Close to three years after mindless ethnic blood-letting broke out between the Kuki-Zo group of tribes and the majority Meitei community in May 2023, overt violence has ceased in Manipur—but the state remains bitterly divided physically and psychologically. Over 60,000 conflict-displaced people from both sides of the divide continue to languish in several relief camps, unsure of their and their children’s future. They have also become prone to depression and even suicide cases among them are on the rise.
The trouble is, both the warring sides continue to see and push for amelioration of their side of the suffering and their understanding of what a solution should be, missing out in the process the fact that the losses and sufferings brought by the violence is shared on both sides. They also tend to forget that Manipur is multi-ethnic, and a solution cannot be a bilateral matter only between them. Another major community, the Nagas, have begun asserting this, and all need to note this seriously.
Any reconciliation would have to begin with a comprehensive plan for the displaced on both sides to return to their abandoned homes and rebuild their lives. This would also mean opening up the highways for free movement either way for all. The responsibility for making this happen cannot just be of the government alone, but also by what conflict resolution and mediation expert John Paul Lederach called “the moral imagination” of the people in his book of the same title. It contends that just as hostility begets hostility as a response, goodwill will be reciprocated with goodwill.
If one side, for instance, unilaterally opens up and welcomes back displaced people, or assures free passage to those wishing to access health facilities in Imphal or outside the state, the iceberg of mutual suspicion would begin to melt, paving the way for a settlement of the crisis across the table. The side to first exercise empathy and see their own sufferings shared by the other side and take courage to reach out, is the one blessed with moral imagination—not the one to blink first in this masculine contest for belligerency.
There will probably be entrenched, vested interests of those who reap a sense of power and other benefits from the conflict. They would therefore want its continuance—if not as open violence, then as a ‘frozen conflict’. These are the elements, as and when they become evident, that the government must tame even if use of the State’s coercive power becomes necessary.
Reconciliation will not be easy, but it’s not impossible. There have been atrocities by both sides and, as in any conflict, there are hawks and doves within. But only the hawks are heard and seen. Again, in a charged, conflict-ridden atmosphere, even the doves often speak the hawks’ language without actually meaning them. The inference is that what’s seen and heard cannot be the summary of the mood of this entire conflict landscape, although many parachute journalists and NGO fact-finders have ended up trying to make it seem so, complicating matters.
Once the displaced have been allowed to return and reclaim their homes, and free movement is ensured across the ‘buffer zones’ established by the government, the larger issues that caused the conflict can be addressed and settled.
Among these are the questions of illegal immigration and unequal development between the state’s valley and the hills. Both of these and more will have to be dealt with, but only after establishing their exact nature and extent. There would be illegal immigrants without doubt, but the number may not be as overwhelming as is often made out to be. The underdeveloped Chin state in western Myanmar, where this immigration is said to be originating, is itself very sparsely populated. In light of this, however, the tradition of villages splitting and spreading among the Kuki-Zo tribes will also have to be discontinued.
There is also the developmental disparity between the hills and the valley. But, here too, a false binary has made this difference seem acute. The tendency has been to compare a hill district township or village with the capital Imphal to claim this disparity. If the comparison were to be between a hill district township or village with a valley district township or village, there would be little or no disparity.
The poppy menace, another oft-cited cause of the present trouble, will have to be stopped unconditionally. Even the option of introducing controlled legal poppy cultivation is unlikely to work, for the legal farmgate price of opium is between ₹850 and ₹3,500 per kg depending on the quality, while in the other illegal narcotics market, the range is between ₹60,000 and ₹80,000.
The biggest challenge, however, will be bringing in all stakeholders to a consensual, participatory truth-and-reconciliation exercise. It is here that all sides can share the traumas they carry, and discover others’. In that telling and hearing of each other, a doorway to a peaceful resolution can become visible.
David Rieff offers some valuable advice in his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies. As psychologists vouch, individual memory is problematic—for a person can remember things that did not happen, or forget those that did. Collective memory is even more problematic, for it is memory passed on by someone else or another generation. It also becomes ‘editable’ to suit the present needs and historical narratives.
The trouble is, forgetting the past is often seen as a betrayal. But Rieff reminds us that remembering the past can also often be toxic for the present. The memory of a trauma can be weaponised by those who benefit from perpetuating past animosities. Sanitising traumatic memories of this toxicity by placing them in the correct context is vital.
That Japan is able to put to rest its memories of the two atom bombs of 1945, just as the US has done of Japan’s Pearl Harbour attack of 1941 so that the two countries can become close allies today, is a lesson for all seeking reconciliation.
Pradip Phanjoubam | Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
(Views are personal)
(phanjoubam@gmail.com)
