Northeastern View | One year on, restive Manipur continues to simmer as the state looks away
A year after the onset of violent clashes, Manipur remains embroiled in a bitter conflict between the dominant Meitei and tribal Kuki-Zo communities
Exactly a year ago, Manipur convulsed into a devastating ethnic conflict that has refused to ebb. The repeated cycles of violence have etched neat lines between the state’s dominant Meitei and tribal Kuki-Zo communities – both on and off the map.
What was once widely recognised as a structural “hill-versus-valley divide” – with the Meitei mostly living in Imphal Valley and the Kuki-Zo in the surrounding hills – today looks like a total partition of two lifeworlds. Over 220 have been killed, thousands have been injured and dozens are missing.
Inter-communal distrust snowballing into violence isn’t rare in modern Indian history. Neither is state failure. But, in Manipur’s case, the scope and enormity of these pathologies have been particularly appalling. The state stands accused of not only looking away as violence roiled but also proactively aiding ethnically motivated attacks.
How did Manipur get to this?
Creation of a militia state
In the days leading up to the first phase of general elections polling in Manipur, Laishram Robason, the so-called “control room operator” of Arambai Tenggol, a hitherto nondescript Meitei armed group that came of age only last year, issued a stern diktat ordering Lok Sabha candidates to not campaign publicly, attempting to prohibit public gatherings, feasts, and use of loudspeakers. State authorities did nothing to bring the group to task for its blatantly illegal act of intimidation.
Days later, on polling day, voters accused Arambai of heckling polling officers using physical force and even gunfire. Once again, state authorities have yet to take any action. The government of N. Biren Singh also looked away when top members of the heavily armed militia forced dozens of elected Meitei lawmakers, including a union minister, to take an unconstitutional oath at Imphal’s Kangla Fort in January.
One of the only times the state police detained an Arambai member was in February. In response, the group abducted the senior police officer responsible for the action. The militia later released him, but the Singh government refused to take further action against them. The state’s silence was so loud that even the police were forced to protest publicly by laying down their arms and seeking help from central forces.
Recently, the Indian Army detained eleven Arambai members but had to free them when a large crowd of Meitei women agitators heckled the convoy. While the Manipur police claim that “necessary legal action” is being taken, authorities are yet to formally charge anyone from the mob or rearrest the militia members.
Therefore, even the state police and forces deployed by the centre find themselves trapped in what looks more and more like a 'militia state'. They seem to be hamstrung by Arambai's rising social clout and apparent closeness to the Imphal government.
Toxic impunity
By doing nothing to defang the Arambai’s leadership even after repeated acts of violent intimidation against both state authorities and the Kuki-Zo community, the Singh government has set a regressive precedent. So has the Narendra Modi-led BJP government in New Delhi, which has not done enough to pressure its own chief minister in Imphal to disarm and dismantle the militia.
The state government, according to media reports, has also silently watched as an older Meitei militant group, United Nation Liberation Front (Pambei), mobilises assets and partakes in ethnic violence alongside Arambai under the guise of a recently-inked peace agreement. Through these acts of omission, Imphal and New Delhi may have arguably created Frankenstein’s monsters, which now roam the streets of Manipur with astounding impunity.
The carte blanche accorded to the Meitei groups has created an ethnically lopsided conflict dynamic. There is no equivalent of the Arambai, which is able to hold the state hostage in the middle of the state capital without the fear of consequences, on the Kuki-Zo side. This essentially implies that the crisis in Manipur is not, as widely argued, a “civil war” in which both sides enjoy equal political and military leverage.
State complicity
The scales of a conflict can be tipped to one side by many factors. Among them, state complicity in violence – usually at the behest of one side – is pivotal.
In July last year, a horrifying video of a Meitei mob parading two naked Kuki-Zo women in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district sent shock waves across India. On April 29, journalist Makepeace Sitlhou, who was able to access the CBI chargesheet on the case, revealed that state police officials not only allegedly refused to help the two survivors, but also practically handed them over to the irate mob which then had its way with them.
While five have been arrested for the heinous sexual assault, the police officers on the scene are yet to face the music. Allegations of police officials willingly handing over weapons to Arambai members or joining them in attacks against the Kuki-Zo community have also largely slipped under the Singh government’s radar. Instead, the chief minister has used his authority and reach to repeatedly recirculate divisive refrains against alleged Kuki-Zo “illegal immigrants” and “illegal settlements”, which has done little to mend broken ethnic relationships.
Manipur exhibits all the standard preconditions for the President’s Rule. Among them is the BJP-led state government’s glaring failure to serve as a neutral arbiter between the two warring sides. It is mind-boggling that the Modi government has refused to do so despite the violence and forced displacement continuing after one whole year.
The ugly disruptions seen last month during polling are only the most recent manifestations of how India’s famed democratic consensus has succumbed to its injuries in what was supposed to be one of Northeast India’s crown jewel states.
Angshuman Choudhury is an associate fellow with the Centre for Policy Research and focuses on Northeast India and Myanmar. The views expressed are personal.