about two decades ago, was bombed because an
underground organization thought it was close to its rival. Most recently, the
hopping courts (kangaroo courts) of two underground organizations took up a
dispute in a College election and came out with two different and conflicting
verdicts. One of the groups wanted the matter to be publicised and the other
wanted it suppressed. All newspapers in Imphal were left in an unenviable
dilemma. governments with their own civil and military administrations, courts,
taxes (extortions) etc. The chief minister Radhabinod Koijam (who also holds
the finance portfolio) was honest enough to acknowledge that this was the case
in his budget speech on March 19 this year. (The hopping courts are so called
because they do not have an address. They are mobile courts that can come up
anywhere and vanish as suddenly as they appeared. They are clandestine,
underground courts run by the insurgents.)
I have been editing The Imphal Free Press for nearly
five years now. All of the five years fall within one of the peaks of
insurgency. Insurgency here has been following a cyclic pattern. The last high
was in the late 70s and early 80s. It simmered in the late 80s. The NSCN split,
the PLA was on the verge of coming overground. The UNLF kept shy of armed
struggle and it too split. Then almost all of them returned with force towards
the middle 90s, the time I began editing The Imphal Free Press. Now they are at
their awesome best or worst. They are all virtually parallel governments.
It is all very well to talk about the media asserting
its freedom etc., but what others outside an insurgency situation do not
realise is that the parallel governments we are dealing with can close down
newspapers, just as the government can, and have, on charges such as that of
sedition. Things have come to such a pass that a good section of the people
instead of sympathising with the victimised newspaper and expressing
solidarity, may even suspect that the newspaper would have done something wrong
to deserve the fate, as is normally also the case when somebody is shot dead
for unexplained reasons by the insurgents. This condition is what observers
outside the insurgency situation fail to understand or empathise with.
The media in the northeast is generally seen as leaning
towards these underground organizations. Some may very well be out of genuine
convictions, but it would be wrong to generalise. It is true the media here
generally publish practically every bit of literature that the underground
groups release. But all these are hardly out of any sympathy. Much of the
information they send out are generally very much in demand by the readers for
it concerns their everyday lives.
It will come as a surprise to most outside the northeast
that newspapers here even publish information about changes in the letter head
designs of underground organizations. This may seem trivial but not to the
people here. For it must be realised that the ability to recognize a letter
head of any particular underground organization, or the failure to do so, can
mean the difference between misery and wellbeing for him or her. In fact, it is
necessary to update one¿s information on these things. Again, even government
intelligence organizations are in constant touch with newspaper staff in order to
find out what interesting underground literature is available for the day.
I know there is an element of ego defence when we justify publishing any and
every bit of underground literature, but these are compulsions not easy to
overcome. We do not mind getting into trouble but not into avoidable and
unnecessary trouble.
So very often, Manipur has been described as a land of no law. While not
disputing this description of the state, I think a more accurate picturisation
of the place would be as a land of too many laws. And as I have hinted earlier,
there is a certain degree of legitimacy of the laws other than that of the
legitimate constitutional government, in the eyes of the public. How exactly
has this come about is a discussion that will take us to the roots of some very
fundamental issues. I for one, am convinced that much of this has become
possible because of the weakness of the government.
A situation now exists in which the legitimate government establishment has
lost the confidence of the people. Years of misgovernance, rampant corruption,
inefficiency, open and blatant show