A viral video of two women being paraded naked in Manipur—one of them is the wife of a Kargil veteran and was allegedly gang-raped—has finally jolted the conscience of the nation. But it has also raised serious questions over the complete failure of governance in the frontier state that holds the key to India’s success of its “Act East” outreach to Southeast Asia by land. That the culprits involved in the gang rape were arrested only after the video went viral several weeks post the gruesome incident points to the withering away of the state, both by design and intent and as a consequence of command-control failure. When the Chief Minister Biren Singh says publicly that it has not been possible to pay attention to this particular case of gang-rape and sexual humiliation because there are 6,000 FIRs filed by victims, he admits to the scale and intensity of the violence and the failure of his government (and the one at the Centre) to control it.
The police personnel are seen in the video as not just silent spectators but also abettors in a heinous crime—the mob is taking the two women away from them, and the police is seen as almost handing them over. The Manipur police is complicit in the entire cycle of violence because it got carried away by ethnic passions; nearly 5,000 assault weapons were given away (not looted) to rioting mobs.
In the past, only heavily armed insurgents in the Northeast, including Manipur, have occasionally looted some weapons in one-off successful raids on a far-flung police station. But during the May violence, there were no such insurgent raids—the weapons were just given away in thousands to marauding groups by policemen who are now setting up drop boxes and asking them to return those very weapons. There is, therefore, a strong case not only for strong specific disciplinary actions (against SHOs and Armoury officials) but also the selective disbandment of the force (as was done to the Bangladesh Rifles after the 2009 mutiny). But those policemen who stand accused for the severe dereliction of duty are actually enjoying political patronage, raising uncomfortable questions about the complicity of the higher echelons of the state government in targeted violence against a minority community.
This view is further reinforced by the obvious linkages between some senior politicians in the government and activists of groups who got police weapons and were then seen arriving at the chief minister’s residence to tear up his resignation letter—many now say this was a “public stunt” to pressurise Delhi into retaining the chief minister.
This raises a critical question: if the Central government is influenced by the furious protest of a few thousand people to retain a chief minister who has emerged as a sectarian Meitei hero but completely failed in his duty as the head of the state government, can we take the tall promises of “Sushasan” (good governance) seriously anymore?
At the peak of the 1980 Bengali tribal riots in Tripura, Communist chief minister Nripen Chakrabarty announced his firm commitment to tribal autonomy and followed it up with Assembly resolutions seeking Sixth Schedule provisions for the Tribal Autonomous Council which not only isolated the tribal extremists but have gone a long way to disincentivise the movement for a separate Tipraland (tribal homeland).
In Assam and Manipur, the ruling upper caste majoritarian elite has viewed tribal autonomy with suspicion, as some kind of a stepping stone to a future tribal state after the creation of Nagaland Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. But the Tripura experience is one of tribal autonomy turning recalcitrant tribespeople into stakeholders, upholding the territorial unity of the existing state and therefore worth emulating elsewhere in the Northeast.
The government’s failure to initiate an inter-ethnic dialogue in the early days of the Manipur conflict and its failure to control the violence has made conflict resolution a near-impossible task now because violence (like the one seen in the viral video) has only hardened attitudes and responses on both sides, with some Meitei groups even threatening to review the state’s merger agreement with India (a subtle hint at secession) and Kuki groups doggedly pushing for an administration independent of the state government.
The much-hyped narrative of “a war against poppy cultivation” which demonises the Kukis as a drug tribe conceals the involvement of powerful quarters (including relatives of senior ministers of all ethnicities) in protecting the Burmese drug trade. Poppy cultivation in Manipur, patronised by Burmese druglords like Zhang Zhi Ming, Lo Hsin Nian and the Wei brothers, has to be rooted out with effective crop substitution programs to help tribal farmers earn a decent income. But has the government taken serious steps against the existing narco trafficking? Why is the Itocha drug cartel in Manipur, run by relatives of some powerful politicians, and their role in marketing the Burmese-origin drugs, not probed? It is an open secret that Manipur’s “Kiran Bedi”, Th.Brinda, had to resign from her police job because she had tried to book a very close relative of a top ruling party politician.
Lt Gen Nishikanta Singh, a retired Manipuri officer of the Indian army, in a sad tweet, recently described Manipur as “stateless”, where “life and property can be destroyed at will”, and drew parallels with Libya, Syria and Lebanon. If Manipur—whose “eastern gates” hold the key to prosperity as the land gateway to Southeast Asia—sinks into what the Northeast’s top political scientist Sanjib Baruah refers to as a “durable disorder”, India’s Act East outreach will fall apart. That this does not dawn on Delhi decision-makers until the viral video shakes the nation out of enforced slumber is cause for worry.
Subir Bhaumik
Former BBC and Reuters correspondent. Acclaimed author on India’s Northeast