For more than two months, till mid-June, the people in Manipur survived without basic necessities as result of economic blockade imposed by blocking the two national highways that connect the state with the rest of the Northeast. Yet even after the suspension of the blockade, there seems to be no easy solution to dissipate the tense atmosphere and prevent another crisis, with a distinct lack of initiative to find a solution. New Delhi maintained an almost complete public silence throughout the impasse. And while the state government in Imphal took a strong position on the issue of territorial integrity, it seemed largely indifferent to the suffering, other than some publicity-friendly but largely insignificant acts such as the airlifting of essential commodities and theatrical acts such as a one-time effort leading a few hundred trucks down National Highway 53. But such actions served a more sentimental value and did little to address the issue at hand. As the situation unfolded, however, it became increasingly clear that such emotional reactions have become the dominant form of political mobilisation, to the detriment of all sides.
The Manipur deadlock is a manifestation of the larger politics in the Indian Northeast, particularly in Manipur. This became especially visible with regards to the plan by Thuingaleng Muivah, the leader of the armed pro-independence National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), to visit his home village in Manipur. Those who opposed the visit maintained that Manipur's territorial integrity could not be compromised, warning of the dangers inherent in the politics that Muivah espouses, and the threat to the historically founded territory of Manipur. Supporters of Muivah, on the other hand, see all this as further proof of the continuation of the Meitei's historical domination over other groups in Manipur, including the Naga. Each party sees the other as advocating politics of ethnic exclusion, with both mobilising differing histories to substantiate their points.
Indeed, history has become one of the fundamental roots of the problem. In the domain of exclusivist politics, history often serves either as a resource for dominance or legitimacy, or as a source of blame. Within the chaotic political scenario of the Northeast, marred by violence of various types, history has a close affinity with the politics of nation-making. Narrating the past has become fundamental to identifying and propagating one's own political goals; each version of the past is evoked and spread, often with violence. Within such a forceful reproduction of the past, anyone casting doubt on a particular historical event or action, or differing from a particular perspective, invites danger.
This intolerance of dissent produces a simplistic, homogeneous and unilinear view of the past. The trope of 'time immemorial' or the 'uniqueness' of the historical experience of each community is a vocabulary that one constantly encounters. These modes of engaging with history have proved to be handy techniques to flatten out the multiple facets of collaboration and contestation, coercion and resistance between the communities.