Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS
Posted: 2009-11-11

The border tension between Nagaland and Manipur at Jessami in Ukhrul district which broke out last month has thankfully receded but the event should be an eye opener to all as to how and why there is a need for accommodating both tradition and the modern in inter ethnic relations. It will be recalled trouble broke out when a BSF camp located on the border on the Manipur side of the border was occupied by Nagaland Armed Police, NAP, after the BSF vacated the premises. The interesting fact is, both sides had no issue on the matter as long as a central force was the occupant of the premises perhaps in the understanding that the force belonged to both or to neither as the case may be, and also that its occupation would not be permanent. The minute the NAP moved in, the question of territory arose, initially between adjacent villages on either side of the border, but before long the matter became an interstate issue. The issue however is not unique and numerous border disputes exists at many different levels not just between states, but also between districts of a state, as the news of the Zeliangrong Students Union, ZSU, protesting a land acquisition move at Kamranga Khasia village by the Jiribam administration for a government project of setting up a Police Training Centre, claiming the village land falls within jurisdiction Zeliangrong tribe dominated Tousem sub-division of Tamenglong district, bears evidence. Such disputes exist even between villages.
If there is any vital lesson to be learnt from these episodes, it is the need not just of the government, but of the people at large, to respect traditional outlooks and at the same time accommodate the demands of modern polity and administration. The consequence of any failure to do this is, among others, a dreary stagnation of the mind which would then be a perennial stumbling block to all modern development projects. Not any less would be the kind of conflict of interest with potentials for violence as witnessed at Jessami, Tungjoy, Dzuko Valley etc. The skirmishes also manifest in other forms. As for instance, in the manner in which seven Assembly segments in the unreserved valley district of Thoubal have become entrapped in the reserved Outer Manipur Parliamentary constituency where the villagers have only the right to vote but not to contest. It is also there in the resistance of the hill districts of Manipur to the introduction of any modern land tenure system, the Manipur Land Revenue and Reforms Act in particular, or in the de facto existence of a separate district called Sadar Hills with headquarters in Kangpokpi, although de jure it is still part of the Senapati district, not for anything else, but because of objections of Nagas to what they believe is a bifurcation of their traditional homeland by the official creation of a separate Sadar Hills, comprising largely of Kuki majority areas. Traces of this same contradiction can be seen in the campaign for and against the introduction of the 6th Schedule in Manipur as well, and in fact, it is also evident in the clash of notions of territory between what the NSCN(IM) proposes to be “Greater Nagaland� and those of neighbouring communities.
The hill-valley divide in Manipur, which is today reduced almost to the status of a cliché in journalism and academics, is an apt metaphor of this dichotomy between tradition and modern. On a positive note, perhaps it is in the imaginative resolution to this metaphoric struggle that the difficult frontier between the ethnic world and the inevitable modern world ahead can be gainfully mapped and traversed. The challenge is to ensure ethnic worldviews are not destroyed, for outside them, ethnic communities have been known to lose their sense of purpose and inner motivations. High rates of alcoholism, drugs abuse, HIV/AIDS prevalence, juvenile delinquency, low self esteem, promiscuity etc in Manipur and many northeast states in modern times may already be an indication of such a depletion of collective morale. The challenge is also equally to usher in the modern at a pace and in idioms that the traditional ethnic societies can comprehend, absorb and internalise without detriment. Both these projects are vital and both must be accommodated into a “post-modern� system in which the two are not mutually exclusive.
 

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