Operation "Exterminate-the-Meitei-in-Manipur"

 

Operation "Exterminate-the-Meitei-in-Manipur"

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Manipur is in flames and the Hindu Meiteis of Manipur are being set off on the path to near-extinction, but the rest of India, and particularly Hindu India, couldn't care less.

The following report in the Outlook, no pro-Hindu journal, gives a pointer to what is happening in Manipur:

https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-burden-of-riots-magazine-287805

To quote some of the relevant points:

"Thirty-five-year-old 'Abeyma’ Laicharam Ichan Devi's wails envelop the cavernous open halls of the Khoyol Keithel relief camp in Moirang, where about 400 Meitei families from neighbouring border villages have taken shelter. She says that every time she tries to shut her eyes and sleep, she gets nightmare of fires—of the fire that consumed not only her house, but her entire village. She recalls how mobs descended upon Torbung, located on the border of Churachandpur and Bishnupur, and started looting and burning houses…."

"Her husband, along with other men from the camp, helps the local people to guard the village against further attacks at night. Such armed vigils by volunteers and civilians are, at the moment, common across the violence-stricken districts. Ichan Devi and others in the camp nevertheless live in constant fear of another raid. “I have not taken a bath in eight days; my children are surviving on biscuits. Soon, they won’t even have that,” she adds, pointing at her oldest son, who is six years old."

"None of these women have any homes left to go back to. “They burned them all and have declared our ancestral lands in Churachandpur as tribal land. It is rightfully our land, which belonged to the Meiteis. Churachandpur is my home,” she states."

 

The article, of course, tries to "balance" the picture by mentioning some of the wrongs suffered by the opposite side (the Kukis and Nagas). But one does not have to be Einstein to recognize the main trigger for all this bloody violence: the demand by the Meiteis of Manipur to be included in the list of ST or Scheduled Tribes of Manipur which led to a violent backlash from the Naga and Kuki tribals of Manipur who find this demand untenable.

To understand this one could take an all-India analogy: suppose Hindus from all parts of India were to start a massive agitation to demand that articles 25-30 of the Constitution be amended to extend to Hindu religious and educational institutions the same special facilities that Muslim and Christian religious and educational institutions already enjoy under those articles, and Muslims and Christians all over India were to start a massive and violent counter-agitation to oppose this demand. Strange though it may seem, it is very unlikely that Muslims and Christians would do so: to date the only politician to try to extend to Hindu religious and educational institutions the same special facilities that Muslim and Christian religious and educational institutions already enjoy under those articles has been Syed Shahabuddin!!

So it is clear that this agitation in Manipur is a case of a privileged class refusing to allow the non-privileged class to enjoy the same facilities and rights that they themselves enjoy (practically the white people in an apartheid system refusing to grant to blacks the same rights that they themselves enjoy)! There is no way in which the anti-Meitei side can be claimed to have any justice on its side, and yet we see a whole nation of journalists, politicians and Hindu people ignoring the whole issue or acting as if the two sides are equally right or equally wrong. In the process, it is likely that the matter will simply be left dragging forever and the Meiteis will never be given the status of Scheduled Tribes in Manipur.

 

In my article "Are Indian Tribals Hindus?" (posted on my blogspot on 14/5/2016), I had pointed out that the Meitei are the only distinct native ethnic group (with a distinct non-Indo-European language and distinct culture of its own, and even, to an extent, a pagan religion of the Hinduism Category 3 type along with Category 1 Hinduism: 79.74% of Meitei are Hindus Category 1, 20.01% are Hindus Category 3, and only 0.25% are Christian converts), from among all the small states of the northeast, who are denied the facility of being counted as a Scheduled Tribe with all its attendant benefits:

"unlike Nagaland and Mizoram, where almost the entire populations are classified as tribal (89.1 and 94.5 respectively, the rest of the state population including emigrants from other neighbouring states and the rest of India), in Manipur only 34.2% of the population is classified as tribal: the major ethnic group in the state, the Meitei, constituting 51.04% of the population, is not counted as tribal. But it is among a section of the Meitei that we see a surviving tribal religion".

In Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, the following is the percentage of converted Christians as per six consecutive censuses:

 

STATE	1951	1961	1971	1981	2001	2011
Manipur	11.84	19.49	26.03	29.68	34.04	41.29
Arunachal Pr	–	–	0.79	4.32	18.72	30.26

As there are no census figures for 2021(no census having been conducted because of COVID), we can easily estimate, from the above successive figures, what percentage of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh are Christian by now in 2023! The 41.29% of Manipur constitutes the figure already in 2011, since roughly (a very little over) half of the population of Manipur is Meitei, and roughly (a very little below) half of the population consists of Kuki and Naga groups, who are almost (and certainly by now) totally Christian.

Therefore the inherent principle behind classifying ethnic groups as ST in the smaller northeastern states, with all its attendant benefits and facilities, seems to be conversion to Christianity!

So the Meitei people seem to be punished by not being classified as ST purely and simply because they have not yet converted en masse to Christianity, being the only major distinct ethnic group in the northeast to not have done so!

 

Being classified or not classified as ST is not a mere symbolic matter: the fact is that the Meitei people of Manipur, constituting (a very little over) half of the population of Manipur, occupy the Imphal Valley in the central part of the state, which constitutes just around 10% of the area of the state but has 67% of the population of the state. This Imphal Valley contains practically the whole of the Meitei population of the state, along with a continuously increasing population of Kukis and Nagas who live in the surrounding hill areas (which constitute practically 90% of the state) and migrate into the Imphal Valley.

The crucial points are:

1) The hill areas of the state, being "Scheduled Tribe" land, are not available for settlement by the Meitei who are not classifies as ST, but their own Imphal Valley area, not being "Scheduled Tribe" land, is open for Naga-Kuki settlement. So, although the Meitei and Naga-Kuki are almost equal to each other in number, the 90% hill-areas of Manipur are exclusively Naga-Kuki "ST" areas, while the 10% Imphal Valley of the Meitei, not being "ST" area, is open for Naga-Kuki settlement.

2) As the Imphal Valley is completely surrounded by the hill areas, the Meitei are permanently vulnerable to being cut off from the outside world by the people of the hills as is happening all the time, and therefore they have that sword of blackmail and terror constantly hanging over their heads.

The only thing that can save the Meitei people from extinction is being granted the status of full-fledged "scheduled Tribes" with all its benefits and facilities. Anything short of that (and it certainly looks as if everything about Manipur except this one crucial item is being discussed everywhere) practically amounts to giving the thumbs-up signal to Operation "Exterminate-the-Meitei-in-Manipur".

 

APPENDIX:

The Meitei language is the most widely spoken Sino-Tibetan language in India,

It has a distinct alphabet of its own since around 1100 CE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitei_script

The Manipur style of classical dance is one of the five or six main official styles of Classical Dance in India (along with Bharata Natyam, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Kathak and Odissi) and is not only distinct in dance style but even has a distinctly different music and singing style of its own:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBCozIAwBKw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RISY7LU3u0

 

Are Hindus going to stand by silently and watch the extermination of all this cultural wealth? Sadly, I think, as always, they are!

Please also go through the following twitter hashtag to see more gruesome details as well as the powerfully organized anti-Hindu conspiracy to paint the Meiteis as the villains of the piece:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Meiteis&src=recent_search_click

 

 

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The Three Grades of Anti-Hinduism

 

 

The Three Grades of Anti-Hinduism

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Recently someone illustrated the stark difference between the general staunch Muslim and the Secularist "Hindu" by putting up a facebook post by a Secular Hindu and the response to it by a staunch Muslim:

The person who put this up intended this to illustrate the stark difference between the general staunch Muslim and the Secularist Hindu. But while this difference is certainly illustrated, it illustrates another, and more fundamental, difference even more starkly: the difference between the general Muslim and the Secularist "Hindu" on the one hand, and the BJP "Hindu" on the other. And this difference is the difference between honesty on the one hand, and dishonesty (treachery, hypocrisy and gleeful brazenness) on the other.

Whether one likes their views, statements and attitudes or not, no-one can deny that both the general staunch Muslim (as represented by Muhammad Qasim above) and the Secularist "Hindu" (as represented by Ankita Choudhury above) represent honesty in two different ways: both are open and honest about what they believe in or what they stand for. The BJP "Hindu", on the other hand, represents unequivocal dishonesty: treachery, hypocrisy and gleeful brazenness: he/she talks Hindutva (especially when elections are around the corner, or when it comes to criticizing anti-BJP entities) but, when it comes to practical or actual issues, behaves and acts exactly like the Secularist "Hindu". It is time we learnt to evaluate people on the basis of their honesty about what they believe in and stand for instead of on the basis of whether or not we like what they claim to believe in or stand for.

