As Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to address the newly elected 18th Lok Sabha on June 24, the hall of Parliament resounded with calls from opposition MPs demanding justice for Manipur. Yet, nothing changes. The state remains intractably divided, the communities profoundly estranged and some 60,000 forced to live for the past 17 months in austere relief camps with little prospect of returning to their homelands.
This conflict that broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023, and grew into a civil war is the subject of a scholarly, sensitive account by Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. Their report – with careful attention to history and contemporary challenges – casts light on an immensely tangled situation in this border state and explains why there is little hope for an early return to peace.
In so doing, they carry forward the proud traditions of the founder of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, the iconic Asghar Ali Engineer. Asghar Ali was one of India’s foremost peace activists. Deeply anguished by the suffering of survivors of hate violence, he would travel tirelessly to any corner of the country where communal conflict broke out. While striving to heal wounds and advance justice, he would meticulously document each conflict. It is this societal responsibility that Asghar Ali’s son Irfan Engineer and his associate Neha Dabhade carry forward with sterling dedication.
The unique history of Manipur is little-known to other Indians. This history, the writers observe, is “chequered and intriguing” with “many layers”. The Tibeto-Burman Meitei community is the dominant group in Manipur, both in population share (53%) as well as politically and economically. They mainly inhabit the verdant Imphal valley which comprises just 10% of the state’s geography.
The Meitei people trace their ancestry in the Imphal valley at least back 2,000 years. Royal chronicles, Cheitharol Kumbaba, document the history of Manipuri kings of Ningthouja dynasty to 33 Common Era. The Ningthouja is one of the longest unbroken dynasties of the world. The name Manipur came later. The kingdom was Kangleipak. It was renamed in 1724 by king Meidingu Pamheiba after he converted to Hinduism. He chose the Sanskrit name Manipur, meaning “abode of jewels”, for the kingdom.
The boundaries of the kingdom varied over the centuries; it sometimes included the surrounding hills, and sometimes went as far as the Irrawady River in Myanmar. But for the greater part of its history of two millennia before the arrival of the British, it was confined to the Imphal valley.
The rulers and people of the Imphal valley followed for many centuries the indigenous, animistic faith of Sanahism until the 18th century. The king in 1704 converted to the Hindu faith, and large sections of the people over time also adopted the Vaishnavite faith. The report underlines that this conversion was sometimes coercive. King Pamheiba, for instance, took drastic measures against those who defied Hindu taboos and enforced vegetarianism.
Independent for many centuries, Manipur became a British protectorate state from around 1824 to 1891 after it was invaded by the Burmese in 1819. Manipur then became a princely state under the British Indian Empire from 1891 to August 1947. Following India’s independence, Manipur on September 21, 1949, signed an annexation treaty with India in 1947. With this, it merged with the Indian union in 1949, one of 500 princely states.
An interesting fact of this history is that before its annexation, the briefly independent princely state of Manipur became, on the initiative of the king, a democratic constitutional monarchy, the first of its kind in Asia. Its legislature passed a progressive State Constitution Act in 1947 that gave representation in the legislature in the ratio of 30, 18 and 3 respectively to three categories that it termed General, Hill and Mohamaden (Muslim).
The General category was of the Meitei people in the valley; the Hill communities were Naga and Kuki-Zomi (listed as 34 Scheduled Tribes in the Indian Constitution); Mohamaden or Muslim Meitei (called Pangal) are believed to have migrated in the 17th century from Sylhet and now are 8% of the state’s population.
The merger with the Indian union in 1949, the writers observe, “generated contestations, bitterness and discontent eventually giving rise to long drawn separatist movement in Manipur”. Another significant nugget of history is that the legislature of Manipur passed a resolution opposing the merger of Manipur with the union of India, and the Speaker at this time was a Kuki, TC Tainkhan.
Many Manipuri people, across ethnic communities, resented the 1949 accession instrument which integrated the princely state into the newly independent India signed by King Bodhchandra. They believed it “violated their right to self-determination”, especially because the merger decision was taken without consulting the newly formed legislature. This “stirred dissent and laid the groundwork for future insurgency”.
