New Delhi: A year of violence has passed in Manipur.
This was a year that saw mindless killing, sexual assault, loss of livelihood – all in the name of a fear of the neighbour who is perceived to be the other and, therefore, must be repelled at all cost.
As per official records, the violence that broke out between the Kuki and the Meitei ethnic communities on May 3, 2023, has claimed 224 lives. At least 60,000 people in that border state have since been displaced; a large section of them still living in relief camps. Many have since fled their neighbourhood and escaped to Mizoram, Assam and Meghalaya. With the loss of home and hearth, the future of such Manipuris, needless to say, is caught in a haze.
Over the year, hundreds of houses, commercial buildings and religious institutions have been set on fire. Residences of government officials and political leaders including the Union minister R.K. Ranjan Singh and state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Sharada Devi were also not spared by the mob. If it is the other, the mob hunted them. This action took place even inside government quarters in Imphal.
While those who have lost their near and dear ones are still grieving, and hoping for justice someday, several families are yet to trace their own.
The violence has not abated yet. News of deaths, even of central forces personnel, has trickled in as recently as April 28. The theatre of conflict thus goes on.
Meanwhile, over the last 12 months, the line of division between the Kuki and the Meitei leadership has only widened. To the strident demand of the Kukis for a ‘separate administration’ for them, the Meiteis have a standard answer – no division of the state at any cost. They have conveyed this to New Delhi too.
Angry protests for or against that demand have roiled the streets of the state even as batch after batch of Kuki and Meitei delegates have continued to visit the national capital to try and influence New Delhi to see their side. Quite a few civil society bodies have sprouted overnight to become the voices of respective communities – holding press meets in New Delhi and Manipur, forming WhatsApp groups to feed news reporters the latest salvos. In the last one year in Manipur, people have been reduced to holding up only their community’s identity.
Meanwhile, the general elections in that beleaguered state were completed on April 19 and 26 without the participation of the Kukis. The violence unleashed by non-state actors, both in the Inner and the Outer Manipur parliamentary constituencies during the voting, and the demand of the opposition to the Election Commission of India for re-polls at dozens of booths have only held up the fact that what Manipur needed first was healing and a conducive environment for conducting a free and fair elections.
Elections or not, the state of the political limbo in Manipur is set to continue.
Also continues the abnormal state of affairs that has become normal over the last one year in Manipur. No Kuki legislator can defy their civil society leaders and those of the armed groups to attend a session of the state assembly without reaching a solution on the community’s political question. Their travel to Imphal, anyway, is not free from danger. The physical divide in the state hinges on ethnicity and is locally referred to as ‘LOC’ or Line of Control. It has been rather effective. No Kuki can dare cross over to board a flight from Imphal even if it is the only airport the state has. They can no longer think of availing themselves of better facilities at government-run hospitals in the capital city. Bodies of the Kuki victims of the May 3 ethnic violence stored in the morgues of Imphal hospitals for months had to be airlifted over the ‘LoC’. The state is no more than a mute spectator while the ethnic divisiveness led by armed militias endure.
Similarly, no Meitei can think of crossing over to the hill districts. Even in neighbouring Mizoram, they don’t feel safe due to the common ethnicity of the Mizos and the Kukis. Many Meiteis working in Mizoram have returned home.
Across that ‘LoC’, the memories of the last 12 months that still haunt them are identical though – be it in the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur or in the Meitei majority Imphal valley, they found their homes most unsafe. They saw their police ineffective at protecting citizens from harm; the central forces deployed across the border state helpless in the face of angry protesters and armed non-state actors. They saw their neighbours failing to shield them from a marauding mob.
On either side of the physical divide, the questions that the victims of the year-long violence have been asking are similar – who had fatally attacked their loved ones? Who burnt and vandalised their homes, business establishments, churches and temples? Some have been wondering whether their houses in the other’s territory still stand. Will they ever be able to reclaim those properties, be it in the Meitei majority Imphal or in Kuki-dominated Churachandpur? Will they ever be able to leave the relief camps?
People gathered outside the DC Office, Bishnupur, after women from the Meitei community were injured at the Imphal-Churachandpur border on August 3. Photo: Yaqut Ali
Hours after the news of May 3 violence in Torbung located at the cusp of the Bishnupur and Churachandpur districts spread into the Imphal valley, news came about widespread loot of arms and ammunition from the police stations, allegedly by the Meitei militia supported by the chief minister N. Biren Singh and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajya Sabha MP L. Sanajaoba, the erstwhile king of Manipur whose premises within the formidable Kangla Fort in Imphal has been their refugee and meeting point.
The questions that still beg answers are:
How could they loot the police stations so easily in a militancy-affected border state?
Did lifting of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from the valley districts by the Narendra Modi government smoothen the path for that daylight loot and, in turn, contribute to the killing of innocents in the Imphal valley?
In the next few weeks, boxes in multiple places were placed across the Meitei-dominated districts in tandem with the state administration’s plea to the looters to return the arms. Many did not.
With arms circulating freely across the state, the common man’s hope and trust in the system is at an all-time low in Manipur. Even Manipur Police officials have recently spoken out against the Meitei militia group Arambai Tenggol threatening them.
