<p>Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister for the Development of North Eastern Region, while replying to opposition barbs in Parliament, retorted – “Manipur is a situation which has been there for the last 25 to 40 years. So it’s not something that has been created by this government”, stamping the ongoing Manipur imbroglio as a legacy issue.</p>.<p>Many conflict analysts feel the hostilities in Manipur may terminate out of combat exhaustion on either side though the ethnic quagmire may remain frozen in a time warp. When internecine conflicts end without a formal cessation of hostilities, they unfreeze intermittently, and we have witnessed these umpteen times in Northeast India. The Meitei and Kuki-Zo strife may be dreadfully preordained as a future conflict trap with no palpable resolution. The confounding approach of the Centre and the BJP-led Manipur government treading water as mayhem continues unabated are pointers to this. The land of jewels is now more intersected by fissures and deeply fractured than before. With ethnic territories of the Meiteis and Kuki-Zos sharply marked by aspirations of identity layered by politics and an imposed violence, Manipur represents a cauldron state in India.</p>.<p>We have witnessed replayed scenarios. Homes are razed and burnt; people of all ethnicities are thrashed and marauded in a spiral of territoriality and revenge strikes. Weapons looted from state armouries and police outposts by both rebels and radicals are now awash in the region. No one knows the sequence or who ignited the flame. All ethnic groups converge periodically on Imphal thoroughfares. Meiteis claim to have been ejected from several districts to take shelter in the Imphal Valley stronghold while Kuki-Chin-Zo cry hoarse about being forced to leave Imphal Valley and take shelter in their home districts.</p>.<p>Intermittent resurgence of unrest and ethnic tension, as in Manipur, has turned the region into an open mayhem zone. Conflicts hibernated to erupt later are not unfamiliar occurrences in the region where different ethnic identities have repeatedly been weaponised along colonial fault-lines to serve the interests of a power elite.</p>.<p>Tension is so overlapped that an upheaval in one nation’s border state rings a distant bell in perimeters of unwary neighbours. Any ethnic or political upheaval in Manipur invariably has a domino effect in Myanmar or Bangladesh. Kukis and several other tribes, aggressively dovetailed by British missionaries in colonial times, remain both Christian and Indian or Myanmarese. Naga tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur have kin across the border in Myanmar’s Sagaing region. Most Kuki-Chin-Zo inhabitants with homelands in Manipur and Mizoram have brethren in Sagaing and Chin State in Myanmar. The corollary to this complex ethno-geography mixed with displacement politics is that upheavals in one region have an escape valve in another nation.</p>.<p><strong>Border politics</strong></p>.<p>Closer home, the BJP’s offensive on minority persecution in Bangladesh has kept the political pot boiling in West Bengal’s border districts. Incessant flux and mayhem in Manipur has the wherewithal to trigger a reaction in Mizoram which has strong indigenous and filial bonds with Manipur’s Kuki-Chin-Zo groups.</p>.<p>Bangladesh and India both have been affected with a steady influx of Rohingya refugees as Myanmar’s military junta started evicting them from Rakhine state. And with reports of Myanmar’s junta having lost control of its border with Bangladesh to the Arakan Army (AA), another stream of Rohingya exodus may be expected into Myanmar’s neighbours, read Bangladesh and India. Existing political instability in both Myanmar and Bangladesh has also made the borders more porous. Dhaka’s tacit and overt support for Rohingya actors has only facilitated the rise of militancy and radicalism in its resolve to repatriate them to Myanmar. This is also a case of a frozen conflict reigniting at intervals.</p>.<p>Besides ramping up army adjuncts and paramilitary companies, there has been no significant intervention by the ruling dispensation in Imphal. The vision of a brave new Manipur publicised during the 2022 state polls seems to have fizzled down. Intertwined border areas are often susceptible to geopolitical stress. The roots of these conflicts in the Northeast date back to colonial and post-colonial boundaries where traditional homelands of various ethnic groups were frowned upon by regimes. Thus the ethnographic mess in Manipur has an indirect bearing on Myanmar hinterlands which adds to the subsidence in the sub-region. Preserved conflicts are like trinkets of intensity. You have abounding maps, uncertain boundaries and belligerent posturing by various groups, all attributing to a region’s restive borders. Everyone is crying <br>wolf but all under plausible deniability and scribbling an edgy primer.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a commentator on society and politics)</em></p>
