Patricia Mukhim is a senior journalist and the editor of Shillong Times. She is a writer and known for her social activism. Patricia has written a number of articles on the ongoing ethnic clashes in Manipur. During her recent visit to Kolkata, she took some time out and talked to Sudarshana Chakraborty from Groundxero on the conflict in Manipur. Excerpts from the interview. 

GX: Should we in the mainland see the ongoing conflict in Manipur as an ethnic civil war between the Meities in the valley and the Kuki tribes in the hills or as a clash between majoritarian Hindu Meiteis and the minority Christian Kukis? 

Patricia: This is essentially an ethnic conflict. It just so happened that some churches were burnt, but then some temples were also burnt, the Meitei’s temples and all that. So I think it is wrong to paint this as a Hindu versus Christian conflict. It is a conflict over resources, a conflict over land. Because as you must have heard that the Meiteis are restricted to 2000 square kilometres of land while the rest 20,000 sq km is in the hills with the Nagas and the Kukis. The Meiteis can’t buy land in the hills but the Kukis can buy land in the Imphal valley. So it’s a very inequitable sharing of resources, which was started by the British, and which India should have revoked, and started afresh, looking at the composition of the whole state and how people are actually one. Why do we have to divide people? You see this whole division of people into tribes and non-tribes has actually created a lot of heartburn.

GX: What we are seeing today is an intense hatred for the tribal peoples, particularly the Kukis, among the Meiteis. So, as you were pointing out, is this hatred recent or it has past historical roots?

Patricia: This hatred has been embedded, you know, for decades; it’s been boiling. We all knew that this would happen one day because there’s a limit to how much you can proscribe people within one territory and the population is growing. So there is this — this thirst, this hunger for land.

Besides, you know, a large area of the valley is also agricultural land. Now the railway is also coming. So there is huge pressure on availability of land but the population is growing. Where does the population go? For this, actually, some land reforms should have been initiated by previous governments, but of course, nobody will do that because it’s such a touchy matter.

GX: What has been the role of RSS in radicalising Meitei youths and integrating the Meitei society into its Hindutva narrative of anti-Christainty in Manipur and the North East?

Patricia: You have perhaps seen that interview of Karan Thapar with a gentleman called Pramot Singh. He is the leader of the Meitei Leepun [an organisation committed to preserving Meitei culture and tradition] and has been trained in the crucible of the RSS in Gujarat. He has been with ABVP and all that. So I think he brought in that culture. That enculturation into deep seated Hinduism.

But at the same time why do you ask for scheduled tribe status? The Meiteis are in fact a very progressive society, much more enlightened and educated because they’ve had access to all educational institutions, the best ones, they have Manipur University in the valley, they have the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences. What is it that they don’t have? The hills don’t have anything. So, if they already have had the best of everything, had more access to all the resources, state amenities, then why do they want the scheduled tribe status? Of course, we can understand, they want to buy land in the hills. But for that rather than becoming scheduled tribes, why not ask for land reforms?

GX: BJP came to power in Manipur with the support of the Kukis. 7-8 Kuki MLAs are from the BJP. The Kuki insurgent groups even appealed to their tribes to vote for the BJP? Why did they vote for the CM who has been demonising them — calling them illegal settlers from Myanmar, narco- terrorist etc.?

Patricia: They had a kind of a pact with Hemanta Biswa Sarma, the Chief Minister of Assam. Hemanta Biswa wants to emerge as the sole leader of the entire region. He wants to be the Chief Minister of the Northeast, not just of Assam. So, when you have somebody like that, who can cut deals, and do all kinds of things with militant outfits, then this is bound to happen. But I think now the Kukis themselves have realised that they cannot leave everything to the militant outfits only. The militant outfits cannot negotiate on their behalf. It has to be the people. The people of Manipur have to be taken onboard. The Kuki militants cannot cut deals anymore like that on their own because they do not represent everyone. They’re not elected bodies.

