Ethnic violence in India explained

Kuki women wait to be evacuated to a safe haven by the Indian army

- Advertisement -

The ethnoreligious violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur between Meiteis and Kukis has been ongoing since May, but it was only in July 2023 when a video went viral in India showing two women being paraded naked that the world began to pay attention to the situation in earnest.

One of the women was reportedly sexually assaulted after the conclusion of the video. Calls for accountability came from all quarters, including the Indian Supreme Court, and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Hindu ultranationalist leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, was forced to break his conspicuous silence on the conflict in Manipur.

The majority of the conflict has been dominated by Meitei mobs, who are Hindu, attacking the Christan, mainly Protestant, Kukis. The Meiteis have been looting and burning down churches and homes and murdering people, though numerous attacks by the Kukis have also occurred. More than 200 people have been killed as of September 20, with about two-thirds being Kuki and one-third being Meitei. However, property damage is extensive, and tens of thousands of people have been displaced.

“How can we coexist with people who are constantly attacking us and want us to be annihilated… All we want from the government now is a separate administration,” one Kuki farmer said to the New Humanitarian.

In some ways, understanding the violence in Manipur is simple: the Meiteis, who are in the majority, are attacking the minority Kuki community under the auspices of the newly ensconced Hindu right-wing government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party at the state level. It is a playbook that goes back at least two decades to the BJP and allied right-wing Hindu organizations’ 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat.

The BJP and its affiliated paramilitary groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have sought to establish themselves in Manipur as in many other parts of the country. In 2017, the BJP won enough seats in state elections to displace the then-ruling Congress Party through a minority government for the first time. In 2022, it won enough seats to form a majority government at the state level. The emergence of Hinduized communal (sectarian) politics at the state level has led to ethnoreligious violence along with an internet blackout in Manipur.

But as with so much else in India’s ethnically and politically fragmented northeast, the devil is in the details. The northeast is connected to the rest of the Indian subcontinent through a narrow stretch of land referred to as the “Chicken’s Neck.” It is where the country narrows to less than 15 miles between Bangladesh and Nepal.

Manipur is one of eight northeastern states and can be broken down into two major areas defined by geography: the hills and the Imphal Valley. In Manipur, the Kukis live predominantly in the hills while the Meiteis primarily occupy the valley. The other communities of the state— the Nagas, for example, another Scheduled Tribe (ST) — the government designation for Indigenous people — who also live in the hills, and the Pangals, who are Muslim Meiteis — have largely been sitting out this conflict.

Further complicating matters, the Kukis can be broken down into individual tribes, viewed as “new” or “old” Kukis depending on when they migrated to Manipur, and are considered as part of a larger agglomeration of related peoples outside of Manipur. The latter are known as the Zo or the Kuki-Zo communities of Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh.

The trigger for the recent conflict was a Manipuri court decision in March that would have paved the road for the Meiteis to also secure ST status, which they don’t currently have, and would have conferred several benefits under India’s affirmative action system. The Kukis, already economically, demographically, and—consequently—politically weaker in the state fear the added privileges that the Meiteis would get if the latter were designated a Scheduled Tribe.

A Kuki home burns after being attacked by an ethnic Meitei mob.

In particular, they have been worried about a land grab by the Meiteis in the hills, which ST status for Meiteis would permit as under the current law, “non-tribals, including the Meiteis, cannot purchase land in the hills,” according to Outlook. The Kukis have also been protesting the fact that the Meiteis already benefit from other affirmative action designations, and adding this new boost would provide them complete dominance in a state that they already largely control: two-thirds of the state legislature’s seats come from the Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley, with only one-third from the hills.

The Kukis have lived in Manipur for an indeterminate amount of time, but the question of how long they have lived there is deeply contested currently. Arguments that the Kukis migrated to the state in the last few centuries or were “planted” by the British are used to create a narrative about them not being native residents of Manipur, paving the way for potential ethnic cleansing. In facing the threat of expropriation from their current land in Manipur, the Kukis suffer a fate similar to other hill peoples elsewhere, such as the Basques and the Kurds in other regions of the world. Meanwhile, arguments in favor of the Kukis having lived in Manipur for centuries are used to establish a basis for their rights and autonomy.