On the scale of anti-Hinduness, I would put the three enemies of Hinduism/Hindutva as:

Anti-Hindu/Breaking-India Forces: BAD.

Secular "Hindus": WORSE.

BJP "Hindus": WORST.

 

I must first explain why I wrote (a) "Anti-Hindu/Breaking-India-Forces" here instead of "general staunch Muslims", and (b) "BJP 'Hindus'" instead of "BJP supporters":

About Anti-Hindu/Breaking-India-Forces:

1. While every general staunch Muslim will think exactly like the Muslim illustrated above in matters of religion (whether he states it openly like Muhammad Qasim above, or is more discreet and diplomatic out of respect for his non-Muslim friends and acquaintances or because he wants to live a normal life and not get involved in acrimonious religious arguments and fights), every such staunch Muslim will not necessarily be interested in Breaking India (although, if push comes to shove, his sympathies may well be with the Breaking India forces).

2. Then, there are of course, the minority of progressive or nominal Muslims who may (or may not) be proud of their cultural heritage but they are not "staunch" in religious matters and will therefore never really be in sympathy with the Breaking India Forces.

3. And again, the Breaking India Forces include many more categories than just "Muslims": there are Evangelists, foreign agents (including Indian "Hindus" whether or not functioning in the name of the caste in which they were born), deracinated and self-identity-hating Hindus (whether leftist or otherwise), etc.

About BJP supporters:    

1. BJP supporters are not necessarily people who claim to be "Hindus". There are, especially in the case of the present BJP regime, huge masses of supporters who care two figs for Hindu issues, even if they do not expressly say so ─ but they don't pretend to care for them either, except perfunctorily when taking part in BJP programs especially in the presence of "Hindu" (RSS, VHP, etc.) leaders: their stand is very clear that they support the out-and-out capitalist and mercenary policies of the BJP and support what they call the "development" agenda of the BJP (pro-corporate, pro-rich, anti-common-man and anti-labour policies; large scale destruction of forests, ecology and environment; abandonment of heritage issues, etc.). They are as bad for India and Hinduism, in a different way, as the Anti-Hindu/Breaking-India forces and the Secularist "Hindus", but, at the same time, these supporters (Hindu only by birth, but not by ideological claim) are also as honest as the Anti-Hindu/Breaking-India forces and the Secularist "Hindus" about what they stand for.

2. A special category among the BJP leadership and party members is the leaders (Hindu by birth) from all hues of Secularist parties who join the BJP for the practical tactical advantage it gives them in terms of money and power (and whom the BJP immediately places in positions of party-internal and electoral advantage to the detriment of people who have slaved all their lives for the party). These leaders and new members also do not make any bones about being in the BJP for reasons other than any kind of "Hindu" ideology, and cannot seriously be accused of any dishonesty in this matter.

3. Then there are the "minority" groups within the BJP, consisting of the Muslim and Christian "leaders" and members who also are in the BJP for the practical tactical advantage it gives them in terms of money and power ─ and who carry on Secularist/Minoritarian activities within the party . They naturally do not make any claims for "Hindutva", and cannot seriously be accused of any dishonesty in this matter.

4. There is also that very small but extremely admirable minority of "minority" members within the BJP (of which Arif Mohammad Khan is perhaps the most shining example) who are truly secular in the genuine sense of the term. They are certainly honest, but cannot be called BJP "Hindus".

5. Finally, we have the huge mass of BJP "Hindus" who have spent all their lives criticizing the Secularism of the Secularist parties and "intellectuals", and the leftists, and exposing or calling out against the activities of the Breaking-India forces. These include the old-time Jan Sangh supporters, the neo-BJP (post-JP-break-up, 1980-1985) supporters, and the people who became supporters of the BJP during different post-1985 phases on the grounds of different Hindu issues and Hindu ideology.

