Global Courant
Hundreds of people burned their homes. Villages, even refugee camps, were shelled with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set on fire by angry mobs.
India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of communal violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed around 100 lives.
Militarized buffer zones now criss-cross the state, patrolled by local women — considered less hot-headed than men — and the thousands of troops sent to quell the fighting, drawing back troops in other parts of India, including the border with China . .
More than 35,000 people have become refugees, many of whom live in makeshift camps. Internet service has been shut down – an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government – and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to peer inside.
The development is shocking for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rival ethnic groups. And it paints an unwelcome picture of instability for a national government bent on portraying India as an emerging global power.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town careers counselor who escaped from his home with the help of the military. “It’s a civil war.”
Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups – the Meiteis, who form a slim majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis – boil over. Citizens belonging to the wrong group are not allowed to pass safely. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors to prevent their houses from catching fire in case of mistaken identity.
The state has been divided in an effort to avoid the targeted violence that swept it in the early days of the conflict. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the capital Imphal when a mob of about 40 men burst in and dragged her away.
‘Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women screamed as the attackers beat up Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth.
Three weeks later, Ms. Haoki, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, was ample evidence of the civil strife she had survived: 23 bodies, most with gunshot wounds to the chest or abdomen, still unclaimed.
“I’m so scared I can’t get that night out of my mind,” Mrs. Haoki said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry about my future.”
For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom in a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what the locals still call the Indian ‘mainland’. A polyglot cradle of culture, the area – closer to Vietnam than Delhi – mingled courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.
The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunities that characterize large parts of India today.
On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis, demanding that he be classified as “tribals” and given special status that would allow them to take land in to buy the hills and a guarantee of an allocation of government jobs. Armed confrontations ensued and police arsenals were raided. At least 56 people were dead within two days.
While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not stopped more than a month later, with Kukis suffering the most deaths.
Resentment between the two groups has been fueled by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is headed by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi led his Bharatiya Janata party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the emerging BJP
Mr. Singh has fallen heavily on the side of Meitei’s complaint. Last year, he brought together migrants from Myanmar’s civil war with their Kuki ethnic kin, fueling fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though there are very few in Manipur.
He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems and accused them of growing poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm oil plantations, Mr. Singh that migrants are responsible for deforestation.
His office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But after violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.”
Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to massively overpower the Meiteis. On Wednesday, Mr Ahouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists”.
General Anil Chauhan, the country’s highest-ranking uniformed military officer, rejected claims that the Kukis were involved in terrorism. “This specific situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said.
Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of the fire in Manipur. Mr Modi said nothing about it publicly as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the interior minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on 30 May and attempted to negotiate peace between the warring factions.
It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr Shah suggested at a campaign rally that many of the Muslims living in the neighboring state of Assam were Bangladeshi “infiltrators” who should be driven into the sea.
While sowing religious division has been a trade stock of the Hindu nationalist BJP in election season, the lines are being drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are predominantly Hindu and the Kuki people are predominantly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them.
Mrs. Haoki, the woman who was beaten by a mob, recovers in a hospital in the hills where Kukis are prevalent. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to complete her nursing degree.
Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers exchanged gunfire with Meitei vigilantes earlier this week. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while sheltering with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei Lines but was stopped and three passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned aliveaccording to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing.
Meiteis also shared some of the hardships. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent the night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a house anymore,’ said Mrs. Moirangthem.
“Let’s live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why would you express animosity against us common people?”
