Kangpokpi/Imphal, India – On Christmas Eve, it was eerily calm inside a makeshift bunker with piles of gunny luggage and a tin roof. Hunkered inside and clutching their single-barrelled rifles, 19-year-old Chonminlal Kipgen and 26-year-old Paolal Kipgen from the predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo neighborhood appeared out and scoured the hills of Kangpokpi district for armed fighters from the rival Meitei neighborhood.
They mentioned they have been village volunteers – civilians who had taken up arms to defend their properties.
Not so distant in Manipur’s capital, Imphal, the majority-Meitei neighborhood had equally muted celebrations throughout their most cherished pageant, Ningol Chakouba, in early November.
For the previous 11 months, the 2 communities in India’s northeastern state of Manipur have been locked in what’s arguably the nation’s longest-running ethnic battle within the twenty first century beneath the watch of a federal authorities headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The battle has killed 219 folks, injured 1,100 and displaced 60,000. It has revived an array of armed teams, sweeping up males and boys as recruits from each communities. On Saturday, two Kuki-Zo “village volunteers” have been killed and their our bodies allegedly mutilated in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. Of their press launch, tribal teams accused “central safety forces, who aided Meitei militants” of being behind the killings.
The battle is often oversimplified as a wrestle between the Hindu Meitei and Christian Kuki-Zo communities, mirroring the spiritual polarisation seen in communal conflicts and assaults on spiritual minorities in varied components of India. Whereas the Kuki-Zo communities are nearly fully Christian, the Meitei neighborhood predominantly follows a syncretic type of Hinduism and their very own Indigenous religion system, known as Sanamahism. A smaller variety of Meitei folks additionally observe Christianity and Islam.
However an evaluation ready by Assam Rifles officers in Manipur highlighted a special set of things which might be distinctive to the battle in Manipur. The Assam Rifles is the federal authorities’s paramilitary pressure with an extended and controversial historical past within the state. It’s the oldest paramilitary pressure within the nation and shoulders the accountability of sustaining regulation and order within the northeast together with the military.
The Reporters’ Collective (TRC) reviewed the evaluation, made in a PowerPoint presentation, late in 2023. The officers who confirmed the presentation wished to stay nameless. They took me by way of the presentation, which was in sync with the views one of many officers shared with me whereas explaining the explanations behind the Manipur battle.
The presentation put a part of the blame on the state authorities, headed by Chief Minister N Biren Singh, a member of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP), and his “political authoritarianism and ambition”.
It’s the first candid evaluation from a federal authorities company that has made it into the general public area.
It’s important as a result of Modi this month, within the run-up to a normal election, had asserted that the federal authorities’s well timed intervention had led to a “marked enchancment within the scenario” in Manipur. This was one of many few occasions that the prime minister had spoken of the battle. In the meantime, the federal dwelling affairs minister has positioned his religion within the chief minister’s capacity to convey peace, which to date has not offered a decision. The state’s two seats in India’s decrease home of parliament vote on April 19 and April 26, within the first two phases of the nationwide elections.
The evaluation by the Assam Rifles listed causes of the battle as decided by officers within the thick of the violence.
It highlighted the affect of “unlawful immigrants” from neighbouring Myanmar, the ensuing demand for a nationwide register of residents to cut back migration and the demand for Kukiland.
Kukiland is a separate administrative unit that the political and armed Kuki management needs cleaved out of Manipur. The demand for Kukiland has been revived in the course of the ethnic battle.
Moreover, the presentation asserted that armed teams from the Meitei neighborhood are equipping folks with weapons, and the Kuki neighborhood’s armed teams are backing “volunteers”.
All of this has intensified tensions and contradicted makes an attempt by each communities’ leaders to current the battle as widespread residents volunteering for self-defence in opposition to the opposite neighborhood.
TRC couldn’t independently confirm if the views within the presentation are endorsed by the Assam Rifles as an organisation. Detailed questions have been despatched to the paramilitary pressure’s official spokesperson.
Initially, a spokesperson mentioned the Assam Rifles wouldn’t be capable to reply to one thing that was “rumour”.
In a follow-up e-mail, the Assam Rifles mentioned it might “respectfully decline to interact in discussions relating to speculative or unverified issues. As knowledgeable establishment, we concentrate on our core duties and tasks, and we’ve got no additional feedback on this situation presently.” Later, it requested for a replica of the presentation.
The Assam Rifles didn’t reply to TRC’s follow-up emails asking if it held the views mirrored within the presentation.
Queries to the Ministry of House Affairs and the Manipur chief minister’s workplace stay unanswered.
