Manipur & Wikipedia: How Kuki-Zo's Digital Inequity Has Caused a Narrative Shift

Significant changes have been made to Wikipedia pages surrounding the Kuki-Zo ethnic groups.

In Manipur, all the crucial infrastructure – education, healthcare, digital infrastructure, air transportation, and government offices – is concentrated in the Imphal valley, thereby increasing the need for land to develop the city.

This selective concentration of infrastructure has also led to the migration of tribals to the Imphal valley, mostly as government servants and students.

The state government currently has no concrete plan to extend this infrastructure to the hills and is also making slow interventions in developing the limitedly available infrastructure in the hilly areas.

But of all the infrastructural challenges, the divide is significantly visible on the digital front – with the Meiteis having an upper-hand over the Kuki-Zo tribes.

Meiteis, Kukis, and Digital Inequities

While the minority tribals are enmeshed in the challenge of digital familiarity due to the lack of access to digital infrastructure, Imphal, over the years, has witnessed a "surge in internet usage, with the number of internet users increasing by over 50 percent since 2015."

As for institutions for pursuing digital expertise, Manipur has several prominent universities in the valley. Institutes such as Manipur University, Manipur Technical University, Manipur Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Information Technology, and National Institute of Technology are among them.

While the digital infrastructure itself is limitedly shared across the hills, the knowledge and skills to operationalise the infrastructure are concentrated only in the valley.

How, then, do digital inequities displace the narratives of Kuki-Zo ethnic groups in the current Manipur violence?

The ongoing conflict and targeted ethnic violence in Manipur must be understood in two contexts: one that is political and on the ground, and the other that digitally follows the narratives set by the Chief Minister Biren Singh-led BJP government or the Meiteis.

Digital Displacement in the Manipuri Context

There are two kinds of digital displacement in the Manipuri context: the social media war, which is dominated by the Meiteis, and the Wikipedia war, which is seemingly discreet.

Wikipedia is the point of interest here because it is fairly obvious that the majoritarian narrative is well placed on social media through popular figures like actor Kangana Ranaut (in the early phase of the violence) and climate activist Licypriya Kangujam, among others.

It is important to look away from the loud social media war and unveil the seemingly discreet nature in which misinformation about the Kuki-Zo ethnic groups is shared, facts are distorted, and majoritarian narratives are set on Wikipedia.

The historical infrastructural inequities and the digital divide experienced by the Kuki-Zo people have paved the way for majoritarian Meitei narratives to take centrestage on Wikipedia. But how?

Changes in Wikipedia Pages as Early as Last Year

In late 2022 and early 2023, news about protected forests, wetlands, reserved forests, eviction notices, and the destruction of tribal churches in Imphal flooded national, state, and local media.

Interestingly, there was a significant change in the narratives surrounding the Kuki-Zo ethnic groups on the Wikipedia pages run by proactive users – and they unsurprisingly favour the majoritarian views.

There were changes on the Wikipedia pages of Kukis as early as November 2022. Wikipedia users like Haoreima, 195.235.214.105, 103.33.173.67, and Yamaguchi先生 distorted information on several Kuki-Zo Wikipedia pages.

The Kuki-Zo community includes tribes like Gangte, Hmar, Thadou/Kuki, Mizo, Paite, Simte, Vaiphei, and Zou. Wikipedia users specifically target the pages of the groups that have a numerical majority, that is, the Hmars, Paites, Kukis, Thadou, and Vaiphei. 

The distortions and settings of the Meitei narratives are along the lines of their call for being included in the scheduled tribe (ST) category and their claims of illegal immigration of the Kuki-Zo community, arguing that the latter are: 1) culturally and historically linked to Burma; 2) are uncivilised; 3) are assimilated by the Meiteis; and 4) they occupy no socio-cultural and political significance in Manipur, among others.

The most active user in setting this narrative is "Haoreima", which historically and culturally translates to a goddess of tragic love in Meitei mythology and religion of Ancient Kangleipak (refer to the image below).

The user is prolific and active on Wikipedia, with several respectable mentions and articles.

Haoreima and others have attempted to digitally Meiteise the Kuki-Zo by setting Wikipedia narratives that reflect the dominant community's perceptions. Although it cannot be confirmed that the users mentioned here are all Meiteis, the focus is rather on the patterns that the Wikipedia narratives follow in relation to what is set by the Biren Singh-led Manipur government or the Meitei narratives that claim the Hmars, Paites, Kuki, Thadou, and Vaipheias are historically and culturally tied to Burma or are 'assimilated' by the Meiteis.

