On new year’s eve, Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh offered an apology. “This entire year [2024] has been very unfortunate. I feel regret and I want to say sorry to the people of the state for what is happening till today, since last May 3. Many people lost their loved ones. Many people left their homes. I really feel regret. I would like to apologise,” he said.
A few days before that, on December 25, speaking at the Good Governance Day programme at the state BJP headquarters in Manipur, Singh had said, “Only BJP can save Manipur…BJP leaders have a high sense of nationalism and social justice,” and that BJP believed in the idea of “living together”.
Contrast these statements with the fact that since May 3, 2023, more than 600 days have passed of Manipur boiling. Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence only a year later when, in July 2024, he told the Rajya Sabha that his government was making all efforts to bring normalcy to the state marred with ethnic violence.
Confrontations between the minority Zo ethnic tribes (Zomi-Kuki-Mizo) and the majority Meitei community over land rights and influence in the region have claimed over 250 lives since last year from both the communities including women and children – even infants – highlighting the escalating crisis in Manipur.
Also read: So, When Will the Modi Government Act on the Manipur Violence?
The violence has resulted in dreadful figures, as per the government’s own records. At least 4,786 homes destroyed, 386 religious structures damaged, mostly churches and synagogues, over 250 lives lost, and nearly a lakh of people internally displaced rendering them homeless and forcing them to live in numerous relief camps. This continued unrest underscores the complicity of both the national and state governments and other state authorities in their failure to address the law and order crisis with impunity of vigilante groups.
Last month, raising concern over the issue, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge asked why the prime minister, despite the demand of the people of Manipur, had not had the time to visit the state. Earlier, he also wrote a letter to President Murmu seeking – as a constitutional imperative on her part – an immediate intervention in the ongoing crisis alleging that the Centre and the state government in Manipur had “completely failed” to restore peace and normalcy over the past 19 months.
Kharge blamed the “deliberate acts of omission and commission” by both central and state governments that had resulted in “complete lawlessness, violations of human rights, compromise of national security and suppression of fundamental rights of citizens of our country”.
Unfortunately, even the shift in political power in May 2024, after a year of violence, when Congress won big on both seats in Lok Sabha elections, has not led to peace.
Silencing and unfair labelling
In 2023, Manipur saw the world’s longest cyber blackout totalling over 5,000 hours – almost continuously from May to December – as a state response to the ethnic violence. Amnesty International, reported in 2024 that the “authorities have continued to crackdown on those who have dared to speak out against this”.
The national media and the state government unbiasedly classified village volunteers as militants using terminology, narratives, and structures that marginalised community guardians while bolstering state troops without restraint. The portrayal of these village volunteers as “militants”, supported by CM Singh, is part of the very system of governance that denigrates and discredits community-led resistance.
For instance, on November 7, 2024, Meitei vigilantes allegedly launched a vicious attack, burning 17 homes, and the Meitei armed vigilante group Arambai Tenggol allegedly raped, tortured and burnt alive 31-year-old Zosangkim Hmar, a loving mother of 3 small children.
On November 11, a group of 10 Hmar youth village volunteers, including a minor, were brutally killed at Jakuradhor by the Central Reserve Police Force and the state police, with reports revealing that they sustained multiple bullet injuries, most of which were fired from behind, while some of them had their eyes gouged. This is the level of inhumane state treatment of the volunteers labelled “militants”.
The Central Coordination Committee (CCC) of the Young Mizo Association on November 13, issued a resolution, deeply condemning the murder of Zosangkim Hmar as well as the subsequent killings of the Hmar youth. Hundreds of individuals from the Zo ethnic communities, dressed in black, took to the streets in Lamka, a Zomi-Kuki-dominated area in Churachandpur carrying empty coffins in solidarity with the 10 village volunteers.
Also read: Manipur Tapes: Did Biren Singh Get Banned Militant Groups to ‘Join Together’ With the Police?
Moreover, at least six innocent Meitei civilians – 3 women and 3 children – were also allegedly killed by Kukis in Jiribam. Several organisations thereafter urged the United Nations to pressure the Indian government into arresting those responsible for the brutal killings and demanded immediate action under the Geneva Conventions Act, 1960, and relevant domestic laws via a memorandum addressed to the UN Secretary-General.
In addition to being a degrading act, this selective criminal labelling is also an act of coercive state control, demonstrating how institutional authority constructs narratives to undermine grassroots defence efforts and divert attention away from the state’s inability to protect vulnerable groups. Such labelling is consistent with theories of power, which hold it as a strategy for preserving composure and guaranteeing that acts of resistance, even those motivated by survival, are not considered to be within the bounds of acceptable social action.
As Howard Becker argues, deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to that act, and the ability to label and to have those labels accepted as legitimate is a form of power held predominantly by those in positions of authority.
What has the Supreme Court done?
