An influential civil society group of the Meitei community in Manipur has criticised comments by former Union home secretary GK Pillai in an article, in which he called for a criminal case to be filed against Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.
The Meitei Leepun in a two-page statement alluded to Mr Pillai’s comments as stemming from his close ties with the Kuki tribes.
“We never expect Mr Pillai to criticise the present government of Manipur and propose a dire consequence. The indigenous people of Manipur will never forget that the perpetrators of the present conflict, Kuki militants, signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement during the Congress-led UPA government and he was the home secretary dealing with northeast affairs,” the Meitei Leepun said in the statement signed by its chief M Pramot Singh.
“However, it’s not surprising that he was befooled by the kukis. It’s not the first or the last time that Kukis have engaged in distorting historical facts. For instance, the curious case of the Kuki rebellion of 1917-1919 which they presented as the Anglo-Kuki War to legitimise their imagined Kuki homeland within Manipur never actually happened,” the Meitei Leepun said.
“Their (Kukis’) academics have written extensively on it for decades to legitimise it and others have not left any stone unturned to validate that manufactured truth. Documents from the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) are readily available to dismiss such false claims. Fortunately for the rest of us without the western Christian tinted glasses, facts are objective and unchanging. Though Mr Pillai seems to have been heavily influenced by biases and experiences. It’s important to remember that feelings are not facts,” the Meitei Leepun said.
Similar to the controversial civil society groups of the Kuki tribes such as the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) and the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), which face allegations of having direct links with Kuki militants, the Meitei Leepun has also come under scrutiny in the Manipur crisis. All of them claim they are working only for the defence of their respective communities. If action is not taken uniformly, if action is taken against only one of them, it would be seen as biased amid the deep divide, they say.
“… Mr Pillai should not have (got) carried away with the post-Independence history-building efforts of the Kukis,” the Meitei Leepun said.
On November 20, Biren Singh blamed “some vested interests” for reigniting a new cycle of violence in Manipur, after having been relatively peaceful for three-four months, and criticised Congress leader P Chidambaram as someone who “created the present crisis”.
Mr Singh’s frontal attack came hours after Mr Chidambaram in a post on X suggested “the Meitei, the Kuki-Zo and the Naga can live together in one state only if they have genuine regional autonomy”, and blamed the Chief Minister for causing the crisis. Mr Chidambaram, however, removed the post after Manipur Congress chief Keisham Meghachandra requested him to delete it , amid the volatile situation in Manipur.
Mr Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2008 when he steered the highly controversial tripartite SoO agreement between over a dozen Kuki-Zo militant groups on one side and the Centre and the state government on the other, the Chief Minister has said. The Congress was also in power in Manipur at that time.
“I will say it openly. When he (Mr Chidambaram) was the (Union) Home Minister in the then Congress government, here in Manipur (Congress’s) O Ibobi was the Chief Minister. During their time, they brought a Myanmarese foreigner, Mr Thanglianpau Guite, a Myanmar-born who himself admitted in an interview that he contested an election for MP in Myanmar. That person is the chairman of the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) based in Myanmar,” Mr Singh said.
“I am surprised how Mr Chidambaram – there is a photograph, there is Chidambaram, then Union Home Minister, and here is Thanglianpau Guite, the chairman of the Zomi Revolutionary Army, who is from Myanmar – they never cared about people from the northeast, about indigenous people,” Mr Singh said, holding up an enlarged photo with a red circle on who Mr Singh said was Thanglianpau Guite seen shaking hands with Mr Chidambaram in a black suit.
Meitei leaders have alleged the SoO groups have been working to strengthen themselves over the years by taking advantage of the ceasefire, until a time came to engineer a violent attack for a separate land. Geopolitical analysts have speculated the Kuki armed groups were used as mercenaries to fight Meitei and Naga militants operating in the India-Myanmar border.
Kuki-Zo civil society groups such as the ITLF and the CoTU, and their 10 MLAs have joined the call for a separate administration carved out of Manipur, a demand also made by the nearly two dozen militant groups that have signed the SoO agreement.
This single demand has brought the Kuki militant groups, the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, and the civil society groups on the same page.
There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.
The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.