How Manipur, a failed state, gave rise to ‘uncivil’ disobedience

War has its own aesthetic appeal. The weapons of modern warfare: tanks, bombs and machine guns are a symmetry of beauty and fear that work like fireworks. The aesthetic of war is made more sublime with the revolutionary claim of liberation fighting against tyranny and terror. Underneath the spectacle of fireworks and the romantic sublime experience of revolution is the chaos that invokes the aesthetic of pain and suffering. 

Such also were the aesthetic and chaotic appeals in Manipur when I last visited the state in July. I saw green armoured vehicles in civilian spaces, the metallisation of the human body with weapons like cyborgs, terrifying megaphones blaring, bunkers in paddy fields, and enigmatic figures walking the streets waiting for something to happen. 

And in the ember and heat of this fearful symmetry lies a failed state yet to be dissolved. And it is this failed state that has given rise to uncivil disobedience.

Manipur is a failed state for three reasons. One, it failed to guarantee the social contract; two, it failed as the machinery of truth; and three, for the durability of the conflict. The social contract is the contract that binds the state and the people. Since the Enlightenment period, many political philosophers have theorised the need for a social contract. 

Absolutists like Thomas Hobbes theorised that a social contract is needed because humans with natural rights or power to will their own preservation are susceptible to being reduced to the state of nature; a state of absolute anarchy. This hypothetical state of nature convinced Hobbes that we must have a social contract wherein we surrender our sovereign power for the security of life and property. 

Hobbes even favoured a contract with a bad monarch over war and revolution that the brutish human nature could condemn humankind in their satiation of desires. 

Quite the contrary, populists like John Locke argued that humans are not essentially brutish; rather, blank slates or tabula rasa and the human and material environment decide our nature. Locke proposed a social contract wherein a democratic representative government and its principle of equality and equal rights would make people believe that they are equal and have rights. And as a monarchy democratized into a modern state, a republic has become the norm. 

But today, Manipur is suspended in the worst of these two worlds. We have a social contract but bad governance and also war and revolution that have introduced the Hobbesian state of nature. We have a state that cannot secure its territory and population on principles of rights and equality. The Manipur government is a failed state for its failure to secure the right to life and property of its citizens.

The state is the machinery of information or the ministry of truth for governance. It is the machinery that records and disseminates facts and information. It is also the only machinery that can ascertain and verify information and news as true or fake. State failure as a machinery of truth can be understood in two senses. 

One, as truth-telling machinery. There are claims made by the state government that are not backed by evidence. One such instance is the claim that the state forces have killed forty militants in its de-arming operations. Another claim is the suo motu action taken by the law enforcing agency of the state with regard to the viral video of sexual assault. 

The truth of the matter is that a FIR was first reported by the victims and the state agency did not take action in its own accord. This instance of sexual assault demonstrates the second sense in which the state failed as a machinery of truth to fight the misinformation war. 

The infamous rape incident was fueled by misinformation about women from one warring community being raped by the other warring community. In the non-performance of the state to validate the authenticity of the information, social media influencers, who are not accountable, took upon themselves the role of arbiter of truth. The end result of this failure on the part of the state to produce official truth was a national disgrace that has traumatised the whole nation.

On the 31st of July, a riot broke out in Nuh, Haryana. The violence was nothing less compared to the violence that broke out in Manipur on the 3rd of May. The difference lies in the durability of the violence. Within a day, violence was subdued in Nuh and rioters were arrested. But the violence in Manipur continued like waves, and it still has no sense of an ending. 

The silver lining in Nuh’s violence is a state government operating despite the unprecedented unpleasant violence. And the underlying fact with regard to Manipur is that the state has failed. 

The failure could be attributed either to the state’s incompetence, complicity or lack of political will, and it is to the people’s fine sense of judgment to decide. Because of the state’s failure, there has been a sudden rise in surveillance in the state, but it is not the machinery of the state that is doing it. The non-state groups are doing it as the state machinery looks by. 

It appears, at least to the onlookers, that the reins have passed over to the non-state groups and the state, in quiet quitting, refuses to dirty its hands to clean up the mess that this chaotic conflict has created.

The ethnic violence in Manipur has lasted longer than expected. In the last three months, we have seen people march in the streets to protest against violence. In the narrative of protest of either community, there is romantic storytelling wherein the virtuous and vicious are juxtaposed, and the conflict is narrated as a fight against tyranny and terror. 

The two dominant narratives are the fight against the tyrannical rule of the dominant group, and the fight against the terror spread by the minor community. These narratives are plotted in the different techniques of protest carried out by either community. The dummy coffin protest was carried out by the Zo-Kuki group to demonstrate the cruelty, oppression, and violence committed against them. 

The mass rally was conducted in the valley by the Meitei group for the integrity of Manipur against the bifurcation attempt by the alleged terror group. The latest form the protest is the boycott of the state assembly meeting and state government. These are instances of civil disobedience wherein the protests are designed to force the government into action. 

But these are hard times when protest cannot be committed to non-violence, and uncivil disobedience has become part of the techniques of protest. Uncivil disobedience can be described as unethical conducts that use coercion or force which may plausibly be against the prescribed rightful conduct for the citizens but they are justified under the circumstances in which they are conducted. 

Uncivil disobedience includes the use of violent threats in protest, unauthorized frisking, vigilantism, disrupting operations and thwarting arrests, destruction of public property, mob lynching and others. These uncivil conduct are justified by invoking the language of self-defence, justice, the rule of law, and above all peace and security. The women groups from both the warring communities in Manipur are accused of uncivil disobedient conduct. 

The Meira Paibis, who have been erstwhile described as the moral force against gender violence, human rights violation, and alcohol and drug abuse, are accused in particular by military forces and media houses. The Zo-Kuki women have likewise thwarted the Manipur state police’s operation and movement. The language of security is used to justify the act of defiance. And the justification appears legit given the failure of the state to redeem its alleged partisan role in the ethnic conflict.

Unauthorized frisking is the most common form of uncivil disobedience in Manipur, it highlights the people’s utter disregard and disrespect for the state and its law-enforcing agencies. This form of disobedience is an attempt to directly control the government, especially the justice system wherein the unsystematic group of people is the witness, prosecutor, judge and executioner. The justice delivered is almost immediate but the kind of justice delivered is extrajudicial punishment. 

Such justice no doubt instill fear in the people, but it is problematic. Civil and uncivil disobedience forms of protest are performed to address issues within society. Both forms of protest can cost and harm society. Civil disobedience can paralyze the transport and the economic system should people stage a dharna in the streets. 

But uncivil disobedience is more harmful because there is no sense of human and children rights, or limit to punishment. We must by now realize that while we wait for the supposed militants and terrorists, we have ourselves become the militants and terrorists who spread fear and terror in people.

The end to this violence does not seem imminent as allegation and counter-allegation, and attack and counter-attack have made the violence take the form of waves that oscillate and crash on the shore. No community is wrong in their rendition of the conflict, and the logjam for peace lies here. 

Perhaps we could start by apologising to mother earth because, in all the debates that we have had as apologists demanding freedom for the motherland and preserving the integrity of the motherland, we have never acknowledged that we have burned her forests and species in them. This could be the way forward.    

Views expressed are personal. Dr. Boniface Gaiguilung Kamei teaches English literature at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University University.

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