The chief minister’s function
The speedy set off for the violence was a requirement by the dominant Meitei neighborhood for Scheduled Tribe standing, a type of affirmative motion granting quotas of presidency jobs and faculty admissions. It was opposed by different tribal teams, together with these from the Kuki-Zo neighborhood.
However within the presentation, Assam Rifles officers pointed to insurance policies of the chief minister that they believed fed the animosity between the communities. It famous Singh’s “exhausting stance” on the “battle on medication” and “vocal social media dissent”, amongst different issues, for inflaming the battle.
The presentation accused Singh of making divisions between communities within the state’s marketing campaign to cease medication from being manufactured, traded and bought in Manipur. His forceful drive in opposition to the cultivation of poppies, grown in hilly areas of the state bordering Myanmar, drove dwelling the impression that he’s concentrating on Kukis.
The presentation additionally cited “state forces’ tacit assist” of the violence and the “dismemberment of law-and-order equipment”.
One other issue within the battle, the presentation famous, is “Meitei Revivalism”. Revivalism refers back to the lengthy historical past of the Meitei neighborhood aspiring to revert to its id earlier than the appearance of Hinduism within the 18th century and later the merger of Manipur into India in 1949. The marketing campaign led to a revival of Sanamahism within the Nineteen Thirties and fuelled the armed actions subsequently.
The presentation lists Meitei Leepun and Arambai Tenggol, two Meitei organisations, as among the many components that has fuelled the battle.
Arambai Tenggol was shaped in 2020 “beneath the aegis of the titular king of Manipur and BJP Member of Parliament Leishemba Sanajaoba”, a police officer instructed me.
The Tenggol was initially shaped as a sociocultural organisation targeted on the revival of Sanamahi tradition and later took up arms. It earned a extra vigilante-like popularity in April final yr after it broke into the home of a Meitei Christian pastor who had allegedly insulted the Sanamahism religion.
The Arambai Tenggol is helmed by Tyson Ngangbam, who goes by the pseudonym “Korounganba Khuman”. (Korounganba is a typical Meitei identify meaning “sunshine” whereas Khuman is the identify of a clan.)
TRC despatched inquiries to Ngangbam by way of his social media account, which he has used in the course of the battle. The report shall be up to date if he responds.
In January, in a present of power, Arambai Tenggol summoned 37 members of Manipur’s Legislative Meeting and two members of parliament from the state, together with RK Ranjan Singh, the federal minister of state for exterior affairs and schooling, for a gathering at Kangla Fort, the palace of the Meitei kings within the coronary heart of Imphal. It included lawmakers from the Meitei neighborhood throughout social gathering strains.
Ngangbam spelled out the group’s calls for, together with updating the Nationwide Register of Residents, a course of by which the Indian authorities hopes to determine and exclude undocumented migrants.
The group additionally demanded abrogation of the Suspension of Operation – a peace settlement – with the Kuki-Zo armed teams, the relocation of refugees from Myanmar to the neighbouring state of Mizoram, border fencing alongside the Indo-Myanmar border, the withdrawal of the Assam Rifles from Manipur and the delisting of “unlawful migrants” from the Scheduled Tribes checklist – a transfer that may exclude Kuki-Zo folks from Myanmar from accessing the Indian authorities’s affirmative motion insurance policies. The lawmakers dedicated to again the calls for.
Meitei Leepun, which can also be of latest origin, is perceived as influenced by the ideology of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the fountainhead of a spectrum of hardline Hindu organisations, together with the BJP. The chief of Meitei Leepun brazenly professes allegiance to the state’s chief minister and BJP chief Biren Singh, a Meitei.
Each Meitei Leepun and Arambai Tenggol face accusations from Kuki leaders of spearheading assaults by the Meitei neighborhood in opposition to their folks. Whereas Arambai Tenggol leans in the direction of a stronger Meitei nationalist stance distinct from Hinduism, Meitei Leepun aligns with the Hindutva marketing campaign led by the RSS and BJP.
A Meitei Leepun chief, Pramot Singh, instructed me: “We [the Meiteis] are followers of sanatana dharma. … If Meitei turns into extinct, the final outpost of sanatana dharma in Manipur is gone in the identical method Kashmiri Pandits are gone.”
Pramot Singh was referring to an upper-caste Brahmin group that lived in Kashmir however was pressured to flee within the Nineties as they confronted persecution and threats of violence by Kashmiri armed teams.
The Revivalists, in distinction, see Meiteis as distinct from the remainder of India with their very own cultural and spiritual id and an erstwhile Manipuri kingdom known as Kangleipak, which was merged by coercion into India in 1949.
