Too Little Too Late | On Manipur HC's Deletion of Contentious Para in 2023 Order

That order was the tinder box leading to the conflagration of the Northeastern state.

One wrong ruling of the Manipur High Court's single judge bench has led to an ongoing catastrophe in the state where thousands are still languishing in relief camps and the studies of the children and youth are completely disrupted. Above all, the lives of the tribal Kuki-Zo people are disjointed because government employees and others working in the Imphal Valley cannot return out of fear for their lives.

With the Arambai Tenggol, an armed outfit, being given a free hand by Chief Minister Biren Singh, there is no sign that overtures for peace are even being contemplated. The CM has taken an overt stance that his people – the Meiteis are the ones wronged and that the wrongdoers are the Kuki-Zo tribes in the Hills.

Dogged attempts to paint all the Kuki-Zo people as illegal migrants have further fuelled the animosity between the two groups, even while the Nagas are in a wait-and-watch mode.

What has now come to light (on the ST status demand by the Meiteis) from the Office of the Registrar General, Ministry of Home Affairs, is that since the 1980s, this demand has always been summarily rejected because the Meiteis exhibit no tribal characteristics. Some citizens had decided to go deep into this matter and ferret out the documents and communication between the government of Manipur and the Central government and have found out that this demand had been repeatedly rejected on the plea that Meiteis have adopted Hinduism (and do not display any tribal characteristics). It was one such appeal that led to a series of actions thereafter.

A Look At Demand for ST Status

On 23 February this year, the Manipur High Court ordered the deletion of a paragraph from the order from March 2023 which had urged the State Government to do the needful and pursue the inclusion of Meiteis in the ST list. Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had earlier stated that the Manipur High Court order was wrong since the apex court bench had clarified that it would not deal with legal issues arising out of the Manipur High Court's decision on the granting of reservations to the majority Meiteis, as the pleas challenging the order were pending with the larger division bench there. The Chief Justice had stated that the contentious paragraph of the Manipur High Court conflicted with the Supreme Court's constitution bench stance – a matter still pending before it.

The series of communications between the Manipur government and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment date back to January 2001, where it was stated that the Sema Nagas should no longer feature in the list of STs in Manipur because they constitute only about 20 speakers at the time (1991) and they are permanent residents of Nagaland. The letter from the Tribal Development Department states about the Meiteis thus:

“The State Government did not specifically recommend the case of Meitei for inclusion in the scheduled list. The opinion of the Registrar General of India on the Meitei that they possess no characteristics of the tribes is correct. Meitei was formed by seven tribes in the long past. They are Hindus assuming the status of Kshatriya caste in the ladder of Hindu caste. They are the dominant group in Manipur. They have now been included in the list of Other Backward Classes. There is no need to list them in the list of Scheduled Tribes now.”

In 1982, the contention of the Office of the Registrar General of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, was that “from published literature, it is seen that the term Meiteis generally written as Meitheis. This term however is used to refer to the non-tribal population in Manipur Valley who have been more under the Hindu influence. According to available information, this community does not appear to possess tribal characteristics. There this office is not in favour of inclusion of Meiteis in the list of Schedule Tribes.”

What is unfortunate is that it was the High Court order of 27 March 2023 directing the state to pursue the matter of inclusion of Meiteis in the ST list triggered a series of killings. It is impossible to describe the plight of people in the hills of Kangpokpi, Churachandpur, and other areas adjoining the Imphal valley. The number of Kuki-Zo people who have lost all their life savings after the only home they know went up in flames cannot be adequately represented in an article such as this.

For now, the injudicious ruling which did not take into account the official correspondence between the government of Manipur and the Central government, can only be considered mischievous.

That order, which was the tinder box leading to the conflagration of Manipur, and has shattered so many lives and continues to cause immense hardship to the people there, was rescinded by Justice Golmei Gaiphulshillu during a review petition. The contentious paragraph from last year's verdict, instructing the state to expedite consideration of Meitei community inclusion, was deemed for deletion. This paragraph stated the state government "shall consider the case of the petitioners for inclusion of Meetei/Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribes list, expeditiously, preferably within a period of four weeks" from the date of receipt of the order.

Justice Gaiphulshillu's ruling on 21 February emphasised the necessity of removing the directive, pointing to the Government of India's stipulated procedure for Scheduled Tribe list amendments. Justice Gaiphulshillu referred to the constitutional protocol detailed in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' 2013-14 report and highlighted the need to align with the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretation as was earlier stated by Chief Justice Chandrachud. Besides, it is not within the realm of courts to deal with the question of deciding on castes and tribes as those are within the ambit of Parliament.

However, it would appear that the demand for ST status for Meiteis was the trigger for many underlying issues that remain subsumed and unspoken. The disinterest of the Central government in the fact that a militant outfit had summoned the MLAs and made them take a vow to protect and promote the interests of the Meiteis would appear as if things had been left to an incompetent State government to handle.

And now with elections around the corner, the BJP could not be bothered about the northeast, a region that sends only 25 MPs in total. It's also a region that is so heavily dependent on the Centre that MLAs and MPs can be induced to change their political preferences at the drop of a hat.

Many are surprised that Nagaland and Meghalaya, which have a substantial Christian population, would be aligned with the BJP government at the Centre despite its overt attempts at curbing religious freedom (now getting even more strident). But as they say, money is everything and fighting elections in India today is not a joyride. With the Congress Party unable to gather its flock and so many MLAs from different states ready to jump ship to the BJP, things can only get murky even as the saffron party embraces all those it accused of corruption and practising dynastic politics.

Politics has become a cruel game of cards where the elected make sure they retain their seats and their power, no matter how many lives are lost in the bargain. Manipur is an example of the meticulous destruction of truth, the collapse of trust, and the rise of animosity. There is no longer a shared narrative in the state. It's about their narrative and ours and the twain will never meet because it takes statesmanship for that to happen. We have no statesmen/women worth their salt today.

(The writer is the Editor of The Shillong Times and former member of NSAB. She can be reached at @meipat. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)