These BJP "Hindus" continue to claim that they stand for Hindu interests, and continue to express outrage at every anti-Hindu act of the Secularists, leftists, and other Breaking India Forces. Every criticism of Hinduism or Hindutva in any foreign forum or newspaper, and every pro-minority or anti-Hindu act of any non-BJP politician or intellectual or foreign entity, has them up in arms in "defense" of Hinduism or Hindu interests. But, when the BJP government and its Parivar commit acts, most of which are much more blatantly pro-minority and anti-Hindu ─ and much more lethal to Hinduism, Hindutva and Hindu interests than any act ever committed by its openly Secularist predecessor governments ─ these "Hindu" BJP supporters not only turn a completely blind eye to every single one of these acts, but, if necessary, indulge in defense, whitewashing and ultimately even glorification of those acts! The amazing thing is that it is not that they now accept that their earlier stance was wrong and say that they have now realized that pro-minority and anti-Hindu acts are for the good of the country (!), they simply go on condemning the Secularists, Leftists and other (Indian and foreign) Breaking India Forces for the very same things for which they now defend, whitewash and glorify the BJP government, and they still go on claiming that they stand for Hinduism, Hindutva and Hindu interests!

In short, from among all the people belonging to all the political formations in India, the BJP "Hindus" stand out as the only Indians who are completely and thoroughly and brazenly dishonest in their political claims. They, more than any others, represent the forces which will be remembered in history by future generations as the main forces responsible for the utter and absolute destruction of Hinduism and Indian Culture in the next few decades of this century.

 

I have already written much on this subject in earlier articles, but there are so many really committed Hindus who have taken up  the herculean task, and made it their life's mission, to point out, document, and publicize, on the social media and on various other public forums, the endless treacheries and lethal back-stabbing acts of the BJP government. That all this is like water off a duck's back for the BJP "Hindus" is the tragedy of Hinduism and India. I am not going to waste my energies on this topic. I will only write here about the one recent event which was for me absolutely the last straw. To understand this, I will have to go back a bit on the history of the BJP.

The BJP was formed in 1980 as a metamorphosis of the Jana Sangh which had earlier merged into a United Opposition party called the Janata Party after the Emergency was lifted in 1977. After its cosy cohabitation with the other Secularist non-Congress parties, this new avatar of the erstwhile Jana Sangh came out as an openly Secularist Party, supported of course by the "Hindu" RSS. Four years later, in its first Lok Sabha foray in 1984, the party was almost decimated out of existence.

Present generations of Indians may not be aware of the complete nature of this decimation (cleverly dismissed by BJP pundits as solely the result of the brutal assassination of Indira Gandhi). So here are the facts as represented by the results to the 543 seats of the Lok Sabha elections 1984:

Congress: 414.

Telugu Desam: 30.

CPI(M): 22.

Independents: 13.

AIADMK: 12.

Janata Party: 10.

Akali Dal: 7.

CPI: 6.

Indian Socialist Congress: 5.

Lok Dal: 3.

RSP: 3.

National Conference: 3.

 

Yes, Indira Gandhi's brutal assassination did create a backlash in favor of the Congress which got a record 414 seats. But see the list of parties above which did not get decimated in the same manner, and to the same extent, as the BJP.

Six parties got 2 seats each: BJP, Muslim league, Kerala Congress, Forward Bloc, DMK, and the 2 (appointed) Anglo-Indians!

[It must be remembered that one of the two seats won by the BJP, Hanamkonda in Andhra Pradesh, was only by the grace of the Telugu Desam party, the only party in India to completely weather the Congress cyclone, and which supported the BJP on that seat; and the second, Mehsana in Gujarat, was won with the support of the Janata Party. In short: the BJP was actually completely decimated in 1984]. 

Only three parties got less, i.e. 1 seat each: Congress (Jagjivan Ram), PWP (in Maharashtra) and the Plains Tribal Council of Assam!

 

How did the BJP rise from the ashes? Did somebody sprinkle phoenix-blood on the ashes? Did Lord Krishna decide that it was a fitting case of "yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānir bhavati bhārata" and appear on the scene to give life to the party? Did rishis meditating in the Himalayas for thousands of years descend the mountains in order to bring the party back to life with their powers? Did Harry Potter come and wave his magic wand?

No! it was the Ayodhya movement, and the Ayodhya movement alone, which triggered off a continuously spiraling graph which took the BJP from 2 seats in 1984 to the present 303 seats in 2019. Without the Ayodhya movement to begin with, the BJP would still have been floundering to this day as just one (and not even the main one) of many opposition parties, occasionally perhaps called upon (like any other party) to participate in a short-lived coalition government.

