Imphal, Nov 23: Central committee of the Proscribed group United National Liberation Front (UNLF) greets the people of the state on occasion of its 52nd Anniversary which falls on November 24.
On behalf of the UNLF and its armed wing the Manipur People’s Party, the Central committee in its message highlighted the organisation’s struggle against the India.
“We further take this opportunity to capture the highlights of our national struggle against Indian neo-colonialism as also share its perspective on the challenges that will continue to confront our struggle in the immediate future so as to enable us to do a critical deliberation with all our nationalistic peoples”, the statement said.
The UNLF central committee statement also reiterated that Manipur-India conflict is engendered by the forcible annexation of erstwhile sovereign independent Manipur in 1949. It said this core issue is the genesis of the national contradiction between Manipur and India.
The statement said that the UNLF will not compromise restoration of Manipur’s Sovereignty and Independence saying that this is the question of survival or extinction of all the indigenous people of our Manipuri nation.
The statement said all colonial masters, whether of the vintage varieties or the contemporary ones, share one thing in common — contempt for the subjects. The passage of more than a century since colonialism reared its head in the history of mankind has done nothing to change this essence of colonial rule. The only concession to time that diehard colonial masters have deigned to make lies in the extent to which some care was taken to disguise the contempt for the subjugated people. But even when such care is taken, the mask falls off when the chips are down.
It said even as India poses as the second largest democratic country in the world, and pretends as a defender of democracy and humane rights in the region hoodwinking the eye of the international communities; it cannot hide its true skin as it shows its colonial legacy of suppressing the legitimate struggle of Kashmiri people and WESEA people as well.
“With draconian laws like AFSPA in hand, the Indian military machine is violating basic human rights with impunity, taking the life of the innocent populations of these regions at their whim in a routine manner. In the recent months, the full scaled war-like repressive measures taken up by the Indian military to suppress the ever increasing voice of the innocent Kashmiri peoples who were agitating against the Indian colonial occupation is a stark example of this. In Manipur’s case, the promulgation and continuance for the last half a century and more of the Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers’ Act, 1958, which abrogates the inalienable right to life, is one such instance highlighting the contempt in which the Indian colonial rulers hold the people of Manipur. In contemporary times, this contempt for the subjugated peoples like the Manipuris and other Mongoloid peoples from Assam, Arunachal, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya and Tripura have given rise to a form of demeaning racial discrimination often culminating in physical assaults in mainland India. Racial profiling and typecasting have also engendered sustained racial violence against the Mongoloid peoples of WESEA region. These are the new layers of colonial subjugation that seeks to dehumanize our people. Brute force and utter contempt for the people is not the only suite in the armour of Indian colonial rulers.
Divide and rule is another classic strategm used by colonial rulers to devastating effect to sustain colonial rule and poisoning relations between and amongst the subject people. Increasing inter and intra ethnic animosities amongst Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis attest to the havoc created by the colonial master’s deadly pastime of divide and rule. Not all ethnic antipathies are, however, the handiwork of the colonial rulers. Much of it can also be traced to the respective insensitivities of the ethnoses themselves to one another’s aspirations. Though the indigenous peoples of WESEA (Western South East Asia) have superficial and temporary issues of difference and petty contradictions, these people share the same social systems, long historical journey together, and mutually interdependent economic systems, and also from sheer topographic and physical geographical features which could not separate one from another, and our close kin settlements make us inseparable, and this strand of a collective life, we are now facing the urge to be united together, and we are experiencing this necessity all the more. Therefore as we envision our future, all indigenous peoples of Western South East Asia, we have entered an age where we cannot but see things collectively, in our future historical development. This sole aspect of our collective vision UNLF had always placed before the indigenous communities of the region. So the collective of indigenous people who are suffering the alien subjugation of India Annual Statement – Central Committee 2016 (3) should, instead of fighting for independence of separate communities, should struggle together for our collective freedom in order to defeat the Indian Colonial power. This very struggle is necessitated by the objective conditions of the true realities of the region. In order to achieve victory we need to build up the Regional Unity Thesis collectively, all of us in WESEA should altogether have a collective struggle on the path of self-determination of WESEA which should be true to the soil of the region, with sheer respect to the culture and traditions of the communities and we shall design collectively the approaches and systems of understanding to enable us to envision and join in the United Struggle much more effectively for our common goal of self-determination. Unfortunately, for all of us, when some of the groups with their individual struggle