Fighting the Giant Goliath: Were the Meiteis Chosen to Slaughter, or be slaughtered as the Sacrificial Lamb?

There is a popular story about David and Goliath in the Bible. Goliath was a Giant who thinks he was the strongest man on Earth. His tribesmen also took pride in having such a great warrior on their side. To them, he was invincible to the enemy, and hence the immortal.

On the other, David was a young shepherd known for his aptitude in humming hymns with his musical instruments in the woods. During the day, he used to play different tunes with his flute, and during the night, he used to defend his lambs against wild beasts coming to snatch them. Even tigers and leopards often find themselves in trouble as he would easily break their yaw-bones and kill them bare-hands without much effort.

One day, this little boy went to the frontline with tiffin where his brothers were guarding the buffer zones like many of our brave soldiers did today. There, he heard a voice from the other side of the border in quest of a man who dare to fight him. This Giant named Goliath was naming a shaming his people, and blaspheming their living God.

To cut the long story short, David picked up a slingshot with few stones and faced the Giant Goliath who was in full armour-combat brandishing spears and sword. In the ensuing battle, Little David killed the Giant Goliath, and put an end to the war in their favour. The death of Goliath not only ended the nightmares his people face on daily basis in the midst of the dreaded standoff between the two tribes but also saved them from possible heavy casualties and destruction of properties.

The current ethnic violence between the minority Kukis and the dominant community Meiteis is comparable to the state Little David and the Giant Goliath were in in terms of population, arms and ammunition, and strategic as well as logistic support from the state. In fact, the dominant community's population in the state is almost four times to that of the Kukis. They control 90% of the state's economy with the authority to take away arms and ammunition from the state armouries anytime with all the state forces on their side. In strategic locations like Moreh, the Meitei forces are even backed by the central forces in terms of ammunition and security coverage provided at critical junctures.

Moreover, the newly emerging militias like the Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun along with the Valley Based Insurgent Groups (VBIGs), including the surrendered UNLF (Pambei faction), are openly hand-in-hand with the state forces in attacking the Kukis all along. In many cases, the so called intellectuals, social activists, and local celebrities are willingly calling for genocide against the Kukis.

All these crimes against humanity which might have invited serious legal repercussions in normal circumstances are now committed without fear of the law and the law enforcing agencies. In fact, being the dominant community in control of the state machinery, the Meiteis can freely twist the laws and bend the rules to serve their community’s interests.

In contrast to this, the Kukis are not only the minority in terms of population but also lack almost all the amenities accessed by the dominant community. People who are critical of the state are slapped with FIRs, anyone got arrested on mere suspicions, state employees gets suspended on flimsy grounds, and there are no such armouries and state forces to fight for them.

However, the Kukis have the same living God whom Little David had worshipped. And as the Giant Goliath did, the Meiteis have been burning and desecrating churches and blaspheming their God. Till now, the Kukis are defending their ancestral homelands from the Meitei intruders using mostly country-made cannons and weaponries, which constitute the main source of their military strength. The country-made cannon series which they fondly called PP23, including those named after David Thiek and Baby Issac, have done most of the work in pushing the marauding Meiteis in frontlines.

Considering the size of population and the kind of resources and state-support the Meiteis have at their disposal, they are not a match for the Kukis. Yet, the war is a must win for the Kukis as it is not just against the Meiteis but something designed within a bigger scheme to annihilate the minority Christian tribals from the country. To stop this majoritarian ploy to further suppress the voice of the minorities largely depends on how the Kukis fare against the onslaught of Meiteis’ majoritarianism.

Anyway, if it were not planned by somebody else, and if the lives of the minority communities really matters, the concerned authority would have long applied its thinking-mind to stop the violence. They didn’t stop it because the actual resolve is to experiment whether annihilating the minorities using violence wrapped with ethnicity as its clothing works or not. The radicalized sections within the dominant Meitei community were probably in fools' paradise to have agreed the responsibility assigned to carry out this experiment!

Remember this war was never initiated by the majority within the Meitei community but a radicalized section who believed in carrying out genocide against the Kukis. This was presumably intended to snatch away their properties and lands to be redistributed to the Meiteis to end all miseries, as Hitler once did to the Jews. Instead they are inviting perpetual misery!

Now that the Meiteis have started the war, cleansed the Kukis from their territory, and openly declare the "Manipuri National War", the Kukis can only look forward. In the current scenario, it is a matter of a serious existential threat for the Kukis as the minority community. They do not have the resources, manpower, technical know-how and the logistic support from the state to win this war. But they can defeat the Giant Goliath and end the war if they have Little David who has the Living God.

In other words, this war is a must win for the Kukis not only for their survival but also to stop the majoritarian design to suppress the rights of the minority communities in this great nation India. Here, the impression is to force the minorities to submit to the majoritarian rule, or face its wrath, for being a minority is already a curse deserving of the worst punishment. The Nagas, the Mizos, and all the indigenous tribal communities in central India know this with the Manipuri Nagas possibly as the only exception though its existence itself is under threat particularly in Imphal and its periphery!

Remember, the current state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kukis is just the beginning of the larger scheme of things designed to establish the perpetual reign of the majority. And for them, the Meiteis' winning or losing doesn't even matter, because it wouldn't affect them! The two warring parties here are mere actors in a play which is produced and directed with the blessings of powerful players within a clique whose ultimate objective is to see the rise of tyranny of the majority.

 

(Courtesy: KSO Bulletin Thingkho le Malcha, Issue No.164, February 24, 2024)