Manipur's Lost Year Shows No Sign Of Ending

The mood has changed among the tens of thousands of displaced Manipuris. From anger and melancholia, they have turned to utter despair. Therein lies a Freudian warning

- PRADIP PHANJOUBAM

THE latest cycle of ethnic strife between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zos in Manipur will be a year old this May 3. The violence has already claimed more than 200 lives and displaced more than 60,000 people, yet there is no sign of a conclusion.

Sporadic exchanges of gunfire at the foothills continue between armed volunteers, at times adding to the toll. The state government is seemingly as clueless as ever; the Centre too still does not seem to see the matter as being urgent enough to step in and use its might to bring the situation back into the hands of the law.

The reality is that there has been ethnic cleansing on both sides. There are no Kuki-Zo tribes left in the central Imphal valley, and similarly, there are no Meiteis left in the townships of the Kuki-Zo-dominated foothills. The mountains beyond the foothills are where the Nagas are.

Other than these broad categories of ethnicities and their geographical locations, there are also several other communities domiciled in the state, and all are adversely affected by the conflict.

The Imphal valley is under the modern land revenue law introduced in 1960, when Manipur was still a Union territory. It is open to settlement by every Indian and therefore always had a mixed population, though dominated by its original inhabitants, the Meiteis. The hills were left outside the purview of modern land laws and generally considered exclusive to its hillmen inhabitants, though no law explicitly spells this out.

The number of Kuki-Zo people displaced as well as property losses among them is greater than the Meiteis displaced from foothill townships.