against the stronger force of Indian colonialsm find the going tough, they opt for “peace-talks” and “SoO”. With their ethno-exclusive outlooks, they compromise their earlier stance of sovereignty and independence to gain some petty political and administrative privileges which causes more squabbles amongst the ethnic brethren. Not only this hampers the progress of “Our United Struggle”, but this also makes a “heyday” of the enemy’s Divide and Rule. With the overwhelming enemy propaganda the common people is thrown into confusion and disappointment, with their confidence in the independence struggle waning. In this situation, some sections amongst the meiteis who have been taking major historical responsibility in paving a composite history of the thousands of year old Manipuri nation are beginning to waver; lacking courage and self-confidence to face the challenge of time. The worries and anxieties of these sections that the survival of the meiteis is slim without the prop of some Articles of the Indian Constitution, thus seeking some Constitutional privileges is quite an irony as the ulterior motive of India is nothing but to assimilate Manipur. Since we became India’s colony, there had been a non-stopping influx of outsiders which had become a demographic and economic threat to the existence of the indigenous peoples. This syndrome is affecting not only Manipur but the whole Western South East Asia (WESEA). This has become a matter of life and death for all the indigenous peoples of our Region, as our distinct identities, culture and racial origin can not survive, let alone develop if we remained subjugated within Indian Colonial Rule. Today, keeping the region under socio-political and economic suppression, India is pursuing a hidden agenda of racial assimilation process in the region by giving permanent citizenship to all the influx populations from within India as well as from the nighbouring countries so that the region can be a part and parcel of India forever. Annual Statement – Central Committee 2016 (4) To realize this, with their “Hindutva dream”, the hindu chauvinist BJP govt. in Delhi is preparing to floor “Citizenship Amendment Bill – 2016” in Indian Parliament to naturalize all the influx in the region from within India and abroad having the same racial and religious affinity with mainland Indians. This clearly proves that within Indian system the indigenous peoples of the region with their small populations can not safeguard their ethnic identities and survive. This is the same life and death situation faced by all the indigenous peoples of WESEA. Therefore, for the indigenous peoples of our region to seek their ethno-exclusive solutions within India’s colonial framework is just like putting our ‘common future’ into oblivion. This is just like the fate of the sacrificial lamb waiting for it’s time at the altar of India’s racial assimilation. As we negotiate Manipur’s collective future, the influential actors on the world stage has multiplied manifold with increasing globalization. Gone are the days when size, inhospitable location or backwardness tended to reinforce isolation. Ironically, for the rich nations and their multinational companies, backwardness and geographically difficult locations offers them mouth-watering opportunities for extraction of resources — physical and human. This new rush for the fast vanishing Shangrillas inevitably brings in its wake roads, dams, bridges and other infrastructures. The recent announcement of investment by the international financial institutions in Manipur and WESEA is an illustrative example. Obviously, globalization will bring many opportunities, economic and otherwise. All these opportunities have, however, a dark side. As experience in other countries has shown, they tend to be entrepreneur friendly rather than people friendly. In plain terms it means that they tend to benefit those who can help the global investors extract more per unit of time and labour. In the eventuality, the advent of global investment may translate into greater pauperization of a people not yet acculturated into the discipline of industrial labour. The danger of further fragmenting our collective life and its implications for our identity is worrisome. Then there is the additional threat of influx of labour from outside destabilizing our collective life and identity further. We would therefore like to call on the middle class to rise above the seductive opportunism that increasing global investment may stir in them and help devise ways and means to limit the disruptive character of globalization. This struggle will be equally important as the ongoing politico-military struggle against Indian colonial rule. Lastly, the UNLF Central Committee would like to share our thoughts and happy messages to the indigenous peoples of Manipur – that Our National Independence, with Autonomy at all levels, and to create a democratic system in tune with our native genius, a respect for identities and traditions, and respectful co-existence of all communities, and to prosper together in equality, justice and freedom shall be our motto and let us all work together towards this end”, the statement added.
The UNLF Central Committee paid revolutionary salute to their Chairman, officers and ranks of the freedom struggle and to those who suffered indignities through torture by Indian.
Besides, the UNLF Central Committee also extended its heartiest greetings to the fraternal member parties of the CorCom, which is fighting for the restoration of Manipur’s freedom, as well as to the other fraternal revolutionary parties of Western South East Asia (WESEA) and to other likeminded ethnic revolutionary groups as well. And we extend our special greetings and are grateful to our civil societies and student bodies who are spearheading our people’s movements against the tyranny of Indian oppressive regime bearing its full impact and highlighting the plight of Manipuri people.