With the ongoing chaos in Myanmar, it’s easy to overlook a peace agreement in neighbouring India, in Manipur state in that country’s far east. On November 30, the United National Liberation Front, one of the oldest rebel groups in Manipur -- indeed, in India -- signed a peace agreement with the government of India in New Delhi.
This would bring leaders and cadres of UNLF, drawn from Manipur's majority Meitei community, back from its camps and havens in Myanmar-in-meltdown.
This is a big deal for several reasons, besides lessons and implications for Eastern South Asia and for dialling down militancy in India, which has several dozen active and at-ceasefire rebel groups that continue to recruit, arm, train, and, quite often, run parallel administrations based on parallel economies.
Manipur, which has the largest number of such groups in India, is a gateway state for India’s so-called Act East Policy: A potentially profitable trading route through adjacent Myanmar to Thailand and beyond. And, a bulwark of sorts against China’s influence.
It also brings UNLF a full circle. The organization was born in 1964 when Meitei nationalism, present since India’s formal takeover of the kingdom of Manipur by a controversial treaty of accession in 1949, saw a revival. Boosted by ham-handed Indian over-reaction, in short order it tipped over to militancy. UNLF in turn spawned breakaways and inspired several Meitei ultra-nationalist rebel groups.
Pushback at a price
Government pushback included human rights horrors: Extra-judicial killings in thousands, and outright revenge killings of civilians by paramilitary and military adjuncts -- all matters of judicial record. The prophylactic of what a legislator from Manipur once described in India’s Parliament as a “lawless law,” the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, or AFSPA, provided both immunity and impunity.
All this only served to cement resentment against India and Indian-ness, from a rebel-enforced ban against the screening of Bollywood movies to attacks on businesses owned by “Mainland” Indians.
Depredations under AFSPA have reduced, and its umbrella application across India’s far-east is today much diminished. It’s an indication of the long-delayed realization that hammer-force and brutality aren’t the best methods to entice people one claims as citizens of a country to be a part of that country in letter and spirit.
Now UNLF’s arrival at the table of peace talks -- and the attendant aspects of de-weaponizing and rehabilitation into the so-called mainstream with assurance of a dignified future -- provides a genuine opportunity for reconciliation.
It also breaks a rebel-cabal: The Coordination Committee, or CorCom. And, it brings into focus the tortuous dynamics of conflict and conflict resolution in this most confounding of political geographies.
CorCom was formed by seven Manipuri rebel groups in July 2012. Besides UNLF, the coalition comprised Revolutionary People’s Front (RPF has as its armed wing the PLA or People’s Liberation Army), Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup, Kangleipak Communist Party, People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak, a faction Prepak progressive, and the United People’s Party of Kangleipak. This last formation was expelled from CorCom in early 2013.
CorCom and its members allied with a major Naga rebel groups, National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent), to conduct operations against the Indian Army, paramilitaries and police. NSCN (K) openly offered quid-pro-quo refuge to these and other rebel groups like factions of Bodo rebels from Assam and Kamtapuri rebels from northern West Bengal.
This arrangement weakened after implosions within NSCN (K) and subsequent operations by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military. This implosion was partly driven by leadership issues after the death of its supremo SS Khaplang in 2017 in the Taga region of northwest Myanmar; partly through wedges inserted by Indian intelligence operations; and partly through steamrolling of its camps by the Tatmadaw, by several accounts, at the express request of India.
It cumulatively had the effect of driving off most K-factions to India and, eventually, join an ongoing peace process alongside a major Naga rebel group. And, the loss of safe havens for NSCN (K) also meant a loss of safe havens for the rebel groups it sheltered.
Deniable ops, undeniable gains
UNLF also has a unique sub-continental history, as it were.
Raj Kumar Meghen, UNLF’s chairman at the time, was arrested in late-2010. It was all quite cloak-and-dagger. Meghen, also known by his nom de guerre, Sana Yaima -- precious son -- suddenly appeared in Indian government custody after several decades underground. The BBC sourced information from senior Indian military and intelligence officials to claim Meghen was flown out from Dhaka in an Indian aircraft.
Indian government officials at first denied it, but after several weeks put out that Meghen was arrested by a team from India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) while crossing over to Bihar state from Nepal. Dhaka handed over several top anti-India rebel leaders -- which some among the political and diplomatic corps now speak of openly.
In November 2019, Meghen, who had relinquished his mantle of chairman to a successor, was released from Guwahati Central Jail, after serving out a 10-year sentence with some remission.
Meanwhile, wheels had been furiously churning within the Meitei rebel construct as well as outside it.
A coalition of convenience
As far back as 2009, during a visit to Manipur, I had come by indications of Meitei rebel groups thinking of forming a coalition of convenience, and wrote of it in columns and a book. It was reconfirmed to me some years later, in 2014, by a senior Imphal-based NGO official. This is what he told me: “We asked the Meitei groups to consider coming together as far as ten years ago.”
By banding together, went the logic, rebel groups could be in a better position to defend themselves, and, as importantly, negotiate en bloc with India’s government. “We told them negotiations were inevitable,” the NGO go-between said. “Better to be in a position from which negotiations are possible to some advantage.”
“We told them pressure would be building up against them. The situation was changing in Bangladesh and Myanmar. There would be more focus on their activities in these areas. There would be greater pressure of politics and geo-politics. But they did not listen.”
Finally, reality sunk in. CorCom arrived in 2011, and began co-operative action in 2012. By then Meghen was already arrested, a big blow. More blows followed, as explained earlier, with the ground-zero in Myanmar dislocated and Indian government agencies not letting up their nut-cracker squeeze of geo-politics and interdiction of rebels. While in jail, Meghen reportedly spoke to an NGO interlocutor of the need to “look ahead” and to “work towards negotiation” -- as that person told me.
Cut to 2019 and Meghen’s release from jail. Meghen had planned to head home to Imphal, the capital of Manipur. But after a day, he was taken back into protective custody by the NIA, and flown to New Delhi.
My take at the time was that Meghen, who studied international relations at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, will again have received an outreach to be a reconciliatory force to bring UNLF and colleagues from CorCom to peace talks. The expediency which led CorCom to band together for survival and conducting war could now be applied to conduct peace.
Meghen returned to Imphal to a hero’s welcome on November 28, 2019, after nearly three weeks in New Delhi’s evidently benign custody. He spoke in a conciliatory manner upon his arrival. Meghen’s peaceful presence in Manipur and the respect he is accorded, especially by the Meitei majority to which he belongs, at the time appeared to be a crucial ingredient in the near-future.
That future has now come to pass -- at least for one rebel group, driven to peace because objective conditions for war were no longer salutary.
Manipur remains deeply fractured on account of massive ethnic strife since May 2023, primarily as Meitei are used as a majoritarian foil by India’s ultra-right Hindu nationalists against other ethnic groups, primarily the Kuki, Zo, and the Naga. But UNLF’s instance offers slim hope that, despite the enormous social-engineering mess in Manipur, and the chaos in neighbouring Myanmar, peace can have a chance.
Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Center for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and Eastern South Asia. His most recent book is ‘The Eastern Gate: War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and India’s Far East’ (Simon and Schuster).
