linked to all their traditional ethno-cultural-political connotations and the same terms as free floating processes of negotiations that Foucault calls identity, would be similar to the contrast between the concepts Hindutva and Hinduism or Zionism and Judaism. While Hinduism is open-ended and free-floating, Hindutva is not. The first is religion, the second is a politics of power at its core.  The same is the truth in the contrast between Judaism and Zionism. Hence, the term “Manipuri” in the traditional understanding is linked inextricably to its own politics of power, and the proposition that this editorial is putting up before all interested in a discourse on the issue is, we should introspect and see what it would be like if we genuinely tried to deconstruct our traditional understanding of the term and make it a free floating negotiation into which all of us clubbed into a common predicament by history and geography can find a respectable place. What we run into may in all likelihood be a new reality purged of many of our festering and endemic problems. The same experiment may conjure up a new visage of the Indian identity as well.

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History cannot be the sole issue, neither can any belief inbrotherhood past or present. The ultimate deciding factor in the present political face off between Naga integrationists and Manipur integrity defenders will have to be rooted in the current reality. It will be good if the two can exist side by side without the need for each to obliterate the other. As we have been consistently arguing in these columns, we see no reason why this cannot happen given the will, imagination and most importantly, accommodative spirit. Why must the boundaries of identity, both cultural and political, be rigid and absolutely non permeable. They can work in non-antagonistic concentric circles, whereby someone can be a Meitei, but also Manpuri, an Indian, an Asian etc, and ultimately a human being at the outermost circle. What then is the current reality? Two perspectives are obvious: One, the aspiration of the Nagas to come under one political roof and two, the survival question of Manipur, whereby its two geographical constituents, the valley and its surrounding hills cannot but remain together under a single administrative control.

In a reversal of the popular portrayal of the scenario, we would even say that the Manipur integrity issue is not about emotions at all at its core, although on the surface it does appear to be so. Quite to the contrary, it is about hard-nosed political geography of survival deep down. As we have argued so many times before, a valley and its surrounding hills must complement each other and form one composite living space. The valley, any valley for that matter, will never let go of the hills that surround it, for it is a matter of its survival. Asking Manipur to give up its hills, would be like asking Israel to give up the Golan Heights. They will never agree, for it would amount to asking them to disintegrate voluntarily. The rightness or the wrongness of their refusal becomes only a matter of perspective and subjective judgement. But if Israel’s right to exist, or Manipur’s right to exist, are to be acknowledged, their right of control over territories extremely vital to their survival cannot but also be acknowledged. To not acknowledge this would amount to war. Leave aside the Israel parallel, but must this right necessarily have to limit the aspiration for Naga integration. The challenge must be to work out a political dispensation where Manipur integrity and Naga integration can happen simultaneously without crossing each other’s core interests. The manner in which even independent nations are melting down borders to evolve into common regional entities, gives hope that this can work.

If the engine that drives the Manipur integrity campaign is emotional only superficially, we would also argue, without attributing any value judgment, that it is the Naga integration movement which is emotional. Disparate tribes, discovering a fraternal bondage in a generic name may be a transcendental journey as Prof. BK Roy Burman puts it, but still it is nevertheless an emotional thread that is the binding force ultimately. It must however be acknowledged that this emotion is a powerful reality that must be factored into any lasting solution to the problem that is unsettling the region. The other reality is that this is the age of partnerships. We do not refer to only the Naga integration-Manipur integrity equation, but also to their relation with India. It does not have to be a binary antagonism always. As in all partnerships, conditions that suit each partner can always be worked out so that relations are cemented in mutual benefits and hopes. If a pride in the self and an all round prosperity can be guaranteed through these partnerships, what else is there to fight for. The ability to come to terms with these realities will be the key to the return of peace and normalcy. It will also be the definition of the true calibre in our situation.

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“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten, in the human kingdom, define or be defined” said wrote Thomas Szasz, capturing a concern of much of the hitherto inarticulate world of the modern times, in particular various native non-European and indigenous communities which have relatively recently come to belong to the modern literate world. The statement undoubtedly is profound. It says much of the notions and mechanisms of identity formation. We bring up this idea up in contemplating what postcolonial identity has been for various communities, in particular the indigenous world. It is not surprising that much of the identities we know of today were given and brought forth from within. Thanks to new energy given to scholarship in this direction, we are now cognisant of how much of the identities that have come to be internalised amongst not just outside observers who caused these identity formation but also communities given these identities, buttressing in the process, and contrary to what William Shakespeare implied in the famous statement in “Romeo and Juliet”, there is a lot in a name, for often it is the name which gives an identity. The Northeast was a nomenclature once defining a certain cartographical location on the Indian political and geographical map. Today it is an identity. The same can be said of the Arunachalis, Mizos, Nagas, Manipuris and Assamese, and as a matter of fact, Indian. Do these identities conform to ethnicity or do they signify domicile and citizenship status, are some of the problematic questions. Without going too deep into these queries, suffices it to say that once upon a time, people who today profess these identities, never knew of themselves by these identities. They were given these names by others to broadly define them, and today, many of those thus defined, would zealously defend these identities as their own intrinsic self understanding, even to violent extents.

That these understanding of identities have their liberal shares of inner tensions and hegemonies is also an undeniable fact today. Indeed, much of the conflict situations we witness in the region are a manifestation of these tensions within. Again, there is no gainsaying these understanding have a profound bearing on the way policies and programmes of the government are formulated and unfolded. This being the case, we are proposing a need to deconstruct these identities which although were given to the communities have crystallised solidly, and attempt a reconstruction in the manner that French philosopher, Jacques Derrida recommends. This is important, because the new identities thus constructed would be informed by inner needs and dynamics of the communities rather than imposed from outside alone. They would also have shed the redundant and at the same time incorporated answers to new challenges, which indeed different times always throw up. We can begin this process by asking some very basic questions like who is a Manipuri or Naga or Assamese etc. Honest and probing queries into these seemingly simple questions should bring in new and refreshing lights as to how many of the tensions within our societies can be resolved.

It goes without saying that this exercise must not mean the total rejection of what is already there. History can never be reversed and historical events cannot be erased. So if certain identities have evolved because of historical logic of a time, even if it meant identities forming out of nomenclatures assigned to peoples for the convenience of anthropological conveniences of outside researchers of the past, they have become engraved in indelible ink as historical experiences of the place, sparking off myriad chains of other historical events, which in their turns set off other chains of events and these too their own chains etc, in a never ending process. In other words, what has happened has happened and cannot be reversed. They have come to have strong historical roots of their own. But acknowledging the limitations of the circumstances they came into being and the consequences they have caused, should be the beginning of a new dawn of understanding of the way forward for our societies in resolving many of the issues of conflict embedded within. As for instance, new courses can be charted in which the old and the new understandings of identities can confluence and evolve more democratic and mutually acceptable ground for coexistence, and in time perhaps even evolving new identities which are inclusive of all stakeholders in an equitable way informed by the noble idea of justice for all.

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