It is 3pm and the sun is blazing down. The lush green plains and paddy fields readied for sowing are in the shade of the mountains. A smartly dressed Rameshwar Basnet, 48, wearing sunglasses, staggers out from a hutment, seemingly quite drunk. Almost zombie-like, he asks: “Daju (elder brother in Nepali), could you lend me a tenner?”
Basnet (named changed) is a resident of Kanglatongbi, a Nepali-dominated settlement near National Highway 37, located in a ‘buffer zone’ demarcating Meitei and Kuki areas. One could only guess what would make a man want to stay drunk all the time. After all, prolonged unrest has its own way of extracting a toll.
Edging close, a CRPF trooper, a rifle cradled in his thick arms, quietly says: “Why does the media not report about how bad things really are? You all say things are normalising. They are not.”
After decades of insurgencies—Naga, Meitei and Kuki—Manipur had seen the green shoots of peace for the last six to seven years. But, the current ethnic turmoil has taken the state back to where it was. Moreover, it could be much worse as, unlike in the past, the social fabric is in tatters. Sapam Bishwajit Meitei, an Imphal-based senior advocate, says: “For the last few years, the long-suffering people saw hopes of peace returning and businesses flourishing. But these latest flare-ups have taken the state back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. Civil strife has set in. One can only hope and pray that sense prevails.”
The situation in Manipur is a nightmare for both the North Block and the South Block. The North Block houses the home ministry, while the defence and foreign ministries are in the South Block. The crisis in the border state may have compelled India's defence secretary, Giridhar Aramane, to rush to Myanmar's capital Nay Pyi Taw on June 30 for a two-day visit. Manipur shares a 398km-long, heavily forested and porous international border with Myanmar; most insurgent groups active in the northeast have their main bases and training centres in Myanmar.
An official press release said that Aramane met Myanmar's military ruler, General Min Aung Hlaing, and his defence minister, General (retired) Mya Tun Oo, and discussed issues relating to maintaining “tranquility in the border areas, illegal transborder movement and transnational crimes such as drug trafficking and smuggling”.
A new dimension to the geopolitics in Myanmar is the entry of the US with its $136 million funding for pro-democracy groups and humanitarian aid. The possibility of the funding translating into military help to pro-democracy activists cannot be ruled out.
China is observing the unrest in Manipur closely. State-owned media have published numerous articles deliberating the issue. The headlines are telling: “Next Ukraine? The gunshots sounded for the division of India…”; “The Indian ethnic conflict situation is completely out of control”. China’s influence with the Tatamadaw (Myanmar military) complicates things further.
Epicentre: Assam Rifles personnel at Churachandpur | Salil Bera
China has been a big factor in the history of insurgency in the northeast. Mizos, Nagas, Meiteis, and Assamese have in the past sought weapons and arms training from China.
The northeast region is surrounded by foreign countries on all sides and connected to the Indian mainland by just 2 per cent of the land boundary. All rail and road links run through this narrow “chicken’s neck” and it is well within the line of sight of the Jampheri Ridge—a highland in Bhutan. China’s desire to hold the high ridge is believed to be one of the main reasons for the 73-day Doklam standoff in 2017.
Lieutenant General Harjit Singh Sahi, commander of the Army’s III Corps, told THE WEEK: “Our preparedness on the India-Myanmar border to increase our deployment and surveillance is adequate to ensure that we are able to prevent any infiltration that can take place from the international border. We have taken a number of measures to enhance surveillance by way of remotely-piloted vehicles and quadcopters, and area domination patrols.” The III Corps, based in Dimapur, Nagaland, is responsible for the entire stretch of the Manipur-Myanmar border.
According to the UN, after the February 1, 2021, coup in Myanmar, 8,250 (mainly Chin) refugees have entered Manipur—apart from another 40,150 in Mizoram.
The situation in Manipur means that India’s Act East Policy is hit hard. The AEP seeks to leverage northeast India’s close cultural and ethnic ties with southeast Asian nations. It is through Manipur and Mizoram that the connect is sought to be established. Persistent instability in this area will cripple the AEP. “Proper activation of the AEP would have benefitted the region immensely,” says Angom Dilip Kumar Singh, who teaches physics at Manipur University. “With the current disturbance in Manipur, that is in question now. Also, the entire region has become a fertile ground for the interplay of global powers, including China, whose interest and influence in Myanmar are well-known. Of immense concern is the way narcotics trade and poppy cultivation have increased. Who is benefitting from it is a key question.”