The Hmar

The following data will take you through the misinformation about the Kuki-Zo community on Wikipedia. Hmar's Wikipedia page was created on 30 June 2004. An interesting change occurred on 12 November 2022, when user Haoreima added the Meitei transliteration of the term "Hmar" ("Mar") as the image that represents the group, entitled the term "Hmar" written in Manipuri script (Meitei script).

The same day, the user added "Meitei" to the list of ethnic groups related to Hmar. This image was subsequently removed on 16 December 2022 by user "Sinlung123", a typical tribal name, who also removed "Hinduism, Buddhism, and other indigenous religions" from the list of religions practised by Hmar.

Interestingly, the user also modified its description from "ethnic group" to "one of the ethnic peoples of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo."

On 3 May 2023, the user Haoreima once again added the image of the term "Hmar" written in Meitei script to the page, while additionally adding the lines, "They use Meitei language as their second language (L2) according to the Ethnologue."

The image remains on the current Wikipedia page (as of 10 May 2023) for "Hmar", while the reference to "Meitei language as second language" has been removed.  

Thadou People

The page for this term was created on 5 March 2012. On 7 February 2023, the user Haoreima added that "Thadou is a dialect of the Tibeto-Burman family" and removed all other information about the Thadous under the sections, including religion, history, Kuki rebellion, modern history, marriage, and literature.

Then, on 3 May 2023, the same user wrote, "They use Meitei language as their second language (L2) according to the Ethnologue."

Kuki People

This page was created on 24 November 2005. On 19 March 2022, a user named Salam Alaykar made negative references to the Kukis, by adding:

"The Kukis looted the area of Bakhshganj and murdered Kamal Poddar of Basantpur. They then proceeded to molest Poddar's women until Guna Ghazi and Jakimal waged war against them in the village of Kulapara. Whilst the Kukis abducted 700 women, Munshi Abdul Ali informed the British authorities of the atrocities."

Another significant change was on 4 May 2023, which was made by user 195.235.214.105, who briefly added the word "uncivilised" to the description, which reads: "The Kuki people are an uncivilised ethnic group in the southeastern part of Mizoram and Manipur in India."

Paite People

Until 17 April 2022, accurate information about the Paites was available on the Wikipedia page "Paite people."

On 18 April 2022, user Yamaguchi先生 removed 2,621 words from Paite Wikipedia page, leaving "Paite are a tribe dwelling in India" as the only piece of information available on the Wikipedia page.

Then, a significant change occurred again on 7 March 2023 when user 103.44.173.67 changed it to "The Paite people are a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group in Northeast India."

Vaiphei People

Similar to the Hmar people's Wikipedia page, Haoreima added the Meitei spelling of "Vaiphei" on the Vaiphei Wikipedia page on 12 November 2022.

Then, on 1 March 2023, the user removed crucial information about the Vaipheis as original inhabitants of the hill areas of what is called Manipur today.

They removed, "Each clan has a chief called 'Upa'. The Vaiphei people follow a primogeniture system where the eldest son inherits his father's property. They were considered to be the first among the Chin-Kuki-Mizo groups to settle in Manipur and hence were included under the "Old Kuki" group based on arrival and settlement in the present borders of Manipur."

Why Is This Distortion Problematic?

Due to the lack of representation worldwide, the distortion of facts and removal of information on Wikipedia pose a serious problem for the tribals in Manipur. There has been a significant increase in the number of viewers on the Wikipedia pages of Hmar, Thadou, Kuki, Paite, and Vaiphei since the outbreak of violence on 2 May 2023.

If the only digital space, through which they could reach a global audience to share their cultures and histories, is breached, then such manipulations cloud the very question of digital democracy for them.

Wikipedia is not the only place where these digital encounters occur. One can get a better understanding of the digital divide concerning the Kuki-Zo by analysing their encounters on Twitter.

While so-called popular Meitei figures, such as Licipriya, with over 166K followers on Twitter, began actively tweeting on the platform since the beginning of violence, it was a different story for the Kuki-Zo community.

In May 2023, there was a mass migration or forced migration of the Kuki-Zo community to Twitter due to the violence. A few experienced Twitter users from the tribal communities encouraged the WhatsApp community to create Twitter accounts in order to collectively voice their problems, nationally and globally.

This was done so that communication and information dissemination on WhatsApp could move beyond the "local" sphere.

Concerned youths took the initiative to "share" Twitter content on WhatsApp, and provided women with instructions on how to retweet, like, and share the content.

Many of the Manipur tribals' Twitter accounts were, hence, born in May 2023.

(Suanmuanlian Tonsing is a PhD student at the School of Information, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. As a cultural insider to the Paite community, Tonsing’s area of study is the intersection of indigenous peoples and technology. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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