Everything You Should Know About Manipur Conflict: Abhijit Chavda (Transcript)

So that’s point number one. The history of Manipur, like I said, is at least 2000 years old. Some versions say it’s at least three and a half thousand years old. And there is a written record of the kings of Manipur, and this record goes back at least 2000 years. It’s the chronicles of the Manipuri kings, the Ningthouja dynasty and various other dynasties.

And every single king in the past 2000 or so years is recorded, the names are recorded. And all of these kings belong to one ethnic group. This was the Meiteis. So the Manipuri language is the language of the Meiteis. All of the Manipuri kings in the past 2000 years were Meitei kings.

We know MANIPURI DANCE, which is world famous. Everyone knows Manipuri dance. It’s one of India’s major dance forms. Which ethnic group is the originator of Manipuri dance? Again, it’s the Meiteis.

Manipur gave the world the game of polo. Polo, the oldest polo ground in the world is in the city of Imphal, it’s around 2000 years old. Which ethnic group is the originator of polo? It is once again the Meiteis. So I could go on and on about this, but I hope you can see the pattern that whether it’s Manipuri history, whether it’s the Manipuri kings, whether it’s the Manipuri language, whether it’s Manipuri culture or civilization, all of it has been created by the Meiteis. The Meiteis have resided in Manipur and ruled Manipur for at least 2000 years.

Now, there’s another ethnic group in Manipur, the Nagas, they are also the indigenous peoples of Manipur. So, the indigenous people of Manipur are the Meiteis and the Nagas. These two ethnic groups, even though now they have separate identities, they have the same origin.

So, a long time ago, at least 2000 years ago, maybe three and a half thousand years ago, Manipur — Manipur is a hill state, okay, it’s situated in the foothills of the Himalayas. The valley region, the Imphal valley region, though technically it’s a valley, it’s almost 900 meters above sea level, so it too is a hill region, it’s a high altitude region. And more than 2000 years ago, this valley region was flooded, okay, it was underwater. And then slowly the waters receded and the people who lived in the hills, in the hills of Manipur, some of them started migrating to the dry part of the valley region and the first part of the valley, where dry land was first formed is called the Kangla and that’s in the heart of Imphal city today, there is a major fort there, which is at least 2000 years old.

So, some people in Manipur, in the old days, started migrating to the valley region after the waters receded and some people stayed in the hills. So, that’s how this division was created in the eyes and in the minds of historians between the hill people and the valley people, but they were the same people.

And there were seven clans among the people of Manipur, the ancient people of Manipur and the king of Manipur who would typically reside in the valley and the seven clans were the clans of the Meitei people and you had various tribal groups as well, who were also the same people, but who eventually became the hill people.

So, this is the origin of the Nagas and the Meiteis, who were still regarded as brothers because they have the same origins. So, eventually the Nagas, their languages became slightly different, the Meitei language became slightly different and that’s how you have this linguistic diversity in Manipur.

So, that is in brief the history of the origin of the people of Manipur, the Nagas and the Meiteis, same origins, same people. Now, the Manipuri kings, they have a long and very complex history, lots of kings and all.

The kingdom of Manipur has had various sizes and shapes over the past two or so millennia, sometimes it’s been larger, sometimes it’s been smaller, expansion, contraction. There were times when Manipur, the kingdom of Manipur included parts of Nagaland, present day Nagaland, it included parts of present day Burma, at least up to Mandalay and further beyond, maybe even up to Rangoon. There were times when the kingdom of Manipur included parts of present day Yunnan, which is currently under Chinese occupation.

So, in the 17th century, the Manipuri king Khagemba conquered parts of Yunnan and brought back Chinese prisoners of war. So, that tells you how large Manipur was. If you go to Mandalay in Burma, you will see that there is an ancient fort there, that was built at least about a couple of hundred years ago and it is essentially a replica of the Kangla fort in Imphal. That tells you how much Manipur influenced Burma and other surrounding regions.

So that’s something, the conquest of Yunnan, of China, that part of China is something that happened in the 17th century. In the 18th century, you had this great flowering of Vaishnava culture in Manipur. The king responsible for that was King Bhagyachandra, Rajarshi Bhagyachandra.

