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11/21/2011: "What is a supra-State in India? Sentinel"

What is a supra-State in India? Sentinel

Way back in the mid-1980s, when Doordarshan was still trying to find its feet in Guwahati, I was asked to do an interview of the late P.H.Trivedi who was then Secretary of the North Eastern Council. Knowing Mr Trivedi to be a man not entirely devoid of a sense of humour and one who could take the odd jibe in his stride, I asked him whether the North Eastern Council was some kind of a super-State of the region since other regions of our country did not have such an arrangement for channeling a sizeable part of the Centre’s development funds to the States of the region. Mr Trivedi took his time to explain to me why a different kind of arrangement was deemed appropriate for the Northeast. Not all of what he said was convincing. Besides, I have this awkward habit of following up such questions with queries on the constitutional provisions that make such special arrangements enforceable. I generally also have my own rule of thumb for assessing such special arrangements: any special measure that needs an amendment of the Constitution must be an ad hoc arrangement arising from the rulers’ inability to anticipate problems that were sure to arise, their having created an avoidable mess out of which they have to find crude remedies that the Constitution does not allow or due to a fear of guns being used. There are few countries in the world that have amended their constitutions as recklessly and as frequently as we have done to cope with one transient problem or the other. Till 2006, our lawmakers amended the Constitution 94 times. Since then, however, we have had some respite.
On Thursday, I was intrigued to read a newspaper report that spoke of Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh’s concern over the political implications of the Home Ministry’s proposal to give Nagaland the status of a supra-State (in lieu of a Greater Nagalim) that would enable people to enjoy certain special powers relating to the tradition and social customs of the Nagas in the three States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur. An alarmed Ibobi Singh has reportedly written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P.Chidambaram requesting them to take the three neighbouring States of Nagaland into confidence while working out the method.
No one seems to be clear about what this new-fangled nomenclature implies or what the Home Ministry’s plans are in respect of Nagaland. The prefix ‘supra’ means above, beyond or transcending. It has a separate existence from the word supra (written in italics) which is an adverb meaning above or earlier on (in a book etc.). Obviously, the root is the same, though the prefix ‘supra’ is not used as an adverb. So, judging from the meaning of the prefix, the Home Ministry has in mind a State that is above the others, beyond the others or one that transcends the others. We find no scope for such an entity in the Indian Constitution. Our Constitution has provision for States and Union Territories. One notices how Union Territories have become States in some cases such as Delhi, Goa and Mizoram. The actual status of Delhi is still confusing to some people even in Delhi. But it is clear that it is not a supra-State. So what really is a supra-State? Can such an undefined entity that does not figure in our Constitution be created merely on the whims of some minister or bureaucrat just because it will make the Nagas feel superior to others and just because the Centre is sufficiently frightened of the Nagas? And obviously I am not the only one to raise these inconvenient questions. People who know their political science backwards and can teach poor lowbrows like us a thing or two, are also going to ask more awkward questions. So, where do the smart inventors of such terminology go from here? They rush to the smart lawmakers in Parliament who not only give them a satisfactory definition of ‘supra-State’ but also the draft of the required amendment to the Constitution that will legitimize both parentage and parturition. Once this is done, hell is likely to break loose because the new initiative will signify that Nagaland is above or beyond all the States of the Indian Union and that it transcends the other States of the Union. Such a discriminatory and exclusive political gimmick is going to divide the country rather than to unite it. The senseless gimmick is going to tell the world that the Government of India regards the Nagas alone as the elite of the country. Can we have such discrimination in a democracy just because some minister, some bureaucrat or some negotiator thinks this is a bright idea and that he does not have to consult anyone on this? This is autocracy and arbitrariness taken to absurd limits.
But what about the fallout of such a gimmick in the Northeast? It may well herald a political process that legitimizes a Greater Nagalim on the ground regardless of what the situation is on paper. It may well be a process that tells the Nagas: “You want a Greater Nagalim? Take it just as you have already taken over 66,000 hectares of Assam’s territory by force. We in Delhi will maintain silence as we have done all these years. You don’t have to worry about Manipur. Your long road block has shown the Manipuris that you can do with their lives just what you please. Manipur will approach Delhi, and we know what we have to do. As for Arunachal Pradesh, the people will not even protest as long as their territory is annexed by Nagas and not by the Assamese. So you have really got your Greater Nagalim on the ground. Why should you worry about what the map shows?”
What is it that has brought the Centre to this position of abject surrender of authority as far as the Nagas are concerned? It is no different from the Centre’s fear of all outfits that do their talking with smoking guns in hand. There is little difference whether the cause of fear is Nagas, Bodos, different Manipuri militant outfits, the Naxalites or the Maoists who have killed so many policemen. The fear of the gun in the hearts of those who got into the police forces on a clear understanding of their job requirements has been all too evident during the past three or four decades. No wonder we have a police force that has ceded over 66,000 hectares of Assam’s territory to the Nagas over the years despite successive chief ministers having indulged in the bravado of declaring that not an inch of our land will be ceded! For some reason, the government has not armed the police force with sophisticated weapons even though almost all militant outfits have Kalashnikov series weapons. In fact, even a phased distribution of the weapons seized from the ULFA and other terrorist oufits would go a long way towards building up the morale of the police force all over the country provided the training in the use of such weapons can be imparted swiftly. We cannot continue to have a government that has to placate militant groups at all times without being able to tell them what demands can be conceded and what cannot. We cannot always be ruled by a government that is ever obliged to make responses motivated solely by fear. Nor can we ever condescend to be lesser mortals or second class citizens just because some people with guns can carve out supra-States for themselves.
