The killing of six Nagas, likely at the hands of Kuki militants, has raised fears about a return to the civil war between the two Christian communities in Manipur that characterized the 1990s.
On May 13, armed groups from both communities abducted 28 Kukis and 20 Nagas in Manipur; On May 15, after negotiations between community leaders in the presence of government authorities, 14 individuals from each community were released. The remaining 14 Kukis were released on June 9, but on June 10, security personnel discovered the mutilated bodies of the remaining six Nagas. The six dead included a priest, and their bodies were found near Kharam Vaifei (Kuki village) in Kangpokpi district of Manipur.
Speaking to the media at the mortuary of Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) Hospital, Imphal East District on June 11, the chief (head) of Konsakul village (Naga village in Kangpokpi district) Dr. Adam said that while the Nagas released 14 Kuki civilians after 27 days, they “obtained the mutilated bodies of the remaining six Nagas.” He demanded “immediate justice.”
The May kidnapping was the culmination of friction that had been building since February, after a drunken brawl in Litan Sarikhong in Ukhrul district. Following the fight, at least 50 homes were set on fire, including government buildings. Since then, according to reports, at least 20 people from the Naga and Kuki communities have been killed, including a truck driver, a resident of West Bengal, who was killed during an ambush by suspected militants on May 29 in Ukhrul.
There is no official consolidated death toll, but the Naga-Kuki violence has overshadowed the Kuki-Maiti clashes that have rocked the northeastern state since May 2023, killing more than 260 people (however, according to an RTI response, the government has already released 217 families as ex-gratia, but the death toll in the Manipur crisis remains unannounced) and displacing 58,881 according to the same RTI response. This violence led to the president’s term in office after the dismissal of the government. The new government was sworn in on February 4, and a few hours later the President’s Rule was abolished.
The violence is reminiscent of the 1990s, when Nagas and Kukis clashed over land, especially in Ukhrul, Senapati and Chandel, leading to the deaths of more than 1,450 people.
“What is happening between the Naga and Kuki communities currently can be viewed from two perspectives,” said Dhiren Sadukpam, an independent researcher and editor of Frontier Manipur, an online regional news portal. “First, the current conflict appears to be a continuation of the Naga-Kuki conflict of the mid-1990s, given their own processes of consolidating ethnic boundaries, territorial mapping and political aspirations. Second, my guess is based on influential invisible hands bent on making this happen. The division of Manipur into three regions was designed to The basis of an exclusive ethnic grouping to achieve this end.
Pradeep Vangupam, another senior journalist and editor of the Imphal Review of Arts and Politics, described the clashes as a land issue between the “sedentary population” and the “nomadic population”. He added that most Naga people are “sedentary people” while Kuki are usually “nomadic people”.
Two Kuki Zo apex bodies, the Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) and the Kuki Zo Council (KZC), have been demanding “separate administration” in the form of the Union Territory since the beginning of the Meitei-Kuki clashes on May 3, 2023. They believe the ongoing friction with the Naga reaffirms “the legitimacy of our demand for a ‘separate administration’,” according to the KZC.
In fact, the situation has become more complex than it was in the 1990s, according to Aglio Numai, professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad: “The causes of the current crisis are multi-dimensional; the previous crisis was mainly due to land. The current crisis has many factors including illegal influx, with the increasing number of new illegal villages, and land grabbing with the help of Suspension of Operation (SoO). All of this is causing a demographic imbalance and can only be resolved with government intervention.”
