The issue marks the re-launch of MRFD Bulletin as Eastern Quarterly. The journal seeks to create a platform and initiate dialogue among diverse viewpoints. It serves to carry along multiple understandings—one, of the people who are physically located in the region; two, of those natives who reside outside the region; and three, of those non-natives who take keen interest on the region—to critically reflect, examine and exchange views on issues pertaining to Manipur in particular and Northeast in general. Eastern Quarterly stands to serve the purposes for which Manipur Research Forum, Delhi (MRFD) was formed.

The inception of MRFD was closely associated with the civil unrest in Manipur in 2001. There were multiple voices, which grappled with the body politics of the time, a politics that had a strong bearing on the future of the state. MRFD owed its origin to that crisis. Although it responded from a distance, it remained deeply immersed in search of an alternative understanding to the then prevailing views and accounts. In a way, MRFD Bulletin fulfilled this limited task.

Once the ripple effect of mass unrest subsided, members of the Forum felt the need to redefine its orientations. Besides, meagre material and human resources constrained both functional and structural existence of the Forum. Bringing out a regular issue of MRFD Bulletin became increasingly difficult.

After a series of meetings and communications amongst its otherwise scattered members, a group of like-minded members emerged. A new consensus to revive MRFD and widen its scope was commonly felt by the new group. Besides, a need for a shift from a reactive to a pro-active approach to the issues pertaining to the region was also felt. These deliberations and reflections led to a critical appraisal of the prevailing and popular understanding of the region. Following these needs, the decision to re-launch the MRFD Bulletin as the Eastern Quarterly was unanimously taken.

The journal shall carry articles under two broad categories, viz. ‘Theme Articles’ and ‘Kaleidoscope’. While the former consists of articles on a specific theme, the latter carries essays unrelated to the theme. The present issue is focused on the theme State, ‘Non-State’ and Human Rights in the Northeast, particularly in Manipur.

The renewed agitation over the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (henceforth, AFSPA) in Manipur was triggered by the alleged rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama Devi by security personnel in their custody. This has raised fundamental questions on the nature and character of the Indian state and its democratic polity.

The modern idea of nation-state was introduced in India through colonial intervention. The post-Enlightenment ideals of value-neutrality, objectivity, impersonal and bureaucratic structures of governance and representative rule, developed in western countries as a part of religious reform movements and protests, had a basis in popular thought. In India, such ideals, which became the basis of nationalism, were a gift from the colonial modernity.

Indian nationalism had to reject the colonial rule and assert its difference from it, while simultaneously internalizing the post-Enlightenment rationality of western thought. Out of such emplacement emerged the ‘Indian dilemma’: a contradictory and conflicting nation-self in which the nation-state had to be at once itself and the other than itself. This dilemma leads the Indian state appropriating the colonial character which it once rejected, thus resulting into a situation of state-linked internal colonialism. The state uses legitimizing core concepts like national security, development, modern science and technology as justificatory ideologies for domination. Violence is used to sustain these ideologies. Northeast India may serve as a case in point.

The manifestation of the dilemmas and the subsequent contradictions is shown in the state’s relation with its minorities. For the state, these minorities are the ‘Others’—the enemies within or the ‘objective enemies’. The very idea of turning the Northeast into an ‘alien space’ where martial law like AFSPA operates suggests that people of the region is closer to Hannah Arendt’s ‘objective enemies’ whose definition is created by virtue of their existence in a particular position at a historical moment in time, and that they do not fall within the self-definition of a state. The idea of ‘national security’ which the Indian state emphatically nurtures may in the long run create incurable conflicts where the state starts subscribing to totalitarian ideology of creating ‘Others’ within the country. The creation of the AFSPA seems to be a pointer towards this idea of exclusivism. Exclusion itself is a form of violence; the hardening character of the state emerges in reinforcing greater violence at the moment of slightest opposition. Ethnic communities in India’s Northeast have been targets of such violence, not only officially at the hands of powerful state machinery, but also at the hands of all those who take their legitimation from state ideology.

Certain procedural issues emerge following the contradictions inherent in the Indian state. Modern constitutional state envisions suspension of democratically elected governments only under the conditions of ‘national emergency’. The Indian Constitution is no exception. However, this clause has been cavalierly made redundant by the AFSPA since 1958 when the Act is enforced in the Northeast. How does this suspension of democratic norms for over four decades reflect on the quality of the democratic regime in the world’s largest democracy? Or, is this a South Asian version of ‘guided democracy’?

Is the AFSPA meant to tame the insurgency or to institutionalize military rule by supplanting the writ of the civil authority with that of the military? How is this qualitatively different from the ‘dictatorial democracy’ practised elsewhere in South Asia? Is the State’s claim that the idea of the civilian or safeguarding civil rights central to militaristic policies sustainable in the face of increasing state violence?

Given these pressing questions thrown up by a restive Manipur, we have thought it fit to entitle the theme of this issue as State, ‘Non-State’ and Human Rights. The writers have brought different perspectives to bear on the theme mentioned above. ‘Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958: Disguised War and its Subversions’ by A. Bimol Akoijam and Th. Tarunkumar underscores the basic premise of AFSPA. It discusses how the Act legitimizes the use of military power in the civilian space and how this has led to institutionalization of military power in the society and polity of Manipur, and Northeast in general. Further, it explores how the ‘absence’ of the Northeast in the imagination of the Indian nation-state primarily informs/distorts policy towards the region. The writers argue that the ‘underlying premises’ of the AFSPA reveal its historical reality beyond its seemingly obvious raison d’etre: ‘insurgency’.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy in his article, ‘Nationalist Ideology, Militarization and Human Rights in Northeast’, discusses some pertinent issues that arise from the militarization of the Northeast. He argues that the deployment of armed forces in the region, the oppressive laws which legitimize it, the judicial scrutiny of such laws and the ways media represents the people’s movements in this part of India are shaped by the dominant nationalist ideology.

In ‘Dignity and Human Security in Manipur’, Babloo Loitongbam assesses the impact of actions of the State on ‘the human security and dignified existence’ of the ethnic minorities in the Northeast leading to curbing the democratic voices. The writer’s basic argument is that there can be no ‘national security’ in a social order where ‘human security’ is under constant threat.

Pradip Phanjoubam in ‘Widening the Human Rights Debate’ espouses the need to examine non-state actors’ roles in the discourse of human rights violations. He remarks that as much as the state is being urged to shed excessive militarization in tackling the issue of terrorism, ‘insurgents groups’ must also be urged to reorient their vision of ‘a healthy society’ by respecting ‘individual liberties and human rights’.

The Kaleidoscope consists of two essays; ‘Shumang Lila: Presentation & Representation of Culture’ by Ksh. Imokanta Singh and ‘Domination and Subjugation: Linguistic Politics in India’ by Kh. Bijoykumar Singh. Tracing the origin of the unique form of theatre from Manipur in the bygone centuries, Imokanta argues that Shumang Lila continues to evolve by holding a mirror to the moral-ethical concerns and preferences of the society and polity. Bijoykumar critiques India’s language policy that prioritises a few elite languages at the cost of smaller communities’ languages. He emphasizes on the need to give due recognitions to languages of the subaltern communities to ensure solution to the ongoing crisis.

The Eastern Quarterly welcomes comments and criticisms to initiate debate on the articles published in the issue. Subsequent editions will carry the debate further.