By Michael Meiphami Shaiza
I. The Question That Demands an Answer
Where is the responsibility of the Manipur State Government?
This is not a rhetorical whisper. It is a thunderous indictment echoing from the broken highways, from the burnt villages, from the eyes of mothers who have not slept since their sons disappeared, from the ancestral soil that is slipping through the fingers of its rightful sons and daughters.
If the Chief Minister, the indigenous MLAs, and the MPs of Manipur cannot stand before their people and declare with unflinching clarity: “No to the Suspension of Operations that has become a shield for rampage, kidnapping, killings, and highway blockades against innocent villagers. No to a Union Territory for immigrant Kukis. No to the erasure of the historical and ancestral land of Manipur’s indigenous peoples” — then what remains of leadership? What remains of a government?
Without land, without the right of the people to live securely on their own soil, without the interest of the indigenous being paramount, what is politics? A theater of chairs? A marketplace for contracts? To trade collective security for personal wealth is not politics; it is betrayal. It is selling the birthright of a nation for silver, and calling it governance.
II. The Moral Anatomy of Silence
The Constitution of India is not a museum piece. It is a living covenant between the people and the state. Article 355 commands the Union to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance. Article 21 guarantees the right to life. Article 371C recognizes the special responsibility of the Governor for the hill areas of Manipur.
Where is that Constitution for the Manipur Government? Where is its enforcement when villages are attacked, when highways are cut, when families flee into the forests with nothing but their children in their arms?
To be inactive is not neutrality. To be silent is not prudence. In the face of terrorism, silence is complicity. In the face of demands for territorial bifurcation in favor of those who did not inherit this land, inaction is surrender. A government that watches while its own people are hunted has forfeited its moral claim to govern.
Biblically, “he who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin,” James 4:17. Politically, he who swears an oath to protect the Constitution and does not act, to him it is treason against the people. Socially, a leader who preserves his seat while his people lose their homes has become a caretaker of ruins.
III. The Political and Strategic Failure
This is not mere electoral politics. This is not about portfolios or party banners. This is about the survival of indigenous Manipur — Naga and Meitei, hill and valley, bound by history, geography, and shared destiny. The stakeholders in this crisis are not equal. One seeks to defend ancestral land. The other seeks political redefinition through demographic leverage and armed intimidation.
When elected representatives cannot name the crime, they become its enablers. When the government cannot enforce law on highways, when it cannot guarantee safe passage for farmers, when it cannot protect the sanctity of ancestral boundaries, it ceases to be a government and becomes a bystander.
To reduce the crisis to “law and order” is to insult the dead. To reduce it to “community clashes” is to erase the strategic nature of the assault. This is a challenge to the territorial integrity of Manipur, to the constitutional rights of its indigenous people, and to the very idea that democracy means more than holding elections while a people are dispossessed.
A politics that enriches families while impoverishing the nation is shameful. A politics that sacrifices collective security for private gain is not governance. It is auction.
IV. The Constitutional and Patriotic Imperative
The Constitution is not a menu from which the government may pick convenient clauses. It is the supreme law. The State Government has a duty to protect life, to uphold territorial integrity, to ensure free movement on highways, and to safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples under the Sixth Schedule and other protective provisions.
To allow the demand for a separate Union Territory to be pursued through violence, kidnapping, and blockade is to reward force over law. To treat armed groups under SoO as untouchable while innocent villagers are unprotected is to invert the moral order.
Retrospectively, we must ask: what will history say? That in 2023, 2024, 2025, and beyond, the leaders of Manipur had the chance to stand, to speak, to act — and they chose silence? That they preserved procedure while the people lost their land?
Introspectively, every MLA, every MP, every minister must ask: if my own village were burning, would I wait for orders? If my own children were missing, would I call it “sensitive”?
V. The Call to Righteous Action
The time for euphemism is over. The time for performative statements is gone. The people demand more than condolences. They demand security. They demand that SoO not be a license for terrorism. They demand that the ancestral land of Manipur not be bartered in backroom negotiations. They demand that indigenous rights be non-negotiable.
Leadership is not about managing headlines. It is about bearing the weight of the people’s trust. A leader who cannot say “no” to terror, “no” to illegal immigration, “no” to the dismantling of Manipur, is not a leader. He is a caretaker of his own legacy, and that legacy will be ash.
Democratically, the people have the right to demand accountability. Nationalistically, the people have the duty to defend their land. Patriotically, every official must choose: will you be remembered as the one who stood, or as the one who sold?
# VI. Conclusion: The Line in the Soil
The ancestral land of Manipur is not real estate. It is memory. It is graves. It is the altar of generations. Without it, politics is hollow. Without the people’s right, governance is fraud.
The Manipur State Government must answer: Where is the Constitution? Where is the will? Where is the courage to say “enough”?
To act now is to redeem. To remain silent is to be judged — by the people, by history, and by the God who sees when leaders sleep while their flock is scattered.
Let it not be written that Manipur fell not to an enemy without, but to the inaction of those within. Let it be written instead that in her darkest hour, her sons and daughters, her leaders and people, stood together — sharply, strongly, vehemently, righteously — and said: “This land is ours. These people are ours. And we will not let them go.”
Michael Meiphami Shaiza is Co-incharge of BJP Manipur State Political Programmes and Meetings and President of Ukhrul-based NGO Ecological Rehabilitators’ Association (ERA).
(Views expressed are writers’ own and do not, in whatsoever manner, reflect that of Ukhrul Now)