It was with a sense of mixed feelings that I watched the Phumdis that were lazying around the lapping waters of the Loktak Lake. I couldn’t fathom the same gait in the innards that had, in earlier times, awaited my arrival to the fabled land.
But I knew that the spheric grasslands were perhaps attempting to both showcase and message nature’s desperate cry to “hold hands” of encirclement, of togetherness, in a land where the Sangai had not so long ago pranced in gay abandon.
But deer are dear creatures and they dance only when happiness abound. Besides, the “roar” of the Pung Chollom and the “grace” of the Sagol Kengkhai had ceased as a result of a madness that had gripped a land that had known only love.
The head stag among the Sangai, I imagined from my window seat in the aircraft, had probably brought together the herd for what I thought could be a day of prayer. May better sense prevail over the people of the blessed land.
The aircraft was circling over Imphal airport in a bid to land. I sensed a hesitation.
Returning to a land that had welcomed countless of joyous visitors before an evil eye had cast a shadow over the “Emerald Land”, I wondered as to why the famed Sangai’s tears of dismay over the blood and gore that had overcome its land had not moved its people to shame, restrain and calm.
I had been to the “Land of the Sangai” on 3 October 2023, five monstrous months after mayhem had erupted in Manipur on 3 May that year.
Chronicling the events at the time (October 2023) by visiting Imphal, Churachandpur and Chandel, I had hung my head in distress. I felt that there was no way that the ethnic chasm that had taken place could be bridged. The divide was just too deep and reconciliation seemed impossible. Indeed, I wrote a series of columns which I had titled as the “Wail of the Sangai”.
But my very recent visit to Manipur primarily Kangpokpi and Senapati (7 May 2024 to 10 May 2024) came as a pleasant surprise. Now, there is a clear yearning for peace, at least among the common folk. The sense came through when I broke bread with the tribal people in their homes that I visited.
Hesitant at first, the villagers lamented that “enough was enough” and that peace had to be given a chance.
“But how is that possible”, I queried. It was not quite a revelation for me, but in any event I was informed that the conflict was simply the creation of a group of people in high places, ones who were benefitting from the unrest. It is this small but powerful interest group that was clinging onto power at the cost of lost homes, lives and chastity. Indeed, there were no naysayers among the simple lives that I met.
Twelve plus months were enough for them to ferret out the conspiracy.
But it was not as if there were no problems in Manipur, especially over land and land rights, perhaps even an illegal influx from across national borders. But these can be corrected by taking recourse to saner means. The manner in which the encouraging words were conveyed by very simple people were music to my ears.
But what is the practical way out? Where is that desperate door that most right thinking people are looking for?
It didn’t take me too long to realise that the people who I met and partook of their food were simply looking for a “twig of opportunity”, to grab and claw one’s way out of the quicksand that cruel fate had cast them onto. Unfortunately, the “proverbial twig” has to emanate from New Delhi.
I was the guest of the 16 Assam Rifles located in Maram. Its redoubtable Commandant, Col. Aditya Deo is an officer who has to be seen to be believed. An out-and-out workaholic, Col. Deo spends most of his time in the remote hamlets of his Area of Responsibility in the IGAR (East).
Col. Deo sits, chats, plays and eats with the people that he has been tasked to protect. In the three nights that I stayed with him, accompanying him everywhere he went, I couldn’t but hold back my amazement by the manner in which he had befriended the people of his parish. He knew almost everyone by their first name, knew about their children and their profession. Here was an Assam Rifles officer in the right place in the right time. And, when I queried about whether the Assam Rifles has the faith of the people of the area, I received the response when they joined Col.Deo, his wonderful Adjutant, Maj. Sherpa and I in a chorus singing “Yeh Dosti, Hum Nahin Torenge”!
But where is the “proverbial twig” that the people were yearning for? Yes, it was clear, as aforesaid, that it stopped at the doorsteps of New Delhi. But, is New Delhi aware that it could be the panacea that its citizenry in a strategically positioned state is looking forward to?
Mandarins are mandarins, as indeed are journalists. Unrest and crises provides fodder and relevance for both.
This conflict theorist is but a self-confessed student of India’s national security. Although he was in government for a period of time, he has no claim to officialdom that decrees.
He is certainly not a journalist. But he believes that were he to chronicle a situation, it must be his wont to first visit, listen and watch with care, mull over what has been gathered and then write or speak. It is one of the misfortune of the times that there are scribes who not only take sides (for reasons yet unknown or known to be yet!), but who pen diatribes without correct research, not to speak of visiting troubled hinterlands.
It is true that as AJP Taylor once said that “mobilisation for war is determined by railway timetables”. It is also true that there are groups such as the Arombai Tenggol are being mobilised. But the difference in the Manipur context is that the mobilisation has not happened because of circumstances that triggered World War-I, but because a few have ordained it.
It is, therefore, not impossible to change the railway timetables.
Yes, there is a “sense of abandonment” among many in Manipur. Unfortunately, columns cannot be concluded on mere platitudes that array only despondency. Certainly I, for one, sensed hope in the despair. Most importantly there is a clear longing for a “return of peace” among the people of Manipur.
New Delhi needs to get into a serious huddle with people like the Director General of the Assam Rifles, Lt Gen. P. C. Nair (which I am certain they are doing) and immediately form a committee of informed people from and about the North East and particularly Manipur.
One of the suggestions that this conflict theorist proffer is the “meeting of minds” of people from the Meitei and the Kuki communities who are settled in say Delhi.
There was a suggestion when this student of security visited Manipur in October 2023. It was to airlift people of the two warring communities to a place such as Guwahati or Shillong. It fell through because there was apprehension among the people that they would be targeted by their respective militias for hobnobbing with the “enemy”. But if residents of Delhi were to, without much ado, meet in Delhi (chaperoned by a central agency!) then there is no real reason for such fear. In the aftermath of such “meeting of minds”, there should be subtle press statements, appeals in the press and social media and if all goes of well then the committee under Gen. Pradeep Chandra Nair could send a peace mission alongwith members of both the Meitei and the Kuki communities to Manipur. It is the need of the hour. Pain of this dimension cannot be let to fester.
Also, an idea can never be said to be workable unless it is tried out in its entirety. The bane of today’s crop of policy makers is to dismiss almost everything by stating it “won’t work”.
For heaven’s sake didn’t Laldenga come back to reign in Aizawl swearing by the Indian constitution? Hasn’t peace returned to once restive Tripura? How has the Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma turned the tables on the once dreaded ULFA?
The village folk of Manipur, tired of the politically motivated turmoil that has been thrust upon them, pauses for a reply.
