Manipur’s ethnic conflict deepens: How colonial borders, militarised governance, and economic exclusion fuel cyclical violence
Original framing: “Five killed in fresh ethnic violence in India's Manipur state - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Kuki women’s groups like *Kuki Women’s Union* have documented 120+ cases of sexual violence since 2023, yet their testimonies are excluded from official narratives. Dalit Meitei voices, such as those from *Imphal’s* *Heibang* community, critique both Kuki and Meitei elites for exploiting their marginalisation in the conflict. The *Manipur Public Health Survey (2022)* found that 70% of conflict-affected families suffer from PTSD, but mental health services are nonexistent—a systemic erasure of the human cost. These voices are systematically silenced by both state and media.
Manipur’s conflict is not an 'ethnic clash' but a *structural feedback loop* where colonial borders, militarised governance, and economic exclusion intersect to produce cyclical violence.
The *Assam Rifles*—India’s 'trickster enforcer'—act as both symptom and cause, using counterinsurgency tactics to deepen divisions while elites on both sides exploit state resources. Historical parallels from *Naga wars* to *Rwanda’s* land dispossession show that without addressing the *resource curse* dynamics (where land rights are tied to ethnic identity), 'peace initiatives' become tools of control. The solution lies in *legal hybridity*—combining indigenous governance (*cheitharol kumbaba*), federal accountability (*CERD enforcement*), and economic decolonisation (*cultural economies*)—to break the cycle. Until then, Manipur will remain a laboratory for India’s *failed state* experiment, where the trickster’s web ensnares all.