And then you had the decline of Manipur, which began in the 19th century. The seven years of devastation, the Chahi Taret Khuntakpa, which was the Burmese invasion and occupation of Manipur for seven years, which began in 1819 and went on until 1826. So, this happened because there was infighting and improper succession among the kings of Manipur, which made Manipur politically weakened and militarily weakened and the Burmese took advantage of this and conquered Manipur.

So, they took away lots of Manipuris as prisoners of war and those settled in Burma and they still live in Burma. The Burmese Meiteis, lots of Meiteis and Manipuris ran away from Manipur, they settled in parts of Assam, parts of Bengal, some of them even lived in Sylhet in present-day Bangladesh. These are the Vishnupriya Meiteis and so on.

So, after the Burmese were ejected from Manipur in 1826, there was still the threat of Burmese aggression and possible Burmese reconquest and at that time, the British East India Company had a presence in Bengal. So, the king of Manipur was forced to take help from the East India Company, the foreign occupiers of Bengal. The Manipuri king was forced to take their help in order to protect his kingdom from the Burmese.

So, this was the beginning of the British involvement in Manipur. There was a Treaty of Yandabo in the first half of the 19th century and then Manipur becomes a British puppet, a British Basal, there is a British political agent in the court of the Manipuri king and that’s where British interference in Manipuri affairs starts.

So, historians will tell you that in the middle of the 19th century, the Manipuri king settled a bunch of Burmese tribals in parts of Manipur. That’s what historians will tell you, that’s what history will tell you. It’s actually something that was done at the behest of the British and the Manipuri kings were at that time in no position to say no to the British.

The British made the Manipuri king settle a bunch of Burmese tribals in parts, in a certain part of Manipur, the southern part of Manipur. So, this is the first influx, small tiny influx of Burmese into, Burmese individuals into the kingdom of Manipur in the 19th century. At that time, the population was still very small, very minuscule. So, the British interference in Manipuri affairs continued, it grew slowly over time and then Manipur made one last bid for freedom in 1891, the Anglo-Manipuri war. Unfortunately, Manipur was defeated. The king of Manipur was sent into exile to the Andamans, we don’t know what happened to him, what happened to his body, obviously he died there, but no record of what his actual fate was.

And the Manipuri Yuvraj, the crown prince and the general of the army who belonged to the Thangal tribe, the Naga Thangal tribe, Yuvraj and the general were hanged in the heart of Imphal in front of the defeated population as a mark, as a measure of humiliation and to show who was the new boss. That’s what happened in 1891.

The Meteis fought the British and they gave stiff resistance to the British in 1891. To punish the Meiteis for this, the British forced the Manipuris, the Meiteis to live in only the Imphal valley. They were denied access to other parts of the kingdom. So, this is a British policy that began in the aftermath of the Anglo-Manipuri war in 1891.

And this is where the apartheid regime starts. The Meiteis are confined by British policy to 10% or 6% rather of the entire kingdom of Manipur. And then the British started settling Burmese tribals, troublemaking tribals into Manipur. So, these Burmese tribals that I am mentioning belong to the Zo Chin or Chin Zo tribe. I think the Zo-Chin tribal community, which is not just one tribe, it’s a bunch of ethnic groups of various tribes. I forget the tribal names and all, but you can look it up.

So, the British started settling these Burmese tribals in Manipuri territory in southern Manipur. At that time, southern Manipur was the abode of the various hill tribes of Manipur, who are now called the Nagas. So, these migrating or this influx of Burmese settlers, they ethnically cleansed — brutally and violently ethnically cleansed the hill people, the Nagas from southern Manipur, who established their presence in southern Manipur. So, this is something that happened after 1891 in the end of the 19th century, in the beginning of the 20th century, the first two, three decades of the 20th century, you had this major influx of Burmese tribals, all engineered by the British, and they were all converted to Christianity.

And at the same time, the British started re-engineering the demographics of India’s Far East and North East on an industrial scale. So, they started Christianizing Nagaland, they started Christianizing Mizoram, and they used various forms of coercion and inducement to convert people to Christianity. It was done as an act of colonialism. British would take advantage of starvation-like conditions, which they would engineer, and then they would force people, they would bring in relief materials, food supplies and all, but they would force people to convert in exchange for being given relief.