Fuelled by grievances over marginalisation and injustice, many militant groups formed, waging “armed resistance against Indian rule, intensifying the cycle of violence and repression”. The writers describe in careful detail the rise of many militant groups in Manipur.
Not long after statehood was granted to Manipur in 1972, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was imposed on the state in 1980, highlighting “the Indian government’s heavy-handed approach to quelling dissent in Manipur”, further eroding civil liberties and exacerbating tensions. This led to widespread unrest and resistance. “Armed with AFSPA, the armed forces indulged in raids, encounters, combing operations and rapes of women. The state of Manipur was blanketed with fear, violence and restrictions”. But the “resistance to AFSPA was multi-ethnic”.
Separate Kuki militancy grew much later, mainly in the 1990s, in the wake of the violent clash of Kukis and Nagas which saw much bloodshed and killings. The Kukis, the writers note, “felt betrayed particularly by the excessive atrocities inflicted upon innocent Kuki people by the Nagas” and in response “some Kuki leaders formed the Kuki National Front to carve out a Kuki homeland or Kuki state within the framework of the Indian Constitution in India”.
They raised the Kuki National Army to fight for the creation of Kuki states, one in India and another in Burma/Myanmar. The Nagas bitterly opposed the creation of a Kuki homeland. The Meiteis, on their part, opposed the creation of both a Kuki homeland or a Greater Nagaland.
To bring peace in the region and to check militant insurgency, the Indian state signed a Suspension of Operations agreement with various militant Kuki groups, first with only the Indian army and then with the government of India and the Manipur state government. The Manipur state government abruptly withdrew from the Suspension of Operations on March 10, 2023, claiming that the ex-insurgents had joined the Kuki protests. This became one of the major sources of Kuki resentment fuelling the conflict.
The relationship between the two communities was also not always hostile. Historical records suggest many instances through the centuries of Kuki chiefs coming to the aid of Meitei kinds in defending and consolidating their kingdoms and boundaries. The most recent examples were supporting the Meitei kings in their wars against the Burmese, and also the resistance to the merger of Manipur into the Indian union.
The estrangement between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo people is more recent. The writers delineate the many conflicting claims and anxieties of the two communities divided by the conflict. Both the unity and the ruptures can be found in the “social and political landscape of Manipur (which) is profoundly intricate, stemming from its rich history and the diverse narratives and most importantly, the claims to its territory”, ethnicity and different ethnic groups’ competing claims over resources.
One paramount Meitei claim that helped stoke the bitter conflict is that the Kuki-Zo are not indigenous to Manipur, and are instead mainly illegal immigrants from Myanmar. However, historical records do not bear out this claim. The writers quote, for instance, Buddhist literature written by Lama Taranatha during the 15th century with accounts of Kukis (Ko-ki) in their present habitat. British records from the 19th century also confirm the presence of Kukis in this region.
The writers point also to the strong Meitei resentment over the legal bar on their acquiring land in the hills. It is this that drove their demand for Scheduled Tribe status, which became the spark that lit the conflagration of May 3. This also fuelled allegations labelling Kukis as illegal immigrants from Myanmar, with alarmist claims that the number of Kuki villages are increasing rapidly, populated by these “infiltrators”.
The Meitei demand implementing the National Register of Citizens, similar to that implemented in neighbouring Assam to identify and expel these alleged foreigners. But the Kukis explain that new villages are the result of Kuki tribal chiefs setting up new villages for extending to new areas their predominantly shifting agriculture; or for their own children; and deny any large-scale illegal immigration from Myanmar.
“This trope seeks to exclude the Kukis completely and stigmatise them. This deliberate attempt at otherising the Kukis has also led to animosity and distrust.” say Engineer and Dhabade. Chief Minister N Biren Singh himself has long stigmatised the Kuki people as “illegal immigrants” and “foreigners”. He is not restrained by the fact that the decennial censuses from 1901 to 2011 did not reveal any unusual rise in the non-Naga tribal population, and therefore the claim of Kukis being aliens to Manipur an evident falsehood.
