Manipur: Reflecting on Indian Nationalism

Sandeep Singh

The viral video of the heinous violence inflicted on the women of Manipur as a result of the continuing ethnic violence since last 3 months, has stunned the entire nation. Among the women being paraded naked was a wife of army personnel who had fought in Kargil. The Manipur Chief Minister says, “Several such incidents have occurred.”

The ongoing violence in Manipur has claimed the lives of 155 people and made about 60,000 homeless. There have been more than 5000 incidents of arson. Police stations across the State have been looted. Thousands of weapons and lakhs of cartridges have fallen in the hands of the rebel factions. Now the flames of this violence are reaching Mizoram. 

Despite the highly sensitive situation, the conduct of the Centre and State has been extremely disappointing. It was only when the barbaric video became viral than the Prime Minister broke his silence.

However, BJP is now attempting to dismiss the continuing violence in Manipur by equating it to the state of crime against women across India.The inability of the BJP regime to provide a sense of security and belongingness to ethnic and local nationalities has threatened the integrity and stability of the north east. What is more troubling is that while both Kuki and Meitei communities have built their own armies and bunkers; the issue is not limited to that.

Sadly it seems now in Manipur there is no “middle ground” left because of the hardening attitudes on all sides of the divide. The situation is so bad that the Indian Prime Minister and Home Minister are evading even talking on the issue.

Civil society barely exists and the political parties do not have the credibility to negotiate between different groups. In this context, Rahul Gandhi's visit to Manipur is the only significant and sincere attempt to usher in a new process of healing the wounds of all groups without a partisan approach.

Nationalism is a double edged sword. It can unite people but at the same time it can create a division and rift amongst them. In its healthy form, it ushers immense happiness, creativity, development, lots of freedom and instils new life in its populace. However, in its unhealthy form it may bring in obstacles, division, violence and end in dictatorship. Narrow nationalism always requires an enemy who can be hated- whether it be a country, a religion or anything else.

In its 150 years journey, nationalism has emerged as a powerful political feeling.Because it isvery delicate, it is easily adopted by linguistic, cultural and religious identifies.  In the beginning of 20^th century Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote, “ Indian Nationalism is a force of recent origin and before us she has evolved itself into a universal mission as if she is going to conquer destiny.”

India is a melting pot. It has within itself from the north-east to the deep south various political, linguistic, cultural and religious identifies.These emotions may be linked to a communities identity, language, religiosity or culture.

Their expression varies. Sometimes in the form of making an organisation, sometimes through different flags and sometimes by having a fair share in wealth and power. These identities together join the identity of India. It is through these identities, expressions or one should say all these regional identities, sub-nationalities combine to form an all Indian Nationality.  The duty of the Indian nation is to bring all these various regional nationalities under the umbrella of a pan Indian nationality and assure them that we are all one together.

This is a delicate task. This requires foresight, humility, deep understanding and the ability to carve out a new future. This cannot be done superficially.

Doing it with the aim of electoral or political gains can prove fatal.At this point it is important to understand how different political ideologies view the different Indian identities. If the government or political parties try to use these identities, which have evolved from intense social processes over thousands of years, for mere electoral gains as, a ‘tool’, a weapon, then despite a change in time or place the outcome will remain the same as what we are witnessing in Manipur today.  

Identities have been used by the RSS and BJP as a weapon for electoral gain and for power. This trend is again copied at the state level and has led to poisoning of relations between different identity groups.RSS-BJP has always tried to present multicultural, pluralistic and inclusive Indian nationalism in a narrow and constricted manner. BJP, while negating Indian nationalism has pushed a reactionary political view which they have cleverly labelled Hindu nationalism.Another product of a similar effort is Islamic nationalism.

BJP and RSS’s HinduRashtra discourse has made every identity - whether religious or ethnic - harden their positions and prepare for the worst.In a country with such great diversity and also overlap between cultures, traditions and even ethnic mix of population the black and white framework of 'Hindu versus non-Hindu' of the Sangh Parivar has led to imitation by all groups along similarly simplistic lines.

Post coming to power, in 2014 BJP-RSShave aggressively worked towards implementing this experiment.In Manipur this is exacerbated by the discourse of insider (Meitei) versus outside (Kuki). What this shows is that anti-Muslim rhetoric will come back to bite all identify groups because it becomes a way of seeing the world and using such reductionist logic for narrow political gains.This will have far reaching implications for every community in the Indian society.

In the last few years there have been continuous attacks upon the federal structure of India. There are continuous state sponsored divisions and attacks on the basis of religion, language and culture.  Manipur is the first victim of the ongoing attack on India’s federal structure.

Importantly both ‘VandeMantram’ and ‘Jan Gana Man’ originated from Eastern India. Renaissance started from Eastern India and it was the main centre of our independence struggle. The same Eastern India which gave birth to Indian nationalism, is challenging nationalism again. Today Indian nationalism is truly facing its toughest crisis. 

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