How Manipur violence is challenging India’s politics

by ELLEN LOANES

Modi and the BJP face a no-confidence motion due to brutal conflict.

Interethnic violence has grown over the summer in India’s northeastern Manipur state, with reports on Thursday claiming three people had been killed and several homes set on fire. The clashes, between the majority Meitei ethnic group and the Kuki tribal groups, risk spilling into neighboring states, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has thus far failed to seriously address the violence or the broader underlying issues of migration and ethnic tensions in the region.

Since May 3, Meitei and Kuki residents of communities inManipur have engaged in horrific violence including reported rapes, burnings, and decapitations, apparently motivated by the state government’s efforts to extend benefits and jobs once exclusively reserved for Kukis to Meiteis. Over the past three months, the violence has become so extreme that it has triggered a no-confidence motion against Modi’s government this coming week.

Though the proposed motion won’t affect Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) grip on power, it will serve two main political purposes: to draw attention to the government’s inaction in containing the conflict as well as other failures and to galvanize the opposition under a new umbrella group.

Interethnic, sectarian, and insurgent violence is not new to India, and Modi’s Hindu nationalist ideology has contributed to the atmosphere of discord, if not outright fueled violence in some cases. The BJP governs Manipur state, and rather than attempting mediation between the largely Hindu Meiteis and Christian Kukis, the state government imposed an internet blackout that was only partially lifted last month.

The no-confidence motion won’t topple Modi’s government and may not even bring relief for the thousands who have fled violence in Manipur — or the many more still living in fear.

Violence in Manipur has become too extreme to ignore

India’s northeastern states — collectively called the “seven sisters” — are remote, often under resourced, and ethnically diverse. Some of these ethnic groups, called Scheduled Tribes, are transitory or share kinships across different states or even into neighboring countries; the Kuki, for example, have ties to ethnic groups in neighboring Myanmar and parts of Bangladesh as well as Mizoram and Assam states.

Because of its remoteness, porous international and state borders, migratory tribal groups, and the political and economic instability of neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar, northeastern India has seen many interethnic conflicts over the decades and under Modi’s government. In Assam, for example, tensions between ethnic Assamese and Bangladeshi migrants, including those whose families had lived in Assam for decades, have always had a political dimension — which was only exacerbated in 2019 when the federal government essentially declared about 1.9 million Bangladeshis in Assam stateless.

Manipur, like Assam, is poor and under-resourced; and inequality, real or perceived, exacerbates any tensions that already exist.

In Manipur, the Meitei people make up about half of the population, per CNN, and the Kuki make up 25 percent. As Scheduled Tribes, the Kuki have special access to land permits, jobs, and other benefits because they had historically been oppressed and denied access to education and livelihoods.

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