The Meiteis, for their part, argue that the ST status is necessary for them to protect their culture, and point, in particular, to an alleged influx of migrants from Myanmar and the growing of opium in the hills. But many like Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh have taken to using this language to depict Kukis as outsiders to the state, and ethnic divisions between the Kukis and the Meiteis are now sharper than they were before the outbreak of violence.

According to a source-based outside Manipur, who wished to stay anonymous for fear of retribution, the largely unchecked violence in the state was “backed by the state in some way or another.” This observer said it was impossible that three months of unchecked mob violence could continue without some level of tolerance by the Manipur government. He noted that the viral video of the sexual assault incident shows how the police were standing by and not intervening.

He further said that the thousands of arms looted from armories and police stations could not have been taken without a level of complicity by the state. However, it should be noted that in past incidents, such as the Maoist acquisition of arms in India, weapons have been obtained on a mass scale without the government’s involvement or consent.

Finally, the observer said that even before the current conflict, the Manipur state government had begun to take over land in the hills through various means in order to circumvent authorities in Kuki-dominated areas who are meant to have a say under the current law.

The worst of the communal violence in Manipur has largely abated. But with thousands of Kukis having fled the Imphal Valley and no clear resolution on the question of ST status for Meiteis and land, it is unlikely that this is the last we will hear of violent communal conflicts in Manipur.

- Advertisement -

Subscribe to our newsletter

A freelance writer, editor, and activist based in Long Island, New York

Latest

EU officially implements landmark AI law

The EU officially implemented its new landmark AI law...

Trump administration unleashes first sanctions on Iranian shadow fleet

On February 6, the Department of the Treasury unleashed...

Tariff Trouble in Trump Town

President Trump has had many a cartoon about him...

Global reaction to Trump tariffs only reinforces his use of this tired and risky strategy

True to form, U.S. President Donald Trump disrupted global...

Don't miss

EU officially implements landmark AI law

The EU officially implemented its new landmark AI law...

Trump administration unleashes first sanctions on Iranian shadow fleet

On February 6, the Department of the Treasury unleashed...

Tariff Trouble in Trump Town

President Trump has had many a cartoon about him...

Global reaction to Trump tariffs only reinforces his use of this tired and risky strategy

True to form, U.S. President Donald Trump disrupted global...

The New Face of an Old Enemy: The renewed dangers of ISIS and al-Qaeda

A dangerous cocktail of indifference and complacency enabled al-Qaeda...

EU officially implements landmark AI law

The EU officially implemented its new landmark AI law on February 2, aiming to ensure safety and ethical use of Artificial Intelligence. The European...

Trump administration unleashes first sanctions on Iranian shadow fleet

On February 6, the Department of the Treasury unleashed the first wave of the new Trump administration’s economic sanctions using the tried-and-true U.S. Government/Treasury...

Tariff Trouble in Trump Town

President Trump has had many a cartoon about him as a child throwing toys and anything to hand out of the playpen. Now, of...

Global reaction to Trump tariffs only reinforces his use of this tired and risky strategy

True to form, U.S. President Donald Trump disrupted global markets with a three-day surge of tariff announcements, border security negotiations and ultimately a 30-day...

The New Face of an Old Enemy: The renewed dangers of ISIS and al-Qaeda

A dangerous cocktail of indifference and complacency enabled al-Qaeda to evolve from a shadowy fringe network in the early 1990s into one of the...

EU-Central Asia Civil Society Forum enhances regional cooperation, sustainable development

Almaty, the largest city and former capital of Kazakhstan, hosted the fifth EU-Central Asia Civil Society Forum on January 28-30, focusing on digital transformation,...

Donald Trump is inaugurated amidst promises of security, stability and prosperity

After storming a frigid Washington D.C. during his extended inauguration festivities on January 20, Donald J Trump, America’s 47th and 45th President, launched a...

The heat is on Trump’s fossil fuel push, climate change pushback

2024 has officially been confirmed as the warmest year on record, with global temperatures surpassing the 1.5°C threshold mentioned in the Paris Agreement, Alberto...