The Assam Rifles presentation was silent on the political and enterprise underpinnings of the battle, the function of the federal authorities – beneath the BJP – and the Assam Rifles’ personal failings and alleged bias.
In response to the Assam Rifles presentation, the battle is split into three phases: “provoke”, “mutate” and “stalemate”. It laid out how the character and character of the violence have modified by way of these levels.
My reporting over six months helped draw out particulars of what the paramilitary pressure’s presentation talked about and what it not noted.
The initiation
The embers of the present battle – Biren Singh’s alleged political authoritarianism, exhausting stance on poppy cultivation, undocumented immigration, demand for Kukiland and Meitei Revivalism – have lengthy smouldered.
However in April final yr got here the spark that ignited the simmering pressure. This era was referred to by the Assam Rifles presentation as “provoke”.
That month, the Manipur Excessive Court docket had requested the state authorities to contemplate petitions for together with the Meitei neighborhood within the checklist of Scheduled Tribes – the constitutional provision that within the case of Manipur consists of property possession within the hilly areas dominated by Kukis. The Manipur Land Income and Land Reforms Act of 1960 permits solely Scheduled Tribes to purchase land within the hill areas.
Heeding a name by the All Tribal College students’ Union Manipur, the main tribal civil society organisation in Manipur, for a “solidarity march” within the hill districts the place tribal communities dominate, rallies have been held on Might 3 in Senapati, Ukhrul, Kangpokpi, Tamenglong, Churachandpur, Chandel and Tengnoupal.
Because the march was winding up within the city of Churachandpur, information unfold {that a} tyre had been set on hearth in entrance of the Anglo-Kuki Centenary Gate, which was constructed to commemorate the 1917-1919 Kuki rebellion in opposition to the British.
Subsequently, a gaggle of younger folks approached the gate wielding weapons. Quickly, phrase unfold, suggesting that “militants” have been frightening the gang, Outlook journal reported. Inside a few hours, rumours unfold by way of the state that Kuki mobs have been vandalising Meitei homes.
The Assam Rifles officers’ presentation mentioned the interval of battle beginning Might 3 was characterised by “excessive depth riots”, “selective concentrating on” and it was “orchestrated and led by militias”.
Mobs ran amok within the cities, notably in Imphal, situated within the valley with a predominantly Meitei inhabitants.
“On the evening of Might 3 at 8pm, folks carrying black shirts attacked us. We fired blanks, which pressured them to retreat however only for a while,” mentioned 43-year-old L Ngampao Khongsai, who had been residing in Imphal’s Khongsai Veng space, a predominantly Kuki-Zo space.
In response to Khongsai, a Kuki-Zo, the mob continued to assault the neighbourhood regardless of pushback from the safety forces. “They might be saying that Kuki needs to be killed and threw stones.”
Khongsai fled together with his household and hid at a close-by faculty. Like hundreds of others from the valley, he ran and made his method to the Kuki-Zo-dominated Churachandpur district.
Within the hill areas and nearer to the foothills, mobs attacked Meitei neighbourhoods. A pregnant Warepam Rameshwori was pressured to flee her village. “Our village is on the foothills in Tronglaobi Maning Leikai [in Bishnupur district] surrounded by Kuki villages. On Might 3, the firing began. … [The Kukis] had refined weapons and began firing at us, and we didn’t have any weapons to defend, so we ran away from there and located shelter at a relative’s dwelling,” she mentioned.
Seventy-nine Kuki-Zo and 18 Meitei people misplaced their lives from Might 3 to Might 23, in response to an Assam Rifles estimate. This era additionally recorded a wave of assaults and looting of arms from police stations. In response to the Assam Rifle evaluation, 5,668 weapons have been looted.
“[The state government] allowed the looting of arms. I imply, it’s apparent as a result of it’s not possible for folks to simply enter the police stations and take out arms,” a retired police officer aware of the safety and intelligence operations within the area instructed me.
“So the Meitei civilians and the insurgent teams had gotten weapons and began sustaining vigilance within the city. … In response, the opposite facet felt that the SoO [Suspension of Operations] arms folks ought to get out and distribute weapons amongst the Kukis,” he mentioned.
The Suspension of Operations is the peace settlement signed amongst Kuki-Zo armed teams, the federal authorities and the Manipur authorities. The SoO requires Kuki-Zo militias to remain in designated camps and all their weapons be saved within the camp’s central armoury beneath the supervision of the state.
