Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Inner Manipur constituency A Bimol Akoijam
Separating Kukis and Meiteis geographically in violence-hit Manipur in the name of "safety" is against the "very idea" of India and should be condemned left, right and centre, said the Congress's Lok Sabha election candidate A Bimol Akoijam.
An associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Social Sciences, Mr Akoijam said as long as the two communities continue to be citizens of the country, they will have to live and work together.
The comments by Mr Akoijam, 57, came amid demands by the Kuki-Zo tribes in Manipur for a separate administration.
Equating the violence in Manipur to "Rwanda-like ethnic conflict", Mr Akoijam alleged the BJP-led government at the Centre and in the state deliberately allowed the situation to aggravate and claimed there is some purpose behind it.
"The kind of situation we are seeing... we don't believe that this can happen in a settled democracy like India... it almost sounds like an ethnic conflict like those happen in Rwanda for instance, and this has been allowed to happen for so long... so returning back to normal life will take long, long time," he told PTI in an interview.
Mr Akoijam, who is contesting from Inner Manipur constituency - his first ever election - questioned why is the Centre allowing partitions to happen within itself.
"When a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country like India says that Kukis and Meiteis have been separated geographically, emotionally and so on and so forth, it is complete nonsense. It is against the very idea of India to say that Kukis and Meiteis cannot live together," Mr Akoijam said.
"If Sikhs were attacked... you tried to protect the locality where a certain community was residing. I am very suspicious of why did they start shifting these people from that side to this and vice versa in the name of safety," he said.
"I consider this as an inability of the Indian state that it allowed to aggravate these situation and I suspect that it is being deliberately done. It is not inability of the Indian state; it is unwillingness to act, and my suspicion is that it has some purpose behind it," he alleged.
Mr Akoijam said people seem to encourage and legitimise the separation demand and termed it a "sorry state of affairs".
"That's a very sorry state of affairs... I think that is why one must not celebrate. These kinds of issues must be condemned left, right and centre. As long as Kukis and Meiteis remain citizens of this country, they will share every platform, be that parliament, (state) assembly, government institutions, private institutions... as fellow citizens, they will have to live together and work together," he said.
"You don't have to justify the fact that they can't work together. That is complete nonsense and unacceptable," he said.
Mr Akoijam said resolving the current issues is going to be a long haul.
"Making sure that these people go back to their original places and lead normal life, is going to be a huge task, precisely because they have allowed to linger on these things for so many months. It is at an unprecedented scale... never in the history of this country.... you have seen such violence happen in rest of the country and if any violence happens it was brought under control within a couple of weeks," he said.
Manipur has seen sporadic, sometimes intense, ethnic clashes since May 3 last year between the Meitei community and the Kuki-Zo tribes, resulting in the loss of more than 200 lives. While the Meiteis are now concentrated in Imphal city, the Kukis have moved to the hills.
Polling for the two Lok Sabha seats in Manipur will be held in two phases. While Inner Manipur and some segments of Outer Manipur will vote in the first phase on April 19, the remaining segments of Outer Manipur will vote in the second phase on April 26.
On the Congress's stand on the demand for Scheduled Tribes (ST) status for Meiteis, Mr Akoijam said, "It is a legitimate demand which must be pursued. I shall be doing my bit to ensure this process is done without harming or hurting other communities."
Mr Akoijam is pitted against BJP's Thounaojam Basanta Kumar Singh, who is also the state's Law and Education Minister.
Asked about the steps he will take to address the situation, Mr Akoijam said, "change the narrative".
"One of the things is to change the narrative. That is why in the Congress manifesto, we have the word 'reconciliation'. In a society that is fractured and where there is estrangement in inter-community relationships, you need reconciliation... My step would be to accentuate this process of reconciliation," he said.
"The violence must be reigned in, accountability fixed and justice done to the victims, that is the first priority. The crisis is manifestation of historically rooted issues in the state so it needs to be addressed with a particular perspective and I will be working on a project where every community can live together with a sense of dignity... a united Manipur," he added.
The Congress has fielded MLA Alfred K Arthur from the Outer Manipur seat, reserved for tribes. The BJP has not fielded any candidate from the Outer Manipur seat and is extending support to Naga People's Front (NPF) candidate Kachui Timothy Zimik.