What is most heartening about the ‘supra-State’ developments is that on Thursday the Opposition parties (including the AGP and the BJP) and the AASU expressed their determination to oppose the supra-State concept and demanded that the State government should clarify its stand on the issue. AGP spokesman Atul Bora was of the view that “the concept of a Greater Nagalim has been merely redefined as a supra-State body”. On Friday, Assam Accord Implementation Minister and State government spokesman Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the Centre would not include Assam in its supra-State concept and if it did include Assam, the State government would oppose it tooth and nail. For once, the State government is speaking as if it is on the side of the people. One can only hope that the minister’s statement truly represents the State government’s intentions and that there would be no change in the ruling party’s stance. The coming days are bound to be trying ones for the people of Assam.
BNC bats for Daimary talks OUR CORRESPONDENT The Telegraph


Chairman Hagrama Mohilary pays homage to martyrs at BNC’s first annual convention in Udalguri on Saturday. Picture by UB Photos
Kokrajhar, Nov. 19: The Bodo National Conference (BNC), a conglomeration of Bodo organisations, will soon meet Union home ministry officials to initiate peace negotiations with the Ranjan Daimary faction of the NDFB.
Addressing a gathering to mark the first annual convention of the BNC in Udalguri today, its chairperson Hagrama Mohilary said a BNC team would soon meet home ministry officials to initiate peace talks with Daimary, who is now in jail, and his group.
Mohilary, however, did not specify the date. He said the Centre had taken initiatives to appoint an interlocutor to negotiate with Ranjan Daimary and his group.
P.C. Haldar, who was appointed by the Centre as interlocutor to negotiate with the NDFB (Progressive) — now in ceasefire for the last six years — is said to have been appointed as interlocutor for talks with the Daimary group.
The BNC requested the government to release arrested Ranjan Daimary, alias D.R. Nabla, and also appealed to it to initiate steps to provide an opportunity for Daimary to participate in the peace process. It also resolved to erase social ills including witch-hunting by creating awareness among the people.
The meeting also accepted withdrawal of the NDFB (P) from the primary membership of the BNC. It, however, said the door was always open for any organisation to be part of the BNC and work for the greater interest of the community. The NDFB (P), whose general secretary Govindo Basumatary was one of the conveners of the BNC, had withdrawn from its primary membership on ideological differences. Anjali Daimari, a BNC convener, said the meeting had resolved to develop the community.
Bring both NDFB factions for talks: BNC From our Staff Reporter Sentinel
UDALGURI, Nov 19: The Bodo National Conference (BNC) has urged the government to bring both the factions of the NDFB to the negotiation table and said that such a balanced move will bring permanent peace in the strife-torn Bodo-dominated areas. A resolution was also taken in this regard by the BNC at its two-day annual conference that was concluded on Saturday. The conference was held at Beriguma Field in Udalguri.
The BNC also pleaded that Ranjan Daimary faction of the NDFB and his colleagues should be immediately released from jail to hasten the peace process.
The open session of the BNC was attended by thousands of people from all ranks of the Bodo society. People, who attended the conference, said that to get the separate State of Bodoland, unity among the all the sections of the Bodo people was a must.
BNC chairman and the BTC chief Hagrama Mohilary, in his speech, said, ‘‘The BNC is not a political group. It is a social platform to deal with the grievances of the Bodo people. Its main aim is to bring peace and unity among the Bodos. The government should bring the Ranjan faction to the negotiation table as it did with the NDFB(P) faction.’’
Talking on the same line, BNC convener Anjali Daimary said that to bring ever-lasting peace in ‘‘Bodoland’’, all the genuine problems of the Bodos should be solved first. ‘‘If the government neglects one Bodo group, then there will be no chance of peace. Bodo people have suffered a lot and now they want permanent peace,’’ Daimary added.
The BNC has welcomed the appointment of PC Halder as interlocutor for peace talks between the Ranjan faction and the government. Some other resolutions of the BNC stated that there were no relations between the NDFB(P) and the BNC, and that steps should be taken by the BNC to curb the practice of witch-hunting. Lok Sabha MP SK Bismuthiary, Rajya Sabha MP Biswajit Daimary, Bodo Sahitya Sabha president Dr Kameswar Brahma, Tourism Minister Chandan Brahma, MLA Pramila Rani Brahma and others took part in the open session.
Meanwhile, BNC chief convener Khampha Borgoyari, while talking to the media, said that a BNC delegation would be leaving for Delhi soon to put pressure on the Central government to lay the ground for peace talks with Ranjan Daimary on the line of ULFA-government peace talks.
