In search of a face-saver in Manipur: Everybody loves a rift that yields rich political dividends

Manipur wavers on the brink of a truce. On Friday, members of the state government and the United Naga Council flew into Delhi for tripartite talks with the Centre. More than five hours of intense discussion ended with the “hope” that the economic blockade launched by Naga groups since November 1 may finally be called off. Yet both parties promised nothing.

Naga groups have persevered with the punishing blockade for over three months now, demanding that the state government roll back its decision to create seven new districts in the hill areas of Manipur. The Congress government led by Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh said its hands were tied - it could not make significant changes less than a month before assembly elections, when the model code of conduct was already in place. It did, however, agree to release Naga leaders jailed for their part in the blockade.

The United Naga Council, for its part, said it would discuss lifting the blockade at a meeting on February 7. Members of the council also said they would only accept the “unconditional release” of the Naga leaders, terming their incarceration “political arrests”. They also pinned their hopes on a second round of tripartite talks to be held on March 25, after the elections.

According to observers in the state, the talks were a face-saving exercise for the state government as well as the United Naga Council. After months of impasse, both needed to be seen working towards a solution. But a truce brokered by the Centre at this point will be temporary and makeshift at best, papering over intractable rivalries.

Polarised state

The Congress Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh presides over a deeply polarised state. Manipur, home to various tribes and ethnicities, has been riven by competing identity politics for decades. In the last couple of years, however, these rivalries are ranged along a single territorial faultline: between the people of the hills, inhabited by a number of tribes, including the Tangkhul Nagas, and the people of the Imphal Valley, dominated by the Meiteis.

The Congress government, which relies on its voter base in the Valley, has been accused of deepening this polarisation. In 2015, it responded to Meitei demands in the valley and hastily passed three contentious bills without consulting the hill tribes, who would be affected by them. Together, the bills put in place a regime akin to an inner line permit system over the whole state, aimed at keeping outsiders away.

They drew violent protests from tribal groups in the hill areas, which had separate protections cordoning them off from the valley. The new legislation, they felt, would enable the densely populated valley to encroach on hills and usurp ancient tribal rights to land.

Last year, demographic anxieties in the hills were intensified by the government’s decision to create seven new districts that would split up older Naga-dominated districts. Naga groups protested, claiming the move was aimed at damaging the integrity of Naga ancestral lands. A major sticking point was the creation of Sadar Hills district, answering an old demand of the Kukis, a hill tribe.

Once again, the decision was taken suddenly, and the government skipped the mandatory process of consultation with the hill tribes. The Naga agitation has now been folded into the larger set of grievances in the hill areas.

The impression gaining ground over last few months is this: that Singh’s government answers the concerns of the plains while turning a deaf ear to the hills. Consolidating its predominantly Meitei vote base, the Congress seems to have forsaken votes from the hills, apart from the sliver of support it may get from the Kukis.

The growing alienation has played into the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party and other rival parties, which have made inroads into Naga-dominated areas. So an ethnic and territorial divide runs the danger of turning into a political divide.

Of divides and dividends

The breakdown in communication between Imphal, the state capital, and Senapati, the Naga headquarters in Manipur, is now almost complete. Naga leaders holding the blockade say they have lost trust in the state government, so talks are not possible without the Centre’s mediation.

This should not come as a surprise – just days before the talks, Congress legislators were speaking of declaring the United Naga Council an unlawful organisation. So it is unlikely the state government entered talks in a spirit of reconciliation.

The Centre’s mediation at this juncture could force a temporary reprieve from the blockade, which has choked off supplies of essential commodities and sent prices soaring for months now. And Naga leaders could be forced to call off an increasingly unpopular protest.

But the bitterness between the hills and the plains needs to be addressed by the state government, at the local level. It may not be in the interests of any political party, however, to dissolve a rift that yields such rich political dividends.