ATSU’s memorandum to the chief minister highlights deep-rooted “social divide between the people of the hills and valley”. The student body argues that Meiteis/Meeteis do not deserve to be categorized as Scheduled Tribe under any circumstances.
TFM News Service
All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur (ATSUM) has termed the demand of the Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee, Manipur (STDCM) as “ill-conceived” and also called it “illogical: and “irrational”.
In a memorandum submitted to the chief minister N Biren Singh on August 30, ATSUM argued that as an apex hill based tribal student organisation of Manipur, it was their bounden duty to share their opinion and displeasure over the “ill-conceived demand” of the STDCM for recognition of Meeteis, “who have been living at par with the rest of the privileged sections of societies in all spheres of lives for the past seventy-four years of independence, as ST”.
ATSUM said that the illogical claim that Meeteis fulfill all the criteria to become Scheduled Tribe on the basis of Mongoloid race and prevalence of distinctive religion and culture is “irrational” on the ground that any community big or small practices some form of religion and posse a unique culture of their own.
The tribal student body argued that having religion or separate culture does not necessarily become the prime reason for including a particular community in the list of Scheduled Tribe.
ATSUM pointed out that the Constitution of India has not spelled out the criteria for specification of a community as a Scheduled Tribe. “However, taking into account the definitions in a 1931 census and the reports of the First Backward Classes commission 1955, the advisory committee on revision of ST/SC 1967 and basically based on Article 342 of the constitution, the following criteria are followed for specification of a community as a scheduled tribe: a) Indication of primitive traits b) Distinctive culture c) Geographical isolation d) Shyness of contact with the community at large, and e) Backwardness”, said ATSUM.
The memorandum further said that Scheduled Tribes are spread across the country mainly in the forest and hilly regions and segregated from the rest of the world socially and economically. The tribal student body reminded that during a debate in the constituent assembly, Dr Ambedkar, the Chairman of the drafting committee was very particular about the word Scheduled to be used before the ‘tribe and the caste’ to mean the ‘selected or the chosen ones’.
“Thus in the context of India, Scheduled group tribe means the selected tribes for protective discrimination to be valid on for 10 years after the promulgation of the constitution of India”, it further said, adding, “But since the scheduled group couldn’t come up at par with the rest of the citizens in all the spheres of lives, protective discrimination continues even after sixty years of independence” said ATSUM.
ATSUM asserted that it was quite obvious that the plain people – Meeteis/Meiteis were included in the general category of the people by the central government due to the simple fact that the “Meiteis have superseded the component characteristic of a tribe”.
The social divide between the people of the hills and valley and the “derogatory name given to the tribal of Manipur by the Meeteis as ‘haos’ besides social segregation as untouchables to the hill men/tribal is an established fact that the Meeteis have crossed several phases of civilisations to the mainstream of modernity”, said the memorandum.
As such, ATSUM said that Meiteis/Meeteis do not deserve to be categorized as Scheduled Tribe under any circumstances.
ATSUM memorandum also reminded the N Biren Singh led government that in the wake of the STDCM pressurising the Central Government as well as the State Government for recognition of the Meetei community as ST, a number of panel discussions “encompassing” tribal leaders, intellectuals and experts in the field of Anthropology and Sociology had been organised at different intervals and unanimous resolutions were adopted to protest against the move of STDCM.