The Naga Students Federation, NSF, has suspended its ban of vehicles with Manipur registration numbers in Nagaland, and with it NH-39, Manipur’s most important life line has become open in the Nagaland sector. However, the All Naga Students Association Manipur, ANSAM, announced their blockade of the highway is on a different issue and they would continue with the blockade in the Manipur sector, belying hopes that normal traffic would resume on this highway. It may be recalled that NSF ban on Manipur vehicles in Nagaland came about after a vehicle of the NSF was stopped at Mao Gate by Manipur police commandos in the midst of the tension over NSCN(IM) secretary general Thuingaleng Muivah’s intended visit to his village in Manipur. The ANSAM blockade on the other hand was to protest the government insistence on holding the Autonomous District Council, ADC, elections without first amending the Act under which the elections were to be held. Apparently, the Manipur government has met the condition of tendering an apology to the NSF thereby the latter’s decision to relax its ban, but the government not only went ahead with the ADC elections but also in accordance to a directive of a court directive to produce the leaders of the blockade before the court, declared the leader of the ANSAM and the UNC “wanted”. The court directed only the ANSAM president arrested, but the government has added the UNC president as well to the list, angering the agitators further.

Judging from past experiences, this is a familiar strategy of the government of Manipur. In the prolonged class boycott strike over the BT Road killing for instance, the government literally filled the jails with the leadership of the AMUCO, Apunba Lup, and various students’ bodies, and booked them under the NSA, hoping this would mount pressure on these organisations. That agitation lasted four months before the Apunba Lup agreed to talk, but by then the original issue had receded into the background, bringing to the fore by default, the issue of NSA arrests. When the matter was finally settled, there were little of the original issue left to be salvaged and the release of the leaders became the solution. The only feeling amongst the overwhelming majority after the agitation was called off was, even if the cause of the agitation was worthy, the four months of school lost was grossly disproportionate. In a way this sense scaled down the worth of original issue too in the eyes of the public. The government which allowed the problem to linger on for so long too was seen as too insensitive to the plight of the public. It will be recalled again that the government tried to apply the same tactics of tiring out strikers by putting them under pressure in the case of the pay strike too, however, this one was resolved before it got too far.

The present economic blockade in comparison to the school boycott strike is still young. It can go on for another two months to equal and even beat the record. It is a depressing thought to imagine such a situation, but to make the best of a bad situation, this will be a vital test of the much prided resilience of the people. The general sense is, as in the case of the four-month school boycott, people are already getting used to living under the new harsher conditions. If the state learned to depend a little less on petroleum products and were willing to give up a little modern health facilities, things wouldn’t be too bad. This development should also trigger the need for the people of the state to reorient their outlooks and relations. Most urgent of all is the need for them to reinvent themselves to meet the new challenges of the new age. Even the festering insurrection and the need for it must be reassessed. Throughout history this ability to reinvent has been the attribute of winners. It has never failed to turn defeat into victory. When Field Marshal Sir William Slim wrote his classic “Defeat into Victory” he was talking about how the Allied troops turned the table in their war in the Burma theatre against the advancing Japanese Imperial troops in their favour. It is one of the supreme ironies of history that in the end it was Japan which learned this lesson most profoundly and turned its ultimate humiliating defeat into a resounding triumph by negotiating a lasting alliance with its vanquishers. As they say impossible is nothing, provided we have the ability to size up the present and work out a pragmatic sense of the future. Manipur must rethink its wars.