The unending cycle of violence in Manipur is a stark reminder that the fault lines that divide Indian society run far too deep to be set right easily. This is true for most parts of the country; but it rings the truest in the Northeast, where ethnic identities are complicated by language, religion, tribal affiliations and the broad feeling that the rest of India doesn’t really understand the people of this easternmost region of the country. The sense of alienation breeds discontent; discontent leads to anger; anger sparks violence; the violence leads to more alienation… and the endless cycle continues.
The current violence can be traced back to April 2023, when a single-judge bench of the Manipur High Court passed an order telling the State government to consider the demand by the dominant Meitei community to be considered as a Scheduled Tribe. The Meiteis, who comprise just over half of the State’s population, are inhabitants of the Imphal valley and are Hindu by religion. All around Imphal valley in the hills live the tribal communities of Nagas, Kukis and others, who are mostly Christian and have ST status. The court order was like a match to dry tinder. It stoked the fear within the tribal communities that the proposed ST status for the Meiteis was just a precursor to their lands and government jobs being taken away by the Hindus. The historically tense relationship between the two sides, which was held taut like a string, snapped, and the ensuing violence has destroyed villages, left families broken, and opened up wounds that will take a long time to heal.
The Meitei-Kuki tribal animosity has historical roots and can be traced back to the British Raj, when the empire used divide-and-rule to maximum effect in the Northeast, sowing the seeds of the unrest that continue to yield a bitter harvest even today. It does not help that since Independence, the Northeast has been blanked out from the consciousness of the rest of India, where derogatory stereotypes persist about the way that people from the Northeast look, their dietary habits and their cultural beliefs. In reality, the Northeast is a strikingly beautiful part of India, with a patchwork quilt of ethnic diversity that is a function of the region’s history. The area lies at the crossroads of a historical highway of migrations, with peoples from Tibetan, Burmese, Chin and other stocks traversing the region for better lives and livelihoods.
The Northeast also has multiple international borders, hemmed in as it is by Myanmar, China, Bangladesh and Bhutan. There is a strong fear in the region that minor tribal identities will get swamped out by migration from other parts of India or from across international borders. This, again, has been the root cause of strife in Assam over the decades, a factor that the BJP used to great effect in its election pitch and won in that state. In Manipur, too, the BJP government has been instrumental in fanning the Meitei-Kuki strife, with the belief on the tribal side that the ruling BJP with N Biren Singh as Chief Minister will push a majoritarian agenda that will further marginalise the tribals.
The State government’s scorecard over the past year and a half has done nothing to allay these fears. On the ground, the feeling persists that the CM took too long to respond to the initial flare-up and even then, the response was inadequate. After the first conflagration that gave every indication that things were getting out of hand, Biren Singh called the violence “a misunderstanding between two communities”. The Centre has stayed largely mum on Manipur despite cries of protest from Congress and the other Opposition parties, and only responded after being prodded by the then Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud.
With this as the backdrop, it is not surprising that the State has slid back into violence, this time in Jiribam. The Centre has decided to send more CAPF forces to Manipur, while the State government has clamped a curfew on the two districts of Imphal West and East and shut schools and colleges. The latest clampdown comes after six members of a Meitei family were murdered, among them three infants, by suspected Kuki militants. If the learnings from other restive regions of India are taken into account, it would be clear that sending in the army or the paramilitary can quell the violence, but never root it out. That requires reconciliation, dialogue and a willingness to learn from past mistakes. The government has a big role to play in starting that process, but there are no indications of that currently. Winter is coming, and it’s going to be a long one in Manipur.