Manipur is no stranger to the scourge of massacres. In the infamous ‘Naga-Kuki clash’ of the 1990s, hundreds of innocents were slaughtered, not for what they did but because of who they were. In that protracted carnage amongst the ‘tribal’ communities of Manipur, places of worship and villages were razed to the ground and thousands rendered homeless. When it came to these Christian communities, the Biblical teaching ‘love thy neighbour’ was of no use in what was politically motivated genocidal violence. That spectre of a bloodbath has returned to haunt Manipur again, this time between the ‘Kukis’ and the Meiteis.
Incidentally, the ‘Kukis’ have been involved in such clashes with their neighbours across the years. Besides the infamous clash with the Nagas in the 1990s, there have been violent conflicts with the Dimasa (2003) and the Karbis (2004) in Assam, and with the Paites (1997-98) in Manipur.
So, what has led to this latest round of carnage involving the ‘Kukis’? Many commentators have mentioned the demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status by the Meiteis, and the attempt of the State government to ‘survey’ forest areas and ‘evict illegal’ occupants from the ‘protected forest’ being some of the ‘sparks’. But then, for the spark(s) to be produced and to turn into an inferno, there needs to be material. That material is the manufactured divide: the ‘hill-valley divide’ in Manipur. This contrived reality has to be taken as a historical a priori to understand the present carnage. For, it is a past that lives in the present and to borrow from Michel Foucault, ‘cast[s] a shadow’.