Chief minister Biren’s meeting with Arambai Tenggol members prior to the ethnic violence, and the fact that they were spotted in police vehicles wearing khaki in the valley districts have together led to allegations of their ‘closeness’ to him. While many in Manipur may also prefer that the chief minister is replaced by the Centre for being ineffective when they needed law and order to prevail in the state, the powers in New Delhi have put their entire weight behind him. ‘However precarious the situation may be on the ground, a BJP-ruled state must not see President’s Rule over a law and order breakdown,’ seems to be the message from the Modi administration. The people have, therefore, been left to be ruled as per a largely discredited chief minister’s best judgment. That the prime minister has avoided visiting Manipur till date sends the same message to the public.
But the question that is fundamental at the moment is this: How will the last 12 months go down in Manipur’s chequered post-independence history?
The question is significant for two reasons: One, Modi and his party have been claiming that not just Manipur but the rest of the Northeast under their rule have become ‘peaceful’. This is the reason AFSPA was lifted from some districts of the north-eastern states including Manipur, the Union home minister Amit Shah has claimed from time to time.
Two, it is not insurgency per se that brought Manipur back to a ‘disturbed area’ zone. It is due to an ethnic conflict between two communities of the state who have, for long, stayed peacefully as neighbours.
To my mind, what would make the last one year stand out are these ten factors:
A Kuki-Meitei conflict
Manipur’s post-independence history had witnessed bloody Kuki-Naga conflict over land contestations. It took decades for normalcy to return to the hills. But never did Manipur note a Kuki-Meitei territorial contest hinged on such ferocity.
This inter-ethnic tensions over land and territorial claims have been brewing for some time though, before all hell broke loose on May 3, 2023 when Kuki students and civil society groups had called for a street march in all the hill districts of Manipur to oppose the state high court’s directive to the Biren Singh government to recommend to the Centre that the Meiteis be granted the status of a scheduled tribe (ST).
The Kukis viewed that move as a ploy by the majority community to grab their land, their territory, opportunities in the government jobs due to their ST status. The seed of that suspicion was no doubt sowed formally during the fag end of the Okram Ibobi Singh government in 2015 when he got passed three controversial bills in the assembly. Massive protests broke out against it in Churachandpur; nine lives were lost in police firing. For a year and a half, the bodies were kept in morgues in the Churachandpur civil hospital by the angry Kukis, demanding that those bills be rejected by the President. Finally, in June 2016, the President’s office sent back the Bills.
Ibobi Singh, by introducing those controversial Bills which could make it easier for the state administration to claim land in the hills, was clearly pandering to the Meitei community to keep them off the BJP-RSS’s clutch. Already, there has been a simmering discontent within the majority community about their land and territory in the valley districts being occupied by the Kukis but the reverse is not possible. A sense of being wronged was building up, feeding that long-festering fear of the other. Singh wanted to milk it at the hustings, unsuccessfully though.
An image uploaded by Manipur Police, showing security forces. Photo: X(Twitter)/@manipur_police
But the seeds of suspicion that the state administration was ‘pro-Meitei’ were formally sowed. That the Kukis have only 10 MLAs while 40 of them come from the Meitei areas in the valley districts firmed up the fear of the other in them. Add to it the BJP leaders, including central ministers of the Modi government, raising the hopes of the Kukis for a ‘political solution’ if they were voted to power in the state in the 2017 assembly elections. Talks stalled between New Delhi and the Kuki armed groups were revived by the Centre suddenly. An interlocutor was named. Hopes soared for a ‘separate administration’ among the Kukis who overwhelmingly voted for the BJP. That hope was kept alive by New Delhi for them to repeat their support to the party in the 2022 elections.
It is this reason why the Modi government has not been able to walk out of the peace talks with the Kukis, even though the electoral support for the BJP among the Meiteis has only grown. In spite of the demand of the Meitei civil society groups on the Centre to not renew the ceasefire agreement with the Kuki armed groups, the Ministry of Home Affairs is ambivalent about its status.
Since the Kukis were more affected by the ethnic conflict in terms of deaths and loss of property, the demand for separate administration has become louder. This tricky turn of events certainly adds a new dimension to the fear that Meiteis have – of Manipur getting sliced up on ethnic lines.
No more the fear of the Nagas alone
Since the demand of the NSCN (Issac-Muivah) for a greater Nagalim includes the Naga areas of Manipur too, the Meitei community has always been vehemently opposed to it. In the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era when the Centre had agreed to talks with the NSCN minus any conditions, massive violence had erupted in the valley-districts of Manipur, forcing the government to recall the ‘no condition’ clause, thus leading to a deadlock in the talks.
The same apprehension raised its head when the Modi government signed a framework agreement with the NSCN (I-M) in 2015. Street protests were seen in Imphal to send the message to New Delhi that Manipur can’t be split. Then home minister Rajnath Singh gave a public assurance to the Meiteis.
To that existing dimension, the May 3 ethnic violence has added a new part – the Kukis now vehemently seeking a ‘separate administration’ for them which may mean bifurcation of the state? The challenge now rests on New Delhi if it can restrict that demand within an autonomous district council without altering the existing boundaries of Manipur.