And they would allow only people who had converted to Christianity to become the hill tribes, to become hill chiefs, to become the chiefs of hill tribes. So, that’s how they started the process of Christianization.

And Mizoram became more than 90% Christian by 1950, right after the British left. Nagaland took slightly longer, the 90% mark was reached, I think, around the 1980s. And initially, there was this major resistance among the Mizos and the Nagas to being Christianized, but eventually, they all, you know, the resistance was broken.

And look, I have nothing against any religion. I have nothing against Christianity. If somebody wants to voluntarily take up a different spiritual path for their own benefit, or because they feel the need for doing it, they have the right to do it. Whether it’s Christianity, whether it’s any religion, it’s perfectly fine. I have absolutely nothing against that.

My issue is with this colonial practice of re-engineering the religious demographics of a region on an industrial scale. And this is the practice of doing this as a form of coercion. You first starve them, then you force them to convert in exchange for being given relief. And that’s what the Chinese used to call this practice, the Rice Christian practice. That’s a Chinese term. Even the Japanese had a similar term for this.

So, that’s a colonial practice. And the objective of colonialism and imperialism is to establish foreign control over a territory by conducting cultural genocide. And that’s what’s happened in the Northeast. The Nagas have lost their culture. Their beautiful indigenous polytheistic culture has been smashed out of existence. And the same has been done to the Mizos. And the Meiteis resisted this.

The Meiteis resisted this until the 1990s and 2000s. And now, as of today, I think there must be 2 or 3 lakh Meitei converts to Christianity. So, now the Meiteis are also giving up.

Now, obviously, the British aren’t around in India in the 21st century. So, what happened? So, the British, we know, they left India in 1947. Yes. In 1949, Manipur merged with India. I think it was in 1956 that Manipur became a Union Territory. And so, the whole of the Northeast became a part of India after 1947 at various points in time. Mainly in 1947. For Manipur, it was 1949.

Now, the Government of India was clueless about the Northeast. Completely clueless. The Nehruvian regime was clueless about the Northeast. They had no idea about the history, the culture, the traditions, anything. So, what they did was, they simply slavishly continued British policies of divided rule and oppression in the Northeast.

So, the Northeast of India, the Far East of India was completely marginalized. It was cut off from the rest of India. It was given stepmotherly treatment. There was no development. There was no infrastructure that was built there. Whatever governance systems existed as part of the princely states were destroyed. And then you had the Nehruvian infrastructure, I mean, the Nehruvian governance system that was brought in, which was terrible.

So, as a result of this, as a consequence of this, as a consequence of this terrible neglect and marginalization and oppression of the Northeast, insurgencies broke out all across these states. Whether it is Assam, whether it is Mizoram, whether it is Meghalaya, whether it is Manipur, whether it is Nagaland. Every state had multiple insurgent groups, all fighting for secession, for separatism and they all wanted out of the Indian Union.

So, you had this massive explosion of insurgency all across the Far East of India. So, in 1958, I believe, AFSPA, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was imposed on Manipur and other parts of the Northeast. And Manipur was at that time declared a disturbed region or a disturbed state, 1958. And this status was finally removed in 2006, if I am not mistaken. Half a century of Manipur being a disturbed state, half a century of complete AFSPA in Manipur and still it made no difference.

AFSPA made no difference to Manipur but it caused incredible hardship and suffering among the common people. So, you have this explosion of insurgency in the Northeast. In Mizoram, it became so bad that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi resorted to the incredible step of asking the Indian Air Force to bomb the capital city of Aizawl and other regions of Mizoram. That’s how bad it became in Mizoram.

So, you had Mizo insurgent groups, you had Naga insurgent groups, you had the Meitei insurgent groups, the Bodos in Assam and so on and so forth. Everybody was trying to get out of India because they were being treated so badly. So, this is something that went on. So, the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s were a terrible dark time for Manipur.

