Taking the first step towards normalcy Questions on Delhi dialogue

The first step has been taken and this is what is needed, for afterall the longer the situation is allowed to fester, the more Manipur stands to lose and everyone knows what this entails. Credit to the Union Home Ministry for breaking the ice and convincing the Kuki-Zo MLAs to attend the meeting and this is something very far removed from the earlier slogan of ‘Peace Later, Solution First,’ a cry coined and floated with so much conviction by the Kangpokpi based Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) and the Churachandpur based Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) in the earlier days of the ethnic conflict. The details of what were discussed during the meeting are not yet available, but if one goes by what NE Live has had to report, one of the Kuki-Zo MLAs is reported to have claimed that the demand for a Separate Administration would be put forward during the meeting. One wonders whether such a subject would be allowed to be brought up in the first meeting itself, but the finer details of the meeting has not been spelt out and this is where it becomes important for everyone not to take everything they hear to heart. Whatever the case may be, it is significant that for the first time in over 17 months, Meitei and Kuki-Zo MLAs have come to the negotiating table and while one may well ask what is there to discuss, the fact that the two sides have sat together at the dialogue table is significant. Manipur has to wait and see what transpired during the meeting and while all the finer details may never come it is important that people just do not jump to conclusions on hearsay and take note of the reality that has become sort of entrenched since the evening of May 3, 2023. It is for the first time in the 25 years history of The Sangai Express that the paper has identified villages as Meitei village or a Kuki or a Naga village. Stretch this understanding a bit and today the need to censor the name of the community to which a drug peddler or a drug smuggler belong to is no longer felt. Same is the case when it comes to the arrest of any arms dealer or anyone caught on the wrong side of the law. In the initial days of the violence, The Sangai Express steered clear of naming the community of anyone, but with things becoming clear that false narratives have been fed to the outside world ably aided by the pen pushers who parachuted in here, the need to start identifying the community to which anyone belonged or belong to became a sort of a given. Situation has come to such a pass today that  even MLAs are now tagged with the community to which they belong to and so it is that it is not surprising to see ”Naga, Kuki and Meitei MLAs line up for Delhi meeting” headlining a crucial story.
This is about the reality here and the backdrop against which the October 15 meeting was held. The first round of meeting has passed, but it is still not clear who presided the meeting. Some say it was Union Home Minister Amit Shah who presided while yet other sources said it was BJP MP and in charge of North East Sambit Patra. Another talk doing the round is, the talk was not initiated by the office of the Home Minister but was organised by the Intelligence Bureau, which of course comes under the Home Ministry. Why has no official statement on the meeting been issued  even now ? Only Delhi will have the answer but it does not help at all if things are kept under a veil of secrecy and this can only create rooms for conspiracy theories to do the round and this is the last that Manipur needs. Despite this, it is to be acknowledged that the first round of meeting to initiate the process of normalcy and peace has been held and one wonders how many more such meetings will be convened in the coming days. Will the meetings in the coming days necessitate the participation of civil society organisations is a question that cannot be brushed aside for in the last 17 months it is more than clear that it is CoTU and ITLF which have been calling the shots on the side of the Kuki-Zo community. The Peace Committee that was set up during the early days of the ethnic clash turned out to be a non-starter and one hopes that the October 15 meeting does not go the way of the Peace Committee but manages to take things forward. How things proceed will depend a lot on how the people here on the ground respond to the initiative, for the fact is, 17 months of strife or confrontation is long enough for anyone and it is Manipur which has been bled dry and ultimately there can be no winner, only losers in such a clash. This is where the importance of the October 15 meeting lies.