The 35,000-strong Manipur Police is credited for having erected a robust security architecture in the restive state. But, this time, it was totally divided along ethnic lines and disintegrated. The lack of coordination among the paramilitary forces, too, was all but apparent. The near-collapse of the security architecture created a vicious circle—for peace, everyone should be disarmed and weapons looted from police armouries returned, but the public on both sides see arms as necessary to protect and defend.
The violence caused a two-way exodus—Kukis leaving the Meitei-dominated valley to return to the hills and vice versa. Brigadier Michael D’Souza, who commands the HQ 27 Assam Rifles at Churachandpur, tells THE WEEK: “Now even geography is accentuating the divide.”
The Meiteis are in the 2,400sqkm Imphal valley, comprising about 10 per cent of the state’s land area—almost like a football pitch surrounded by mountains. The hills begin about 50km, in any direction, from the centre of Imphal.
The fault lines between the two communities are not new. The genesis lies in the Treaty of Yandabo signed between the British and Burma in 1826. This pact divided the topography into spaces for communities based on ethnicity. But, with arable and fertile land gradually becoming scarce, the ethnic communities had to look for their own lebensraum or living spaces.
Meitei valley-based insurgencies peaked in the 2003-2012 period. Kuki outfits, too, took to the gun with demands ranging from greater autonomy to sovereignty. Valley-based insurgent groups lost relevance and faded out, and more than 20 Kuki outfits inked suspension of operation pacts. “But, the current turmoil brought these extremist elements of both sides to the forefront by making them relevant once more,” says a top military source. “Manipur is now fertile ground for secessionist ideology. The militarisation of society is complete. The big fear is that the conflagration in Manipur may now slip into the counterinsurgency/counterterror domain.”
Interactions by THE WEEK with the general public—both Meiteis and Kukis—the security personnel, and intelligence officials corroborated this fear.
Concomitant with a new lease of life for insurgent elements, the demand among the Kuki-Chin-Mizo group—collectively termed the Zo or Zomi—to seek a homeland has also gained ground. Since 1988, the Zo Re-Unification Organisation (ZORO) has sought one administrative umbrella for Zomi people across Myanmar, multiple Indian states and Bangladesh. George Guite, a ZORO general secretary, tells THE WEEK: “Our forefathers helped the Manipuri Meitei king ward off Burmese invaders. And then artificial boundaries drawn by the British divided the Kuki nation. This battle in Manipur will go on till the other side ceases to attack and we get a homeland.”
Chongboi Haokip, a Kuki student's organisation functionary, adds a feisty demand: “Before any reconciliatory moves, there will have to be administrative separation between the Kukis and the Meiteis. Only then we will sit down and talk.”
There are three vital points regarding the prevailing situation. Firstly, after being sparked by the May 3 protest march, the sudden speed and manner of the spread of the violence was remarkable. This indicates planning. Secondly, the failure of the intelligence agencies to report the build-up in both the hills and the valley and the quick emergence of the vigilante groups and civil society groups on both sides speak of high-level organising ability. Thirdly, it seems impossible that the Meitei-Kuki ethnic divide in the state police force would not have been noticed. This one factor hastened the erosion of the authority of the state apparatus.
The Manipur conflict has the potential to change the politics of the entire region and take it back to the days of widespread insurgency and the resultant strong-arm tactics by the state. Amid the enveloping air of despondency, the only glimmer of hope is the firm belief among small sections on both sides that the way out is a political solution, something most people THE WEEK spoke to on both sides of the divide agreed to.
Meanwhile, there is another battle—for medicines in relief camps. “We have a lot of ill people,” says Kennedy Haokip, information secretary of an NGO housing 12,000 displaced Kukis in Churachandpur. “A few days back we had a death at childbirth as we did not have adequate facilities.” Unsurprisingly, the story in the relief camps in the valley is not much different.
A helpless and insecure people divided by partisan emotions; a broken state structure; a history of sub-nationalism and a sensitive, geostrategic zone, where global powers are eager to play their own games—the mix could not have been worse.