Guwahati: The Zomi Council Steering Committee (ZCSC) wrote to the Prime Minister of India on Wednesday highlighting the “unending polarisation” in Manipur.
The council pointed out the numerous actions of the “majoritarian” Manipur Government and the Meitei community at large that have “contributed to furthering the divide” among the communities.
As per the body, the memorandum mentioned about the state government’s repeated failed attempts of portraying a sense of normalcy in the State.
“Towing the line of narratives propagated by radical Meitei groups, the majoritarian Manipur Government as well as the Meitei community at large continue to make various attempts to discredit the Zo people (the Zomis, the Hmars and the Kuki-Zos) – a once-proud ethnic community fragmented into numerous transborder tribes by the British Imperialists – which further polarises the already deeply divided State”, the memorandum stated.
The memorandum, addressed to the PM mentioned how the request by Chief Minister N Biren Singh to remove the Free Movement Regime, and its “ready compliance by the Union Government is nothing short of a fresh attempt to set up an iron curtain between the same people who have been divided by the British colonial rulers, and is one of the continued efforts of the Manipur Government to shift the focus away from the root cause of the ethnic violence – the majority Meitei community’s hunger for ancestral tribal lands and privileges”.
The memorandum also cited about the open deployment of proscribed Meitei militant groups and State Police Forces (Meitei) at Moreh by the Manipur Government and the withdrawal of affiliation to several schools in Zo ancestral territories by the Central Board of Secondary Education following interference by the State Government.
Further, the letter mentioned that the Union Government’s recent request to the State Government to examine a representation seeking deletion of the Zo people (“nomadic Chin-Kuki”) from the list of Scheduled Tribes in Manipur on the ground that the Zo people are “not indigenous to Manipur” is a “blatant attempt to rewrite history to suit the majoritarian narrative and only end up widening the existing divide”.
They also wrote about the Chief Minister’s alleged attempts to mislead the public.
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“Having lost all its trust in the majoritarian Manipur Government, the ZCSC prayed for the hastening of dialogue with the groups under Suspension of Operations. The memorandum concluded that, with total separation sans administration already existing between the Meitei and Zo people in Manipur, the Union Government create a separate administration in the form of Union Territory with Legislature within the framework of the Indian Constitution for the Zo people at the earliest,” the body said.
According to the tribal body, the only viable way forward is to consider the deep fault lines already existing in all possible fronts between the Meitei and the Zo people.
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