On February 13, 2025, Article 356 of the Constitution was invoked in Manipur and the State came under President’s Rule. It made way for the President of India to take charge of all administrative and legislative functions of the State from Manipur’s Council of Ministers. The State Assembly, however, has not been dissolved but kept in ‘animated suspension’ instead, indicating that rather than having a fresh election to the Assembly after President’s Rule, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its legislators are being given time to tide over their differences to resume power.
There were other reasons
For 20 long months of lawless anarchy in the State, ever since communal mayhem descended on it on May 3, 2023, the Union government did not consider this emergency step despite there being demands for it from many quarters. Why the move now? Obviously, the primary consideration is still not the anarchy but some other.
One of these is technical. Article 174 of the Constitution requires that the space between two State Assembly sessions is not more than six months — a deadline which expired on February 12. The deadline had closed in because the Assembly had skipped its winter session, and, therefore, the Budget session was planned to begin on February 10, two days ahead of this deadline. However, on the afternoon of February 9, the then Manipur Chief Minister, N. Biren Singh, resigned, a move that was probably compelled by the BJP’s central leadership in order to avoid a possible split in the BJP legislative party as dissidence against Mr. Singh was becoming intense. The Opposition Congress party was poised to move a no-confidence motion against the government, and it was feared that dissenting ruling MLAs were ready to risk disqualification to support the motion if Mr. Singh remained as Chief Minister.
Just after accepting Mr. Singh’s resignation, the Manipur Governor, Ajay Kumar Bhalla, for unexplained reasons, declared the Assembly session scheduled to begin the next day as “null and void”. He had probably not been briefed about the February 12 deadline. He may have also thought that a new Chief Minister could take charge and the Assembly summoned again. However, a bitter struggle between the loyalists of Mr. Singh and dissidents on who should succeed Mr. Singh made this impossible.
The State, which was in a constitutional limbo by then, with only a caretaker government and a lapsed Assembly session deadline, had little other option than having President’s Rule invoked. This was done on February 13, without dissolving the Assembly.
According to a Ministry of Home Affairs reply to an online Right To Information application in 2016, Manipur has had President’s Rule 10 times. This will be its 11th time, making it one of the most vulnerable States to have this extreme measure taken. This also reflects the fractured nature of its political landscape, but this is not surprising given its ethnic diversity.
Manipur has 33 recognised Scheduled Tribes, most falling into the Naga and Kuki (now Kuki-Zo) groupings. There are also the majority Meiteis (and Pangals or Meitei Muslims) who are considered non-tribals. In addition, there are several other non-tribal communities such as Nepalis, Punjabis, Tamils and Marwaris, who constitute a substantive percentage of the State’s projected population of about three million. Unfortunately, they are virtually invisible and taken for granted.
The politics of populism
Adding to this complication is what has been termed as the politics of populism. A book, Righteous Demagogues: Populist Politics in South Asia and Beyond (2024), by Adnan A. Naseemullah and Pradeep K. Chhibber, provides many insights even into the problems unfolding on micro canvases such as Manipur. A brief sketch of their proposition will be helpful.
The authors start with the Google dictionary definition of political populism, which is “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups”. What is interesting and relevant are the three broad categories of political populism that the authors profile.
The first is “Reordering” populism, and its representation is broad, not sectarian. Its appeal is the idea of restructuring the moral order, such as by championing, or else using, issues such as poverty uplift and farmer’s rights to further political gains. Politicians who successfully push such agendas and emerge as leaders also tend to be majoritarian and autocratic.
The second is “Additive” populism, in which would fall campaigns for inclusion by those excluded. A political movement, for instance by Nepalis, for inclusion in the larger scheme of the Manipur political establishment would fit into this category. These seek realignment and not radical restructuring.
The third is what the authors call “Quotidian” populism. These popularist politicians seek to create their exclusive constituencies, and then to have the exclusivity of their constituencies preserved for their vested ends. They are partisan and their popularist political interest is to keep societies polarised.
Quite obviously, in the hotly contested political arena of Manipur, there are players of all these different brands of political populism. Those who follow the politics of Manipur in the wake of the State’s nearly two-year-old ethnic strife between two of its major communities, the Meiteis and Kuki-Zos, would have also noticed this.
A fight that grew
This fight should have remained between the Government of Manipur, then headed by N. Biren Singh, and the Kuki-Zo tribes, considering the chief reasons for all the animus were Mr. Singh’s drive against forest encroachers, poppy cultivation and illegal migration. These were pursued rather insensitively and with accusatory populist fanfare that would have been dehumanising and humiliating for those at the receiving end. Unfortunately, the politics of populism of Mr. Singh as well as those of his elite adversaries on the other side of the political fence, competitively built on waves of ethnic paranoia in their respective constituencies for their brands of politics to ride on, ensuring in the process that the hostilities were transformed into communal enmity.
The current spell of President’s Rule is unlikely to last for long and a new BJP government could probably take charge sooner rather than later. But whether there is such a government in place or whether President’s Rule continues, the challenges ahead are far from simple. On consideration of the irredenta reality, population movements across the international border must be allowed to continue, but not in an unaccounted manner like in the past. Similarly, the drive against poppy cultivation or forest encroachment must continue, but sensibly and sensitively.
Above all, the effort must be for an end to senseless communal hostilities. In the long run, politics must shed populism and be consensual instead, shaped by the principle that promoting the greater common good guarantees the enlightened self-interest of all. Manipur became a full-fledged State in 1972, but its political history has ample evidence of this character, and anybody from any community could emerge as Chief Minister based solely on calibre.
Pradip Phanjoubam is Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics, and the author of two books
Published – February 20, 2025 12:16 am IST