When ‘Kacha Naga’ hurts Manipur must act against ethnic slurs before they become weapons

Dr Raj Singh
In a peaceful society, a wrong word may cause embarrassment. In a wounded society, a wrong word can cause another wound. In Manipur today, where communities already live behind walls of fear, suspicion and grief, ethnic slurs are not ordinary words. They are emotional weapons.
The recent controversy over the use of the expression “Kacha Naga” by a Kuki-Zo organization while addressing the Nagas of Manipur after the abduction and killing of six Nagas is therefore not a small linguistic dispute. It is a warning. An apology should have healed a wound. Instead, the use of a name regarded by many Nagas as derogatory opened another wound. Worse, when objections were raised, the expression was reportedly justified by citing an old Government document.
That argument is dangerous. Old documents may explain history, but they cannot decide present dignity. Colonial records, census categories and old administrative papers contain many words that modern societies have abandoned. A name does not become respectful merely because an office once used it.
The principle must be simple: no community should insist on calling another community by a name that the latter finds insulting.
Manipur is not short of such dangerous words. “Kacha Naga” hurts Nagas. “Hao,” when used by Meiteis for hill tribals in a dismissive tone, hurts tribal communities. “Mayang,” though sometimes descriptive of outsiders, can become insulting when used contemptuously. “Pangal” is more complex because many Manipuri Muslims use it as an accepted community name; yet even an accepted name can become offensive if used with contempt. More recently, blanket expressions such as “refugee Kukis” have entered political language, reducing an entire people to a disputed label.
The point is not to accuse one community. The point is that every community has been wounded by words, and every community has also wounded others through words.
Social psychology explains why this matters. According to Social Identity Theory, human beings naturally divide the world into “us” and “them.” Once that division hardens, language becomes the first fence. A nickname becomes a label; a label becomes a stereotype; a stereotype becomes prejudice; prejudice becomes discrimination; and discrimination can become violence.
The chain is simple: Name---Label---Stereotype---Hatred ---Violence.
History repeatedly proves this. In Rwanda, extremist propaganda called Tutsis “cockroaches” before the mass killings began. Nazi propaganda described Jews as vermin before the Holocaust.
In many conflicts, dehumanizing language prepared ordinary people to accept extraordinary cruelty. Violence often begins not with the gun, but with the word that makes the gun morally easier to fire. That is why civilized societies change their language as their moral awareness grows. In the United States, “Negro” gave way to “Black” and “African American” in most respectful contexts. In Canada, “Eskimo” has widely been replaced by “Inuit” because many Inuit reject the older outsider term. “Red Indian” has been replaced by “First Nations,” “Native American” or “Indigenous Peoples.” In Norway and Scandinavia, “Lapp” is avoided in favour of “Sámi.” In Australia, “Abo” is now recognized as a racial slur, while respectful usage prefers “Aboriginal Australians,” “Aboriginal peoples” and “Torres Strait Islanders.”
India has its own shameful example. North Easterners with East Asian features have long been called “Chinky” by other Indians. Many users claimed it was harmless teasing. But for the victim, it was not teasing. It was racial reduction. It erased identity, language, history and dignity.
Another useful example comes from Canada. Canadians of Pakistani origin have long been targeted with the slur “Paki.” No Canadian law requires a dictionary to publish a notice that this exact word is banned. Yet its use can still become legally serious depending on context. If someone shouts it while threatening, harassing, intimidating or attacking a Pakistani person, the word becomes evidence of hate motivation. The offence is not merely the utterance of a four-letter word. The offence may be harassment, intimidation, assault, hate propaganda, workplace discrimination or creation of a hostile environment. The slur helps prove the hateful character of the conduct.
This distinction is important for Manipur.
Modern democracies usually do not criminalize dictionaries. They criminalize harmful conduct.
A word becomes legally relevant when it is used to humiliate, threaten, exclude, incite or provoke hostility against a protected community. This is why Canada, Britain, Australia and other democracies often manage racial slurs through hate-crime laws, human rights codes, workplace rules, school discipline, media ethics and public culture rather than by printing a permanent list of forbidden words in the statute book.
Manipur must learn from this wisdom.
Some may argue that banning slurs will restrict free speech. But no democracy gives unlimited protection to language that humiliates, threatens or incites hatred against communities.
Defamation, threats and hate speech are already restricted because words can harm public order.
In a conflict-torn State, ethnic slurs should be treated as early warning signals of violence.
Yet Manipur must avoid a crude, rigid law that simply lists words and punishes every use. That would create confusion. Scholars may need to discuss old terms. Journalists may need to report controversies. Courts may need to record evidence. Writers may need to describe historical prejudice. Therefore, the law should not punish genuine academic, historical, literary, judicial or journalistic use.
The law should punish deliberate public use of ethnic slurs when such use is intended, or is reasonably likely, to insult, intimidate, degrade, provoke hostility or disturb communal harmony.
This distinction protects both dignity and freedom.
Manipur, therefore, needs a carefully drafted Ethnic Harmony and Respect Act. The Act should not behave like a schoolmaster scolding every wrong word. It should establish a serious legal principle: ethnic, linguistic, religious and indigenous communities have the right not to be publicly degraded by derogatory labels.
The Act may state that the intentional public use of derogatory expressions against any ethnic community, in a manner likely to promote hatred, insult dignity, intimidate members or disturb public order, shall be treated as an offence or civil wrong depending on severity.
Alongside the Act, the Government may frame Rules containing a periodically updated advisory schedule of expressions considered offensive by different communities. This schedule should not be frozen forever. Language changes. Community preferences change. Words acquire new meanings. Therefore, the schedule should be reviewed by a Standing Commission on Ethnic Harmony after consulting tribal bodies, Meitei organizations, Pangal bodies, women’s groups, student bodies, scholars, media representatives and human rights experts.
This Commission should also recommend preferred community names. It should prepare style guides for government offices, schools, media houses and civil society organizations. It should clarify when certain expressions are unacceptable and when historical or academic reference is permissible.
This will prevent the common excuse: “But the word exists in an old document.”
The proper answer should be: “The old document may be cited in history, but not used today to insult a living people.”
Law alone will not be enough. The deeper reform must be social. Schools should teach children the preferred names of all communities. Media houses should adopt a common style guide on ethnic terminology. Political parties, CSOs, student bodies, Churches, Temples, Mosques and local clubs should publicly commit to avoiding slurs. Social media platforms and local administrators should monitor repeated abusive usage during tense situations. Public apologies should be judged not only by the word “sorry,” but also by the dignity of the language used.
Most importantly, each community must accept a moral rule: I will not use a name for others that I would not tolerate for myself.
Manipur does not need another grand peace conference to begin this reform. It can begin in daily speech. It can begin in newspapers, meetings, classrooms, public statements and Facebook posts.
It can begin when one person says, “That word is not acceptable.”
Peace is not built only by ceasefires and agreements. It is also built on vocabulary.
In a fragile society, words do not merely describe reality. They create it. If Manipur continues to speak in the language of contempt, it will continue to live in the politics of hatred. If it learns to speak with dignity, it may still recover the possibility of coexistence.
The first step to peace may be simpler than we think.
Call every person by the name they accept.
Stop calling them by the names that wound.


This column, “Beyond the Obvious,” seeks to examine public controversies not through emotional binaries but through deeper historical memory, constitutional logic, and comparative political thought - in the belief that durable peace lies not in louder demands, but in wiser design.