Ibobi government in dilemma over Supra rumpus Iboyaima Laithangbam
IMPHAL Nov 19: Chief Minister Okram Ibobi and his close associates who have been publicly expressing their confidence for the hat trick of win for the party which is completing 10 years of uninterrupted rule in Manipur shortly are worried by the developments after the machinations of the Union government regarding Supra state formation. They believe if the trend is not checked by coming out with a clear-cut stand on the policy relating to Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur regarding the creation of greater Nagaland, now doing the rounds under a new nomenclature, the supra state body, the Congress may be face a stunning defeat instead.
So far the central leaders have not reacted at all to the rumpus created by a report. Besides the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister have not condescended to make a reply to the urgent letter Okram IBobi had written seeking clarification on the concept and applicability of the supra state body in the North-eastern region.
After the rumpus Ibobi who has rushed to New Delhi to seek a clarification. Till the filing of this report he has not been given any kind of assurance. In view of the gravity of the situation an official statement is expected from the Central Government. A mere reporting by Okram Ibobi that the Prime Minister had assured him on the territorial integrity cannot be accepted now. Besides nobody is talking about territorial disintegration now since the supra state body does not seek a vivisection of the existing territory. What the adversaries are saying is that it is the first step towards the creation of greater Nagaland. It was pointed out that the constitution does not have any provision for this kind of body.
Manipur gets the much needed shot in the arm from Assam as some Ministers have said that Assam shall oppose the supra state body plan. During the agitations in Manipur in June 2001 following the extension of the ceasefire with the NSCN(IM) “without territorial limits” Assam and Arunachal Pradesh remained as disinterested specators except for the perfunctory statements. It may be recalled that 18 persons in
Manipur had made the extreme sacrifice over this issue after which the central government had unilaterally withdrawn the extension on June 27.
Officials feel that the Indian government and the NSCN(IM) leaders must have come to an understanding on the concept of supra state body which means that the central leaders will be in a cleft stick now. Because if the central leaders now announce that there is no basis of the newspaper report which did not mention the source it may anger some quarters. If on the other hand the report turns out to be factual Manipur will burn. It is yet to be seen what happens in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. In any case there is no reaction from Arunachal Pradesh on this issue.
The Manipur unit of the BJP has been saying that the territory of Manipur is not safe in the hands of the Congress. Reacting to the political attacks launched by the BJP Ibobi said that it would not be proper to cause panic and confusion among the people before the whole truth is learnt. Another political power, the Manipur People’s Party has said that the Congress had signed the merger agreement with the United Naga Integration Council on August 4, 1972 agreeing that the demand for the territorial reorganization is not anti-people and unconstitutional. Besides it said that the Congress supports the unity move among the Nagas.
Since Manipur goes to polls in February 2012 this issue is regarded as the main plank of the election propaganda and some opposition parties are making best use of it. As per the current scenario if Ibobi comes with a written statement from the central leaders it will be well and good and for the Congress to retain the power. The political observers predict that if the Chief Minister returns empty handed from New Delhi it will mean a political hara-kiri for the party in the next elections. On tactical grounds the civil society organizations of the communities are concerned and are keeping their fingers crossed. The MPP President Nimaichand Luwang has warned of a civil war if the centre goes ahead with this novel experiment.
Kisama- A basketful of traditions & cultures Kuzhovesa Soho/Kisama (Kohima) | One of the Morungs in construction at Kisama, for the annual Hornbill Festival of Nagaland.
The Hornbill Festival is no doubt an international renowned festival, which is an annual event for the people of “Land of Festivals”- Nagaland. Kisama Heritage is all set to engage with visitors, judging by the busy Nagas from various tribes making hectic preparation at their respective Morung sites.
Aside from citizens in Nagaland, tourists from mainland India and abroad visit the festival. Interacting with The Morung Express, workers from the Garo sites said that they are happy to be joining the festival. Mention may be made that the Kachari and Garo joined the ‘Heritage Village’ some few years back and have been endeavouring in their tradition and culture as part of the festival. They are reportedly spending at least 2 months building their ‘Morung’ with a minimum expenditure of 4 lakhs. The Tourism department is only providing Rs. 30,000 to each Morung, it is informed. Still, the communities are enthusiastically rigging up their Morungs and stalls etc.
Among the highlights of the festival are the National Hornbill Rock Contest, a motor rally, and Naga wrestling events aside from other ‘Naga sports’ activities such as bamboo-post climbing, catapult-shooting, chilli-eating competitions etc. A unique achievement from among the tribals’ is more less contributing tireless efforts for the promotion of Hornbill-an international festival to a lighter side of human envy and anxieties thereby marking uniqueness achievement for the DAN government under the able leadership of Neiphiu-u Rio-the Chief Minister of Nagaland.
