New fault lines: On Manipur’s Kuki-Zo–Naga conflict

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In the three years since the conflagration of May 2023 hardened into a fault line between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, Manipur has traversed a slow path towards peace between them. After nearly a year of President’s Rule gave way in February 2026 to a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government under a new Chief Minister, Yumnam Khemchand Singh , attempts to engineer a thaw gathered pace with the everyday violence between the communities abating. Yet, many of those displaced in 2023 remain in relief camps; an RTI reply puts those dead in these camps at over 700, many due to the lack of access to basic health care and adequate nutrition. Even so, there have been tentative and encouraging openings towards rebuilding normalcy. On September 2, two Kuki-Zo MLAs attended the Assembly session — the first time since legislators from the community began boycotting it following the attacks in Imphal at the start of the ethnic conflict. In doing so they defied a directive from the Kuki-Zo civil society organisation, the Kuki Inpi Manipur, to continue the boycott until there was a concession on the demand for a separate administration. The two MLAs seem to acknowledge that it is time to reopen the political space even if differences persist, and for this, their presence in the Assembly must be welcomed.

Yet, these moves have coincided with a new ethnic fault line in Manipur. Since February, violence between the Naga and Kuki-Zo communities — which began as localised disputes — has spread across the hill districts. Till July, at least 15 Kuki-Zo people, 11 Nagas, three security personnel and a truck driver were killed; more have died in the last two months. Houses in Naga and Kuki-Zo villages have been burnt down and the newly displaced have moved into camps. Blockades imposed by partisans of the communities against the other have held up essentials and medicines, with the smaller Kuki-Zo community the worse affected. Health centres in the hills have been left dysfunctional. This echoes the Naga-Kuki violence of the 1990s, now revived by armed groups claiming to act on behalf of their respective communities and resurrecting arguments over who controls the hills and whose customary laws prevail there. With its tenure ending soon and Assembly elections due next year, the State government must move quickly to contain this outbreak of hostilities. It must work with civil society to lower the rhetoric — reportage from the ground suggests a weariness with the violence across communities – while acting against the armed groups with the help of the security forces. Those imposing blockades must be deterred by the force of law. Criminal law must apply equally across communities in the hills, and the safety and welfare of civilians must be guaranteed irrespective of ethnicity.

Manipur / civil unrest / Right to Information / politics / national or ethnic minority / government / law / welfare / health / nutrition and diet

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