(Rebuttal to Benjamin Mate’s article on India Today NE)
By- Raj Yumnam
The ongoing tragedy in Manipur demands justice, accountability, and relief for displaced civilians. However, portraying the crisis solely as the outcome of a decades-long, single-community political conspiracy risks replacing careful analysis with rigid moral absolutism. Such framing may stir emotion, but it does not help resolve a conflict rooted in institutional collapse and prolonged governance failure.
Delimitation, repeatedly cited as the master cause, is a constitutional process conducted by independent commissions and governed by national law, not by any one ethnic group. The freeze on delimitation is not unique to Manipur. If census distortions occurred in 2001 or 2011, they reflect administrative and political failure at multiple levels—not proof of a secret ethnic project.
Linking present violence directly to a 1972 electoral map oversimplifies causation. The immediate trigger was the Manipur High Court’s March 2023 order on Meitei ST status, which ignited protests in an already volatile environment shaped by land regulations, armed group activity, drug trafficking corridors, and long-standing ethnic militarization on both sides.
Equally troubling is the use of collective criminal language. Accusing an entire community of “state-tolerated terror” replaces individual criminal accountability with communal guilt—the very logic that fuels mass violence. Crimes must be prosecuted with evidence, not assigned by ethnicity.
Border instability and migration following the 2021 Myanmar coup are real security challenges across the Northeast. Recognizing this reality does not justify violence against any indigenous community—but refusing to acknowledge it blocks serious policy response.
Where there is no disagreement is on fundamentals: sexual violence, arson, and killings demand swift and impartial prosecution; displaced families deserve safe return; and administrative failures must be investigated independently.
Manipur’s crisis is not the product of a single community’s conspiracy. It is the consequence of institutional breakdown, political failure, militarization, and delayed reforms. Healing will not come through ideological verdicts—but through constitutional repair, rule of law, and governance restored without ethnic bias.