In the hills of Manipur, a heavy silence lingers—not the kind that follows resolution, but one born of chaos, pain, and abandonment. Gunfire, the burning of homes, and cries of desperation have all preceded this silence, now bearing the weight of deep ethnic divisions. In both the hills and the valley, childhoods are being reshaped by trauma.
Young people are learning more about ethnic fault lines than they are about shared futures. Hatred is no longer merely political; it has become inherited, lived, and institutionalised. Generations are growing up in relief camps. Ancestral lands lie scarred by arson and occupation. Roads that once connected villages now serve as mental borders, and neighbours once bound by shared histories are estranged by fear.
This is the silence of a people forsaken by the very institutions meant to protect them—a silence that echoes with unheard voices, unanswered pleas, and a grief that remains unacknowledged.
The extension of President’s Rule in Manipur is a fragile truce, not a resolution. It is a temporary suspension of visible violence, while the deeper fault lines remain unaddressed.
This ongoing armed conflict, which began in May 2023, is not a sudden eruption—it is the consequence of decades of systemic neglect and centuries of calculated division. The roots of this catastrophe stretch as far back as colonial rule, when the British first separated the hills and the valley through distinct administrative structures—dividing the people to rule them more easily.
This colonial fracture, which treated the Meitei-dominated valley and the tribal-inhabited hills as separate political spheres, laid the groundwork for entrenched inequality and identity-based governance.
Post-Independence India did little to bridge this divide, allowing it to harden into political, economic, and emotional fault lines. The present-day conflict is not the result of a single spark—it ignited a tinderbox long primed by layered tensions.
At the core lies the Meitei demand for Scheduled Tribe status, driven by fears of land scarcity in the valley, which comprises just 10% of the state’s geography. This aspiration collides with the existential anxieties of the Kuki-Zo and Naga communities, who view it as a threat to their constitutionally protected hill areas that span 90% of the state.
These tensions are deepened by decades of political marginalization, as successive governments failed to fairly represent or develop the hill regions. Real and complex issues—like the refugee influx from Myanmar and poppy cultivation—have been weaponized to stoke division, selectively criminalizing entire communities through labels like “illegal immigrants” or “drug mafias.”
For the Kuki-Zo, this narrative has been especially dehumanizing, used to justify disproportionate violence and silence legitimate concerns. The result is a breakdown in trust not just with neighbouring communities, but with the state itself. Accused of bias and inaction, government institutions have lost credibility, prompting the rise of “village volunteers” and grassroots resistance—an assertion of self-defence in the absence of state protection.
For the Meitei community too, the losses have been immense. The fear of cultural dilution, of landlessness in their own ancestral valley, and of a future slipping away from their grasp is not unfounded. Families displaced from border villages, the psychological toll of sustained violence, and the frustration of feeling unheard by the same State they were once central to—this is grief, too.
Generations of memories etched into the streets of Imphal now bear the shadow of barricades and distrust. At the same time, a deafening void from both state and central leadership has created a dangerous vacuum where propaganda thrives and nuance disappears.
If this void isn’t engineered to divide, it reflects deeper structural failures—an institutional paralysis shaped by risk aversion and an unwillingness to confront uncomfortable truths.
It is the byproduct of a “security-first” doctrine that prioritizes the containment of unrest over addressing its root causes, often worsening the very grievances it aims to suppress.
It stems from political games and power struggles that keep any unified, humane response from taking shape and is rooted in the long-standing marginalization of the Northeast, whose suffering rarely provokes urgency in the national conscience. Whether through deliberate inaction or bureaucratic failure, this strategic absence has allowed pain and bitterness to fester.
President’s Rule may have temporarily quieted the gunfire, but it has not begun to mend the deeper tear in the social fabric. Peace cannot be imagined in this moment without confronting the magnitude of what has been lost—not just lives, but the fragile threads of coexistence. We cannot demand peace from those still burying their dead. Nor can we expect healing from institutions that continue to remain silent.
But we must ask ourselves: how long can we live with the belief that we are only victims? Marginalized by the Centre, neglected in policy, ignored in the national conscience—yes. But if we remain in this posture forever, we risk becoming authors of our own decline.
The future of Manipur—our culture, our identity, our land—is not a fight between communities. It is a reckoning with our past and a challenge to reimagine our future. We are a border state, yes—but more than that, we are a living story of resistance, survival, and plurality.
In times like these, when even the central government chooses indifference, we as the people of this land must decide whether our unity is transactional—based on profit and political expediency—or transformational.
Because this is no longer just about resolving a conflict. It is about refusing to let our future be dictated by old wounds.
And so we must ask: In a democracy where power is meant to be of the people, by the people, and for the people—when a state like Manipur is caught in a crisis this deep, is the only solution a stabilizing control from the Centre? Or is it time we hand the mandate back to the people themselves?
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