In what could have been an anti-climax to a melodramatic Shumang Leela act (a traditional form of theatre in Manipur), 38 Meitei legislators took a six-point public oath-taking at the Kangla Fort, Imphal, on January 24. Unlike the four-generic resolutions passed by the State Assembly, and reportedly endorsed by 34-odd State legislators (this included a Meitei Pangal and five Nagas) three days earlier, the six-points oath (later endorsed by the Chief Minister of Manipur, N. Biren Singh) made explicit its communal overtones by castigating the ‘Kuki’ for unilaterally fomenting violence since May 3.
Everything other than disarmament
The six-points oath called upon the Centre to do the following: abrogate the tripartite Suspension of Agreement (SoO) that it signed with the State and Kuki-Zomi-Hmar militants since 2008; implement the National Register of Citizens but using 1951 as the base year; construct a border-fence across the India-Myanmar border; replace the Assam Rifles with other central paramilitary forces; delete ‘Kuki’ from the Scheduled Tribe list, and relocate ‘Kuki refugees’ in Manipur to Mizoram.
If these were implemented, they would not only further expose the vulnerability of the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups but would also effectively erase their long-standing protective discrimination benefits.
In hindsight, had the above points been played as themes of a Shumang Leela act to showcase what could have transpired in the real world, patrons of Shumang Leela would have been sorely disappointed by the inversion of its conventional themes, wherein brotherhood, tolerance and justice, among others, are sacrificed at the altar of collective self-love and perceived sense of insecurity.
Clearly, the legislators lost Tagore’s dream of ‘clear stream of reason’ and a fearless mind which should have animated their public action even as they allowed themselves to be consumed by the burning passion to protect the interests of the ‘Sanamahi’ and Meitei ‘community’. That this reflection and reasoned public action were missing from the legislators’ public action became apparent as the six-points oath failed to mention ‘disarmament’, which was one of the four resolutions passed earlier by the Assembly. This is glaring given that almost half of the 6,000 automatic rifles and over five lakh rounds of live ammunitions from various police armouries that were handed over to ragtag mobs are reportedly still with the Arambai Tenggol, the armed militia under whose diktat and supervision this oath-taking event was held.
This, and the fact that much of the arms and ammunition continue to be in the hands of armed militants across the divide, continue to be a key structural cause of this violence.
An abandonment of constitutional duty
Given the extensive reports of Arambais being involved in violent attacks against several Kuki-Zomi-Hmar villages, the legislators’ decision to publicly partake in the Arambais agenda only reinforces the partisan image and the role of the Meitei legislators in Manipur’s violence. There may have been applause following the Arambai Tenggol’s triumphant shout of ‘Manipur na yai phare (Manipur has done well’) in Kangla as they retreated to their camps in motor cavalcades after this event, but far from securing the interests of the Meiteis and protecting Manipur’s territorial integrity, there are signs of a sense of insecurity. If one is to go by the hostile responses on social media, this event has also sharpened the emotional, demographic and territorial divide between the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar and Meitei.
The immediate fallout of this was evident during the event as three legislators, who included Meghachandra, the President of Congress Pradesh Committee, were physically assaulted by the Arambais for attributing the violence to misrule by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the State. The muzzling of dissent and violent intolerance stems from this. That the Arambai Tenggol brooks no dissent and might unleash terror was also evident when its cadres vandalised the residences of human rights activist Babloo Loitangbam and a retired police official, Thounaojam Brinda, when they implicated the Arambai Tenggol for its role in this cycle of violence.
By giving in to the diktat of the Arambai Tenggol and Korounganba Khuman, its commander-in-chief (out of fear of being labelled ‘enemy’ and ‘traitor’ of the Meitei ‘community’), the Meitei legislators have abandoned their primary constitutional duty and oath to protect India’s Constitution.
This dramatic event is also remarkable for its symbolic and iterative significance. That an armed militia chose Kangla Fort as the site for public oath-taking demonstrates its determination to not only revive the glorious past of Kangleipak (the local name for Meitei Kingdom) from its symbolic and traditional seat of power, but also project this as a fulcrum to revive Meitei indigenous tradition, culture, and religion (Sanamahi). The event is also significant for another reason — that elected representatives of a democratic state, whose primary oath of allegiance is to the Indian Constitution, are very pliable and can be blackmailed under duress to capitulate to the partisan communal agenda of an unelected, and armed militant group. That elected legislators could be overshadowed in a democratic and constitutional state is disturbing as it strikes at the very root of the legitimacy of the Indian state.
Dangers of a radical agenda
The fact that this event was organised to convey a strong political message to New Delhi is clear as it happened within days of backroom attempts by a three-member team of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (headed by A.K. Mishra, a retired police officer and an interlocutor with Kuki-Zomi-Hmar SoO groups in Manipur), to persuade the Arambai Tenggol to either cancel or postpone the event. In its ambition to upstage the 38-odd Meitei legislators (plus the Chief Minister who later signed the pledge) as the bearers of democratic legitimacy, the Arambai Tenggol and this oath reinforced the communal and partisan agenda/interest of large segments of Meitei non-state actors and their legislators in targeting the ‘Kuki’ as the problematic ‘other’.
Although the Arambai Tenggol is largely seen as a private militia (started and sustained under the patronage of Leisemba Sanajaoba, the titular king of Manipur, and the powers-that-be), it also represents a calibrated organisational attempt to revive Meitei indigenous culture, tradition and religion (Sanamahi). Much like the radicalisation of youths in Punjab in the 1980s under Bhindranwale’s Damdami Taksal, the Arambai Tenggol has succeeded in reorienting many unemployed Meitei youth to the cause of a sovereign Kangleipak under the veneer of reviving Meitei’s fast-vanishing indigenous religion, traditions and cultures such as traditional martial arts that focus on the use of sword, and a horse-mount dart as a weapon. In doing so, the Arambai Tenggol has galvanised popular interest and support in quick time. However, given that it operates in an insurgent space where the ‘radical’ agenda and interest of a motley of non-state actors including armed groups which espouse a sovereign Kangleipak intersect and often either coalesce or reinforce one another, the Arambai Tenggol is susceptible to manipulation and control by powerful social forces and political actors.
It is precisely here that one should be wary of the Janus-faced Arambai Tenggol. Allowing the mighty Indian state to capitulate to this armed militia, or other powerful social forces, just because it is amenable to cultural and nationalist appropriation by some vested parties in their electoral pursuit cannot be used as a ruse to denude what the eminent sociologist Michael Mann in a different context calls the ‘infrastructural power’ of the state — that is, the autonomous power to regulate state-society relations. Otherwise, this public event could turn out to be India’s Bhindranwale moment again.
Kham Khan Suan Hausing is Professor and former Head, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, and also Senior Fellow, Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal
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