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By Com. Akashneel, MA Arts & Aesthetics, JNU
In spite of the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration’s attempts to thwart a public discussion on the ongoing inter-ethnic conflict that erupted in Manipur, COLLECTIVE JNU Unit’s event on 18 May saw spirited participation. It is estimated that up to 60 civilians have died, several churches have been burnt and entire villages in the hill districts evacuated due to the violence in Manipur.
Nandita Haksar, veteran human rights lawyer and author of Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in Northeast India, and Dr. Praem Hidam, who teaches law, governance and citizenship at Ambedkar University, Delhi, were invited to speak on the ‘burning’ issue of Manipur at Ganga Dhaba—this was the adjective used by the JNU administration to stop the discussion from taking place. Many students and young scholars assembled after dinner to listen and ask questions, in violation of the JNU Registrar’s circular cautioning against participating in the event.
As per media reports, the current violence stems from the opposition of Kukis and other tribes to the dominant Meitei community’s demand for ST status, which would eventually guarantee their procurement of purchase rights of land and forest areas in the reserved hill districts. According to Dr. Hidam, this apparently uncomplicated narrative of inter-community conflict, which appears from the outside as each ethnic group’s attempt to safeguard its own identity, is only a facade for corporate power trying to carve up the state. Dr. Hidam connects the current turmoil in Manipur to the recently implemented Environmental Impact Assessment rating system and pro-corporate environmental clearance policies. With substantial funding from foreign neoliberal corporations, he fears that soon the people’s notion of the ‘land as identity’ would be transformed into ‘land as property’, whose perks would only be enjoyed by a handful of the wealthy individuals of the two communities. The corporate plundering of these natural resources, with the assistance of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the state and the Union level, would only worsen the impact of the conflict, leading to serious instances of human rights violations.
Dr. Hidam argues that merely preserving ethnic groups’ cultural integrity may ultimately prove to be inadequate in the face of corporate intrusion. Neoliberalism makes things worse by reducing even ethnic identity to a commodity which can be exchanged for a share of the corporate pie. This presents a significant challenge to those who see an inherent value in defending their cultural integrity.
According to Dr. Hidam, the recent communal violence has unfortunately not fostered any new sense of solidarity; instead, it has created a violent rift in the psychological life of the community. In this process, the individual inadvertently adopts fascistic tendencies, attempting to impose his/her singular vision of how the community should be reconstructed. In doing so, the individual sacrifices the autonomy and individual capabilities of community members on the altar of an ‘imagined collective’. This pursuit of a fictive community leads to the rise of totalitarian inclinations and authoritarian traits within the political landscape.
Nandita Haksar points out that since the 1980s, human rights violations in large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America has been blamed on a new category of ethnicity—‘not imperialism, not colonialism, not capitalism, not class, but ethnicity’. Weaving biography and factual narrative, Haksar reflects on her experience as part of this ‘ethnic politics’, as a lawyer for the Naga human rights movement, the blind-spots of the nationalist framework that it emerged in response to and sought to overcome and the blind alley it has gone up today. Continuing where Dr. Hidam left off, Haksar also shows that similar ethnic articulations in Kashmir has ultimately left the Valley exposed to corporate exploitation after the abrogation of Article 370 without any murmur of protest.
Haksar speaks about the need to find a new vocabulary for ethnic politics tied to an alternate vision of development that serves people’s needs. Instead of being satisfied with representation within the State at the cost of opportunistic political compromises, all groups must find a space for discussion outside of the State. It is here that unity can be built, as was done in the late 80s when different ethnic groups came together to resist the military repression being unleashed under AFSPA and President’s Rule in the north-eastern states. Speaking of autonomy, sovereignty or separation without addressing these concerns will only lead to more violence.
Pointing to the way forward, Haksar argues that the conflict in Manipur today is fueled by questions on citizenship, refugees and so-called ‘illegal’ migration. With reference to the Burmese influx into the states of Manipur and Mizoram—the neighbouring country of Myanmar (earlier known as Burma) is currently riven by the most atrocious army rule with parts controlled by the military junta and others by Aung San Suu Kyi’s provisional government—Haksar argues that the Indian State must take responsibility for their well-being as refugees, not treat them as ‘illegals’. She reminds us that the current eruption of violence in Manipur will become a justifiable reason for the State to conduct the malicious National Register of Citizens (NRC), which would in turn invariably lead to an unjust manipulation of figures. The solution would be to recognize those entering the state as refugees, issue identification documents to them as is being done in Mizoram and ensure their basic rights being guaranteed. This will also reduce the anxieties of the dominant sections of the local population as such ID cards will not be the same as granting citizenship or permanent ownership of land—this is a temporary solution till conditions of democracy are restored in Myanmar.
Several students who gathered raised pointed questions and enriched the discussion. COLLECTIVE resolves to continue fighting for the space of democratic discussion, in our campuses and in society at large. Only the people united can resist the divide-and-rule policy of the State, pushed down at the behest of its corporate backers.
