The Politics of Identifying with and Distancing from Kuki Identity in Manipur

Arora, Vibha; Kipgen, Ngamjahao

doi:10.1177/0038022920120303

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This is particularly glaring as we historicise the forging of Naga nationality.’ This is achieved by the NSCN-IM through a method, as Nag (2012, p. 190) pointed out again, of ‘coercion, carried out by threats: tribes were to surrender individual identities and officially merge with the Naga identity, or alternatively, face the violence of mass murder, burning of villages and eviction’. The expansion of Naga identity through the ‘Naga-isation’ process (Kabui, 1993, p. 1) coincided with what Gangte (2013, p. 146) calls the ‘politics of disunity and eventual fragmentation of the Kukis’, resulting in the ‘politics of identifying with and distancing from Kuki identity in Manipur’ (Arora & Kipgen, 2012). Gangte (2011, p. 63) delineates: Such a socio-political faux pas allowed the Naga nationalism to buttress right through the very heart of the Kukis when large segment of small tribes belonging to the Old Kukis such as Anal, Aimol, Khoibu, Lamkang, Maring, (to name a few) decided to follow their leaders who had their self-interest in joining the ever increasing and enlarging edifice of the Nagas in view of some disdainful behaviour of the Kuki leaders and thus helped in chipping away of the Kuki edifice that was the over-riding scene in Manipur.…”

Section: Manipur: Ethno-demographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spurn Thy Neighbour: The Politics of Indigeneity in Manipur

Haokip

2016

Studies in Indian Politics

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This article examines the recurrent ‘politics of indigeneity’ in Manipur with the emerging notions of space and territoriality, and the increasing demand for ‘political space’ by marginal groups. The perpetual xenophobic anxiety and perceived threat of ‘homogenization’, which aroused the drive for ‘ethnic revivalism’ in recent years, have been dominating the state’s day-to-day ethno-political life. Treating ‘tribes as indigenous people’ and the synonymous usage of ‘indigenous people as original inhabitant’, the ethno-politics of territory translates into the ‘politics of indigeneity’. The emergent ‘indigenous tribe’ politics is a strategy not only to claim further rights and entitlements from the state but also to question the ‘indigeneity’ of certain marginal ‘others’ in the state and their rights.

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Section: Manipur: Ethno-demographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spurn Thy Neighbour: The Politics of Indigeneity in Manipur

Haokip

2016

Studies in Indian Politics

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a sense, UPF's political objective is identical to that of the KNO's in terms of the people and land. However, preoccupation with an alternative to the terminology Kuki, on the one hand, and considerations of regional issues, on the other, seems to be an obstacle to the two umbrella organizations forging unity (Arora and Kipgen 2012). 2 Consequently, there is an ongoing and competing ethnic mobilization in the hill areas of Manipur where the Nagas demand 'alternative arrangement', the Kuki groups under KNO demand a separate Kuki state, and the groups (more favourable towards Zomi nomenclature) under UPF demand an Autonomous Hill State.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Contested State‐craft’ on the Frontiers of the Indian Nation: ‘Hills–Valley Divide’ and the Genealogy of Kuki Ethnic Nationalism in Manipur

Kipgen

Chowdhury

2016

Studies Ethnicity & National

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Drawing on scholars like Scott and Suan, it can be argued that a ‘hills–valley divide’ has prevailed in Manipur from the colonial period. The Kuki tribes who inhabit Manipur's hilly regions are underdeveloped compared to the politically and economically powerful Meiteis who inhabit its valleys. The postcolonial central and state government policies have failed to respond to local problems, which have created a regional imbalance and have sharpened the hills–valley divide. The Kukis have undergone many resulting economic hardships and have become further alienated and marginalized. To highlight uneven development and Kuki tribal minority marginalization, we refer to key ‘development’ indicators – administration, employment, poverty, health, and infrastructure – and analyse the Kuki quest for tribal identity and demand for an ethnic homeland in postcolonial India, by tracing the genealogy of their identity formation from archives, extant historiography, and ethnographic fieldwork.

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“…These are ethno-political categories that encompass several tribes and sub-tribes residing in states of Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam and other parts of Northeast India. With the politics of identity assertion, many groups collated under the Kuki group are differentiating and distancing themselves by adopting and advocating the use of Mizo, and Zomi terminology (Arora & Kipgen, 2012a).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8.The demand for Scheduled Tribes status and associated identity politics are critically analysed in Arora (2007), Arora and Kipgen (2012a) and Haokip (2015). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roads (Not) Taken: The Materiality, Poetics and Politics of Infrastructure in Manipur, India

Arora

Ziipao

2020

Journal of South Asian Development

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Roads are bitumen covered concrete metaphors of modernity and development, and they materially represent fantasies, collective hopes, and aspirations of future(s). They symbolize movement, connectivity, transactions and transportation, and eminently reflect governmentality. Our article is about Manipur’s connective infrastructures, and it focuses on internal roads, and a border highway that connects Imphal (Manipur’s capital city) to Dimapur at Nagaland in North-east India. We explain the infrastructural deficit within Manipur and decision-making about them being influenced by a hill-valley socio-ecological ethnic distributional conflict. The road links and is part of the uneven development route. We provide an ethnographic account of a truck journey undertaken between Imphal and Dimapur in 2018, and this enables us to understand routinized corruption and the collusion of state and non-state actors therein. The road is the symbol of hope, and a developmental desire, and epitomizes state’s governmentality and developmental project of progress, nonetheless it also gets transformed into the central locale of political protest, ethnic conflict when ethnic groups appropriate it forcibly to erect blockades and organize protests in its arterial space. The roads and highways spatially produce and reproduce (il)legality, (il)legibility, and (il)legitimacy of the Indian state. Our ethnographic research unpacks and invokes the multivalence of roads.

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The Politics of Identifying with and Distancing from Kuki Identity in Manipur

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Spurn Thy Neighbour: The Politics of Indigeneity in Manipur

Spurn Thy Neighbour: The Politics of Indigeneity in Manipur

‘Contested State‐craft’ on the Frontiers of the Indian Nation: ‘Hills–Valley Divide’ and the Genealogy of Kuki Ethnic Nationalism in Manipur

The Roads (Not) Taken: The Materiality, Poetics and Politics of Infrastructure in Manipur, India

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