In a letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge last week, BJP president J P Nadda accused the party of “sensationalising” the Manipur issue and blamed senior Congress leader and former Union home minister P Chidambaram for the crisis.

“It appears that you have forgotten that not only did your government legitimise the illegal migration of foreign militants to India, Mr Chidambaram – the erstwhile Home Minister – signed treaties with them,” Nadda wrote in the letter.

The BJP has opened this line of attack against the Congress after Chidambaram put out a social media post – later deleted – in the wake of the recent spurt of violence, saying Biren Singh should be removed as Chief Minister. The post added that “the Meitei, the Kuki-Zo and the Naga can live together in one State only if they have genuine regional autonomy”.

Given the sensitivity around the autonomy issue – a Kuki demand, opposed by the Meiteis – among the first to urge Chidambaram to take down the post was Manipur Congress chief K Meghachandra.

Biren Singh by then had seized the opportunity to deflect the heat on him by bringing up Chidambaram and the situation in Manipur during his tenure as Union home minister. Accusing the Congress leader of being behind the Manipur problem, Biren Singh shared a purported picture of Chidambaram shaking hands with a man he claimed to be Thanglianpau Guite, the president of the Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA), a militant group under a ceasefire agreement with the government.

Biren argued that Guite was a Myanmar national and suggested this showed that Chidambaram supported illegal immigration.

Nadda later accused Chidambaram of allowing “foreigners” to enter India and signing Suspension of Operation (SoO) agreements with militant groups.

Hoping to sign a peace deal with Kuki-Zo militant groups operating in the hills of Manipur, the UPA government at the Centre had begun ceasefire talks with them in 2005. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal, the Zomi Re-unification Organisation (ZRO) – the political wing of the ZRA – put out a statement on August 9, 2005, saying that it had reached a ceasefire understanding with the security forces for a period of six months, beginning August 1 that year.

Eventually, in August 2008, a tripartite SoO involving some 25 Kuki-Zo militant groups, under the twin umbrellas of the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and United People’s Front (UPF), was signed, with the other signatories being the Manipur government and the Centre. Shivraj Patil was the Union Home Minister at the time.

The SoO ground rules included suspension of militant activities, limiting movement of constituent militant groups to designated camps, and periodic review of the agreement by a monitoring group.

In the wake of the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks, Patil was replaced with Chidambaram. It was only in December that year that Chidambaram took charge as the Home Minister.

While The Indian Express could not independently verify the picture shown by Biren Singh of the two shaking hands, Chidambaram did visit a ZRA camp in Manipur in 2010 when he was the Home Minister. According to media reports of the time, he spent around 45 minutes at the camp and met ZRA leaders. ZRA was under SoO at the time.

Congress sources said the picture shared by Biren Singh could not have been from that time as Chidambaram is wearing a suit in it, and that he never wears a suit during political or official visits in India.

As for Guite’s nationality, it has been widely reported that he contested elections and became an MP in Myanmar in the 1990s.

A Wikileaks cable on more insurgent groups emerging in Myanmar too said this in 2017. Identifying the ZRA chief as “Thang Lian Pau”, the cable said he was earlier associated with Myanmar’s Zomi National Congress but split to form an armed group.

“The leader of the ZRA, Thang Lian Pau, elected an MP in the 1990 elections, was the former General-Secretary of the ZNC. Following the annulled elections …Thang Lian Pau …was expelled from the party. He moved to India, where he founded the Zomi Revolutionary Organization, also called the Zomi Reunification Organization, in 1993. Three years later, he established its armed wing, the ZRA, with 200 soldiers believed to be mostly Paite ethnics from India. The ZRA is based in Churachandpur District, Manipur State, where our sources claimed it supported itself through extortion and occasional kidnapping,” the cable said.

Sources in Kuki-Zo organisations do not deny that Guite contested elections in Myanmar, but claim he was born in Churachandpur and his parents and grandparents are from the district.

Sources within the security establishment pointed out that it was common for ethnic groups and their members to flit between India and Myanmar since they shared ethnicity, culture and language. In fact, the tribes of Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland do not consider the Indo-Myanmar border a legitimate one and armed movements in these regions have had unification of ethnically similar areas on either side of the border as one of the goals.

It has more to do with the current situation in Manipur, with even party colleagues split down ethnic lines. So, Meitei legislators across parties speak for Meitei interests, while Kuki legislators irrespective of party affiliations raise tribal demands.

Congress sources said that Chidambaram’s suggestion of “genuine regional autonomy” to Kukis and Nagas in Manipur did not go down well with the Meiteis – Chidambaram also mentioned the Meiteis in his post, incidentally.

Since the onset of violence in the state, the Kukis have been demanding “separate administration” for the hill tribes, which has been summarily rejected by the Meiteis, including the public and leaders.

Several tribes in the Northeast enjoy relative freedom through autonomous councils. Though Manipur also got autonomous councils in the ’70s, the system has been a nonstarter.

In December 1971, Parliament had passed The Manipur (Hill Areas) District Council Act, paving the way for creation of autonomous district councils in Manipur’s hill areas. The stated aim was to grant the hill people a chance at self-governance, protect their identity and culture, and to give them rights over the management of their resources.

However, the councils in the state never really took off for lack of adequate powers and budgetary allocations. While the law itself was limp, even the many powers enshrined in it were not devolved to the councils after Manipur became a state in 1972 because of opposition from Meitei politicians.

For the Meitei population in the state, “disintegration” of Manipur has always been a non-negotiable issue, with grant of autonomy to hill tribes viewed as an extension of the same. Since the onset of violence, this stance of the Meitei population has only hardened.

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