Taking into an account of genuineness, 2011 Hornbill Festival 2011 is more or less a look out for more infrastructure(s) and development(s) process where never an inch of injustice prevails as reliably learnt so far from the Tourism department. Indeed, it’s no doubt the common expectation of “one for all” found to be on mainstream of everyone being loyal to what we (Chakhesangs) decide, thereby nothing in wrong aspects is viewed rather, fining tune is surveyed upon, this is disclosed while Chakhesangs were renovating their Morungs. The specific Morung of Kachari(s) and Garo(s) which were under well acceptable and recommendable way of beautiful designing structure is more or less singing a tune of shifting Nagas to a new horizon in calculating positive changes in society a “wake up call”.
Manipur`s Obsession With Hills And Valleys: Missing The Speck And The Log At The Frontiers Part I “We are all mountain people” Imphal Free Press By Laifungbam Debabrata Roy
In the presently raging (and long on-going) highly emotional internal debates, protests, accusations, charges and counter-charges on land, the law and the indigenous communities in Manipur, many of the persons involved, all honourable and respectable, also very learned, educated in a variety of academic subjects such as the pure sciences, law, the social and life sciences, military science, politics, environment, human rights and so forth. This is very encouraging, that such persons of scholarship obviously engaged regularly in rational thought and reflections, are involved. What is disappointing is that the content of this endless fracas is actually shallow, lacking in vision, very ill-informed and filled with outdated insular colonial notions. The sub-title of my article refers to one of the famous parables attributed to Jesus Christ, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but pay no attention to the log in your own eye?”
The contentious inner debate has many inter-related elements, some of them with deep historical roots. It is the nature of roots that they are often fragile, easily lost and often ramifying into unexpected areas and layers. Many of the critical roots of the present problematique are shadowy tendrils mislaid in our distant past and freely interpretable. Like the proverbial three blind men and the elephant, it is very clear that the problem faces enormous difficulties in identification today as we have become not only “blind” but also “illiterate”. Is the essential nature of the problem political, social, cultural, anthropological, environmental, topographical, administrative, legislative, rights-based or historical? Is it a combination of all the above, a potent and volatile admixture with many ingredients in various and perhaps changing proportions depending on the perceiver? Or are we barking up the wrong tree all these years?
The expressions used to describe and come to grips with the problem are multifarious and based on many a questionable rubric. It is more confusing than clarifying. The more this dispute continues, the more confounding it has become. How green are our valleys, how beautiful our blue hills and how blessed our land with bountiful abundance in every respect. And yet, fools we have become, unable to spare one moment to humility and the giving of gratitude. We are all unanimous about one wish. We all want an alternative to what we have, a new dispensation or alternative arrangement; but not one of us is willing to give an inch for this!
Elevating thoughts
Talking about inches, let us look at our political geography more honestly and creatively than we have been. A hill is defined as a naturally raised area of land, not as high or craggy as a mountain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit (e.g. Box Hill, Surrey or Capitol Hill, Washington DC). The distinction between a hill and a mountain is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is generally somewhat lower and less steep than a mountain. In the United Kingdom geographers historically regarded mountains as hills greater than 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level. Some hills can be quite small; for example, an ant hill or a mole hill. Some hills are created by human beings. There is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. The distinction between a hill and mountain is also considered by a range of topographic values, and not therefore absolute.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Mountain Watch report uses a range of characteristics that are based on elevation as a descriptor. According to this report compiled during the International Year of the Mountains (2002), “[t]opographical data from the GTOPO30 global digital elevation model (USGS EROS Data Centre 1996) were used to generate slope and local elevation range on a 30 arc-second grid of the world. These parameters were combined with elevation to arrive at the empirically derived definitions of six mountain classes. To reduce projection distortion in the original dataset, analysis was based on continental subsets in equidistant conic projection. Class
1: elevation > 4 500 m
2: elevation 3 500 – 4 500 m
3: elevation 2 500 – 3 500 m
4: elevation 1 500 – 2 500 m and slope ‡ 2°
5: elevation 1 000 – 1 500 m and slope ‡ 5° or local elevation range (7 km radius) 300 m
6: elevation 300 – 1 000 m and local elevation range (7 km radius) > 300 m
7: isolated inner basins and plateaus less than 25 km2 in extent that are surrounded by mountains but do not themselves meet criteria 1-6
The global mountain area thus ranged is almost 40 million km2, or some 27 per cent of the Earth’s surface. According to this classification, about 64 per cent of Asia is mountainous. Future parameters to be incorporated to better understand mountain environments are bioclimatic data into this formal topographic definition in order to model regional and latitudinal variations in the transition to mountain conditions. By this presently current system of classification, the entire area of Manipur may be called mountainous. UNEP’s mapping of mountainous areas of the Asia region includes Manipur in its entirety. Hills and valleys, we are all mountainous!
The UN’s approach to the report of mountain ecosystems is to generally assess the potential impacts of environmental change on mountain ecosystems and the services that they provide to people, and a key objective is to identify those mountain regions that are at particular risk of such impacts occurring in the future. It is oriented to sustainable development objectives, and not to administrative or political ones. Physically, existing mountains have only slope and elevation in common, and the fact that all will ultimately be eroded into insignificance, while others will be created. They may be formed by uplift of extensive blocks of land around major faultlines, or by folding of rock strata, both of which result from continental movements, or by volcanic activity often associated with both faulting and folding. Any given segment of land may well have been affected by all three processes over the course of Earth history, and so, with the exception of volcanic cones, mountain ranges will often be composed of a variety of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock types.
