By – Amar Yumnam
In a few recent pieces, I have emphasized two critical situations Manipur is now in: I. Unique geopolitics being played out in Manipur. II. Both design and grand design accompanying it to permanently extricate the history of the civilization. I am not a student of history, but I can say with confidence that the coming together of the Seven Clans to constitute the Meeteis could not have been on the basis of killing each other, but significantly there must have been issues of dissent, differences of opinion and ultimate adaptation to a common agreement. This consequence must have been founded on knowledge of logical understanding and the shared perception of a potential path of progress. After this, there must have been mutual reaching out to the surrounding population for exchange of commodities and finally coming together. The incompleteness of any Meetei household without a product of Maring artisanship cannot be without meaning. The Nagas forming a society of their own must have also undergone through a differential evolutionary process. Their close relationship with the Meeteis implies intense exchange of commodities and knowledge for long.
While in the case of Kukis, it is very unfortunate that they are finishing themselves. There are separate groups of ethnicities having intense relationships with the Meeteis, there is yet to be a fully evolved Kuki Society. Some individuals have made their personal names and privileges; there is yet to emerge a shared framework for evolution towards a society. This must have ensured the large inequalities while denying the larger proportion of families to move upward. The maximum price of this must have been borne by the women and the children. Malthus’s criticism of Adam Smith particularly applies to the Kukis that Smith had “not stopped to take notice of those instances where the wealth of a society may increase without having any tendency to increase the comforts of the labouring part of it’.Such outcomes would be much more critical in populations where societal formation is still very incomplete. Killing, disruptions and outside alignment can never be a foundation for creation of society, identity and territory in the contemporary world. Further, the evolutionary history and shared civilization of the Nagas and the Meeteis and some exclusive Kuki groups are already well established.
Hume said “It is true; those who maintain, that the goodness of all government consists in the goodness of the administration, may cite many particular instances in history, where the very same government, in different hands, has varied suddenly into the two opposite extremes of good and bad.” Similar views are very strongly put by scholars from London, Liverpool, Essex and Cambridge Universities in a recent article, The state of the state, just published in in Economy and Society (2026): “Arguably, the question and problem of the state have been posed most forcefully by illiberal, authoritarian nationalist regimes, driven by the rising popularity of many radical and far right political parties. ‘Populist’ parties of the Right have been in the ascendence in many democracies around the world since the global financial crisis. Given electoral successes in India, Brazil, Hungary, Italy and the United States, populist leaders and parties are no longer simply critics of the status quo. They have pushed forward policies for targeting their ideological and ‘cultural’ opponents, whether these are to be found in universities, the ‘old’ print and broadcast media, independent civil service and so on. In these states in particular, ethno-nationalist, patriarchal and ‘anti-woke’ agendas have been threaded through public policies in areas of education, culture, welfare and border control, with fiscal policy also being remade to serve radical Right agendas.”
In the light of all the points above there is necessity of realising that the present Manipur Crisis relates to the Indian state. Now what should we do? The CSOs (Civil Society Organisations) of the youths are fighting a great combat, and exactly in this context there are certain imperative norms to be observed. First, given the present realities, the Meeteis have to play the leading role by continuous deliberations with the Nagas and indigenous Kukis and evolve into a shared community. Second, the Meeteis need to be extraordinarily careful such that any CSO of them become untrustworthy.
All these demand that the Meeteis do not behave like an ethnic group with no democracy within. Here there are signs of falling into a trap. The very norms of tolerating different opinions and ultimate agreement on some core issues are getting compromised. The emerging trend of giving threats to any differing opinion and warning to apologise within limited periods can never be a foundation for the present nor for the future. Above all, let us all try to re-read the classics of the great scholars. Understanding the path travelled by the others would socially strengthen us.