In 2006, AFSPA was lifted from the Imphal Valley and some other regions but most of Manipur was still under AFSPA. Now, in 2008, something special happened. The Suspension of Operations agreement, the SOO. So, under this, what happened is that the government of India which was at that time led by Shri Manmohan Singh Ji, they made the special agreement that the Kuki insurgent groups would be allowed to keep their weapons. They would be allowed to maintain their camps with weapons and uniforms and all that. And each Kuki terrorist or insurgent would be given a monthly stipend of 6000 rupees at Indian taxpayer expense.

And so, in response to that, the Kukis should not fight the government of India. So, that was the agreement. And this was done only with the Kuki insurgent groups. There were other insurgent groups. I think there was a separate agreement that was later done with the Nagas as well. So, the Meitei insurgent groups essentially are operating from beyond the border in Burma. So, as a consequence of the 2008 Suspension of Operations agreement, the Kukis were allowed to keep their sophisticated weapons and keep their armed camps.

So, if you look at the map today, you will see that the Kuki terrorist camps or insurgent camps or whatever you want to call them, they ring-fence the Imphal Valley. They are all around the Imphal Valley, completely encircled, like a string of pearls, like what China would like to do to India. That’s what’s happened.

Now, so let’s fast forward to 2017 when Mr. Biren Singh comes to power, the BJP comes to power and the BJP turns around the fortunes of the state. Now, you will say that I am being pro-BJP. Let me be very clear about this. What’s happening right now in 2023 is a complete failure of the government of India, which is run by the BJP. It’s a complete failure. Manipur is burning and the government has failed. So, I am not being pro-BJP or pro-whatever. I am just stating facts as they are.

In 2017, the BJP came to power and they really turned around the fortunes of Manipur. Manipur saw peace for the first time in decades. AFSPA was removed from Imphal and certain other parts of the state. You know, in Imphal and other parts of the state, by the time it was nightfall, as darkness descended, every day it was curfew. So, that was lifted and finally, Imphal, the city of Imphal saw nightlife. You know, restaurants opened. Earlier, there were no restaurants.

So, you had restaurants, you had businesses opening up. People who had left Manipur for decades started returning to Manipur to start businesses. Business started booming. Tourism started booming. Manipur started seeing normalcy again and the economy was doing very well. From 2017 to 2023, this was the situation. You had an explosion of interest in tourism, all kinds of businesses, agriculture, aerosports, what not. All that was happening in Manipur.

And then, in 2023, what happens? I think it’s the Manipur High Court. There was long-standing demand of the Meiteis. That they want ST, Scheduled Tribe Status, that they get the same treatment and the same rights as the Nagas and the Kukis. This was a long-standing demand of the Meiteis.

In 2023, in the beginning, in the first half of the year, the Manipur High Court said that this should be taken seriously and they made a recommendation that this should be taken up and considered. In response to that, there was this outpouring of violence. Sudden! All of a sudden, in early May, sudden outburst of coordinated violence by the Kukis. So, it starts, I think on the 3rd of May, in the city of Churachandpur, which is in the Imphal Valley region. It’s not in the hills region.

Suddenly, on that day, there is supposed to be a peaceful march — protest march, but that becomes violent and the Meiteis in the Churachandpur city are attacked. And after that attack, all the Meiteis were ethnically cleansed from Churachandpur and today there is not a single Meitei who lives there.

Similarly, the city of Moreh, which is at the India-Burma border, has also seen the same kind of situation, ethnic cleansing. Moreh is an extremely critical and vital city. It is India’s gateway to Southeast Asia. And now, it is entirely controlled by the Kukis. The Meiteis have been, let’s say, eliminated. They have also burned down the properties of Tamils and Gorkhas and what not. It’s now a totally Kuki-run, administered city. I don’t think the Indian government exists there.

The Indian government has no say in Churachandpur, in Moreh, in the southern half of Manipur, where the Kukis live. And in the past 5 to 10 years, according to the Manipuri media, there has been this huge influx of Kukis into Manipur. The borders are open. Several lakh Kukis apparently have entered Manipur. Maybe some of them through Mizoram, but they have crossed through Mizoram and entered Manipur. And apparently, more than a thousand new villages have been set up in Manipur. Villages that are not registered and villages that don’t appear on the map. But they will appear in satellite images.

