GUWAHATI: Manipur‘s Thadou community rejected the colonial-era classification & post-independence bureaucratic nomenclature designating it as a constituent of Kuki group, asserting that this label was arbitrarily imposed without its explicit consent.
“Thadou is a distinct ethnic group, with our own distinct language, culture, traditions, and history. Thadou is not Kuki, or underneath Kuki, or part of Kuki, but a separate, independent entity,” states the declaration of Thadou Convention 2024, which concluded Saturday in Guwahati. The convention said among all those touched by ethnic violence in Manipur since May 3 last year, Thadous were most affected.
The state’s sectarian strife has claimed over 225 lives and displaced around 60,000 people, creating a deep divide between Kuki-Zo tribal people of the hills and Meiteis of Imphal valley. The convention extended sympathy to survivors of the violence and their kin and affirmed its solidarity with Thadou people of Myanmar, who were affected by the ongoing political unrest in the country.
It also affirmed that Thadou people constitute an independent, indigenous community among Manipur’s 29 native tribes, as recognised by the 1956 Presidential Order. “Thadous have always been known and recorded as Thadou, without any prefix or suffix to it, and it has been the single largest tribe in Manipur consistently since the first census of India in 1881 till the latest census in 2011 that recorded Thadou population at 2,15,913,” the declaration states.
It said Thadous reject and disown the term ‘Kuki’, which was “coined by colonial rulers, supposedly known as a conglomerate of several constituent tribes, without which it is non-existent and irrelevant. The term has never been accepted by any of the other kindred tribes (Aimol, Gangte, Hmar, Kom, Mizo, Paite, Simte, Vaiphei, Zou, etc). Thus, any attempt to conflate or confuse Thadou identity with Kuki will be construed as the imposition of Kuki upon Thadous with divisive and malicious intentions, and it will never be acceptable to Thadou people”.