The second labour of Hercules was to kill the Lernaean Hydra. It was a terrible and almost impossible task, for two heads grew every time Hercules chopped off one. The issues behind the ethnic conflict in the border state of Manipur in India have become the Hydra itself. But there is no Hercules in Manipur.
It has been over 80 days since widespread ethnic clashes engulfed Manipur. The root cause of the conflict between the Kuki-Zo and Meitei communities arose from the government’s anti-encroachment drive in the hills, crackdown on illegal poppy cultivation in areas dominated by the Kukis and the Manipur High Court’s recommendation of providing Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiteis. These actions have triggered violent reactions and activated dormant antagonisms.
Manipur is one of India’s most diverse and turbulent states, and multiple governments and armed forces have struggled to calm tensions in the area. The state government informed the Supreme Court on July 4 that the violence has claimed 142 lives, and over 60,000 have been displaced, and it continues unabated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his two-and-a-half-month-long silence after a national uproar caused by the emergence of a video of two Kuki women being paraded naked and assaulted by a mob of Meitei men. The horrors witnessed by those at home in Manipur are unbeknownst to the public. The shutdown of internet services in the state has created an information blackout, with even journalists struggling to access information. Important facts and details about the scale of the violence remain unavailable to the public. For long, the Centre was a silent spectator to the brutality of the violence — a crisis for both India’s national security and constitutional values.
In Manipur, Meiteis make up around 53 per cent of the population and reside in the fertile Imphal valley which accounts for 10 per cent of the land. Naga and Kuki-Zo tribes make up about 40 per cent of the population and live in the hill districts that make up the other 90 per cent. While the law allows tribal communities to buy land in the valley, the Meiteis cannot buy land in the hills. The tribal communities, on the other hand, feel under-represented in the Assembly of the Meitei-dominated government. The Kuki-Zo and Naga communities are entitled to reservation under the Scheduled Tribe classification, a constitutional clause that guarantees some of India’s indigenous people educational and employment rights.
Economic indicators over a long period reveal the underlying, deeper cause of the violence. At Rs 84,345 in 2022, Manipur has the lowest per capita income amongst the eight Northeastern states. “Manipur needs to improve forward and backward linkages in the economy. We also do not have adequate resources for industry. Our one way out is by identifying monopoly trading areas to accelerate our state income,” says Munindro Thangjam, former Director, Planning Department, government of Manipur.
From the late 1960s to the early 2010s, armed insurgent groups operated from the state and from across the border in Myanmar. At one point, the state was home to some 30 armed groups. The region has seen multiple inter-ethnic conflicts — Kuki-Naga, Meitei-Muslim, Kuki-Karbi, Hmar-Dimasa, and even Kuki-Tamil clashes. Following the 2001 expansion of the truce with the NSCN-IM into Manipur, there was widespread violence, as Meiteis feared that their state would be partitioned. Over four decades, violence was fueled by ethnic rivalries and demands for independence and affirmative action for indigenous people. Some insurgent groups also acted as social watchdogs — targeting liquor sellers, drug traffickers and banning Bollywood films. I still remember pleading with my parents to get me a cassette of the movie Dil Chahta Hai. After two months of relentless negotiations, I got my cassette. An uncle in Delhi sent it by post. What anyone could get off the counter anywhere in India, took me two months in Manipur.
As a result of the insurgency, businesses exited the state and development was hampered. Manipuris in general, and Meiteis in particular, found that the only option was to look outside the region for jobs. Widespread unemployment, hopelessness and economic strife worsened matters.
There is also mistrust of the armed forces in the state. The controversial anti-insurgent law, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which protects security forces who may kill a civilian by mistake or in unavoidable circumstances, has been in effect here since 1958 and has been partly blamed for the “immunity” enjoyed by the forces. The current mistrust of the Assam Rifles has its roots in this history. By 2010, Manipur was finally rising from the ashes of insurgency. But today, the Meitei and Kuki insurgent groups that were pushed out of the state and into the borders of Myanmar and Bangladesh are now back and have joined the ethnic clashes, with their sophisticated weaponry. Lack of political negotiation and inaction by the Centre had left the gates of the state unmanned.
One area that needs closer inspection is the case of Meitei Hindus and their decade-long demand for ST status. The Meiteis were converted to Hinduism by religious leaders from Sylhet in pre-partition Bengal, after the burning of court chronicles and history books, leaving the community and its future generations with a perpetual sense of identity crisis. The racial diversity of India’s Northeast, often invoked as a catchphrase by every mainstream Indian politician, (“unity in diversity”) feels like a gimmick to those who are from the area.
Unemployment pushes Manipuris to the mainland, but what welcomes them there is racism. Hate crimes against people from Northeast India in metros are treated as isolated incidents and rarely discussed except when one of us gets beaten to death by a mob. The Meiteis have not really recovered from the religious colonisation and to make matters worse, they are invisibilised in policy discourse and are unacknowledged by the upper-caste Hindu majority of the country. The government must contextualise the possible polarising effects of the benefits granted to certain groups of society by federal and state policy. This is significant, particularly in the case of Manipur, as the same ethnic mix coexisted peacefully throughout its independent monarchy and later democratic period, both of which occurred before Manipur, a princely state, joined India, through the 1949 merger agreement.
As I write from my apartment in New Delhi, my relatives at home struggle in relief camps. Their houses were burned in a wave of violence by Kuki armed groups in Sugnu village in June. Their children have not been to school in almost three months. My 69-year-old father is unable to get an appointment for a much-needed knee replacement surgery. Their lives have come to a standstill and those of us outside the state are helpless. Irrespective of our ethnic identities, one common pain rings in our hearts: The Centre has failed Manipur.
The writer is a Communications Officer at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress. Views are personal