The concept of a “hill” itself is highly subjective, even arbitrary. Lengpui airport in Mizoram is described as located at a ‘high altitude’, but its elevation is only 426 m above mean sea level. Imphal valley’s average elevation at 786 metres (2578 feet) above mean sea level is almost double that of Lengpui. Depending on how you define the extent of the Imphal valley, a part of the Manipur River valley that is itself a part of the Manipur Plateau in the Eastern Himalaya, its altitude ranges from about 2530 feet above sea level to about 2610 feet. The Eastern Himalaya stretches between India and Myanmar. The Nága Hills and Manipur Plateau form the watershed between India and Myanmar (Burma). Imphal city itself is at 2565 feet (782 m). The elevations of some places in the elongate high valley are Mayang Imphal at 2533 feet (772 m), Oinam at 2532 feet (772 m), Thoubal at 2544 feet (775 m) and Sagolmang at 2610 feet (796 m) above mean sea level. On the other hand, Churachandpur town which is known as a hill town is just over 900 m above mean sea level (ASL). Present Manipur’s overall elevation ranges from about 40 m ASL to the south-west at a narrow strip of land called Jiribam Sub-Division of Imphal East District to 2994 m ASL to the north at Mt. Iso in Senapati District. Except for the narrow eastern and western slopes at the boundaries, the State is no doubt a mountainous one.
Cultural knowledge and understanding – can hills exist without valleys?
“It’s a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory.” In the Meitei and other indigenous languages spoken in Manipur, we are familiar with local terms like “ching”, “tampaak”, “zo”, “phai”, etc. We have many such places locally named as “ching” or “tampaak” all over the State. One could say that these local cultural descriptions are topographically based. So, we have “Sajik tampaak” and “Imphal tampaak”, for example. While we also have places such as “Cheiraoching”, “Maibalokpaching”, “Nongmaiching”, “Langol ching”, and so on, located and surrounded by tampaak. Just as the State of Manipur abounds in hills and mountains, this area is also fibrillated by high valleys and plateau-like topographical zones.
We also have, in Meitei, the concept of “ching-tam”, so also in other languages, to emphasise the unity, co-existence and co-dependence of the two topographically described geographic entities. In our knowledge, there are no valleys on this earth that are not flanked or surrounded by hills; and hills do not exist if not for the valleys. (The only exception is perhaps a solitary volcanic mountain, which is extremely rare, e.g., Mount Elgon on the border of eastern Uganda and western Kenya.) One cannot exist without the other; it is an ecosystem shaped and unified by the Earth’s tecto-climatic evolution. This is an old cultural wisdom, an indigenous knowledge that is now “discovered” and widely propounded through modern scientific understanding.
Invasive and colonised arguments
With the entry of the early Brahman proselytizers and settlers or “invaders” (the British census reports of 1881 and 1891 refer to the Brahmans in Manipur as invaders, another undecided argument perhaps), the British and other colonisers into the region known today as India’s north-eastern region came a new vocabulary to describe ourselves and what have as our inheritance. A people became a tribe, as if we all wore ties. Our culture became uncultured, and our civilisation became uncivilised, wild and primitive. It did not matter who did accept and who did not accept this indulgence from the invaders; all were tarred by the same brush.
The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from the “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.” So they devised a multi-pronged policy. The invasion and colonisation of our minds and thinking were paramount priorities. The rest would be easy, once these were achieved with success. They quickly saw what Hindu Brahmanical proselytization had achieved in dividing peoples. And they did the same. Exclusion was the watchword of both forms of mind-wash. All collectivisation trends and practices would be demolished, leaving us naked and open to exploitation. Apartheid and xenophobia were, after all, were well-worn practices before the dawn of the British Empire.
The General Report on the Census of India, 1891, London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, (Jervoise Athelstane Baines, 1893), for the first time, includes information on the Kathé (Manipur), Nága, Kuki and Khyin (Chin) as all tribes. Baines mentioned that “the mass of the population of Manipur is Mongoloid, even in title, and Brahmanic proclivities are confined to the court and its entourage.” Interestingly, in the table given for Class III “Forest Tribes” under Agricultural and Pastoral castes and tribes (p.194), the tribes are categorised into 9 (nine) groups. The Nága, Mikir, and Ching-pau (Singpo) are in Group 8, and the Kúki, Kathé (Manipuri) and Khyîn (Chin) are in Group 9. The Census Report of 1893 is extremely sketchy, though authoritative, regarding our region, especially the Indo-Burma frontier region, which now includes the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram. In 1891, there were no non-tribes in Manipur; all were tribal people except perhaps the Brahman and other “invaders” (sic).
Linguistically, among the tonic dialects, the main groups enumerated in the 1891 census concerning present day Manipur are Nága-Kákhyîn (Kachin) and Kúki-Lushai groups. They are both classified as belonging to the Thibeto-Burman. The Kúki and Kathé (Manipuri) dialects was included in the latter group, while the languages of Angámi, Á-o, Lho-tá, Séma, Kezháma, etc., (seven in all) are included in the former group.
