Manipur Government’s Attempt To Reopen Public Transport Hits Kuki Roadblock

Imphal/Guwahati:

Civil society groups of Manipur’s Kuki tribes in Kangpokpi called a shutdown of the district after the Manipur government announced public buses would run from the state capital Imphal till this district, and towards Bishnupur and Churachandpur.

Members of the Kuki tribes gathered at Gamgiphai, a key thoroughfare between Kangpokpi and Imphal West district to block the government’s attempt to restart public transport.

Ng Lun Kipgen, spokesperson of the Kangpokpi-based Kuki civil group Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), said the escalating tension in Manipur has prompted the Kuki tribes to strengthen their unwavering opposition to what they termed as a “partisan and baseless” government directive.

Mr Kipgen alleged Chief Minister N Biren Singh has been constantly trying to derail their “movement”.

“In his fourth desperate attempt, the chief minister has sought to impose vilified and unfounded ideas upon us, further exacerbating the divide,” Mr Kipgen said.

He said the directive was a deliberate attempt to vilify the Kuki tribes and undermine their struggle for a separate administration. “The order is not only unwarranted but preposterous,” he said.

The Kuki Inpi also criticised the government’s decision to let public transport resume between hill and valley areas, calling it a reckless and insensitive attempt to restore public services without addressing the underlying political tensions.

The internally displaced people from both communities in Manipur are yet to return home. The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs in Manipur who have been spearheading the call for a separate land carved out of the state bordering Myanmar, and Kuki groups such as CoTU have said talks are not possible unless the chief minister quits.

The Kuki tribes also blame him for allegedly starting the Manipur crisis; they have reinforced this allegation with the leaked tapes controversy, which is being heard in the Supreme Court.

Kuki leaders have said a “political solution” in the form of a separate administration should be discussed first before any other issues, including the return of thousands of people living in relief camps.

Meitei leaders have, however, cited this condition placed by the Kuki leaders as a deceitful attempt to set up a narrative for an ethnocentric homeland demand; the Meitei leaders’ argument is that talks can go on while at the same time people living in difficult conditions in the camps can also return home since no territory is ethnic exclusive.

The demand for an ethnocentric homeland is untenable and obsolete in Manipur, where at least 35 communities co-exist, a group of activists and academics from the violence-hit state bordering Myanmar had said at a side event of the 57th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva in October.

Manipur is seeing a growth of divisive forces that play the cards of myopic ethnicity leading to the undermining of historical and legal foundations of the state’s pluralistic demography and territoriality, Dr Arambam Noni, associate professor at Imphal-based DM University, had told the UN gathering.

“Due to the increasing weaponization of ethnicity by a section of elites and academics, as seen in the case of an exclusive narrative for a Kuki Lebensraum in India-Myanmar-Bangladesh region, there is an apparent design to proliferate inter-ethnic tension as an instrument to segregate people exclusively on ethnic lines,” Dr Noni had said.

There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 250 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want the separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.