“Manipur will never forget the perpetrators of the present conflict, Kuki militants, who signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement during the Congress-led UPA government and GK Pillai was the home secretary dealing with northeast affairs,” the Meitei Leepun said
An influential civil society group of the Meitei community in Manipur has criticised comments by former Union home secretary GK Pillai in an article, in which he called for a criminal case to be filed against Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.
The Meitei Leepun in a two-page statement alluded to Mr Pillai’s comments as stemming from his close ties with the Kuki tribes.
“We never expect Mr Pillai to criticise the present government of Manipur and propose a dire consequence. The indigenous people of Manipur will never forget that the perpetrators of the present conflict, Kuki militants, signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement during the Congress-led UPA government and he was the home secretary dealing with northeast affairs,” the Meitei Leepun said in the statement signed by its chief M Pramot Singh.
“However, it’s not surprising that he was befooled by the kukis. It’s not the first or the last time that Kukis have engaged in distorting historical facts. For instance, the curious case of the Kuki rebellion of 1917-1919 which they presented as the Anglo-Kuki War to legitimise their imagined Kuki homeland within Manipur never actually happened,” the Meitei Leepun said.
“Their (Kukis’) academics have written extensively on it for decades to legitimise it and others have not left any stone unturned to validate that manufactured truth. Documents from the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) are readily available to dismiss such false claims. Fortunately for the rest of us without the western Christian tinted glasses, facts are objective and unchanging. Though Mr Pillai seems to have been heavily influenced by biases and experiences. It’s important to remember that feelings are not facts,” the Meitei Leepun said.
Similar to the controversial civil society groups of the Kuki tribes such as the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) and the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), which face allegations of having direct links with Kuki militants, the Meitei Leepun has also come under scrutiny in the Manipur crisis. All of them claim they are working only for the defence of their respective communities. If action is not taken uniformly, if action is taken against only one of them, it would be seen as biased amid the deep divide, they say.