The insidious notion of segregated “hill” and “plain” or “valley” areas were introduced into our official colonial vernacular for the first time around 1891; and the usage was initially quite arbitrary. Manipur was not the only administrative unit in the region with such topographically variable terrain. The province of undivided Assam was large, and had many valleys and mountainous areas. Even then, the British did not introduce such a language into legislative instruments, even though there were hill districts created with the gradual annexation of the kingdoms of the Jaintia and Khasi, and the Nága, Garo and Lushai Hills. The specific application of these seemingly topographically determined areas in Manipur had a totally different motive and was driven by a policy of division. The purported reasons posited by the British administrative representatives were based on other quasi-anthropological and neo-ethnographic terminology. This queer and designed terminology exists today in modern India and has even entered the language of the Constitution of the secular, socialist republic of India. What is even more queer is that this terminology been religiously adopted by ourselves and a source of hostilities, jealousies and conflicts. The tragedy is that the adopted alien terminology and its destructive legislative heritage have made us forget how to live together with dignity and humility, using our creativity and genius.
PART II “Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” [Frank Herbert]
Language, land and law Instead of recognising the fact that early British linguistic and other classifications were quite arbitrary and poorly informed by an inexact science, I find that our belligerent groups and learned leaders, young and old, engaged in the present poisonous debate continue to offer and perpetuate arguments that are self-contradictory in their essence. All kinds of administrative reports, footnotes, diaries and communications between petty colonial officers are religiously sourced. Extracts, remarks and quotes by colonialists discerned as useful ammunition are parroted out of context and fired at each other. The government, colonial (British) or successor (Indian), are painted as demons or heroes as a matter of convenience by all the parties whenever it suits them. The Constitution of India, a document that is “from time to time changeable by way of addition, variation or repeal” that gives with one hand and takes away with the other, is referred to by the argumentative parties as a monolithic or biblical, almost God-given, volume sometimes and at others, as a book of witchcraft from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”).
We are trapped within a post-colonial state formation track. Whether some us around here aspire for Nágalim or Kúkiland or Kangleipak or whatever, the local intelligentsia are unable to look at our profound and historic relationship to our lands and with each other as peoples beyond the myopia of European colonial and post-colonial mind-set constructs. Although the effective authority of non-state actors over certain domains – such as economic redistribution and the determination of rights to economic resources – might lead us to conclude that they stand in ‘opposition’ to the nation-state, the relationships between both are often as antagonistic as they are reciprocal and complicit. Artificially separating the state from the non-state, the formal from the informal, or the personal from the political, therefore, leave us no room for fluidity, porosity and overlap. In other words, we need to re-evaluate the dominant ideal model of the state as being strong or weak, failed or functioning by specifically demonstrating the interconnectedness between several dimensions of political space and action, which gather their specific expression in everyday practices of survival and regulation.
We have to question the idea of the state as a ‘‘thing’’, which apparently soars above people’s heads in an abstract and dominant fashion. What we are seeing over the last few decades is the phenomenon of political power being constantly demonstrated, projected and contested by ordinary people trying to arrange and project their lives. The persistent reordering of space in our frontier lands is not a product of nations, but is creating them. The elite amongst us, be it state or non-state, government or civil society, prefers the status quo when it comes to a perception of the political economy of our frontier lands. The elite always projects the colonial and post-colonial state constructs, dominating and encroaching as “superiorly placed” groups that determine and mould our world. They prefer to ignore the “broad scenes of intense interactions in which ordinary people from both sides work out everyday accommodations based on face-to-face relationships” (as described in a much cited article by Willem Van Schendel and Michiel Baud).
The Constitution of India originally provided for the right to property under Articles 19 and 31. Article 19 guaranteed to all citizens the right to ‘acquire, hold and dispose of property’. Article 31 provided that “No person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.” It also provided that compensation would be paid to a person whose property had been ‘taken possession of or acquired’ for public purposes. In addition, both the state government as well as the union (federal) government were empowered to enact laws for the “acquisition or requisition of property” (Schedule VII, Entry 42, List III). It is this provision that has been interpreted as being the source of the state’s ‘eminent domain’ powers.
The provisions relating to the right to property were changed a number of times. The 44th Amendment Act of 1978 deleted the right to property from the list of Fundamental Rights. A new article, Article 300-A, was added to the constitution which provided that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law”. Thus, if a legislature makes a law depriving a person of his property, there would be no obligation on the part of the State to pay anything as compensation. The aggrieved person shall have no right to move the court under Article 32. Thus, the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, though it is still a constitutional right. So, under the Indian constitutional and legislative dispensation, it is meaningless to talk of inviolate rights over land, the state owns all. This is the true meaning of ‘eminent domain’, a legal concept introduced from Europe. The state does not need the citizen’s consent to seize or expropriate private property. The property is taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties who will purportedly devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, economic development.
