President’s rule in Manipur has completed three weeks. Initial apprehension among ordinary folks that this would be a bulldozer on a rampage is giving way to appreciation of what are seen as positive steps to bring back peace and normalcy in the state ravaged by a brutal and bitter ethnic conflict between the Kuki-Zo group of tribes and the Meiteis. This optimism notwithstanding, there can be no gainsaying that the road ahead will have many challenges.
Under the leadership of Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla, the Governor-in-Council has already taken some bold steps, which unfortunately were conspicuous by their absence for close to two years of violent civil strife under a popular government. On February 20, the governor first called for surrendering all illegally held firearms by February 28, extending it to March 6.
The governor’s call has met with encouraging results, though not yet satisfactory. According to police records, in the immediate wake of the May 4 ethnic violence, violent mobs looted 6,020 firearms from police stations and armouries, mostly from the greater Imphal area. Other than these, there were also lootings from licensed armed stores, one of which was caught on multiple CCTV cameras of a private store in Churachandpur town on May 3 afternoon—the day the violence broke out—and became viral on the internet the same day.
On May 31, 2023, following an appeal by the then popular government, voluntary surrender of these stolen arms began in trickles. As of February 9, 2025, the day the then chief minister N Biren Singh resigned, paving the way for president’s rule by “suspended animation”, 3,422 stolen arms were voluntarily deposited or recovered.
Exactly a week after the declaration of the president’s rule on February 13, the governor’s stern order came for the rest of the stolen arms to be deposited by February 28, warning of consequences to the non-compliant. At the expiry of the deadline, about 700 more weapons were deposited, including, quite dramatically, 246 by Arambai Tenggol, formerly a cultural group of the Meiteis but radicalised and militarised since the outbreak of the ethnic violence.
This makes a little over 4,100 arms surrendered of the 6,020 looted. The governor had since extended the deadline for the surrender of the remaining 1,900-odd arms by March 6, and newspapers have been reporting a continued trickle of arms surrender daily ever since, both in the valley and the hills.
Though the extended March 6 deadline also lapsed, all missing arms are not back in police custody; an additional 189 firearms were surrendered between February 28 and March 6, bringing the total to 894 after the governor’s call. Since mobs, and not known organisations, did the looting, it is also speculated that some of the looted arms may have reached the hands of insurgents at their bases across the border in Myanmar through their supporters. The grapevine has it that some joined the mobs for a share of the loot only to sell them to the highest bidders.
What step the governor takes to recover the remaining weapons still on the loose is to be seen. A further extension of the deadline has not been announced by the time of publishing this column, so a mass combing operation by security forces might be on the anvil. It would not just be aimed at recovering more weapons, but be a show of authority in the spirit of Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as the wielder of monopoly over “legitimate violence”. Manipur’s problem thus far has been about the abject inability of the state to assert this authority, making many disregard it with impunity.
The other bold step the Governor-in-Council has chosen is to ensure free movement along all highways in the state by March 8. This followed a stern directive from Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah after a meeting with top state functionaries on February 27 in New Delhi.
This move, however, already faces a hurdle, with a Kuki-Zo civil society body, Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU), issuing a statement that it will not allow free movement in what it considers Kuki-Zo territory until the area is granted the status of a separate
Union Territory with a legislature.
This demand, however, is unlikely to be met, not just on account of Meiteis, who are averse to the idea of bifurcating Manipur, but because another major community in the state, the Nagas, cite history and official land records to claim that much of the lower hill tracts Kuki-Zo tribes are now settled in have always been theirs but were conditionally rented out to the latter or else have been encroached upon.
Like many hardline groups in the valley and hills, COTU came into prominence in the wake of the current ethnic bloodletting. When the March 8 deadline for allowing free movement expires, it remains to be seen whose writ runs—the state’s or someone else’s. Niccolo Machiavelli’s discussion in chapter 17 of his classic ‘The Prince’ is reminiscent here. In an ideal situation, the state must win both the love and the fear of its subjects, but if winning both becomes impossible, it cannot dispense with the fear—the fear of the law.
All said, even in the three weeks since the imposition of the president’s rule in the state, there is a noticeable change in the outlook of the public at large. Before its imposition, they watched the state descend into unending chaos and wished for change, yet most shuddered at the thought of the president’s rule. This is understandable because it is invoked amid crises, ensuring its memories are also associated with these crises.
These memories are fresh in Manipur, the state previously having been under the president’s rule ten times. The foisting of the president’s rule in the insurgency-torn state has, in the past, usually meant severely tough measures. The fear of direct central rule in the state is akin to childhood terror associated with visits to dentists. This time, too, iron-tough measures will likely be inevitable, but we do hope they come sheathed in velvet gloves.
(Views are personal)
(phanjoubam@gmail.com)
Pradip Phanjoubam | Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics