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

Here is the full transcript of Abhijit Chavda’s in-depth analysis talk titled “Everything You Should Know About Manipur Conflict”.

TRANSCRIPT:

Imagine you live in a country where the indigenous people are forced by law to live in only 6% of their ancestral territory. More than 90% of their territory is denied to them, and a foreign tribal group is given access and residence in 90% of your ancestral territory. And they are given special rights and privileges because they are tribals.

So these foreign tribals take over 90% of your country, they deny you access to your ancestral lands, they desecrate your sacred sites, and then one day, when you ask for equal rights, they go on a violent ethnic cleansing rampage against you, while at the same time portraying you as the evil majoritarian oppressors. That is essentially what’s happening in Manipur in a nutshell.

And let’s examine the issue in detail.

So to understand why a certain issue exists, we have to look back at the history of the place to get the right context. If we do not know the history of the place, then we will not be in any position to know what’s really happening and to understand why it’s happening, and it’s very easy to mislead us if we don’t know the history.

History of Manipur

So let’s first examine the history of Manipur to get the right context. So as of today, currently, there are three major ethnic groups in Manipur: the Meiteis, the Nagas, and the Kukis. Everyone knows the MANIPURI LANGUAGE. The Manipuri language is the official state language of Manipur. It’s a language that has existed for at least 2000 years in various forms.