Recently, much public reference has been made to Article 371C (under Part XXI – “Special Provision” amendment made by the Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Act, 1962, sec. 2, w.e.f. 1.12.1963, and inserted by the Constitution (Twenty-seventh Amendment) Act, 1971, sec. 5, w.e.f. 15.2.1972), the Vth or VIth Schedules of the Indian Constitution, and the Manipur Land Reform & Land Revenue Act of 1960 enacted by India’s Parliament while Manipur was a Union Territory. The ML&LR Act is a law enacted without the assent of or debate by the people of Manipur.
Some of the belligerent parties claim that Article 371C of the Constitution and the Vth Schedule provides special and discriminatory protection to the tribes. After reading these provisions, I have only these comments to make. Article 371C makes no mention of a Scheduled or any other kind of tribe; its two clauses merely give the President of India a totally arbitrary power to declare what is or is not a Hill Area of Manipur. Of course, this also means that the India’s President can also subsequently and equally arbitrarily un-declare what was previously declared as a Hill Area in Manipur. A hill, by definition, is merely a topographically described particular feature of a geographically located area. No mention of valleys is made in this Article. So, technically and legalistically, some areas may be declared as Hill Areas, but such a Presidential declaration in his or her wisdom may exclude the adjoining ecologically unifying valleys from such protective provision that have implications beyond the narrow administrative sphere. I wonder how the President can possibly or conceivably make such declarations upon his or her mere whim.
On the other hand, eager to support this arbitrary and absurd provision as a protective or affirmative measure, some of the debating teams have read this provision to equate Hill Areas to the Scheduled Tribal Areas. So, Hill Areas mean Tribal Areas and vice versa. The President may declare Keishamthong in Sagolband Assembly Constituency or Moirangkhom in Yaiskul AC or Mahabali in the Manipur Palace Compound in Wangkhei AC as Hill Areas in the middle of Imphal City tomorrow – that is possible and Constitutionally, in order. Similarly, areas inhabited by Meitei (who are not yet a Scheduled Tribe) in Churachandpur Town, or Moreh or Kwatha in Chandel District may be declared as not Hill Areas. Needless to say, those peoples who are not Scheduled by the President of India are not “protected” by any of the special provisions in the Constitution. The people of Manipur are not protected by Article 371C. It merely gives the constitutional head of the government of India totally arbitrary and discriminatory powers to determine what geographers and ecologists all over the world have still a hard time defining as a hill.
The VIth Schedule does not provide for Manipur, so it remains a wishful thought. The Vth Schedule is a different matter because it applies to all of India except where the VIth Schedule is applicable – Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. But this Schedule only merely applies, for actually, it is never really implemented. When I look at this Schedule carefully, I am shocked. It prohibits the Scheduled tribes from even transferring land amongst each other. Each tribe, each tribal even, is stuck literally forever in its village or imagined Scheduled area. In reality, the tribe does not get even the constitutional rights that every citizen of India enjoys with his or her rightful immovable property. On the other hand, the right is abolished and transferred to the government to do as it pleases with it. The government also enjoys the privileges of regulating and benefiting from the practice of money-lending in the Scheduled areas. The underprivileged Scheduled Tribes are only allowed to sit and occupy (squat) the presidentially designated areas, no more. Confined and incarcerated by this ingenuous Schedule, the Scheduled Tribes can only hope to get out and get along in life when their land is acquired for a “greater public purpose” by the application of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and they are forcibly displaced (thrown out by an old British law that is not only applicable, but actually regularly implemented in full). In this human zoo, only the zookeeper decides who to throw to the sharks.
As for the land law enacted for Manipur, but only applicable to the arbitrarily declared “Hill Areas”, I can only say that we would very much better off without it. After this Act came into force in 1960, almost all the old land records of the Imphal Valley areas have mysteriously disappeared. So the land squatting rights of the people of the Imphal Valley literally sprang into being from 1960. But, this is not as good as it may sound. Land registers cannot verify certificates issued by the government of or the State of Manipur before 1960 in innumerable instances. The rights that existed before 1960 are effectively erased
Finally, grappling with the problem
How do we as responsible people with a sense of our unique histories, desire for honourable outcomes, aspiring self-respecting livelihoods, valuing freedom, wishing to live with dignity, recognizing our shared ancestry, often harping on faraway lands where we originally came from and drawing genomic relationships with other distant peoples, get a grip on this vexed and hexed problem? A problem, now inter-generational, that is branded by rapidly receding hopes for peaceful co-existence, destruction of our birthright and selfish squandering of our inheritance.