GX:  Also what can be the possible reasons for the CM Birendra Singh to rally the Meities against the Kukis now at this point?

Patricia: See, earlier on, the people, the valley people, have started becoming a little disillusioned, saying that he’s reaching out to the hills. I think he’s now in his second term doing all this to appease them. He feels that he has won over the Kukis, but his own people have felt a bit neglected. So now this is what I got after talking to some people from Manipur, they’re saying now he wants to appease the valley people. Because the 2024 elections are coming, so rallying his people together. And as I said earlier, politics is divisive. You can’t win elections by uniting people.

GX:  Looking at the chain of events and the role of the government in the state as well as centre, it doesn’t look like a failure of governance, but more like an orchestrated pogrom. What else can explain the looting of such a huge amount of sophisticated weapons from the state armouries?

Patricia: This has been allowed to happen. I’ve always said this, this has been facilitated by the police who are largely Meitei. And we’ve seen how they’ve been co-opted by the state. I wrote an article yesterday in the Assam Tribune about how police, the policing, the entire policing system has collapsed, because the police is again following the 1861 Indian Police Act, a colonial act, and acting according to that. It’s not a people’s police. They don’t care about the security of the citizens. They care only about protecting the state. Look at the number of security personnel that surround Biren Singh. Where are the same police to defend the defenceless, especially the Kukis. See, there are so many other people who have died, whose bodies have not been found. Some bodies are in the morgue, some people have been raped and killed. All these stories are yet to come out, and I don’t feel that people should be immured by hearing too many of these stories. We should continue to probe and we should continue to feel the outreach. It shouldn’t go to the back burner.

GX:  What in your opinion is the political intent of BJP in facilitating this armed conflict, when it actually is in power in all the North Eastern states?

Patricia: See, what they’ve done is, they’ve cut deals with quite a few of the militant outfits. So, the bloodshed, the violence has come down relatively in recent years. But now, what I fear is after seeing what happened in Manipur and how helpless people are, my fear is that this may spread to other states, because the Northeastern region is a region of conflict and there are a lot of guns everywhere. When these guys regroup, there will be no shortage of ammunition. As it is, ammunition comes from Burma, from China via Burma, Myanmar. So getting weapons is not a problem. But how will those weapons be used and against whom? That is a question now. Already we saw some violent incident happening in Meghalaya, the other day. So, you know, it will spread because people will see that the state has become complicit in some cases and unable to defend a different category of citizens from troublemakers, from miscreants, from murderers.

There are a lot of militant outfits. They’ve signed the so-called peace agreements, but we don’t know where the weapons are and they can regroup at short notice.

GX:  How do you explain the integration of the Meitei society into the Hindu nationalism project of the RSS-BJP?

Patricia: See, essentially they’re already Hindus and they feel a sense of superiority over the tribes. Biren Singh has been known to use his social media handle to say the tribals are illegal migrants, drug peddlers, poppy growers, junglees. He said all that. So he is the one who’s othering them. And his community [Meitei community] feels very good about that, they think that these people [Kuki-Zo] are intruders. They’ve never been citizens of Manipur, they’ve come from the Chin hills and now they are having access to all the resources of the state. That is what they feel. It has been put into their heads.

GX:  In the past we have seen conflict between tribal groups like Kuki-Naga conflict, Meitei- Naga conflict. How is the conflict today between Meiteis and Kukis different from the earlier ones?

Patricia: In the past you’ve had Kukis and Nagas going at each other’s throat in 1992, because of land, because the Nagas felt that the Kukis were encroaching into their homelands. Then that was done. Now it’s between Meiteis and Kukis, and the Nagas are maintaining a very studied silence in all of this, we don’t understand why; they’ve been told not to get involved in this because the Nagas also feel that the Kukis are not indigenous to Manipur. That is their stated position. So maybe the Nagas think that let the Meiteis have it out with the Kukis. We’ve had it out with them once.

