As we said before, the Kuki leaders and rabble-rousers are rather strange. They keep shifting the goalposts whenever it suits them and their narrative howsoever disjointed. Now, they have become strangely silent as the Lok Sabha general elections approach. They must have had their reasons for remaining silent, but we must say it is quite deafening like that of BJP supremo and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the last state assembly elections, they had sent up 10 MLAs of their brethren as promised and they are holding the entire state to ransom by making demand after demand ranging from separate administration to Union Territory status besides to be part of Greater Mizoram.
But, as it takes both hands to clap and Mizoram has to reciprocate in real terms by extending its hand which they have not done so far, sadly. Well, Mizoram has its own problems and it cannot do much except a few sympathetic words of support. Meanwhile, the much-touted Kuki-Zo brotherhood is once again threatened by the age-old deep fissures between the Kukis and the Paites. The fratricidal violence is happening in Churachandpur district particularly in the district headquarters although tactfully hidden from national and international audience by sympathetic media outlets, while it makes it a point to hype any report of anything which is anti-Meitei narrative.
Coming back to point, why are the Kukis silent regarding the general elections which is their favourite playbook in any endeavour to control a land or a state. Remember the testimony of a SoO outfit leader voicing his concern about the amount which exchanged hands during the assembly elections between BJP and Kuki elements, which BJP leaders vehemently tried to clarify.
At the superficial level, both BJP and Congress had chosen to ignore the Kukis while deciding candidates for the Outer Manipur parliamentary constituency which has seen five leaders from Kuki-Zo fraternity representing it. In almost every parliamentary election in Outer Manipur, it was a contest between the Nagas and Kukis with the Meitei voters in eight assembly segments doing the balancing act and it was the ruling party which managed to get the majority of the votes in the valley.
Sadly, the BJP candidate and Kuki leader Benjamin Mate failed to secure the Meitei votes in the last parliamentary election, although it was a ruling party and it was not because the candidate was a Kuki. This time, as both the principal parties ignored the Kukis, some sections came out with a resolution not to participate in the elections. And when a former bureaucrat WL Hangshing tried to throw his hat in the ring with the help of SoO outfits and Kuki MLAs, he was prevented by a mob of disgruntled Kukis from filing his nomination. Then, in a last-ditch effort to stay in the limelight, the Kuki MLAs seem to have resolved the NPF candidate of their arch-enemy the Nagas.
Meanwhile, the usually communal Kuki-Zo civil society organisations like ITLF and CoTU are seen consoling the Kuki masses to cooperate with the elections. All this while, the extension of SoO with Kuki outfits is pending and the Indian establishment continues to play its cards close to the chest. Are they expecting something from the central government which is dear to us? Anyway, the Kuki stand is quite mystifying.
One moment, they will play the victim card to the hilt by bombarding the national media and social media with concocted historical narratives and false propaganda and in the not-so-distant past, as a victim of an imagined ‘genocide’ started by the majority Meitei community. With Manipur being a BJP ruled state and a section of the national media so eager to lap up the false narratives that it continues to play the victim card over and over again.
The so-called mainstream media has been dabbling in ‘majority oppressing minorities’ or ‘targeting religious minorities’ narratives while focusing on the present conflict in Manipur without even bothering to understand the ground realities. And the Kuki lobby had chosen to lean on these self-appointed champions of minority as against the oppressive majority communities. The so-called champions of mainstream media had been all along judgmental while flagging the yarn of ‘victimhood’ and oppression of minorities by the majority community.