Narco terrorists and foreigners
Meanwhile, the opposition to that demand within the Meitei community can be felt through the use of two terms for the Kuki communities – ‘narco terrorists’ and ‘foreigners’.
There is little doubt among political observers in Manipur about a thriving illegal drug trade in their state due to the open border with Myanmar. But it is also a fact that the operators and benefactors of that trade is not community specific. Here, it would be helpful to recall that a Manipur Police official handling an anti-drugs search had told the state high court in an affidavit in 2020 that she was asked by the chief minister to go easy on one of the kingpins, a Kuki, arrested by the police with drugs. Curiously, during the ethnic conflict, we saw Arambai Tenggol cadres openly threatening that police officer at her residence for ‘defaming Meiteis’ after she spoke in media interviews.
Photographs received by The Wire, that show the damage done to Babloo’s home.
Though the civil war in Myanmar may have pushed the operators further into Manipur, as claimed by some Meitei civil society groups, it is not just the Kuki groups that benefit financially from the sale of poppy along that porous border. Residents in the border towns of Myanmar have complained about Meitei armed groups growing poppy for profit several times too.
It is likely that the ongoing civil war in Myanmar may have forced some civilians to take refuge in the Kuki areas of Manipur considering they share kinship but to term an entire community which has been living in Manipur for centuries as ‘foreigners’ is utterly irresponsible if not sinister. The right-thinking Meiteis must learn from the anti-foreigner movement of Assam. What that agitation produced over the decades was only a set of self-serving politicians. The fear of the community of becoming a ‘minority’ in the hands of the ‘illegal foreigners’ just didn’t go away – even after the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was updated under the watch of the Supreme Court.
Village volunteers
Yet another novelty in the insurgency-affected Manipur that one noted in the last one year, both in Kuki and Meitei dominated areas, was the rise of an armed brigade locally termed ‘village volunteers’. These non-state actors coming to the rescue of their community members and guarding their home and land 24 hours, and at times engaging in an exchange of fire even with the state police (in Kuki areas), only convey that there is a massive trust deficit of the public in the state police force.
Rise of religious violence
While ethnic violence is not new to any north-eastern state including Manipur, what was new during this ethnic fight in the state was attack on the churches in Imphal, and retaliatory assaults on temples left behind by the Meities who fled the hill areas. It certainly had an overriding religious dimension to it.
Overt complicity of a political party leader with armed non-state actors
Unlike before, what we witnessed in the last 12 months in Manipur is also the overt complicity of a senior ruling party leader and a parliamentarian, Sanajouba, with armed non-stated actors spreading terror on the streets of Imphal. He is said to be the founder of Arambai Tenggol, which has reportedly kidnapped people from their homes in the capital city if found raising a voice against them. Worse, they are often seen in the state in police vehicles. They can pass diktats to elected leaders; can even physically assault them if needed. New Delhi is yet to act on this extra-judicial power in Manipur.
Arambai Tenggol and the chief minister
Some have accused the chief minister of colluding with Arambai Tenggol, too, to push his political interests. Though militancy-affected, Manipur had never witnessed such an overt takeover of Imphal by armed non-state actors.
A short-lived peace deal
Even while the state was burning, the Centre, in November 2023, signed a peace deal with a faction of the Meitei armed group, United National Liberation Front (UNLF). Union home minister Amit Shah presented it as another master stoke of the Modi government. However, just a few months later, some of its top leaders were arrested and brought to New Delhi by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). It is unlikely that the Northeast has seen such a short-lived peace agreement.
Additionally, what the region never saw was also women activists forcing the central forces to release a set of militants belonging to banned armed groups. It could happen in the valley areas because the Modi government took away from the army the very instrument it would typically use to ensure that no local obstruction happens when a suspected militant is nabbed – the AFSPA. Since the law is applicable only in the hill districts, no such incident was reported from those areas.
Nagas as peace-makers
With the stalemate continuing between the Kuki and Meitei leadership, there has been some attempt at the behest of the state and the Centre to involve Naga legislators as go-betweens to unroll a dialogue to find a solution. A meeting or two had taken place in a neutral ground, Guwahati, but without much success so far.
This role of Nagas as peace brokers in Manipur is certainly new.
Sexual assault
But what is absolutely new, not just in Manipur but elsewhere in the Northeast are the instances of sexual assault committed on women during the ethnic conflict. Till last year, the allegations of rape, even among the Meitei community, have been typically mounted against the security forces.
However, a video clip of two Kuki women paraded naked by a Meitei mob on May 3 last year which went viral last July after the internet ban was lifted temporarily in the state, pulled to pieces the long-held belief in the entire Northeast that women’s safety in the region will never be jeopardised by a local man. That video, therefore, not only forced the Prime Minister to break his silence on Manipur but also led to a shocking paradigm shift of that common belief. Many Meitei women, enraged by the act, might have burned down the houses of the accused but that doesn’t take away the ripples of outrage it sent across the region.
That way, the ethnic conflict also lent the biggest blow to the high standards of social morality that the Meitei society pride itself for – by one of their own.