So, there has been this huge demographic re-engineering. Lakhs of Kukis have come into Manipur. And Meiteis are now a minority in their own state. They are confined to 6% of the land. They are under siege. And there is a huge orgy of violence that is happening right now. The Indian government should have seen this coming. Clearly, they have failed.

And right now, there is no action being taken. So, Manipur, at least half of the state, doesn’t have any Indian government presence. That’s what it looks like. The Kukis are doing whatever they want. And these are the regions where you have AFSPA. AFSPA is not present in the Imphal Valley. But there is no violence there.

Where you have AFSPA, you have violence. Armed Forces Special Power Act. Right? And so, wherever the Kukis dominate, the Meiteis have been made to disappear from there. But in the city of Imphal, there are still regions, parts of the city where you have Kukis who are living there peacefully and safely. That is the situation.

So, that’s what’s happened. That’s the background and that’s where we are today. Now, let’s understand the geopolitical angle.

Geopolitical Angle

So, the Kukis, they are fighting armed insurgencies in Bangladesh, in India, and in Myanmar. They seek a greater imaginary nation called Kukiland or Zalengam or whatever they want to call it. They seek an independent imaginary nation. Right? And in India, they are saying that they want a separate administration. They want to carve out a piece of Manipur for themselves. They don’t want a separate country. That’s what they are saying right now.

But if you see their social media posts, their Facebook posts, their Twitter accounts and all that — they want a separate country for Christ. That’s what they say. Okay?

And if you see the map, the so-called map of this imaginary country, you will see that this country, if it is created, will entirely cut India off from Southeast Asia. So, that is a geopolitical project to cut India off from Southeast Asia. See, right now, India’s access to Central Asia and Europe is completely cut off for the past 70 plus years because of POK and because of Chinese-occupied Tibet. We can’t pass through these regions and access Central Asia and Europe, which we have been doing for thousands of years.

Our historical access to Central Asia and Europe has been cut off. Now, certain external forces would like to cut off India’s access to Southeast Asia as well. And this entire Kuki insurgency clearly is a step in that direction. Now, who would want India to be cut off in that manner?

So, we have to look at how the Kukis are being funded, how they are being organized. Clearly, a bunch of tribals who have just entered your country. How will they be so well organized? How will they have so much funding? How will they have such sophisticated weaponry? Some of that could come through China.

But clearly, there is an organizing force behind all of this. And the church is involved in this. They are all Christians. And the church is not just a religious organization. It’s a political organization. And there clearly is, well, possibly a US hand in this. And then there’s the drugs angle.

See, Manipur is right next to the Golden Triangle, which is the junction, tri-junction of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, which has historically been a region that produces drugs, you know, heroin and all that. Now, when the Taliban were fighting the Americans and the puppet government in Afghanistan, their major source of funding or an income was poppy cultivation. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they shut down more than 99% of the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. And the American media has been criticizing the Taliban for shutting down this drug business.

At the same time, we have witnessed a sudden upsurge in poppy cultivation in Manipur. And it’s the Kukis who are cultivating poppy. They have destroyed enormous areas of protected forests, including sacred forests, sacred to the Meiteis — in the Koubru and Thangjing mountains. They’ve destroyed these forests and they are growing poppy everywhere.

And that is something that is a significant source of income for them. And that is creating a huge drug problem, right? So, this once again is a huge issue. And that’s what the Manipur government was trying to crack down on. And that is also one of the things that has triggered off this armed insurgency and this orgy of violence, which is being, which we are seeing right now. So, that’s what’s happening right now.

So, what’s the solution? How do we go ahead? See, we would like to see Manipur go back to its peaceful days. We need a restoration of peace. But what kind of peace do we want? Do we want a peace that is on the terms of the oppressors, of the violent people? Or do we want a peace that safeguards the rights of the indigenous people?

So, one kind of peace is that you allow the Kukis to do whatever they want — to eliminate the Meiteis from 90% of the state and to carve out a piece of Manipur for themselves. That is one kind of peace we could have. So, we give into them their demands and we give them whatever they want. That is peace on the terms of the foreigners, of the invaders, of the oppressors.