GX:  How much is the Meiteis’ claim to get ST status, which triggered the conflict, justified in your opinion?

Patricia: In my opinion, it’s not justified, because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You become a Hindu. Of course, now a lot of Meiteis are trying to come back to the indigenous Sanamahi faith, their belief — the animistic beliefs. But that’s a long process.

 GX:  In the past we have seen Manipuri women’s glorious history of fighting against state terrorism. We all remember that protest banner: Indian Army Rape Us at Kangla Fort. What explains the current regressive role of the women in Manipur?

Patricia: You are talking about the Meira Paibis? The Meira Paibis [Women torch bearers, a womens’ social movement in Manipur] are facilitating this whole conflict by not allowing the security personnel, the army to even arrest the troublemakers, arrest those who were behind the violence, those militant outfit KYKL — very dangerous outfit. So by preventing the arrest of criminals, what are you doing? You’re enabling crime. You’re complicit in that. Should they not be tried? The law should apply equally to everyone. And then we have the law that you cannot prevent a public servant from doing his duty. So what are they doing? They were doing exactly that.

GX:  The women activists in the whole country looked up to them …

Patricia: The whole country looks up to them because the whole country does not study them intimately. I have written one article where I’ve said that when women are schooled in patriarchy, they act out patriarchy. And this is what has happened in Manipur. I’ve studied Meira Paibis, and I spoke to them. Most of them, most of the Meira Paibis, they’re not from the educated lot. It’s easy to brainwash them. I asked the educated Meitei women, why are you not with the Meira Paibis when they go around in the evening? They said, we have work to do. We come back from the office, we have to cook, we have to look after our kid’s education and all that. We can’t afford to go around hitting these electric posts and guarding. They call themselves social guardians. They want to guard the young people against drug addiction, alcoholism, and all that.

But, see, this also is something that is difficult to understand. In the past, we were told that they fought against the intruders — the British, and they fought against the Indian Army a lot, that historic stripping protest, up to that point, it’s fine. It is now getting very negative. Women allowing men to rape women from another communities.

GX:  How do you see the role of the mainland media in covering this conflict?

Patricia: Oh God. Some of them were complicit. Some of them pretended that they didn’t even know about the videos until much later, and then they did a turnaround, which was very surprising to me. So the mainland media will sensationalise everything. Once the sensation dies, they will forget about it. So I’m not very happy with this kind of coverage. It has to be a more sustained, more informed, more educated coverage that you give to the rest of India. Some understanding of the region, you know, because it’s difficult for anyone to understand this region. They are asking now why two groups of the same state are fighting. We have to look at their history, their cultural history.

Some of them, you know, will be there in Imphal Valley, will go to Churachandpur, speak to a few people. How much are they really getting? It’s not easy to do a story on any group if you don’t stay there for a while and don’t understand their culture and their responses because of their culture. It’s very important that you be there for a while. That’s why I’ve always said that when you report conflict, there cannot be a deadline. Because much research is needed, you know.

By just giving those reports, you’re not suggesting anything. Of course, you’re not supposed to suggest. What you’re reporting, are you’re trying to sensitise the government — National government. Because you’re the national media and because the national government has so much to do, so much responsibility. But, it doesn’t seem to have sensitised them at all, until the Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of the incident in that viral video.

GX:  Last question, why are we not seeing or hearing voices of the civil society groups, the intellectuals who can rise up beyond ethnicity?

Patricia: This was a question I have been asking also because Manipur used to have the highest number of NGOs on human rights, on women’s rights, on peace building. Where have they all disappeared? I mean, it is at such times that you need a civil society that can stand up and say, we are not going to take sides. In this conflict even the civil society has been completely polarised.

And this is happening across the country. It’s you against them, them against you. The polarisation has gone very deep, and it is affecting us mentally. It’s affecting our emotions, it’s affecting our psyche, so it spreads … its spread.