New Delhi’s self-inflicted wound in Manipur has deepened. The devastating confrontation engineered between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities has evolved into a far more complex crisis, with the fractured security landscape compounded by growing Kuki-Naga conflict. The killing of three tribal church pastors from the Thadou Baptist Association of India while they were returning from peace talks on May 13, resulted in retaliatory abductions, and the subsequent killing of six abducted Naga civilians by Kuki insurgents, despite the safe return of Kuki abductees by Naga groups, demonstrating how rapidly the conflict had descended into increasingly barbaric forms. As identity politics is weaponised and ethnic hatred normalised, violence is inflating well beyond its original protagonists.
Three years after the ethnic violence erupted in May 2023, Manipur remains physically divided, thousands remain displaced, villages have been destroyed, livelihoods disrupted, and confidence in state institutions is virtually non-existent. Massive deployments of Central security forces have prevented an even greater catastrophe, but military containment cannot substitute for political resolution.
Kuki-Naga tensions in Manipur have a long history, and periodic low-grade conflict is not unusual over contested territories and political frictions. Indeed, between 1992 and 1997, escalating violence between militant elements of the two groups resulted in hundreds of fatalities, though the conflict thereafter remained largely dormant or sporadic. The current crisis, however, overlaps with a collapse of government authority and credibility, as well as public trust, with non-state armed actors steadily expanding their role and influence.
Crucially, simmering disputes were transformed into sustained ethnic warfare as a result of the systematic mobilisation of ethnic hatred and fear by political actors, militant organisations and sections of civil society that have increasingly sought to harness a vicious and polarising identity politics.
The descent into mutually reinforcing hatred in Manipur represents one of the gravest failures of democratic politics in India since Independence. Instead of moderating conflict, reassuring competing communities and preserving confidence in the neutrality of the state, the political leadership, both Central and State, did the opposite, inflaming passions and destroying faith in administrative impartiality. Administrative decisions are now viewed through ethnic lenses, political rhetoric has deepened communal suspicions, and trust in public institutions has steadily evaporated. While the state government was essentially part of the mischief that provoked the initial conflagration, the Union Government failed to articulate a credible political roadmap capable of rebuilding trust among Manipur’s fractured communities. Massive deployments of Central security forces may suppress violence, but they cannot reconcile communities. Without sustained political engagement, ethnic segregation and the extremist narrative has strengthened month after month, making coexistence virtually impossible.
The consequences extend beyond Manipur. Bordering an unstable Myanmar, the state lies astride expanding narcotics trafficking networks and long-established insurgent corridors that exploit weak governance and porous frontiers. Continuing political fragmentation is creating vulnerabilities extending across India’s fragile Northeast.
The symbolic character of the recent violence is particularly disturbing. The murder of church leaders engaged in peace initiatives sends an unmistakable message that moderation itself has become a target. Those seeking dialogue increasingly find themselves threatened by extremists on all sides whose political relevance depends on perpetuating fear and radical communal mobilisation. Every successful effort at reconciliation weakens the influence of armed organisations and ethnic entrepreneurs; every fresh atrocity strengthens their claim that coexistence has become impossible. The killing of religious leaders was not merely another criminal act but an assault on the very possibility of political reconciliation
Manipur today suffers not merely from ethnic division but from a collapse of political responsibility. The killing of peace emissaries, the descent into reciprocal hostage-taking and the murder of abducted civilians should dispel any illusion that the crisis is a conventional law-and-order problem. The conflict is becoming progressively more fragmented, more communal, and more resistant to resolution. Unless India’s political leadership rejects the cynical politics of hatred and restores confidence in constitutional governance, Manipur risks becoming a permanent theatre of overlapping ethnic conflicts whose consequences will reach far beyond the state’s borders.
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