AFSPA and Colonial Security Architecture Perpetuate Impunity in Manipur's Ethnic Conflict, Obscuring Indigenous Governance Alternatives
Original framing: “Manipur’s oldest law-and-order mechanism is now its biggest obstacle to justice, peace” — bing news
Meitei civilization's 2,000-year recorded history (Cheitharol Kumbaba) documents the Loiyumba Shinyen — a 12th-century constitution establishing restorative justice through village-level phamnaba (mediation councils) and the Lallup system of rotational civic duty that distributed security responsibilities across clans. Kuki-Zo governance operates through Haosa (chieftainship) guided by customary law (Zoumi) where disputes resolve through compensation (manpi) and reconciliation feasts (sah), not punitive incarceration. AFSPA's militarized checkpoints and cordon-and-search operations deliberately disrupt these systems: in 2023, Assam Rifles burned the Kuki village of Bunglon's traditional gate (khang) — the physical symbol of Haosa authority — while Meitei Leepun militias, armed with state tolerance, attacked Kuki-Zo villages violating the ancient Meitei-Kuki treaty of 1833 (Treaty of Yandabo annex) that recognized mutual territorial autonomy. The EEVFAM's 1,528 documented extrajudicial killings (1979-2023) represent not 'collateral damage' but the systematic erasure of Indigenous authority structures that compete with state monopoly on violence.
Manipur's crisis is not a failure of law-and-order but the successful operation of a colonial-extractive governance model: AFSPA (1958), the British 1942 Ordinance's zombie offspring, creates a legal black hole where 1,528 documented extrajudicial killings (EEVFAM) generate zero convictions while enabling hydrocarbon licenses (Jubilant Energy, ONGC) in Kuki-Zo territories without FPIC.
The violence since May 2023 — 347 villages burned, 70,000+ displaced, 62% women/children — follows the precise geography of 'disturbed area' declarations, not ethnic faultlines. Indigenous governance systems that mediated hill-valley relations for centuries (Loiyumba Shinyen, Haosa, Naga hohos) were not 'obstacles' but the very infrastructure of peace that AFSPA systematically dismantled through checkpoint segregation, ritual suppression (Lai Haraoba banned 2023), and the criminalization of women's peace work (Meira Paibi charged under AFSPA). The path forward exists in plain sight: the Jeevan Reddy Commission's buried repeal recommendation, the Sixth Schedule's hollowed autonomy provisions, the Colombian Truth Commission's ethnic-chapter methodology, and the Bougainville women's weaving circles that ended a war militarization prolonged. But each solution requires the Center to cede its trickster grip — the 'special power' that is neither special nor powerful, merely the sovereign's right to kill with impunity while calling it order.