Manipur High Court Ex Chief Justice

To a question by NDTV over reports that some civil society organisations are threatening internally displaced people, or IDPs, from returning to whatever is left of their homes to rebuild them with government support and security, Justice Mridul said, “The IDPs are not their [some organisations’] hostages. Let’s be clear.”

“They can return home provided we create an environment conducive to their returning home, which brings us back to the rule of law. Once law and order are restored and there is a rule of law, and groups have been disarmed of all the illegal weapons that they possess, either looted or smuggled, and there are talks under the auspices of the government, that’s the only way forward, external factors apart because I am keen on Manipur. I am sure there are external factors, but I am not an expert on that,” said Justice Mridul, who served as Manipur High Court Chief Justice from October 2023 till his retirement last month.

At least 50,000 people from both the valley-dominant Meitei community and over a dozen distinct tribes collectively known as Kuki, who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, have been displaced since ethnic clashes began between the two in May 2023.

The Kuki tribes also include ‘Any Kuki Tribes’, which was added to the Scheduled Tribes’ (ST) list in 2003 when the Congress was in power in the state, led by Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh.

Justice Mridul repeated what the Supreme Court said in November 2023 about “keeping the pot boiling”, while hearing a court-appointed committee’s report that flagged troubling actions by civil society organisations that contributed to keeping ethnic tensions simmering in Manipur.

“… The reason why I believe that there is somebody interested in keeping the pot boiling is that every time the situation seems to be normalising, there is a fresh injection of violence, which leads me to believe that there are forces – and if I were to believe the General, the forces are external, not internal. Even if the forces are external, they do have collaborators locally who ensure that the agenda of keeping Manipur burning is pursued vigorously,” Justice Mridul said, referring to a presentation by Major General Rajan Kochhar (retired) at the Delhi event.

“I am beginning to subscribe to the idea that there does seem to be an invisible hand. Whose hand is it is not clear to me yet. There could be a number of factors at play,” he said.

Justice Mridul had worked closely with the state authorities while he was in Manipur. He said though there have been periods of absence of violence, at no stage since May last year has normalcy ever been restored in Manipur.

“… You must understand the separation of powers. My interaction with the executive was purely to ensure that the judiciary was able to discharge its function. These are not political discussions, they can never be political discussions. But the impression I gathered was that – I may be wrong, I may be terribly wrong – nobody seems to be in command of the vessel,” he said.

“The point is that till such time there is disarmament, till the time that the weapons that were looted, snatched, whatever, are recovered, and till the time people with arms smuggled from across the border are intercepted and the weapons are taken from them, there is no possibility of peace returning to Manipur,” Justice Mridul said. “Armed people are not going to permit you either to return to your homes or live peacefully.”

“Trust Is Important”: Major General Rajan Kochhar (Retired)

Major General Kochhar said trust is the most important factor to normalise Manipur.

“Without trust, there will be all kinds of forces – you can call them internal, you can call them external – who will increase the divide. After I have listened to everybody here. Everybody agrees that there should be peace there. How this peace has to be brought about is the big question,” said Major General Kochhar, VSM, who retired after 37 years of service.

“A large number of people have come from Myanmar to Manipur… It is very important for the local community to identify militants among the civilians. It is the responsibility of the community. Unless we do that, we are creating buffer zones within our own state. That cannot happen. A buffer zone is created between two countries that are at war to prevent that war from escalating. Golan Heights, Syria, there was a buffer zone. Lebanon, the Blue Line, there was a buffer zone… How can you have a buffer zone within your own state and restrict the movement of people from one place to another? That is the larger question which I think both the communities need to answer,” Major General Kochhar said.

Dr Arambam Noni, an associate professor at Imphal-based DM University and one of the speakers at the Delhi event, further extended his comment on the “untenable and obsolete demand” of an ethnocentric homeland which he made at a side event of the 57th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva in early October.

Ethnocentric Homeland

“Ethnopolitical leaders are playing a dangerous game. They want to end overlapping spaces. When they end overlapping spaces in a state like Manipur inhabited by 35 officially recognised communities, some of which only have a population of 600 or 1,000 people, their existence is under threat. If we allow to end these overlapping spaces, they only aim to increase the demand for ethnocentric political spaces. And that is very, very dangerous. We’d be setting a very dangerous precedence by favouring an ethnocentric homeland because the Constitution does not really acknowledge the possibility of ethnocentric homelands,” Dr Noni said.

He said the question of whether the modern state can afford to allow the incessant movement of population across borders in the name of culture, or can the modern state accommodate them, needs an answer.

“Do you have a mechanism in the modern state system to accommodate these free-flowing movements of population, not only for cultural solidarities but also for territorial solidarity? That’s problematic. I think modern states normally do not have any such mechanism to deal with these continued, territorial trespassing of identities because modern states basically stand on fixed territoriality and sovereignty. What is happening in northeast India is the porousness of the fixed idea of a State.

“I don’t see any problem in the cultural transition of people across borders. But I see a problem in the continual reconciliation of identities for ethnocentric homelands. That of course will create a conflict with overlapping spaces like Manipur, which is a multicultural state. Having said this, I think our problem is very, very complex. The weaponisation of identity is not good because micro-identities are increasingly feeling threatened. That part must be acknowledged. The media or the academic society must not get trapped in binaries that they believe… because there are other aspects of our social world, and we must also acknowledge the resources that can unite people, not divide people.

No Comfortable Life In Relief Camps

“Institutions need to be democratised. There should be fair development and redistribution of resources… The other suggestion that I want to make is – as Justice Mridul has already said – that you must allow IDPs to return home because that’s their fundamental right. You cannot give them a comfortable life in relief camps,” Dr Noni said at the panel discussion ‘Understanding the Barriers of Northeast India and Manipur Violence: The Way Forward’, organised by TMP Manipur, Meitei Alliance, and Manipur International Youth Centre.

This is the second winter the internally displaced people in Manipur are spending in relief camps.

The 10 MLAs of the Kuki tribes and the Zo people and their civil society groups have said talks are not possible unless Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh quits. The Kuki tribes also blame him for allegedly starting the Manipur crisis; they have reinforced this allegation with the leaked tapes controversy.

Kuki leaders have demanded a political solution in the form of a separate administration before any other issues, including the return of thousands of people living in relief camps, can be discussed.

Meitei leaders have cited this condition to allege that Kuki leaders are engineering an ethnocentric homeland demand; the Meitei leaders’ argument is talks can go on while at the same time people living in difficult conditions in the camps can also return home since no territory is ethnic exclusive.

There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley districts.

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 have cited discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis as some of the reasons behind their call for separation.