A year ago, Manipur began to burn. In these 365 days, 225 people have died, and over 50,000 have been displaced, forced to live away from their homes, afraid to return. In these 365 days, a Lok Sabha election has taken place across its two seats; one of them the only constituency in India that voted in two phases–a measure of just how precarious the situation is. In these 365 days, roughly 6,500 arms and 650,000 pieces of ammunition have been looted from government armouries, and to date, only 2,003 weapons and 25,168 weapons have been recovered. In these 365 days, there has been no change at the top, no replacement of the people mandated to keep the peace. And in these 365 days, despite ostensible attempts at restoring the peace, the state’s valleys and mountains are as divided as ever, ringing out with the sounds of gunfire.
When the violence first began on May 3, the fault lines in Manipur were clear. The cleavage was distinctly ethnic in nature; the festering hostility chiefly between the majority Meitei community, who dominate regions in and around the Imphal valley, and the tribal Kukis, who dot the hills. Within the first three months, any semblance of control was already gone. Unbridled mobs drove Kukis away from the plains; in the hills, the Meiteis were chased away. As the state government, then the paramilitary, and then the Army struggled to regain control, villages were set ablaze, women were paraded naked and raped, even children in ambulances burnt alive in frenzied hatred.
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Over time, Manipur’s wounds deepened beyond just an ethnic divide. Underground militant groups regained support they had lost for decades, targeting security forces and engaging in rampant extortion. Buffer zones came up in villages that border Meitei and Kuki areas, some guarded by security forces, but most by trigger-happy, armed and overzealous “village defence committees” claiming to protect their own. The hills and forests provided cover for attacks that have continued apace. “The civilian population still has access to powerful weapons and the first thing we need to do is to find ways to disarm them,” a senior security force officer said.
There have been interludes in the violence but they have thus far, always been false dawns. On April 27, one day after Manipur finished its voting process, replete with allegations of duress, responding to which the Election Commission of India ordered a repoll in 17 booths, two CRPF personnel were killed in Bishnupur, attacked by grenades and a hail of bullets. One day later, one person was killed and three others injured in a gunbattle between armed groups in Kangpokpi.
365 days later, Manipur continues to burn.
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Manipur’s missing
Its hills and forests may have ineffective security, but in the capital Imphal, the city’s two top hotels — Imphal by Classic and The Classic — are both heavily guarded fortresses. Teams of the CRPF and the BSF stand watch in the compounds and near the gates, their weapons never leaving their side. Inside both, dozens of rooms are now used as make-shift offices by different teams and committees dealing with the violence, some set up by the state government, others by central agencies. Some are meant to probe the violence, others are from federal agencies CBI and NIA, investigating specific cases, still others are meant to suggest relief measures. At The Classic, there is even a separate CBI reception desk on the ground floor, where people can offer information on the ethnic clashes.
In June 2023, the centre appointed a three-member committee led by retired chief justice of the Guwahati high court Ajai Lamba to probe the cause of violence. Two months later, the Supreme Court appointed former Maharashtra DGP Dattarey Padsalgikar to oversee investigations by CBI and NIA. There are 42 different SITs headed by DIG-rank officers of different police forces that are probing cases.
And yet, in a living symbol of their futility, 2,402 kilometres away, in Press Club of India in Delhi, seven families from Manipur addressed a sparsely attended press conference on Wednesday. All they wanted to know was where their family members were, if they were dead or alive, breathing or buried.
Ningthoujam Anthony, 18, went missing with his friend 16-year-old M Avinash on November 5 from Kangpokpi, presumably abducted by militants. Anthony’s mother, Prem Lata, said, “Despite so many probe agencies, why are they unable to find our boys? Last year, we were told that the bodies were buried in Kuki militant areas so the police have been unable to travel there. How long do we have to wait?”
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They aren’t the only ones. Meitei groups say there are 31 such missing people from their community. Kuki groups say there are 14 from theirs. Both admit the real numbers are likely much higher.
The division on the ground
In Manipur, there is division everywhere – in the geography, in the police forces, in the politics, even in conceptions of fairly recent history.
In an interview to HT last month, chief minister Biren Singh said that there are police records to show that violence was started by Kuki groups in Churachandpur on May 3 during a rally against a proposed inclusion of Meiteis in the state’s scheduled tribes list, following a Manipur high court order delivered on March 27, 2023. “The first rally happened in Moreh at around 9.40am. The second rally happened in Churachandpur at 11am. About half an hour before that rally, militants burnt down a forest office to destroy documents which showed how illegal villages had come up there,” Singh said on April 12.
