“Both the state government and central government must deeply study the root-causes of insurgency before offering peace talk. The party is not ready to accept it at this juncture”, said L Paliba M, the chairman of the proscribed PREPAK (Pro)
TFM Desk
L Paliba M, the chairman of the proscribed PREPAK (Pro) on the eve of its 12th Progressive Day, has asserted that his party is not ready to accept the offer of peace talk at this juncture and argued that the outfit is “proceeding along the 2000 plus years old historical path, so we should not be categorised as “wayward or recalcitrant groups”.
On the occasion of 12th Progressive Day, L Paliba M greeted the people and paid tribute to all who had “sacrificed their lives in the course of liberation movements.
In a speech released by the outfit to the media stated that the revolutionary parties have been delineating over the decades that India had “unjustly annexed Manipur sparking an armed rebellion for regaining our independence”.
L Paliba M said that the public discontent against the “oppressive Indian regime began in the 1950s. India did not respect our two-thousand-year-old independence; instead, Manipur was demoted to downgraded Part-C status, and the Passport system was abrogated purposefully in a hasty way”.
He pointed out that the Assembly Demand Coordination Committee of 1960 expressed that “the Assembly of 1948-49 was abolished illegally; the future of Manipur was uncertain as it was being kept under powerless political status; India had mistreated Manipur as compared to other states”.
The Coordination Committee demanded restoring the pre-merger status of the Assembly of 1948-49. The deception and “step motherly” attitudes of India had stirred up “politically anti-India sentiment” among the people of Manipur, he said. “Afterward, the so-called Merger Agreement of 1949 was declared illegal by the National Conventions of 1993 and 1996. The issue is now not expected to be exclusively for the insurgents, as the people had mandated the causes of the insurgency,” added the chairman.
L Paliba M argued that lack of political order and political maturity of India have been amply exposed by the fact that President’s Rule (PR) has been imposed 132 times in various Indian states and union territories, covering 31117 days. Constitution drafters thought Article
356 would rarely be used and would eventually become a ‘dead letter’, however on the contrary it has been used many times as a dangerous political weapon, he added.
During the 75 years of India’s independence, paradoxically, a mosaic of around 85 years of President’s Rule was added to all states. Imposition of 10 times PR lasted 2337 days in Manipur. Over the course of the 72 years of “India’s colonization of Manipur”, in the first 22 years, India propagated their political might ferociously in order to Indianize politically the new Indians – the Kangleichas, said L Paliba M.
In the following 50 years of the Manipur’s statehood, there were six years of President’s Rule, and until now, the state has been administratively haunted by the spectre of AFSPA for 42 years. In Manipur, it has become bizarre that the commanding officers of Indian security forces are routinely flaunting its extra powers of AFSPA as if they are administrators of the state; such behaviours are not found in other states, said the chairman.
He also pointed out that a federal country must have a collective agreement between all units. The United States, for example, was founded with the ratification of 13 colonies. As part of the legal basis for forming the federal union of India, the merger agreement and instrument of accession were drafted. However, they were “coerced and deceptively collected and utilized”. In the 1948 whitepaper on Indian states, the emphasis was placed on special security arrangements because Manipur is an essential geostrategic state. “So, it was evident since the early stages that India had been intensely interested in expropriating Manipur under Central rule with the deployment of enormous security forces. Indian federalism is a form of “Holding Together” Federalism by allocating the arrangement of the 5th/6th Schedule, Reservation, SC/ST and autonomy. It is not like “Coming Together” Federalism as that of the USA. The Manipur State Assembly of 1949 never discussed accession to Indian Union, let alone the ratification, recalled the chairman.
“We must live no longer under this quasi-federal and asymmetric federal India. Historians assert that India is a land of Truth Seekers of Dharma Niti. Despite this assertion, the languages had remained partial by bracketing Sanskrit as “Holy Language” reserved exclusively for certain castes. Since the early stages, no downtrodden castes were allowed access to religious rituals performed in Sanskrit”, he said.
“The emperor Ashoka destroyed many temples and murdered his immediate kith and kin, and many Jains and Ajivikas were also murdered as well. However, the lion capital of Ashoka has become the symbol of the Indian Emblem, expressing “Truth always triumphs”. There are many mythological narrations of war stories of Hindu deities at the most. Such mythical war-based religion is uncommon in our indigenous traditions. The Chaos and war had been infused and rooted in the so-called Bharatvarsha or Aryavarta. Dharmic India is no longer what it was once, instead, it is taking the path of Chanyaka, who advocated the use of deception and suspicion as administrative guidelines for being a mighty king. In the past, some Hindu preachers came to Kangleipak and they wrongly preached Hinduism without “Dharma” by adjuring the kings of the divisive ideas which had dismantled the long-lived society. It was due to such instigative and acrimonious teachings that many Kangleichas developed an anti-Hindu sentiment”, narrated L Paliba M.
