On October 17, 2026, Kuki villages across Northeast India remembered the 109th anniversary of the Anglo-Kuki War (1917-1919). It is a day deeply rooted in their history of anti-colonial resistance. But in Kamjong district, that memory was met with gunfire.
Chassad, a nearly two-century-old Kuki village, was under attack in broad daylight, allegedly involving NSCN-IM cadres. The assault began when the village chief, accompanied by members of the village authority, went to repair local electricity lines.
What followed was a brutal 4-to-5-hour siege involving heavy automatic weapons, mortars, and bombs. This attack left one villager dead, injured four others, including the village chief, Thangjahou Haokip, and at least 15 houses were torched.
The Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) condemned the incident and called for immediate deployment of central security forces to protect vulnerable Kuki-Zo settlements.
This wasn’t a sudden flare-up. Just last week, another raid on Chassad left a 42-year-old woman and another villager dead. For the people living there, these regular attacks by the neighbouring Tangkhul community, allegedly backed by the NSCN-IM, feel like a systematic campaign to push them out completely.
In fact, in its statement, CoTU called the latest attack on Chassad an orchestrated attempt to “evict the entire Kuki-zo community” from Tangkhul-dominated areas.
A village trapped on a volatile border
Chassad sits deep in the rugged hills of the Kamjong district, situated about 120 km east of Imphal near the India-Myanmar border. This location makes it an important international frontier corridor.
For anyone outside Northeast India, this isn’t just a remote tribal settlement; it’s a frontline gateway tied directly to the unstable political landscape of northwestern Myanmar. Because Kamjong is overwhelmingly Tangkhul Naga territory, Chassad is a demographically isolated Kuki enclave, surrounded by and cut off from larger Kuki-Zo areas.
What deepens the gravity of the latest attack is how it pierced right through a heavily fortified state security corridor. Chassad directly neighbours Kamjong, the district headquarters, and a local police station sits right between them.
Following the total burning of Chassad village in 2020, a company of the Manipur Rifles was permanently deployed here. Security was tightened further in February this year after the Litan incident, when Border Security Force (BSF) units were positioned between that police station and Chassad village.
Most recently, on October 9, an additional company of the Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) was deployed to the very same police station.
A local source, on the condition of anonymity, reveals that despite this multi-layered security buffer, the broad daylight attack on Chassad reportedly originated from the area where the IRB and BSF forces were deployed.
Following the latest incident, on October 18, 2026, the state government issued a transfer order for the Superintendent of Police (SP) In-Charge of Kamjong, Tholu Rocky, to an Assistant Director post at the Manipur Police Training College (MPTC). He was replaced by Jay Barange, IPS.
In a statement released that same day, the Chassad Village Authority reiterated the breakdown of local trust by demanding an immediate, “impartial security deployment” to secure the area.
Why the village chief is a target
The continued violence against Chassad cannot be solely attributed to its direct neighbours. It is also due to its role as a historic geopolitical anchor, a legal barrier against exclusive territorial mapping, and the symbolic heart of Kuki heritage in eastern Manipur.
The alleged NSCN IM-backed Tangkhul community’s campaign to remove Chassad points directly to the village’s status in Kuki society. The village, in traditional Kuki governance and history, is recognised as the hereditary seat of the Pipa, the senior-most patrilineal head of the Haokip clan.
In the traditional Kuki chieftainship system, the chief holds absolute rights over the land and protects the community’s territory. Because Chassad represents the highest level of this traditional authority, its very existence guarantees a permanent Kuki presence in the eastern hills.
For any groups trying to project these hills as an exclusively Naga space, Chassad is a major obstacle. Displacing its people and targeting Chief Thangjahou Haokip is a direct attempt to break the traditional framework that gives Kukis a legitimate claim to the land.
The battle over maps and boundaries
The political engine behind this pressure can be viewed in sync with the NSCN-IM’s vision of Greater Nagaland. The insurgent group is looking to consolidate all Naga-inhabited areas of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, and Myanmar into a single autonomous territory.
Chassad physically breaks the continuity of the NSCN-IM’s territorial claims. By using local mobs to terrorise, burn houses, and displace Kuki villages, armed groups are trying to create an exclusively Tangkhul demographic before any final peace accord is signed with New Delhi.
This displacement is already a reality in the surrounding hills. In April this year, the neighbouring Kuki village of Khoikai, home to roughly 40 households, was completely abandoned as residents fled out of fear.
The strategy appears to have gained fresh urgency following the Indian Central government’s recent agreement to include a Union Minister or a panel of Union-level Ministers in the peace talks, a concession that fulfils a longstanding NSCN-IM demand for high-level political representation in the negotiations.
The battle over archives: The 1945 land ruling
Historically, the Tangkhul and larger Naga tribes in Manipur have viewed the Kuki community through a lens of exclusion, frequently labelling them as “migratory settlers.” This stance was explicitly highlighted by NSCN-IM leader Thuingaleng Muivah during a 2019 exclusive interview with NorthEast Live, where he claimed that “Kukis are not indigenous; they are refugees.”
A similar narrative was later popularised by former Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, who borrowed the underlying idea but shifted the rhetoric to term them “illegal immigrants.”
However, in the case of Chassad, official historical records tell a very different story. The village’s territorial legitimacy is written into colonial administrative history, and the 1907 British Kuki Hills Map recognised the area as a core Kuki domain.
On the ground, the local excuse for violence usually involves a boundary dispute with the neighbouring Tangkhul village of Sampui. Sampui claims ancestral ownership, but on July 6, 1945, the British Sub-Divisional Officer of Ukhrul, R.L. Shaw, settled the matter in Civil Case No. 36 of 1944-45.
The court rejected Sampui’s claims, ruling that the land belonged to the Chief of Chassad and that Sampui residents were only permitted to use certain areas under specific rules.
Because the village’s land claims are rooted in these colonial deeds, physical violence was accompanied by a literal attempt to destroy their archives. During the arson attack in March 2020, a mob torched over 140 houses in Chassad, an assault that community leaders say intentionally targeted family libraries and official land records.
In a June 2020 report for The Wire, Hoineilhing Sitlhou and Zamminlien noted that when the village chief’s wife, Lamneihoi, fled to a nearby army camp for shelter during the attack with the legal land deeds.
The cost of inaction
Chassad is not being attacked over a simple argument between farmers. It is being targeted because its history, its legal deeds, and its very presence stand in the way of absolute territorial monopolies sought by powerful insurgent forces.
Until the state steps in to enforce the rule of law, honours historical land records, and actively protects vulnerable minority enclaves in ethnic-majority districts, Chassad will remain a precarious frontline in Manipur’s enduring war over cartography.
Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue.
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