Northeast India’s conflict-torn Manipur had four months of relative calm after a yearlong nightmare since May 2023. The victory of the main Opposition party, the Congress, in both the parliamentary seats from the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, carried at least two messages: public loss of trust in Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and the people’s desire for peace. But the post-election lull of four months ended on September 1, 2024, with the shocking news of aerial bombing using drones.
“In an unprecedented attack in Koutruk, Imphal West, alleged Kuki militants have deployed numerous RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) using high-tech drones,” the Manipur Police said in a statement. “While drone bombs have commonly been used in general warfare, this recent deployment of drones to deploy explosives against security forces and civilians marks a significant escalation.”
The bombing happened in an area dominated by the Meiteis, the state’s majority ethnic group, and the police blamed Kuki militants right away. The recipe was perfect for the return of the nightmare that Manipur lived through from May 2023 to May 2024, a period that recorded over 225 deaths, with over two dozen missing and over 60,000 displaced.
As protests broke out from the night of September 1 and nearly a dozen lives were lost in clashes over the following days, the state government resorted to a shutdown of mobile internet, broadband and VPN services once again.
While the Kuki demand for a separate administration has caught the state in limbo—with both the Meiteis and the Nagas, two other ethnic groups, opposing it–the scope of reconciliation between the Meiteis and the Kuki tribal people remains narrow. Tensions had started rising since the end of August after leaked audio tapes purportedly featuring Chief Minister Singh’s voice spoke of “secretly bombing” Kuki areas. Singh and several other BJP leaders have been accused of maintaining close ties with the Meitei militant group, Arambai Tenggol.
On September 1, after the Manipur police blamed Kuki militants for the drone attack, Kuki groups started hitting the streets, alleging a state-sponsored conspiracy. The Meiteis protested too, claiming a lack of security. Singh, on the other hand, called the leaked tapes a ‘‘conspiracy’’ and reiterated that the main problem in the Manipur crisis was ‘‘the foreign hand’’, a reference to Myanmar where the Kuki-Chin tribe that shares ethnic similarities with the Kukis of Manipur lives. At the moment, when the Manipur conflict shows no sign of a solution, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya spoke to journalist and author Samrat Choudhury, who has written extensively on Manipur and Northeast India.
What are your observations on the recent flare-up in Manipur?
I see it as a clash of multiple nationalisms. There is Manipuri, meaning Meitei, nationalism. This has, behind it, the idea and image of an ancient princely state whose origins date back to 33 A D. There is great pride attached to this legacy. The pride is tied to the territorial boundaries of the present state of Manipur. Therefore, any diminishing of the size or authority of the Manipur state over any part of this territory is anathema to the Manipuri nationalists.
Then there are the Kuki-Zo nationalisms, in the plural, with which the Meitei Manipuri nationalism has come into conflict. The different but related Kuki-Zo nationalisms have long had a dream of a separate administration of some sort for the areas in which they are dominant, which includes large parts of the hills of Manipur.
Third, there is Naga nationalism, which is part of the larger Naga separatist struggle for independence from India. This has been around since 1947 and it is still an unresolved issue—the peace talks between the Indian government and the NSCN(IM), which started in 1997, are still going on. The chief of the NSCN(IM) Thuingaleng Muivah himself is from Ukhrul in Manipur, and the Naga maps of their territories overlap with those of the Kuki-Zo groups. There is also Indian nationalism.
In Manipur, it is a three-way struggle between three contending nationalisms, each seeking something that they can only get at the expense of the other two, and each negotiating a space with Indian nationalism and with other nationalist forces of various kinds in Myanmar next door.
The latest book you co-edited, But I Am One Of You: Northeast India and the Struggle to Belong, is dedicated to “all people everywhere who are struggling to belong”. How has the question of belonging been relevant to the Manipur crisis since May 2023?
It is fundamental to what has been happening in Manipur since May 2023, since the issue is that Meitei groups and even the state government have been harbouring suspicions that a large number of Kuki-Zo people there are recent migrants from Myanmar. The Manipur assembly had already passed a resolution demanding a National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise for the state in 2022. The question of migration from Myanmar has been hanging over the politics there like the issue of alleged migration from Bangladesh has been a constant presence in the politics of other parts of Northeast India.
In Manipur, it is a three-way struggle between three contending nationalisms, each seeking something that they can only get at the expense of the other two.
How are the Nagas relevant in this war between the Kukis and the Meiteis?
They are extremely relevant. The fight between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo groups reached a stalemate but if the Naga-armed outfits such as the NSCN(IM) enter the fray on one side, it could tip the balance. That is precisely what seems to be happening now in some areas along the Myanmar border.
Some people tried to give the Manipur situation a religious identity spin where Hindu Meiteis were contrasted with Christian Kukis, but the fact of the matter is that the Nagas and the Kukis both are tribals; both are Christians; but they have a long history of conflict.
The NSCN(IM) has been accused by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of helping Meitei insurgent groups since the present conflict started, while the group itself has claimed to have clashed of late with the Kuki National Army. So they do seem to be entering the fight against their fellow tribals and fellow Christians because this is not a religious conflict.
In your book, Northeast India: A Political History, you ended the chapter on Manipur with: “Manipur remains suspended in an uneasy peace, prone to descending into fraternal conflict just as it was a thousand years ago.” It was probably written just before trouble broke out in May. What made you think so?
I had submitted my final manuscript long before the trouble broke out. I wrote those words because I could see that none of the larger issues had been solved and all of them were bubbling beneath the surface. The Naga issue, which is very significant for Manipur, was unresolved. The territorial disputes between the Naga and the Kuki groups were already there. The demand for NRC was already there. As was the Meitei demand for Scheduled Tribe status. Basically, all the major factors that have since blown up into the present conflict were already present. One of these factors, the unresolved Naga issue, has not yet come fully into play, but if the situation continues to escalate, then that too will happen.
What can we learn from history to find possible solutions?
The greatest lesson of history from Northeast India is how the place has been plagued by ideas of nation and nationalism. The dictionary definition of nation is: “a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory”. This is extremely problematic in a part of the world where large bodies of people simply don’t inhabit neat blocks of territory where no other groups live. There are always other communities in everyone’s imagined homelands. The desire to have exclusive national homelands has caused endless strife in Northeast India. We must remember, from history, that a lot of these places were historically non-state spaces, part of what the scholar Willem van Schendel named “Zomia”. The advent of maps, censuses and borders as lines rather than zones has been very problematic here. Any search for a solution must start with the acceptance and realisation of the fact that those outdated ideas of nation will have to be jettisoned.
History also reminds us that India is the principal successor state to the British Indian Empire—and that Northeast India came into that empire following a war with Burma sparked off by a Burmese attack on Arakanese rebels in what is now Bangladesh. So, a solution that narrow-focuses on only one corner will miss the big picture.
