Paper short abstract:

This essay the Inner Line Permit movement in Manipur, India and the relationship between ethnicity, protest and political agency.I argue that blockades and marches of protest are symbolic political action that opens to an imagined set of possibilities towards continuance of everyday political life.

Paper long abstract:

What does a view from the lived and messy realities from a site of protest offer ? This essay discusses how a mass movement to re-introduce a colonial bureaucratic policy to protect indigenous peoples was performed through lockdown and blockade in India. I discuss the Inner Line Permit or ILP – a document issued by the decree of state government towards domestic travel in the protected areas of certain Indian states. Through the people’s movement to implement the permit – this essay explores the relationship between ethnicity, protest and political agency in a city that is at the margins of Indian political life. I draw upon my ethnographic research conducted in the state of Manipur in 2015. I argue the blockades and marches of protest during the ILP movement were imbibed with a regenerative potential, or instances of licensed transgression and suspension of social hierarchies – an institutionalised, repeating cycle of performances geared towards the strengthening of intra-communal ties. The blockades are symbolic or actual political action that opens to an imagined set of possibilities towards the continuance of the day to day of political life. I suggest, ILP is more than a material artefact of the state; rather through the protests the Meitei community articulated a political voice towards amplifying their disconcert over other ethnic communities of Manipur. The paradigms of protest engages with historical and sociological complexities of northeastern politics in India.