“The divide was full, and that was the stage to start with when the political management ought to have cracked down very, very closely,” the officer mentioned.
That didn’t occur. The battle unfold and mutated, the Assam Rifles presentation famous.
Greater than 8,000 reviews
TRC tried to redraw the preliminary interval of the battle by analysing 8,169 first data reviews (FIRs) – 5,818 have been filed in Might and a pair of,351 in June.
An FIR is the primary grievance filed both by residents or police, which the police then have to analyze to find out whether or not a criminal offense has been dedicated.
On Might 3, an FIR was filed recording the preliminary set off of the violence between the 2 communities. In response to the FIR filed by the authorities: “An enormous [number] of Kuki and Meitei youths numbering about 1,500 clashed amongst one another and vandalised and burned down many homes of each communities at Torbung Bangla. In that, many homes numbering about 300 homes and a few personal automobiles have been additionally burnt down by the rioters. The police personnel hearth[d] some rounds of tear gasoline smoke bombs and different ammunition to disperse the mob.”
The looting of weapons was reported as beginning on Might 4 with the primary registered incident being reported at Manipur Police Coaching School in Imphal. In response to the FIR, “The massive mob overpowered the sentry and broke the lock of arm kote room and looted numerous arms and ammunitions [sic],” together with automated rifles – 157 INSAS rifles, 54 SLR rifles and AK-47 rifles, amongst others. The looting of weapons continued till Might 31, as recorded in these 8,169 FIRs.
Within the first two months of the battle, 7,831 circumstances of vandalism and incidents by which residents have been pressured to flee have been reported. As well as, 189 circumstances of killings, assaults – together with sexual assault – bodily hurt and lacking individuals, and 79 circumstances of mass looting of weapons have been additionally recorded.
A number of FIRs have been practically similar or comparable. As an example, on Might 10, 76 FIRs filed within the Sagolmang police station in Imphal East District included an identical grievance: “Some unknown individuals holding arms and lethal weapons numbering about 1,000 suspected to be Kuki Group from completely different villages entered at [name of place] and broken the properties in addition to burnt the home.” The one variations within the reviews have been the place names and the lists of broken objects.
The same pattern was seen within the police complaints filed by the opposing Kuki-Zo facet.
“If a village with 40 households was burnt, there can be 40 complaints,” a second police officer mentioned on the situation of anonymity. In response to him, the “similar” circumstances have been all mixed to assist the inquiry being led by a particular investigative staff.
The second section
In response to the Assam Rifles presentation, the character of the battle started to alter on the finish of Might.
That is the time when federal House Minister Amit Shah made a four-day journey to Manipur to sew up a truce. By then, the federal authorities, in an unprecedented transfer, had appointed a federal officer answerable for all safety and policing operations within the state, bringing the state police and the federal paramilitary and military beneath one command.
The federal authorities might dismiss a state authorities and take over management of the state’s capabilities if it believes “the constitutional equipment” has failed. The structure additionally requires the federal authorities to guard a “state in opposition to exterior aggression and inner disturbance”.
However on this case, the federal authorities saved its religion within the state authorities and didn’t invoke both of those constitutional provisions.
Once more unprecedented, the federal government sought to realize a truce by drawing up an ethnic boundary, calling it a buffer zone, dividing the Kuki-Zo from Meitei-dominated areas and implementing this boundary by way of its armed forces.
Shah’s go to and the technique to impose a unified federal policing command and the buffer zone failed.
The violence abated in the primary Kuki-Zo or Meitei-dominated cities, however it shifted to rural areas. These rural areas, stretching from the Imphal Valley to the Kuki-dominated hills, are made up of small hamlets, villages and townships the place Meitei and Kuki folks have historically lived subsequent to one another.
Now, the villages of each communities got here beneath assault from armed teams on either side. A battle to forcibly create ethnic territories had kicked off.
This section stretched from Might 23 to June 15.
On a September evening, after I visited the Meitei village of Singda Kadangband, situated on the fringe of the Meitei-dominated Imphal West district, its residents spoke in regards to the sleepless nights that they had spent for the six months of the battle.
About 170 males from 165 households had been taking round the clock shifts to face guard at 10 bunkers arrange on the periphery of the village.
In early June, the villagers have been approached by Meitei fighters. “They got here ahead to assist us, however we didn’t permit them. We’re afraid that later they are going to make the most of us,” mentioned N Bobi Singh, who had been organising the surveillance.
That is when the Assam Rifles presentation acknowledged teams of fighters from each communities acquired concerned.
