What about our 2000 years of history?
A stringent mechanism to protect the Indigenous Manipuri people including the Meitei/Meetei community is the need of the hour. But while doing so it is not right to sabotage the history of this erstwhile nation in South East Asia for a mere gain in employment quotas or whatsoever it may be. The logic is understand by each of us in the erstwhile nation and diverting the peoples’ mindset in the name of social equality, development or for bringing peace and harmony to recklessly pushing up a demand is a serious matter. It is more like twisting of tongue to fool the people by inciting the attitude of jealousy towards getting some benefit. Well it is once more about the demand for schedule tribe. No doubt if we meetei or Meitei become scheduled tribe we might get lot of privileged in getting jobs in central service through reservation quotas. And in the same way the underdeveloped communities which has been living together from time immemorial will no doubt loss all the opportunity of competing with the general people in this region. The committee on their justification had once said that there will be reservations for the various scheduled tribes of the state in case of benefit provided by the state government. A social thinker once asked me the logic behind it and said they had already contradicted their so call propaganda of uniting the hill and plain people the region if in case all the people become scheduled tribes.
Now the Scheduled Tribe demand committee has again geared up their demand to include Meetei/Meitei in Scheduled Tribe category. Before once more putting up the argument on the veracity of why Meitei/meetei community should not be included to scheduled, it is better that the so call committee make the public clear about the motive of why they eagerly wanted to include the community which have a unique history of 2000 years.
Well as according to a statement appeared at a local paper it is stated that the vision of the committee is to bring coial equality, development, peace and harmony –”by undoing the classification between Hills and plain people”. How could this be so sure when already the tribal people had strongly objected the demand since the beginning?
On one hand social equality is a political economy system and this cannot be brought with a mere compensation from the government. It is a fact that Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Lakshdeep and Andaman Nicobar Island are Scheduled Tribe state, can somebody from among the committee clarify that there is a social equality in these states. The logic behind the suffixing of the very term to bring social equality is nothing but to fool the people which will never be succeeded.
To shorten up this argument it is clear that Manipur has a history of 2000 years and this history is a treasure for the people of this erstwhile kingdom and converting the Meitei to scheduled tribe will surely sabotage the history of this erstwhile nation.