Hundreds of people expelled from their burning homes. Villages, even refugee camps, devastated by 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 economy, is now also a war zone, where weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur have killed an estimated 100 people.
Militarized zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women, who are seen as less impulsive than men. Thousands of troops were deployed to quell the fighting, reducing forces in other parts of India, including the Chinese border.
More than 35,000 people are refugees, many of them living in makeshift camps. Internet service was cut off — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions made it difficult for the rest of the world to see that reality.
Development has been brisk in a country whose 1.4 billion people generally manage to get along, despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rival ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome picture of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power.
“It’s a nightmare, a civil war,” says Mairembam Ratan, a professional adviser who escaped with the help of the army.
Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as old tensions simmer between two groups – the Meiteis, who form a small majority in the state, and the hill tribes known as the Kukis. Citizens belonging to the wrong group may not pass safely. Many painted their ethnicity on the doors, so that their houses would not be burned in case of mistaken identity.
The state was partitioned in an effort to avoid the targeted violence that engulfed it in the early days of the conflict. On the night of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a mob of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away.
“Rape! Torture! Cut to pieces!” the meitei women screamed, as the attackers pummeled Haokip, knocking out his front teeth and biting his hands.
Three weeks later, Haokip, who is a kuki, was in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, was ample evidence of the civil strife she’d been lucky enough to survive: 23 dead bodies, most with gunshot wounds to the chest or stomach.
“I’m so scared I can’t get that night out of my mind,” says Haokip, sobbing. “I worry about my future.”
For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom, occupying a fertile valley in the verdant mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland”. A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory – closer to Vietnam than Delhi – blended courtly traditions imported from India with languages and customs brought over by waves of settlers from East Asia.
The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunities that define large parts of India today.
On May 3, a group led by students, mainly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of meiteis who demanded to be classified as “tribal” and given a special status that allowed them to buy land in the mountains and occupy part of the public offices. Armed clashes occurred. In two days, at least 56 people died.
Although this was the height of the violence, the bloodshed did not stop more than a month later, with the Kuki suffering the most casualties.
Resentments between the two groups were fueled by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his meitei followers joined the rising party.
Singh strongly supported the meiteis’ complaints. Last year, he confused migrants from Myanmar’s civil war with their ethnic Kuki relatives, stoking fears among people of an influx of refugees, although very few are in Manipur.
He blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of growing poppies. And as the forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm oil plantations, Singh said migrants are responsible for deforestation.
His office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But after violence broke out, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur”.
Khuraijam Athouba, spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meiteis, accused what he called “kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to dominate the Meiteis in sheer numbers. On Wednesday (7), Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists”.
General Anil Chauhan, the country’s top military official, rejected the claim that the Kuki were involved in terrorism. “This particular situation has nothing to do with counterinsurgency, and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities.”
While sowing religious divisions has been a trump card of the Hindu nationalist party this election season, the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with mutual animosity.
Haokip, who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the Kuki-dominated hills. She fears that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies.
Another kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and other villagers exchanged gunfire earlier this week with meitel vigilantes. A seven-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 but was stopped and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing.
The Meiteis also shared some difficulties. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother ran away from home and spent the night hiding in a latrine. “It’s all over. We don’t have a home anymore,” says Moirangthem.
“We only want to live our lives where our homes are. Why create animosity towards us common people?”