The state has an extended and troubled historical past with greater than 30 armed teams from completely different ethnic communities that decision it dwelling. They’ve fought for calls for that vary from separate nation-states to the creation of recent states inside India primarily based on ethnic identities.
Lots of them draw sources from and camp in Myanmar. The affect of the Meitei armed teams, which have been notably focused by the federal government’s armed forces, had been waning for the reason that 2000s. And a majority of the Kuki-Zo armed teams had signed the SoO settlement with the federal government.
Researchers famous reviews of how the Indian armed forces, with the assistance of Kuki militias, have strategically remoted militia factions from different ethnicities. This allegation, coupled with a observe file of human rights violations and illegal killings, has considerably tarnished the Assam Rifles’ standing inside the Meitei neighborhood. The paramilitary is perceived as biased whereas the state police have confronted accusations of bias in opposition to Kuki communities.
This battle gave the Kuki and the Meitei armed teams a brand new lease on life, apart from resulting in the emergence of recent Meitei militias.
On the Kuki-Zo facet, the teams sure by the ceasefire had begun from the preliminary levels to assist civilians who had taken up arms.
“A number of the [cadres] of the Suspension of Operations teams helped us arrange the bunkers as a result of they’ve expertise,” mentioned 35-year-old Mimin Sithlou, the joint secretary of the defence committee beneath the Committee on Tribal Unity, a conglomerate of civil society organisations functioning largely in Kangpokpi district, who oversaw the administration of the bunkers there.
The involvement of those cadres put the “VBIGs beneath strain” to additionally be part of the battle to battle on behalf of the Meitei neighborhood, the Assam Rifles doc famous. VBIGs are valley-based rebel teams, referring to the older Meitei-affiliated armed teams.
They started “offering arms and ammunition”, consolidating their base and “growing recruitment and ideological assist”, the presentation mentioned.
As militias on both facet of the divide started amping up recruitment and coaching of younger folks, notably from rural areas, the battle would typically ebb however then decide up once more. The stalemate got here into being.
The stalemate
In Haipi village, situated about 15km (10 miles) from the trenches dug on the border of Kangpokpi district, Christmas handed with none celebrations for Janggoulun Kipgen’s household.
I first met 19-year-old Kipgen in one of many bunkers in September. “We have been skilled for 5 to 6 days again in our village,” he instructed me, holding a rifle.
On December 25, sitting inside her home in Haipi, Kipgen’s mom, Neinkhongah Kipgen, instructed me: “Who received’t worry to ship their son to the entrance strains? We will solely pray that he’s protected.”
Meitei civilians in villages like Singda Kadangband additionally face an identical dilemma. The nights appear infinite, and the times are spent with unceasing uncertainty.
“Apart from the 60+-year-olds, everybody is anticipated to do 24-hour shifts,” a villager who didn’t want to be named, instructed me again in September. “I’ve a one-year-old child and work as a welder. I really feel scared, however we don’t have a lot selection.”
“It will have a long-lasting affect, notably on the younger and future generations. They’ve weapons to defend their neighborhood, however that’s not precisely the way it will pan out. The individual may use it to resolve private enmity. Then some unemployed folks may begin extortion. Then there might be circumstances of mistaken id killing after which revenge killing. It will grow to be a vicious cycle,” retired Lieutenant Common Konsam Himalay Singh instructed me.
What Lieutenant Common Singh mentioned had begun to play out by December after I final reported from Manipur. Movies of gun-toting males within the valley and the hills had proliferated on social media. The armed “volunteers” have been being valorised on social media whereas in private areas, many spoke of the troubles of younger males being lured or recruited by militias, spawning a endless cycle of assault, revenge and turf battle.
That is regardless of greater than 60,000 armed personnel of the federal authorities’s paramilitary forces, the military and the state police implementing a buffer zone dividing a big a part of the state into two ethnic territories that every neighborhood fears crossing.
On April 19, Manipur will vote — together with a number of different components of the nation — even because the battle rages on between the 2 communities.
“The chief minister ought to have been thrown out. He’s the pinnacle of state, and if he can’t be trusted, … the military and police ought to have gone on overdrive and brought management over the world, … however finally, it was allowed to proceed as a result of when it simmers, your voting combination will increase,” mentioned the retired police officer aware of the safety and intelligence operations within the area.
The second a part of this collection appears on the function of the drug commerce, politics and armed teams in preserving Manipur on a boil.
Angana Chakrabarti is an affiliate member of The Reporters’ Collective.
(With inputs from Harshitha Manwani, Mohan Rajagopal, Aryan Chaudhary and Vedant Kottapalle)
