It has been three months since Manipur has been engulfed in the violence. There have been calls from various parts of the country for the violence to be stopped and there have been fervent prayer meetings seeking divine intervention to end the conflict.

More than 60,000 people have been displaced, around 40,000 of whom are living in 350 relief camps without basic amenities. More than 3,500 homes have been burnt and 321 religious places destroyed, of which 249 are churches. More than 10,200 cases of arson, murder and at least one rape case have been registered. However, there have been many more cases of rape and sexual assault. It has been brutal and savage and often provoked by fake videos that have mysteriously been circulating despite the lengthy internet ban.

It is true that both parties to the ethnic conflict have suffered. But clearly one side, the Meiteis, have been backed by the chief minister and state machinery while the Kukis have been at the receiving end. There have been stray attacks on Naga women. There was one particularly savage attack in which a Naga woman was bludgeoned to death despite her identifying herself as a Naga. It seems someone had a vested interest in drawing the Nagas into the conflict but the Nagas have shown extreme restraint and caution.

Who is responsible for this prolonged mayhem in Manipur? And why did they do this? Whose interest is being served by this violence?

State complicity

From the start, it seemed that the state was complicit in the violence but anyone who dared make such an allegation put himself in grave danger. However, now India’s top security expert has made clear statement that this violence could not have continued for this long unless the state was complicit in the violence – especially when we remember that in Manipur the ratio of police per population is six times the national average.

Ajai Sahni, founding member and executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, said in an interview with Praveen Swamy, that the reason for the prolonged violence was neither incompetence nor was it lack of planning but it is collusion of the state; “the state is either supporting of orchestrating the violence”.

In the violence in Manipur, we have seen that the police has fractured along ethnic lines with the Meitei police battling for their community and the Kuki police abandoning their posts in the Valley. There are examples of happening in other parts of India but even this has not led to such prolonged violence. The 10 Kuki MLAs alleged in a memo to Home Minister Amit Shah that all Kuki policemen from director general to the constables were disarmed and stripped of power even before May 3, when the violence began.

Ajai Sahni pointed out that the chief minister was falsifying the reality by saying that the cause of the violence was terrorism though the chief of army staff and the chief of defence staff have both stated that the violence was nothing to do with insurgency but is an ethnic conflict.

The Kuki militants had deposited their arms and had signed a ceasefire agreement in August 2008. The chairman of a Kuki militant organisation has claimed that his organisation helped Bharatiya Janata Party candidates win the 2017 assembly elections and also the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, as per an agreement with Ram Madhav of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of the BJP.

Why then did Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh unleash this violence against the Kuki-Zo communities?

The Kukis have been accused of narco-terrorism. While this is not the place to go into the history of drug trafficking in Manipur, reports so far have indicated that every community is involved in it. There is no doubt that drug trafficking and drug production is a real problem, so when Biren Singh announced an anti-drug drive, residents welcomed it. But how far did it really address the problem?

Civil society groups working in the field such as the Coalition Against Drugs and Alcohol say that drug smuggling in the state is growing despite such frequent seizures because the real perpetrators and kingpins of drug smuggling rackets are never tracked down. Others have said that the so-called war against drugs in the state is a big farce. They claim that there are reports that the government agencies destroyed poppy fields after the harvest to make a “show before the public” and asserted none of the plantation owners was arrested.

For instance, on June 20, 2018, a team of the Narcotics and Affairs of Border, led by Additional Superintendent of Police Thounaojam Brinda arrested a man named Lhukhosei Zou along with seven others and seized 4.595 kg of heroin, 280,200 WY (World is Yours) tablets, Rs 57.18 lakh in cash, another Rs 95,000 in demonetised currency notes and several other incriminating articles. In 2020, Brinda returned her gallantry medal.

She claimed she had been pressurised to release Zou, who was ultimately let out on bail and acquitted. According to an affidavit she filed, the vice-president of BJP Manipur Pradesh, Chief Minister N Biren Singh, an associate of his named Olish and some high-ranking police officers had been working to let off Lhukhosei Zou, who belongs to Kuki-Zomi group of tribes.

Drug mafia

The reports on drug trafficking and drug production have indicated that there are those who are involved at the highest level are from Myanmar and perhaps some Chinese businessmen. But there is no report that links the drug mafia with the influx of the refugees from Myanmar who have taken shelter in India, fearing for their lives in the conflict in their country.

Biren Singh blames the Kukis of harbouring “illegal migrants” from Myanmar and this is being echoed by the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. Sarma has said that the Rohigyas are coming into India’s North East.