The chequered history of the Ayodhya movement, its many minor tributaries and distributaries, and the many major and minor heroes, villains and episodes in its course, is a long and interesting one. While there were many heroes and villains in the story, the one person who stood out from all the others ─ as villain in Hindu eyes and hero in Muslim ones ─ was Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (1989-1991) in his first term ─ who in 1990 ordered the police to fire on Kar Sewaks or Hindu volunteers who approached the Babri-Masjid-structure, killing 16 Kar Sewaks.

To put it coarsely, among all those whose martyrdom fuelled the Ayodhya movement and whose corpses formed the stepping stones on which the BJP mounted the Indian throne, the most prominent were the Kar Sewaks killed by Mulayam Singh Yadav (followed later by the Kar Sewaks in the train at Godhra).

Now, on 5th April 2023, the BJP commemorated the memory of the martyred Kar Sewaks for their sacrifice by post-humously awarding the second highest Indian Civilian Honor, the Padma Vibhushan, to Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Nothing the BJP does should have the power to shock anyone any more. Nor actually should the reaction of the BJP "Hindus", to the acts of the BJP government, have the power to shock anyone any more. We non-BJP Hindus are merely the common animals of this Indian Animal Farm watching the last scene of Orwell's classic being enacted, and should be inured to anything and everything by now.

But, to me, although I have always had my eyes and ears, and mind and conscience as well, wide open, this was something unbelievable. Not just the BJP government giving this highest award to Mulayam Singh, but the fact that the BJP "Hindus" continue to remain totally and utterly unfazed by this, and continue to support and defend the BJP, stonewalling all discussion on this matter ─ I have personally experienced the extent of this on the internet and on various "Hindu" discussion groups. Now, with the Lok Sabha elections due in early 2024, the "saints" and leaders of the Ayodhya movement have decided that the new glorious temple to "Ram Lalla" (although work on the structure is not fully completed and will continue after that) will be thrown open to worshippers in January 2024, with all the intended political repercussions on the elections to soon follow. BJP "Hindus" will now once again become enthusiastic "Hindus" and celebrate the "inauguration" of the temple by going out to cast their votes in large numbers for the party which gave the Padma Vibhushan to Mulayam Singh for shooting and killing 16 Kar Sewaks in 1990 and giving a fillip to their Ayodhya "card" (as Uma Bharati once candidly described the Ayodhya issue in an interview).

The ugly fact is that Mulayam Singh, the one-time villain for BJP "Hindus" ─ but now a hero for them since his contribution to the rise of the BJP has now been officially recognized by the Party ─ although a killer of Kar Sewaks (a latter day General Dyer), and a supporter of the acts of gang-rapists (remember his indulgent defense of the Mumbai Shakti Mills gang rapists in 2014), has, through every phase of his villainy, been characterized by openness and honesty in his statements. Brazen honesty, but still honesty. The BJP government by its act of honoring him for his exploits, and BJP "Hindus" by endorsing this act at the ballots in the glow of the new "Ram Lalla" temple, will be guilty of brazen dishonesty. By this single act, the BJP and its BJP "Hindu" supporters have redefined the whole "Hindu" narrative and proved their absolute commitment to the principle of dishonesty in politics.

Is there ever going to be an end to this? Already, the next connected step has taken place in Gujarat: the BJP government in Gujarat appealed against the bail application of Kajal Hindustani on the ground that "Kajal Hindustani's speech had hurt sentiments of Muslim community which led to communal clash". A scholarly BJP "Hindu" defended this in a discussion group on the ground that this was "necessary to maintain order"!

Will the next step be a declaration by the BJP government in Gujarat that "the slogans of the Kar Sewaks in the train at Godhra had hurt sentiments of Muslim community which led to burning of the train"? Are more Padma awards in the offing, this time for the accused in the train burning incident? It is not even interesting any more to hear the apologetic excuses of the BJP "Hindus" for each new case of backstabbing.

The BJP and BJP "Hindus" very clearly represent a force which is much more dangerous to India, Hinduism, and Hindu interests, and much more reprehensible, than either the Breaking India forces or the Secularists.