A Durable Settlement

Manipur has suffered unbearable losses due to political machinations. How long will settlement, reconciliation and healing take?

- Nitin Sethi

MOURNING the loss of more than a hundred dead and thousands displaced, Kuki and Meitei people, the two communities at loggerheads in Manipur, have been forced to parade their losses to an ignorant rest of India. And to a Union government that pretends in public to be uninformed and unfazed.

Within Manipur, the armed groups of both communities, the political and civil society leaders, and two societies that live a legitimate mix of anger, fear and anxiety, battle it out. Both sides rightly believe the State is not there to fend for them. And that it is too pulverised by the politics of those who run the State to focus on speedily drawing the societies back from the conflict.

They all know that the license to impose violence has never been the exclusive domain of the State in Manipur—armed groups of many shades and vintage have always shared that license with the government. In fact, the State has actively distributed that license to some in order to break the monopoly of others.

In this game of crafting a nation-state, of continuous negotiations over the strategic distribution of the right to commit violence, the State’s own armed agencies have always been perceived as players and contestants, not neutral umpires that impose peace.

Both communities have known these truths for generations. The rest of India has always preferred not to acknowledge Manipur’s age-old truths. Acknowledging them means accepting with shame that some geographical locations in India are governed by Constitution lite.