Kuki groups have a completely different telling of the trigger to the violence, pointing to Meitei residents allegedly setting fire to the gates of the Anglo-Kuki centenary gate near Churachandpur. “On the morning of May 3, a Meitei truck driver drove through the water bottles kept on the road for rally-goers but women groups intervened and the matter was settled there. In the afternoon, residents of Kangvai (a Kuki-dominated area) saw the distressing sight of Meiteis setting fire to the Anglo Kuki centenary at Leishang. Burning of Kuki homes in Imphal started around the same time. The violence began with them,” Muan Tombing, secretary of the Churachandpur-based umbrella Kuki group — Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) said.
Biren Singh however said that reports of arson at the cemetery gate came at 2.30pm, and by then the violence in Churachandpur had already begun. “The violence in Imphal started after 4.30pm,” he told HT on April 12.
But what is clear is that Manipur’s peace was fragile, and all it took were some imprudent state government actions – such as unilaterally exiting a tripartite peace agreement – and the high court order to break it.
And what is clear is that both communities have been badly served by justice.
Inside the premises of a Sunday school within a church in Churachandpur, Kamjoungmang Haokip (39) and his family of four live crammed in a crumbling classroom with two other families from his village Haotak Phailen, burnt down May 4 last year. They sleep on the floor, and bedsheets are used as makeshift partitions. “Is this how we are supposed to live all our lives? We cannot return home. Our children are out of school; 15 people live in one class room. Is this what they call rehabilitation?” Haokip said.
Violence returns in divided Manipur
For 46 days between February 26 and April 12, there was some hope; some silence in the hills; some pause. And then, at 9am on April 13, the fragile peace was broken, and the same macabre patterns returned. Two men were shot dead in a gunfight on the border of Imphal East and Kangpokpi, their bodies mutilated and photographed, circulated as macabre trophies on social media. Since then four more have died.
A second security officer, who asked not to be named, said, “It seems like militants are desperate and want to make noise to show their relevance.”
There have been other disturbing signs of a resuscitation of patterns that posed security challenges in all of 2023. Officials said that women protesters have taken to stopping security forces from doing their jobs again over the past few weeks. In June last year, the Army had issued a statement that women groups were deliberately blocking routes and interfering with operations.
On Tuesday, hundreds of women protesters stopped an army convoy and forced the release of 11 detained militants of Arambai Tenggol, a radical Meitei group that seems to have effectively become an arm of the state. The army had nabbed the 11 on April 30 from Bishnupur district with 3 AK series rifles, 5 INSAS, 2 SLR, 2 hand grenades and over 500 rounds of ammunition. “People are supporting the militants. They lie down on the road and refuse to let the convoy move. Working in Manipur under these circumstances has become a challenge,” said a paramilitary officer.
In this continued atmosphere, even as the government, both at the state and the centre have said they are working to restore normalcy, political positions have hardened.
Muan Tombing, secretary of the ITLF, which speaks for Kukis, said that tribal people would not now accept any solution except a complete separation from the Meiteis and Biren Singh’s government. “The past year has shown that the tribal people cannot live with the MeiteIs. We cannot live any longer under this state government. Even the constitution guarantees a separate administration based on ethnicity. In all our meetings with the Centre’s representatives, we have insisted on separate administration.”
This, despite the high court in February this year deleting the offending paragraph of its original judgement, accepting that it was based on a wrong reading of the law.
A spokesperson of Meitei Heritage Society, a Meitei group said, “During the last one year, evidence has emerged that this violence was pre-planned by Kuki groups with vested interest and separatist ideas.”
“If the Centre takes a firm decision, this violence can end in days. But because the central and state governments have failed to restore peace, we call upon civil society groups from both communities to reconcile. Dialogue is the only way forward,” said the spokesperson.
On the streets of Imphal, these fissures are a lived reality, both in the people that call this their home, and those that can no longer. In New Lambulane, where Kuki people once lived and thrived, the homes are abandoned, several burnt; at Konung Mamang place, Bazar India — Imphal’s largest shopping complex, owned by a Kuki, has been reduced to rotting wood, ash and cinder. Prim Vaipei (79) moved to West Bengal in November And has since spent his days watching videos of mobs ransacking his home. “Cadres of militant groups have moved people to where we once lived, and now collect rent. Can any government say, we will get our houses back?” he said.
In every Indian capital, there are enclaves of power, where politicians and bureaucrats live and wield influence, always fortified, always “high-security.” In Manipur, in Imphal’s New Checkon are abandoned homes of top Kuki bureaucrats and police officers, of Kuki politicians that can no longer live safely in Manipur. One of those empty homes is of P Doungel, a Kuki who’s father was a minister in the state government, who’s brother is also an ADGP level police officer and who on May 3, 2023, was the state DGP, the most powerful police officer in the state.
365 days later, he has now retired but can no longer stay in the state his family has always called home, taking refuge in a neighbouring state.