The report also points to provocation of the discriminatory eviction drive in Kuki villages, from February 2023. State authorities alleged that Kukis have encroached on reserved forest land and are illegal immigrants. The Kuki residents and Kuki organisations protested in vain that these eviction drives are threatening their existence because they are essentially forest dwellers; and that the Kukis in these villages are not immigrants but settled for many years. They see this as a ploy to grab Kuki tribal lands.
A second smouldering trope against the Kukis is that they are destroying Meitei youth by growing and peddling drugs. Again Singh repeatedly disgraces Kukis as “poppy cultivators” – or worse, narco-terrorists. The writers note how “the state government’s crackdown on Kukis in the hills under the pretext of combating drug cultivation” intensified tensions. The state announced the eradication of 15,000 acres of poppy fields, predominantly situated in Kuki-dominated hill areas.
But, as the writers observe, the Kukis “are merely poor cultivators while (the state turns) a blind eye to the influential elements that acquire the poppy, manufacture, and market it. Those who control the movements of the drugs, enjoy political support”.
They quote sensational claims of former Assistant Superintendent of Police in Manipur, Brinda Thounaojam, that “the Chief Minister himself is the biggest investor in the poppy cultivation”. She said to the writers that he “is a drug lord with vested interests in the poppy industry”. She alleged that “not only the CM but the son of Union Minister Amit Shah is also involved in the poppy industry…The CM’s second wife who is a Naga and MLA from Tandel is also active in poppy industry…”
The team clarifies its inability to independently verify these allegations. But I am convinced that it is unfair to lay the blame for Manipur’s drug epidemic primarily at the door of the Kuki people. This illegal cultivation could not have continued without the tacit consent of successive governments in Manipur. There is no evidence the Kukis are key actors in the cross-border drug industry centred in Myanmar, making them culpable for the massive cancer of drug addiction across the valley. The giant transnational drug industry indeed could only flourish with the patronage of people of immense wealth and political clout in Imphal, Delhi and Myanmar.
An important contribution of the report is to document unflinchingly the culpability of the Bharatiya Janata Party governments in Delhi and Imphal, and militant groups with open patronage of the chief minister in igniting and fuelling the conflict.
It lists the many provocations by the chief minister – stigmatising Kukis as illegal immigrants and foreigners, with eviction drives targeting Kuki lands and villages, and with the abrupt withdrawal from the Suspension of Operations with Kuki militant groups. “By portraying the Kukis in a poor light and dehumanising them by calling them ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘poppy cultivators’ and ‘encroachers’, the BJP is firmly on its way to disenfranchise the Kukis,” the report says.
The Kukis, the writers observe worryingly, have been rendered electorally dispensable similar to the ways in which Muslims have been rendered inconsequential electorally “by consolidating the ‘Hindu’ vote and creating one strong ‘Hindu’ identity including all the caste groups”. Besides, the report describes systematic ways in which the autonomous hill councils were weakened and development funds to the hills squeezed.
The writers also touch on the close alliance of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with the Meitei militant group Arambai Tenggol which is openly patronised by Signh and the former BJP MP Leishemba Sanajoaba, who is also the titular “king” of Manipur. Each have strengthened the other in the valley. The writers explain that the Arambai Tenggol plank of reviving Sanamahism works as a pretext for Hindutva agenda.
“The Arambai Tenggol’s claim of reviving Sanamahism is pushing the Meiteis towards an agenda of supremacism akin to Hindutva movement in the rest of India,” the report says. The close ties with the state government of the Arambai Tenggol, with the signature black t-shirts of its militia, assures it impunity in “not only using its force and violence against the Kukis but also against Meitei Christians and Meitei liberals who oppose its actions”.
The Arambai Tenggol led the vandalising of the Meitei Christians and Kuki churches. Its members were allegedly part of the mobs which sexually assaulted Kuki women during the conflict, vandalised and attacked Kuki villages and homes and murdered them brutally. Its members had been seen marking the houses of the Kukis in Imphal months before the May violence broke out.
