Ever
since childhood I remember being in highly homogenous groups of friends and
familial circles. Such circles have the tendency to numb us to differences, an
easy sedate living insulated from those different from us. It was not a shock
though considering the direction the country and the state is heading when a
friend narrated to me in a series of conversation the travails any muslim girl
growing up in Manipur would have most probably undergone. “‘Amina Begum’ is one
of one such verbal harassment thrown at anyone wearing the hijab or have
wrapped herself up in a scarf or chaddar,” she explained. People like us who
are not subject to such particular harassment and targeting based on religious
affiliation might even state that such harassment is to be taken lightly.
Harassment of such kind is mildly called laknaba,
a term as innocuous as eve teasing, a term which could include an array of
other activities which are indeed innocuous and thereby makes it difficult for
women to argue that laknaba is verbal
harassment also, or perhaps what is required is to coin another term which
would encompass the ordeal that such an act embodies. While it is more often
than not understood and (hopefully) a consensus built around the fact that
women undergo harassment at most public and private spaces such harassment of
the minorities should be understood as of much more virulent an attack and the
fear of being small in numbers is not to be underestimated. The point here is
not to compare the degrees of ordeal that women undergo but to state that women
belonging to different communities are marked out differently, the minorities
always bearing the brunt and in the case of Manipur, the muslims become the
other. Just as we are in other parts of the country marked out by our features,
they are in their own land marked by other visible markers.
Sites
that we as “mainstream”, at least in Manipur (by we, I mean the majority
community of Manipur, the Meiteis regardless of being hindus or followers of
Sanamahi religion) have taken as sacred if looked at through a different lens
gives quite an altogether different picture. For instance, Kangla (in the news
for quite some time now) has easily morphed from being a site of kingly
subjugation to a site of resistance, if only, for the Meiteis. Manipuri muslims
or meitei pangal is the category in
the census and such colloquial words –pangal, hao have in time acquired prejudices by what the majority community
prefix and suffix with these words that most people with political sensitivity
prefer the English replacement –muslim, tribal. A series of conversation with
this friend from the meitei pangal community revealed for me the many flaws of
my own community. Her research interest being sacred spaces she interviewed
some of the priests in Kangla. It is difficult to identify her as the “other”
from her name or her “looks”. She was entertained with her queries for a few
days after which she was told in no uncertain terms that she has polluted the
space. As a political move there has been many feasts organised in the space of
Kangla wherein people from other religious and ethnic communities have been
invited, if only for political correctness. The priest also gave her some of
his own opinion on how such moves pollute the space of Kangla. Are we to think
then that it is only on such marked off days that “the others” are invited,
allowed inside the so-called sacred space? It is to be remembered that spaces
only become sacred by exclusivity, an exclusivity that more often than not is
built on an exclusion, an exclusion that marks certain people as unpolluted and
thereby those who are so. It is time we look at such spaces and understand that
in the exalted histories of such spaces lie narratives of subjugation/
discrimination.
The
meitei hindus of Manipur certainly pride themselves as being separate from
hindus of the rest of the country. This is on the basis of the erroneous belief
being that they are innocent of discriminatory practices like that of caste.
However the notion of purity and pollution has seeped into the very core of all
practices. Women are aware of how they are denied access to certain spaces
during their menstrual periods. Practices like these have become banal enough
to pass unnoticed. We have equally bizarre cases like Municipal Corporation workers
sweeping roads being physically and verbally harassed; something as innocuous
as the broom has become a potent inauspicious symbol! This idea of purity and
pollution also comes in our conduct vis-à-vis the religious and the ethnic
minority. My friend was shown the door by a well known meitei intellectual. She
has polluted his sacred texts was the reason attributed. That we still live in
a time where it is possible to make such disparaging statements and not only
that, in effect actually rendering certain areas of research inaccessible to a
community and also getting away with it is nothing less than shameful and is to
be pointed out as a practice of untouchability, an illegal act. She narrated to
me an incident wherein she with her sisters travelling in a bus bound for Mayai Lambi was address by an old meitei
lady, “Ebemma will you hold these flowers for me, I got them for a puja, the
person next to me is a muslim”. I would have been stunned to be address this
way. My friend growing up in an everyday of such acts of shunning directed
towards her nonchalantly replied “ Ema eisu pangan ne” (Mother, I am also a
muslim). A remark to which the elderly woman nonchalantly said “Phare adudi, ei
adum pairage” (It is okay then, I might as well hold the flowers myself). Would
not we see this as an act of untouchability directed towards a community? If
this anecdote is amusing I should consider it a failed project to attempt to
draw attention to such discriminatory practices.
While
the name meitei pangal do suggests the indigeneity of the muslims, the term
prefixed as it were, with a meitei, yet the question of indigeneity is a
growing and a highly contentious issue. The muslims seems certainly marked out,
not only in the state but going by the decade that we live in, in all parts of
the country. More, so in the north eastern region of the country, due to its
proximity to Bangladesh, muslims have to prove their indigeneity and
non-Bangladeshi origin again and again. The meitei pangal in spite of their
indigeneity seemed forever set apart because of their religion. As in other
parts of the country in the regressive times we live in the religion seem to
question their authenticity as indigenous people of Manipur. All other
ethnicities following other institutional religion or those aspiring to be one
(Hinduism, Christianity, Sanamahi-ism) at least in the case of Manipur no not
at any point of time have to prove themselves as being indigenous population of
the state. In fact for those following non-institutional religion, the question
does not even arise. At any point of them one can see that there seem to a
mortal fear of people who do not constitute even 10% of the population
(according to the 2001 census).
Not
too long ago an incident of muslim villagers lynching a muslim couple in Sora
Awang Leikai occupied print and screen space for a weeks. This was used as an
illustration of the “otherness” of the meitei pangal. This is strange in a
violence ridden place where sporadic killing could be seen anywhere regardless
of the religious affiliation of the place. However, the ways in which media
possess video recording of the killings and questions of media ethics in such a
scenario was not questioned. What was questioned was the ethics of the
community and not the ethics of policing mechanism and the manner in which the
entire process was video recorded and shown in news bulletin erasing only the
most incriminating part.
It could be said that
issues like the movement asking repeal of AFSPA, resisting acts of violence, resistance
to racialised targeting of women from the region in the capital and our
indignation against it occupies our time and attention. One should not desist
from that. Along with this however it is to be noted that we treat our own
minorities with the respect that we demand. While I write this the news of Haji
Abdul Salam, first ever Muslim MP that the Manipur state is going to see is
doing its rounds. The Congress has woken up rather late in the day to the fact
that they need to have some secular credential. It is left to be seen if this
would translate into any palpable changes in the way we view the meitei pangals.