A Nyishi elder in Arunachal Pradesh once gently told me, some years ago, when I spent an evening with him to explain the effects of large dams on the mountain people, “Who is this government? Where did it come from? We were here before they came.” The European colonials asserted the modern legal concepts of “terra nullius” and “eminent domain”. They conquered and occupied lands as if the land belonged to no one before they arrived. The doctrine of terra nullius as it is applied to indigenous peoples holds that indigenous lands are legally unoccupied until the arrival of a colonial presence, and can therefore become the property of the colonizing power through effective occupation. The present government of independent India continues to adopt this western legal doctrine, as embodied in the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. In other words the people of India are squatters on their own lands, because the government claims ownership of all the land in the territories of India. The Martínez Cobo study, commissioned by the United Nations, found that many countries with large indigenous populations nevertheless reported that no such peoples existed there. India, on the one hand, is one country that claims that all its inhabitants, including the tribals, at the time of independence, and their descendants are all indigenous. On the other, the Indian government also claims there are no indigenous peoples in the country. Unless and until the right to private property is first reinstated as a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution, all claims to private property, ancestral land, and so forth, are null and void. The 44th Constitutional Amendment Act of 1978 must be quashed.
Prof. Erica-Irene A. Daes, an expert member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights was the Special Rapporteur entrusted in 1997 with the challenging task of preparing a Working Paper on indigenous peoples and their relationship to land with a view to suggesting practical measures to address ongoing problems in that regard. Prof. Daes submitted her final Working Paper in 2001. While submitting her researched paper, she requested the United Nations to have it translated into different languages and disseminated widely. But this never happened.
According to her, “it is fundamental that this relationship be understood as more than simply a matter of “land ownership”, in the usual sense of private ownership by citizens, but a special and comprehensive kind of relationship that is historical, spiritual, cultural and collective.” It is fundamental to understand that we indigenous people do not relate to our land exclusively by the inch. If we embark on an honest and collectively participatory exercise of demarcating indigenous territories in Manipur based on the profound relationships we all have with our land, we shall surely find that many of the territories overlap and more are shared by neighbouring groups. “Ancestral domain” is not synonymous with “eminent domain”.
Prof. Daes elucidated many problems associated with indigenous lands, historically and currently. As all the original inhabitants of Manipur claim to be indigenous peoples, it would be very wise to undertake a serious reading of her learned paper. By such an exercise, we shall discover that not only is the present ceaseless clashes we engage in amongst ourselves quite absurd, but we shall, more importantly, learn where the problems really lie. Putting it into the language of the physician, it is most important that we diagnose the disease before we prescribe. Making a comprehensive diagnosis of our land related issues and problems is easier said than done. There are an enormous number of issues and problems relating to indigenous land rights. Any attempt to deal with all of them would necessarily be superficial and lengthy. A better way would be to sort and organize the multitude of issues into an analytical framework and to attempt to identify those issues or problems which are the most fundamental or most severe and, of these, the most deserving of attention in the search for means of alleviating the suffering and injustices endured by the different ethnic groups or indigenous peoples of Manipur.
The very first consideration. We all need to address and agree upon what the core values or principles that would guide our work should be. Such a set of core values that we would all agree upon should be affirmative, and not condemnatory. Only the positive values should be on the table. Negative values should be discarded as they are usually contentious and dispute prone. Negative values with very limiting scope and freely interpretable, such as “not an inch of our land shall be sacrificed” or “the land belongs to no particular group” or “government owns all the land” can never progress our problem-solving work. The international human rights framework provides a useful set of core values, values that the Indian Constitution and juridical system that obviously do not satisfactorily meet our needs or aspirations, and fail to deliver for us.
US to support India’s Look East policy Assam Tribune News
November 11, 2011: Washington, Aiming to strengthen its ties with countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has said it wants to actively support India’s Look East policy and is committed to broader, deeper and more purposeful ties with it, reports PTI.
“Our ability to build a successful regional architecture will turn on our ability to work effectively with the emerging powers, countries like Indonesia, or India, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, and the Pacific Island countries,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her remarks at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. As such the US is making a concerted effort to build closer and more extensive partnerships with all these nations, she said.
“India and Indonesia in particular are two of the most dynamic and significant democratic powers in the world, and the United States is committed to broader, deeper, more purposeful relations with each. And we want to actively support India’s Look East policy as it grows into an Act East policy,” Clinton said. From the very beginning, the Obama administration embraced the importance of the Asia Pacific region, she said.
Clinton said that so many global trends point to Asia — it is home to nearly half the world’s population, it boasts several of the largest and fastest-growing economies and some of the world’s busiest ports and shipping lanes, and it also presents consequential challenges such as military build-ups, concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, natural disasters, and the world’s worst levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
It is becoming increasingly clear that in the 21st century, the world’s strategic and economic centre of gravity will be the Asia Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of Americas, she said. And one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decades will be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise – in this region, she said.
Earthquake rocks Assam, Manipur and Nagaland IANS

Earthquake measuring 5.9 on richter scale jolts North-East
GUWAHATI: An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale rocked India's northeast, Myanmar and Bangladesh on Monday, triggering panic among people. The tremor was felt at 8.47am in most parts of Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur, besides in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The epicentre was located at 24.947°N, 95.226°E in Myanmar, about 130 km east of Manipur capital Imphal, the website of US Geological Survey said.

Seven northeastern states - Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur - are considered by seismologists to be the sixth most earthquake-prone belt in the world. The region experienced one of the worst earthquakes, measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale, in 1897, that claimed the lives of over 1,600 people. In September, more than 50 people died after a killer quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale shook the region.