DC Edit | Govt must stop Manipur drift now or face trouble
The grist of the Indian Constitution, or for that matter the constitution of all democratic counties, is the protection of the weak against injustice perpetrated by the mighty, whether it is between the citizen and the state or between various individuals or sections of the population. It vests the state with the power and responsibility to ensure that everyone follows the laws that the people have given themselves. A failure to observe this basic constitutional principle will result in the denial of justice to one person or a group which could then take up unlawful practices, causing unrest in society.
The people of Manipur, a state of the Indian Union, have been denied the rights the Constitution confers on them for quite some time now. From the right to equality to the right to life and the right to judicial redress, every single fundamental right the Constitution has assured them has been called to question in the border state for the last 18 months. The state machinery is in total collapse ever since the start of the ethnic violence assisted by the state around May 3, 2023. And the ground realities have not yet improved even the slightest bit despite the Supreme Court stating in a loud and clear voice on August 1 last year that “there is an absolute breakdown of the state machinery in Manipur”.
The latest series of violent incidents, which started off with the murder of a woman and then a retaliatory murder last week, culminating in the Central Reserve Police Force troops gunning down 11 armed militants on Monday, would convince anyone who has a stake in the running of the country, except for the governments in the state and at the Centre, that the people of the state deserve much better. Protection of the life and property of citizens is supposed to be the primary responsibility of democratic governments but those in charge of Manipur have none of it. The ethnic group, to which the gunned down militants belong, claims that the slain people are part of village protection groups. It is unimaginable that people have to take care of their own security in order to survive in hitherto-peaceful villages.
The statement of the 10 MLAs from the Kuki community that the solicitor general was lying to the Supreme Court about the Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh meeting them comes as a shocker of an equal magnitude. The man responsible for ensuring justice to all has been accused of acting in a partisan fashion ever since violence began one-and-a-half years ago. He has been accused of running an administration which discriminates against his own people not by one but many fact-finding teams. But there has been scant change in his conduct or in the Union government’s attitude either towards him or towards the people of the state.
It is a paradox that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been making his voice heard on global platforms on India’s willingness to negotiate peace in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war while not seeing the need of his intervention so that peace returns to Manipur. He has not yet found time to visit the strife-torn state which is under his care and none else’s.
India has paid a heavy price for allowing regional and local conflicts to slip into a mess. Manipur is one such mess in the making, and for a long time to boot. So there is that much more urgency to solve this problem.
The Constitution and the laws that are supposed to govern life must find their foothold in Manipur; we can no longer afford the people there being subjected to the most grotesque injustices. But only the government can make that happen.