“No communal riot in India can last for more than 24 hours without the consent of the State,” retired IPS officer Vibhuti Rai famously said, summarising the opinion of senior officials. The violence in Manipur is more along ethnic, than communal, lines -- although religious undertones exist – but Rai’s thumb rule holds for the sensitive border state. The Manipur violence shows no sign of abating even after 75 days. Draw your own conclusions.
Silence should not usually be construed as consent but how else do we read Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s continuing silence on Manipur. In governance, indifference is a form of consent, bordering on complicity. Leaders are punished more heavily for their acts of omission than for acts of commission. In our system, accountability rests with the head of the political executive, as he controls the Indian State. The State must either be able to persuade or force people to stop violence. It cannot lose its monopoly over violence or be seen as weak and dithering. The Prime Minister cannot run away from a problem. He must take tough political calls. That’s the job.
The Prime Minister also sets the example for others in government. His second-in-command, Amit Shah, has also shunned any mention of Manipur in the last few weeks. He had earlier travelled to Manipur and promised to return in 15 days. As with the visit of Army Chief Gen Manoj Pande to the state, violence flared up after Shah ended his Manipur trip. His administrative measures – of appointing a retired IPS officer as the Centre’s security adviser to the state or posting a new DGP from Tripura cadre -- have demonstrably failed. The political steps – of involving Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma or using the IB Director as an interlocutor with Kuki groups -- have been futile.
Political directions to the security forces defy common sense. A ‘Maginot Line’, in the form of a buffer zone, is being built between the hills and the valley. This is meant to physically separate the two ethnic groups and thereby reduce violence. This measure has been partially successful, but this manner of suppressing violence is self-defeating. If security forces burn bridges between communities instead of building them, the idea of peacebuilding and political reconciliation becomes even more distant and difficult. The state’s new DGP has asked police personnel to join duty in areas where their ethnic brethren are in majority, further deepening the cleavages within the State apparatus and the society.
The Kukis are demanding a separate administrative mechanism for their areas, whether it is a new state, a Union Territory, some local council outside Manipur State, or merger into Greater Mizoram. None of these seem plausible. The Meitei are staunchly opposed to it. Chief Minister Biren Singh enacted a charade of a resignation drama – and its withdrawal – as the BJP’s central leadership looked askance. Biren has now firmly established himself as a leader of the Meitei community, which publicly burns effigies of Modi and Shah but never of Biren. Conceding the demand of the Kukis is further complicated by the longstanding claim of Nagas for a sovereign Nagalim, which includes parts of Manipur. That would jeopardise the talks between the Union government and Naga groups, which have not moved beyond the showpiece framework agreement signed in 2015.
Instead of resolving problems through deft politics, a ham-handed handling of a vexed issue with the help of bureaucrats, spooks and politicians of poor standing has compounded the challenges. The worst sufferers in this clumsy blundering by the top political leadership have been the security forces. The Assam Rifles, which operates under the army, is being targeted as part of a vicious campaign by the Meitei. The army finds itself unable to handle pressure from protesting locals in the valley and has lost its credence as the final security instrument of the Indian State. The central armed police forces have been left manning the buffer zones, dividing not just two ethnic groups but also the police and Assam Rifles. In this mess, there has been no concerted effort to retrieve the 4,500 weapons taken away from police armouries. Any attempt to subdue violence is bound to fail unless these weapons are retrieved. But political interests dictate otherwise. In its affidavit, the Manipur government avoided any mention of the lost weapons, forcing the Supreme Court to ask for their exact number.
Another challenge for the security forces is that this is not an insurgency, as has been the wont in the Northeast. The men with weapons are not attacking the Indian soldier, they want to target people of another ethnicity. But what is being destroyed in the bargain is the Indian State. As the Indian State loses its monopoly over organised violence, the higgledy-piggledy response of the Modi government is disturbing. Statecraft calls for a strong hand when warranted, and a capaciousness to negotiate thereafter.
Indira Gandhi had been Prime Minister for only a month in 1966 when Mizo rebels under Laldenga attempted to take over the Mizo hills to prevent the induction of 18 Assam Rifles into Aizawl. Army units could not get into Aizawl, and heliborne reinforcements to augment the Demagiri garrison failed. The air force was called in, and it strafed hostile positions twice that day, scattering the rebels. Later, the air force strafed the hostile positions for five more days, allowing the Indian State to reassert its authority. By 1986, the same Laldenga had embraced the democratic process and become Chief Minister of Mizoram.
A better-resourced and more powerful State today ought to do better. But the government is more outraged by a discussion on Manipur in the European Parliament than by the continuing humanitarian tragedy in the State. If only it noticed that Modi’s silence rings louder than the words of the members of the European Parliament. It is the silence of consent, the consent of the Indian State to the ongoings in Manipur.