The other kind of peace is that you have justice for the natives, that is the Nagas and the Meiteis. Now, there were these terrible Naga-Kuki clashes in the 1990s. And the Nagas came out on top and the Meiteis had actually helped the Kukis and given them shelter and saved them from the Nagas at that time.

And now you see the shoes on the other foot and the Kukis are going after the Meiteis now. So, you can either give into the Kuki demands and give them whatever they want. That would be a complete failure on the part of the Indian government, or you can have actual justice with peace. Which means you get rid of the foreigners, you send them back, you deport them all to Burma and then you have peace according to Indian law and with justice.

So, for that to happen you would need an NRC process, National Register of Citizens. So, the question is what date, what should be the cut-off date? So, if there is any justice in the world, the cut-off date would be 1949 which is when Manipur merged with India. So, anybody who did not live in India, whose parents or grandparents did not live in India before 1949 should be deported from India. That’s how you would have justice. Now, some people will say let’s compromise, let’s make it 1951 or 61 or 71 or 1991 or 2001. Well, that defeats the whole purpose.

And the second thing that would defeat the entire purpose of this exercise is the fact that now anybody can get Indian Aadhaar cards. Reports have come in the news that in Mizoram, apparently anybody can buy an Aadhaar card for 8000 rupees. So, that would mean that anybody who is coming from Burma would be facilitated and helped out by whichever powers and forces are behind this. They would be given Indian Aadhaar cards and once you have an Aadhaar card, you can also get a passport. And that’s how everybody acquires Indian documents.

And then what do you do about it? So, for that you would need a proper NRC process. They would need to prove that their ancestors lived in India before a certain date. That’s what needs to happen. That’s what the Indian government should do. But it’s not going to happen tomorrow or next week.

Manipur is ruined for now. Manipur will not be fixed for at least a decade now. That’s how bad the situation is. But if there is any justice in the world, the illegal migrants will all be repatriated to their country, the Chin state in Burma. If they want a separate country, they are free to fight the Burmese government for it, not India. Leave India, go back to Burma, fight over there.

So, that’s the deal. That is the situation right now. And that’s what needs to happen. Right now, what we are witnessing is a complete failure of the Indian government. Is it an intelligence failure? I don’t know. Did they not see this coming? I don’t know. But this is a failure and this needs to be fixed.

And there is only one government that can fix this, which is the Narendra Modi government. They have failed right now. But there is no other government that you would want to bring in.

See, if you look at this entire Manipur issue, the entire Northeast insurgency issue, it was the Nehruvian government and subsequent governments and subsequent state governments that created the issue. When the BJP came to power in Manipur in 2017, they started fixing the issue. But they have failed in 2023.

So, now we need to take appropriate measures to fix the problem, get rid of the foreigners, send them back to their country. India is not some Dharamshala that anybody can come in and grab pieces of territory. We need to have higher standards. We cannot keep compromising forever. Our land, our territory is sacred territory. We cannot just give it up to anybody.

Anyone these days can come into India. A few million Bangladeshis, a few lakh Rohingyas and now several lakh Kukis just come in and start asking for rights and all that. And the thing is that these people have been given special rights and privileges. They have been given ST status. Scheduled tribe status. As a consequence, they get free education and all kinds of perks. And the Meiteis, the native people, don’t get any of that. As a consequence, these people, they become part of the government machinery.

I think Manipur’s police chief, DGP or whatever, was a Kuki when this entire matter happened in early May. They become part of the bureaucracy. They become part of the IAS. They even become part of the judiciary. This is what happens.

This is how you destroy a nation: By giving outsiders and foreigners special privileges over your own people, over your own indigenous people. This is an issue that needs to be resolved. Manipur right now is in a terrible situation. It’s not going to be fixed anytime soon.

The state, whatever progress was made from 2017 until 2023, has been undone and it’s gone back 20-30 years. That is the situation right now. And so the government needs to fix this and fix this in a just manner. In a manner that gives justice to the indigenous Indians, not to the Burmese foreigners.

So that is the situation in Manipur. I hope this has thrown some light on the issue. There’s been a lot of misreporting and propaganda in the media. But I hope this gives you a better perspective. Thank you for watching and I will see you next time.

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