<p>Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister for the Development of North Eastern Region, while replying to opposition barbs in Parliament, retorted – “Manipur is a situation which has been there for the last 25 to 40 years. So it’s not something that has been created by this government”, stamping the ongoing Manipur imbroglio as a legacy issue.</p>.<p>Many conflict analysts feel the hostilities in Manipur may terminate out of combat exhaustion on either side though the ethnic quagmire may remain frozen in a time warp. When internecine conflicts end without a formal cessation of hostilities, they unfreeze intermittently, and we have witnessed these umpteen times in Northeast India. The Meitei and Kuki-Zo strife may be dreadfully preordained as a future conflict trap with no palpable resolution. The confounding approach of the Centre and the BJP-led Manipur government treading water as mayhem continues unabated are pointers to this. The land of jewels is now more intersected by fissures and deeply fractured than before. With ethnic territories of the Meiteis and Kuki-Zos sharply marked by aspirations of identity layered by politics and an imposed violence, Manipur represents a cauldron state in India.</p>.<p>We have witnessed replayed scenarios. Homes are razed and burnt; people of all ethnicities are thrashed and marauded in a spiral of territoriality and revenge strikes. Weapons looted from state armouries and police outposts by both rebels and radicals are now awash in the region. No one knows the sequence or who ignited the flame. All ethnic groups converge periodically on Imphal thoroughfares. Meiteis claim to have been ejected from several districts to take shelter in the Imphal Valley stronghold while Kuki-Chin-Zo cry hoarse about being forced to leave Imphal Valley and take shelter in their home districts.</p>.<p>Intermittent resurgence of unrest and ethnic tension, as in Manipur, has turned the region into an open mayhem zone. Conflicts hibernated to erupt later are not unfamiliar occurrences in the region where different ethnic identities have repeatedly been weaponised along colonial fault-lines to serve the interests of a power elite.</p>.<p>Tension is so overlapped that an upheaval in one nation’s border state rings a distant bell in perimeters of unwary neighbours. Any ethnic or political upheaval in Manipur invariably has a domino effect in Myanmar or Bangladesh. Kukis and several other tribes, aggressively dovetailed by British missionaries in colonial times, remain both Christian and Indian or Myanmarese. Naga tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur have kin across the border in Myanmar’s Sagaing region. Most Kuki-Chin-Zo inhabitants with homelands in Manipur and Mizoram have brethren in Sagaing and Chin State in Myanmar. The corollary to this complex ethno-geography mixed with displacement politics is that upheavals in one region have an escape valve in another nation.</p>.<p><strong>Border politics</strong></p>.<p>Closer home, the BJP’s offensive on minority persecution in Bangladesh has kept the political pot boiling in West Bengal’s border districts. Incessant flux and mayhem in Manipur has the wherewithal to trigger a reaction in Mizoram which has strong indigenous and filial bonds with Manipur’s Kuki-Chin-Zo groups.</p>.<p>Bangladesh and India both have been affected with a steady influx of Rohingya refugees as Myanmar’s military junta started evicting them from Rakhine state. And with reports of Myanmar’s junta having lost control of its border with Bangladesh to the Arakan Army (AA), another stream of Rohingya exodus may be expected into Myanmar’s neighbours, read Bangladesh and India. Existing political instability in both Myanmar and Bangladesh has also made the borders more porous. Dhaka’s tacit and overt support for Rohingya actors has only facilitated the rise of militancy and radicalism in its resolve to repatriate them to Myanmar. This is also a case of a frozen conflict reigniting at intervals.</p>.<p>Besides ramping up army adjuncts and paramilitary companies, there has been no significant intervention by the ruling dispensation in Imphal. The vision of a brave new Manipur publicised during the 2022 state polls seems to have fizzled down. Intertwined border areas are often susceptible to geopolitical stress. The roots of these conflicts in the Northeast date back to colonial and post-colonial boundaries where traditional homelands of various ethnic groups were frowned upon by regimes. Thus the ethnographic mess in Manipur has an indirect bearing on Myanmar hinterlands which adds to the subsidence in the sub-region. Preserved conflicts are like trinkets of intensity. You have abounding maps, uncertain boundaries and belligerent posturing by various groups, all attributing to a region’s restive borders. Everyone is crying <br>wolf but all under plausible deniability and scribbling an edgy primer.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a commentator on society and politics)</em></p>
