Meira Paibis : Manipuri women caught between violence and narratives

Melody Kshetrimayum (FLAME University, Pune)
Contd from previous issue
During the ongoing Manipur violence, they had formed human chains, staged peace demonstrations, and organised peace rallies seeking restoration of normalcy in the State. Four months into the violence, the Government and non-Government institutions have failed to protect the people of Manipur and provide safety to their families. Women have lost trust and faith in the institutions and authorities. Peace building for these women may mean constructing something new, blocking destruction, or transforming what is already present. Meira Paibis strengthened their voices over the course of violence and have used various forms to restore peace. They slept on the streets in the night to guard their localities, checked vehicles for unidentified persons, protected the sacred places, organised sit-in protests in the capital city, and public meetings. These women, who have witnessed destructions and killings for more than four months despite the presence of security forces, developed their own peace building methods. The key slogans of all the protests focused on protecting the integrity and unity of Manipur.
In the light of many unwanted incidents, multiple narratives have been developed and called out on Meira Paibis using terms such as ‘naked nature’, and ‘anti-National’ forces for blocking security forces. All seemed well when Meira Paibis protested against the British and their exploitative administration. During the ongoing violence, the narrative of Meira Paibis has been changed by few scholarships that chose to be the saviour of the community with special protection. Meira Paibis, belonging to the ‘majority’ community, suddenly became ‘anti-tribal’ due to the increase in scholarships that chose one community over the other. It is noteworthy to mention that the social relationship between the Meiteis and other tribal groups is not the same as Hindus and Adivasis of mainland India. There have been instances of sexual assaults in the initial days of the violence. Rather than seeing the assaults as violence against women during conflict, few feminists’ scholarships conveyed the incident as majority minority/tribal-non tribal affairs. Besides, calls for justice by those few feminists presented powerful rhetoric theoretically but lacked an understanding of the current situation and local socio-political relationship between the communities. The endorsements and calls for justice fell into the trap of misleading tribal- non-tribal, majority-minority, and religion dichotomies. They often used sweeping statements within these frameworks by portraying the incident as a treatment meted out by the majority to the marginalised community. While the two communities, belonging to the same Tibeto-Burman family and speaking Tibeto-Burman languages could be treated as different people is a different discussion altogether, the recent discourse on sexual violence remained a linear and polished way of looking at power relationships. The scholarships completely ignored the local historical and social ethos with respect to women in these communities. The feminists’ scholarships often examined violent incidents, including sexual violence from either majority- minority or Hindu-Christian lens dismissing the complicated socio-political realities between communities that both have their respective grievances.
As Paromita Chakravarti rightly said, Indian feminists have not engaged actively enough with the systematic terrorisation of women by both the Indian Army and militant groups in the so called ‘disturbed’ States of the Indian Nation. Meira Paibis helped the assaulted women to escape from the angry mob. When culprits were identified two months later due to a viral video, they vandalised one of the culprit’s houses. It is important to note that the culprit belongs to the same community as the Meira Paibis.
It would be difficult to find women from other communities who would vandalise assaulter’s house (belonging to their own community) during a communal riot. While the vandalisation of one’s private property is not justified, what the few scholarships failed to examine was that the incident as well as the vandalization happened during the conflict when Meira Paibis themselves were struggling to protect their families from the armed conflict. Scholarships questioned Meira Paibis’ stance on not stepping up in solidarity with the victims’ family and loss of loved ones. The response to sexual violence could have been different if it did not happen during an armed conflict and if Meira Paibis were not living in fear for their own lives. The scholarships also failed to examine the incident as an embedded incident within a conflict or war. The assault was only one of the many horrible incidents that happened during the Manipur violence. People are struggling to fulfil their physiological and safety needs during the conflict. The scholarships denied the gravity of the impacts that both communities were experiencing by speaking loudly for only one community.
The pressing need is to understand that two communities are still in conflict,and equally affected. The Government, policy makers, academicians, practitioners, CSOs, journalists, and feminists need to accept that both communities, irrespective of their statuses or religion, need support and seek normalcy.