He also alleged that today, the religious, economic, political, and security policies of the Indian government have turned Kanglei society upside-down. A challenge to such invasive procedures requires more than one means, said L Paliba M.
“Our observation is that there must be an Ultimate goal including objectives and means for establishing the rational foundations in the existing situation. In order to combat the adverse parameters of the enemy’s stratagem and to challenge the constantly changing global materialistic impact on our revolutionary society, PREPAK (Progressive) was formed to move the liberation struggle forward. Generally, the revolutionary struggle is ups and downs, though every revolutionary party is facing some shortcomings, despite that we earn a great support of people towards our end of restoring independence. People at many public conventions agreed with our cause and objective, and boldly denounced the “Illegal Merger of 1949,” said the chairman.
Stating that such actions inspired them to pursue the struggle, PREPAK (Pro) chairman rued that fact that there has not been a powerful public movement to augment the general resolutions. “We must stop with the habit of “Began with a bang, but ends in a whimper.” Under colonial India, Kangleichas were deliberately supporting defective candidates in order to win, ceding political power with little personal gain in return; localities destroyed houses of those who recruited new members for the insurgency while they were begging the drug smugglers, seeking constable posts by selling lands; the wishful thinking of quick earnings without hard work creates endless problems. In order to become ‘Indian,’ our culture, rituals, and traditions are mixed up by manipulating our history in order to blend them together”, he said.
The PREPAK (Pro) chairman said that as a result of development and the Act East policy, railways will transport many Indians to scatter around the valley. Primary indigenous communities will need to adopt integrated mind-sets in order to face these strategies. “In fact, India’s government and its political parties are in decline and disintegrating. The power of any government can be measured by its political parties. There were Congress party dominated governments for 54 years; and in the meantime, there were also regional parties dominated namely the coalition governments. Now the BJP dominated government has been running under the identity of ‘National Federalism’ by allowing some responsibilities to regional leaders. In other words, this means that governance trends have been moving in the phases of Centralization (Nationalization), Decentralization (De[1]nationalization or Regionalization) and Re-nationalization”, said the chairman.
L Paliba M argued that the insurgency was started and roused during the long period of Congress’ government. “The once-dominant Congress party, which was also synonymous with ‘India’, gradually became the local club; so too, the BJP may also become a cultural party. It seems there will be no one political party to lead the disintegrating India, so instead of charting our destiny inside India we should strive to make our land self-sufficient. Each revolutionary party draws a line between people’s movement and party movement, which lead to rigid conditioning within a circle of Party to Party instead of people to people through the Party. As the self-party interest becomes more powerful, it pulls and limits the collective or unified force that has frozen our unity sometimes”, said L Paliba M.
L Paliba M further stated that by ignoring reality-based policy, “we are more interested in tactical programs than a political strategy”. In this context, it is imperative to analyse the saying of Sun Tzu “Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.
The events of two “Nupi Laan” which shared a paramount historical chapter in World History were not armed struggle in our revolutionary sense. But the events had paralyzed the then powerful colonial government, said L Paliba M. A deep emotional appeal from mothers at Kangla Gate and the events of the June 18 Uprising have always shaped “patriotic courage” and the declaration of the so-called the Merger Agreement as an ‘Annexation 1949’ in the national convention of 1993/1996 had influenced many to join the insurgency leaving their families behind, said the chairman adding that “Our objectives have been somewhat successfully ingrained in the public’s mind. Still, we need to organise the people to trust our means, that is, the armed struggle”.
On Peace Talk
On peace talk, PPREPAK (Pro) chairman said, “we never started the war, but we are facing the war. We are proceeding along the 2000 plus years old historical path, so we should not be categorised as “Wayward or recalcitrant groups”. Instead of repeatedly saying to seek a final solution through peace talk with insurgents, it must say, “What is the reply of the Government of India to the illegal annexation of Manipur”?, he asked.
“So, the Kangleichas and this State’s government must have the boldness to grind the Centre for that Big Reply. The long continuity of the historical process was deflected in 1891 and 1949; this deflection needs to be realised and corrected courageously by these Delhi-worshipers of supposedly people’s representatives who were elected in exchange for voters’ benefit. It may have been possible to stop the existence of the revolutionary Party, but the inspirational wave for independence with its evolution over more than 2000 years could not be annihilated. Both the State government and Central government must deeply study the root-causes of insurgency before offering peace talk. Our Party is not ready to accept it at this juncture”, said the chairman of PREPAK (Pro).