Aheli Moitra
Learning from Standing Rock & each other
The campaigners protecting their indigenous lands have come a long way. They have sustained a powerful movement to protect their land—the source of life and livelihood for the indigenous peoples—but power blocs have refused to acknowledge the current and past injustices that have led people to transform their lives in the spirit of the campaign. These people, in the past and now, have not just protected their land but stood by the land and rights of other indigenous peoples too.
This is a summary of the nonviolent resistance that the indigenous people of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, United States of America, are waging to protect their lands from a proposed oil pipeline that will destroy their ancestral water sources and other cultural artefact.
Many nations away, however, it is also the story of the peoples of Manipur State in the Indian Union. This time, it is a protest to protect the indigenous lands from forceful bifurcation by the Government of Manipur (GoM). Yesteryears saw the indigenous communities in Manipur State form a strong alliance, much like the one we saw over the past few months at Standing Rock, to protect people from getting alienated from their land—this was the result of a sustained campaign against the three bills passed by the Manipur Legislative Assembly in lieu of an ‘inner line permit’ system without drawing any consent from the people. It gave way to a powerful nonviolent campaign wherein the communities refused to bury their dead (since 2015) to protect their lands—with prayers offered by people coming in from near and far to the morgue, the campaign was rooted in spirituality that was a hallmark of the Standing Rock campaign too. In Manipur, however, justice remained evasive though the said ‘inner line permit’ could not be implemented in its current form.
In 2016, much like the US government’s failure to adhere to various treaties made with the Native Americans, the GoM bifurcated lands in the hills in direct violation of several memoranda of understanding, thereby causing indirect grief to all peoples who inhabit the State. Yet the issue has been constructed in ways, particularly by the Manipur and Indian national media, that project the protectors as the violators—any line of defense of them is met with abhorrence on the hegemonic front.
While this aspect remains to be acknowledged, the scenario also reflects a failure on the part of campaigners in the hills of Manipur—the inability to empathise with the people of the Imphal valley who have become co-victims to the violence of the State. This has created the inevitable divide between peoples that the Manipur State Government, as well as the Government of India, has been directly responsible for over the decades.
It has now become pertinent that the various peoples and nationalities that inhabit Manipur begin to protect each other. A brilliant example of this was shown by various community students and apex organisations from the hills that called for restraint on the part of the people when they were attacked in the valley; at various points in history, valley based organisations have also come out to resolve thorny issues that emanated in the hills. The values that gave rise to these initiatives must be kept at the core of developing new friendships. Possibilities should be explored, as the Native Americans did at Standing Rock, to bring the peoples of the region together to protect one another first in order to discuss and deliberate on issues of land and resources that have reached a pressing point.
At a peace activists’ meet held recently through the initiative of the North Eastern Social Research Centre in Guwahati, various peoples’ representatives from the region convened to deliberate on the issues unfolding in Manipur. Given the helpless situation of the times, it was exhilarating to witness that people from the valley and the hills of Manipur could sit together on a panel and lay out the problems as faced by each of them without losing their cool, or the sense of a shared future.
While it may take time for everyone to truly start listening to each other by going beyond immediate suffering, the NESRC’s initiative showed that it is possible to create spaces that spark peoples’ dialogues. Here, the presence of other communities of the region, for instance the Adivasi community which has also survived extreme violence and injustice, could help in lending that essential ear to the discussion thereby avoiding a “dialogue of the deaf.” In turn, they could transform into a community of peace builders.
Listening and developing empathy towards one another, not just as individuals but whole communities that are suffering in lopsided degrees, could lead to a process of healing and reconciliation, a step to restore faith in each other while moving towards a just and peaceful society.
The state making project in this region has created extreme violence and hardened ideological positions, but time has come to prepare nonviolent campaigns that lay the foundation of renewed relationships rooted in the peoples’ imagination of JustPeace. In that, Manipur can lead the way if its leaders can look beyond the state as a means to a solution, and become protectors instead of protestors.
Other suggestions may be sent to moitramail@yahoo.com