The gravest outcome of the close partnership of the Arambai Tenggol with the state government was that the state stood by as its members looted around 4,000 modern weapons from the state armoury. It is this that decisively transformed the ethnic conflict into a civil war.
The writers speak compassionately about the situation a year after the conflict started, with no sign of any end in the horizon. At least 70,000 people were displaced by the attacks on their homes and villages, 45,000 of them Kuki. The majority of these still are forced to live in relief camps. They inhabit common halls with partitions of clothes and tarpaulin, sleeping on thin mattresses even in the freezing cold of the winter months. The conditions of sanitation, food, child care, medical attention in the camps are all abysmal.
Hundreds of places of worship remain vandalised and desecrated. Both the valley and the hills have been ethnically cleansed of the estranged community. The boundaries between the valley and the hills are “as hard borders as those between two hostile countries”, protected by different security forces – Assam Rifles guarding the Kukis and Manipur police guarding the Meities – with no less than seven check posts.
The writers make clear why immediate prospects for peace in Manipur are dim. “There are compelling narratives that are hardening community identity amongst individuals, blurring reason and sense of right and solidarity,” they say.
They describe how the claims and demands of each of the warring communities are irreconcilable with the other. The Meitei combatants want an undivided Manipur but with Scheduled Tribe status to enable them to own land in the hill areas. They also demand an Assam-style National Register of Citizens to identify and expel Kuki “infiltrators”, and the fencing of the mostly open border between Myanmar and Manipur.
They seek further a withdrawal of the Suspension of Operations agreement between Kuki militant groups, the central government and the state government. They demand the withdrawal of the Assam Rifles which they claim protect the Kukis alone, and the handing of all security responsibilities to the Manipur police. And finally, they insist that the displaced Meiteis are returned to their villages and homes in the hills.
The Kukis, on their part, are united in their unyielding opposition to every one of these demands, and require a guarantee that their rights to land and forests in the hills are robustly defended from the Meitei people of the valley. For this, they seek a separate administration for the hill areas in Manipur. The Nagas, although not part of this conflict, oppose a separate administration to the Kukis. They contend that since the areas claimed for separate governance by the Kukis also contain Naga-inhabited territories, any such concession would undermine the Naga pursuit of Nagalim.
On the other hand, many among them oppose, like the Kukis, the grant of Scheduled Tribe status to the Meitei people, as this would endanger Naga-held lands in the hills as well. They seek power-sharing between all the ethnic communities that inhabit Manipur with no room for Meitei chauvinism.
The writers end their report with describing some building blocks that would be essential to a process, however distant, of restoring peace to Manipur. Both communities have lost faith in the chief minister, and are dismayed by the continuing silence of the prime minister regarding their continuing tragedy. Even before Chief Minister Singh steps down, his hate speeches must end, and the state administration must punish any further hate speech.
The writers call for a process of truth and reconciliation, built on a shared acknowledgment of loss and suffering on both sides. A peace committee should be established to initiate a peace process involving dialogue between the communities. With this the wheels of justice must be set in motion, punishing those responsible for the killings, mass rape, arson, destruction of habitats and desecration of shrines.
But perhaps the most urgent need is to disarm all militant groups and end the regime of state patronage and impunity that they enjoy. The armed militants of both communities, but particularly the Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun, have let loose a climate of fear. People who call for peace or criticise the state government are attacked with violence and intimidation unleashed by these armed groups.
It is imperative, the writers rightly conclude, “for all ethnic groups to acknowledge Manipur as a shared homeland, wherein each group respects the others as equals and co-inhabitants. Embracing this collective understanding of a composite homeland holds the key to a sustainable resolution for Manipur”.
Harsh Mander, justice and peace worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign to counter hate violence with love and solidarity. He teaches at FAU University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University, Germany; Vrije University, Amsterdam; and IIM, Ahmedabad.
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