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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