Last year, the Supreme Court slammed the investigation carried out by the Manipur police in relation to this ethnic violence as “lethargic” and went to the extent of saying that there is “absolute breakdown of law and order and machinery of the state”.
The top court was aghast to note that FIRs were not registered for nearly three months after the occurrences and only few arrests had been made so far. In August 2023, a bench of then Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra had set up a committee, led by Justice Gita Mittal from the Jammu & Kashmir high court, to supervise “diverse aspects of a humanitarian nature” in Manipur. This committee was authorised to submit its reports directly to the court.
Manipur has experienced recurrent instances of armed looting since the onset of this violence along with destruction of properties. Recently, joint operations in Manipur by the Indian Army and state police seized weapons and explosives and busted hideouts. Last month, the Supreme Court directed the Manipur government to disclose details of properties destroyed or encroached after violence and instructed the Mittal Committee monitoring rehabilitation in Manipur to share its report with petitioners.
But barring this, as critiqued here, even the Supreme Court has failed to hold any effective hearings or pass corresponding orders in the past year to hold authorities accountable and help rebuild the trust of the people of Manipur.
Violence and terror against women and children
Instances of violence against women and children in Manipur – like the viral sexual assault video from 2023 of two Kuki women paraded naked and molested by Meitei men that shocked the country – demonstrate the nature of crime where sexual assault and rape are deployed as tool for revenge against the community. In addition to causing the victim physical, mental and psychological suffering, such crimes are especially used to control, humiliate and exercise dominance over the victim and their community.
The idea of phallocentric power that governs these situations, where women’s bodies are utilised as battlegrounds, is progressively becoming a recognised and essential domestic and global dispute.
Also read: Kuki Woman From Viral Video Speaks Out on Sexual Assault, Witnessing Murders
Even the United Nations (UN) is tasked with protecting populations from sexual violence in the wake of armed conflict. The purpose of the 24 UN agencies that make up UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict is to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, enhance accountability and meet the needs of survivors both during and after the armed conflict. Its goal is also to close important knowledge gaps and produce training materials, policy and guidelines to support evidence-based prevention and response to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV).
With a renewed emphasis on CRSV prevention, including addressing its structural root causes, it created a new strategic framework (2020–2025) that emphasises a holistic and survivor-centred approach.
Law, governance and blame game
In November 2024, CM Singh placed the blame for the ongoing violence squarely on senior Congress MP P Chidambaram and the party, accusing them of instigating the unrest, arguing that “the present crisis is not an ethnic conflict, it is the problem of illegal migration of people from Myanmar and drug smuggling.”
Chidambaram had stated, “It is more understanding: that the Meitei, the Kuki-Zo and the Naga can live together in one state only if they have genuine regional autonomy.” The Congress, however, soon distanced itself from this comment.
While CM Singh’s claims are supported by the Coordination Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), the Meira Paibis – a women’s group for the Meiteis – hold the central government accountable for the relentless violence.
This ongoing violence highlights the complete breakdown of law and order in the state. In another significant political shift, on November 17, 2024, 11 members of the legislative assembly from the National People’s Party (NPP) defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), further intensifying the political turmoil in the region.
Conrad K. Sangma, the national president of the NPP and the CM of Meghalaya, wrote to BJP president Nadda, expressing the party’s belief that the Manipur government, led by Biren Singh “completely failed” to end the crisis and bring the state back to normalcy.
There must be a start
It seems that perhaps the most viable solution to the ongoing crisis and for both communities is to establish parallel trust through meaningful dialogue and to pursue a form of self-autonomy, such as a Union Territory with its own legislature.
Violence is not the answer, especially considering the deep divisions between the Meiteis and the Zomi-Kuki-Mizo tribes, which are geographically, socially, politically and economically separated. It is imperative that justice be served for the victims and survivors from both communities.
As the conflict enters its 21st month, prolonged by insufficient action from the Union and state governments, there is still no sign of respite or resolution – only a deepening hatred, grief and frustration within the affected communities. The longer this violence continues, the greater will be the destruction of, inter alia, the right to life and of dignity of the people of Manipur that the Indian Constitution guarantees under Article 21.
Moreover, to promote lasting mutual respect and harmony, the harmful and persistent labelling of one community as narco-terrorists, illegal immigrants or poppy growers must also come to an immediate end.
To be hopeful, at this juncture, of an initiation of the healing process might seem difficult but perhaps a start could be with Modi extending the dignity of hearing the people of Manipur. Would it not be fitting for him as their prime minister to at least visit their land and record in person the deep concerns about the violation of rights of victims and survivors of this seemingly unending ethnic violence? Would it not be fitting for him to just listen to the oral testimony of their pain and suffering with humility? Only through understanding, collaboration and efforts to bring justice can a sustainable peace – which often seems so fragile in this region – be achieved.
Dr. Langthianmung Vualzong is an alumnus of the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU, New Delhi.
Dr. Shailesh Kumar is a lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London and a Commonwealth Scholar.