But what have the Rohingyas got to do with the influx of the Chin refugees from Myanmar who are being supported by the Indian Kuki-zo community in Manipur and in Mizoram? There is no connection between the two and neither have been linked to drug mafia. This talk of “illegal migrants” is a way of mobilising xenophobia.

The decision to register the refugees and collect their biometric data has to be welcomed under these circumstances and this will go a long way to assuage the concerns of those who feel the refugees may settle permanently in Manipur. However, the concern of the Myanmar refugees is that the data collected may be given to the Myanmar junta, with whom the Indian government has close ties.

The Myanmar refugees take pains to emphasize that they think of India as a safe place and look to India to intervene in any way to restore democracy in their country.

Therefore, the question remains: who is behind the violence in Manipur and with what intention?

Right at the beginning of this violence, there were reports that some Meitei groups looted arms from the police stations. There was a report that those who looted, or took the arms, actually left their Aadhar cards with the police. As EastMojo reported: “One of the first incidents that shocked the country was that Meitei groups were able to loot thousands of weapons from the Manipur police armoury. The blatant nature of the act was epitomised by the fact that looters were deliberately leaving their Aadhar cards, informing the authorities of their identity. This clearly shows that these individuals were confident that the authorities would not take action against them and would sympathise with their cause.”

The extent of police involvement was dramatically emphasised in the what has been called the Khamenlok area incident. While some media reports have focused on the claims that 200 Meiteis had been killed in the incident, the context is missing in the narrative. According to EastMojo, “thousands of heavily-armed Meitei militants, including the banned UNLF [United National Liberation Front] cadres and militias aided by armed personnel drawn from Manipur policecommandos and the IRB [India Reserve Battalion of the Manipur Police], attacked villages under Khamenlok area in Saikul Sub Division of Kangpokpi for three days between June 12 and 14, leading to the destruction of villages namely H Khopibung, Khamenlok, Chullouphai, Aigejang, A Leikot, A Phainom, Thombol, T Jordanphai, Songjang and Govajang.”

The residents of these villages had escaped and were hiding in neighbouring settlements or in the jungles. The Meitei armed groups had left the church unharmed and they sat inside celebrating. In the cover of darkness, Kuki defence forces attacked the armed Meitei militants, killing a large number. The number is still disputed.

The allegation that the violence was planned is substantiated by the fact that the state government has been issuing gun licenses to the Meiteis. A Right to Information filing by The Wire showed that today there are 35,117 active gun licences in Manipur, up from 26,836 in December 2016. This is in addition to the 5,000 arms that were looted from police stations in Manipur at the start of the violence.

Vigilante groups

Then there is the presence of the two vigilante groups, the Arambai Tenggol, a militant group that emerged in Manipur in the early 2020s. The group claims to represent the interests of the Meitei and, according to reports, the group was created by cadres of Meitei insurgent groups with the support of powerful politicians.

The group adopted religious and nationalist rhetoric, invoking the ancient Meitei religion of Sanamahi and and the historical Meitei kingdom of Kangleipak. The members wore black shorts and were accused of much of the violence, even though they had officially been dissolved by the end of May. The other vigilante group is the Meitei Leepun, against whom a case has been filed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has maintained silent all through these months except when he spoke out after the video of the two Kuki women being paraded naked went viral. Then he spoke of his anger and anguish at how women have been subjected to such attacks in many parts of the country, going on to name Congres- led states. Almost at the same time, Chief Minister Biren Singh also made a statement and promised to try to get the perpetrators the death sentence.

Unfortunately, many organisations across the country felt compelled to make similar statements to the ones made by Prime Minister Modi and refused to see the context in which the act was committed. Most organisations feel a need to make balanced or objective statements by saying both parties are involved but they miss the point one of them is backed by the state.

The repercussions of the violence in Manipur can be seen in Mizoram, where the chief minister and his party are supporting the Kukis in Manipur as well as the refugees coming from Myanmar.

In the days to come, we shall see more layers uncovered and complex political realities of the North East will unravel. But we still do not know the real reasons or the forces behind the violence in Manipur. All the major issues relate to land and land use. But while the communities fight each other, there are vested interests eyeing the land. In the end none of the communities, Kuki, Meitei, Pangal or Nagas will gain from the violence. They are all getting poorer. But there are corporations waiting in the sidelines eyeing the rich resources in the North East.

In an interview to Frontier Manipur, MS Khaidem, the consultant of the Oil Palm Mission, Manipur, said that the Union government had given assent to the initiative with an outlay of Rs 11,000 crores for a five-year period. He added that 66,652 hectares of land had been decided as potential areas for the scheme across six districts of the state.

Can the communities of Manipur and the North East come together and save their lands from the coming ecological disaster instead of fighting separately for their imagined homelands?

Nandita Haksar is a human rights lawyer and award-winning author.