What is Manipur facing now? Is it slipping out of India’s hands?

There comes a point in every conflict when the question is no longer who started it. The question is, why did those in power allow it to continue for so long?

Manipur crossed this point long ago.

Since May 2023, homes have been burned, families displaced, women attacked, villages destroyed and communities forced to live across ethnic lines within the same country. What began as a conflict between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo groups has turned into something far more dangerous: the failure of the Indian state to act as a neutral protector.

Manipur is not only facing violence. He faces abandonment.

More than 200 people have been killed. Tens of thousands have been displaced. Many still live in relief camps, unable to safely return to the homes they fled. But numbers alone cannot explain the depth of the crisis.

This conflict is rooted in history, land, identity and mistrust. Before joining India, Manipur had its own monarchy and political institutions. The 1949 merger is still seen by many as a wound. For decades, Delhi treated much of the Northeast through a security lens. Militarism, AFSPA, alleged abuses and counter-insurgency left scars that have never fully healed.

Today’s violence stands on this broken ground.

Imphal Valley, the political center of Manipur, is dominated by the Maithis. The Kokizo and Naga communities live mostly in the hills. Disputes over land, tribal status, forest rights, migration and political control persisted for years. When violence broke out, many victims did not see the administration as neutral. They saw him as absent-minded at best, biased at worst.

That is why the crisis became so toxic.

Nothing exposed the failure more brutally than the attack on the Kuki-zo women in May 2023 who were stripped and paraded by a mob. Weeks later, India woke up to the video. But women were already victims of it. His family had already buried his dead. Their fear was real before the rest of the country decided to watch.

Here’s the Manipur question: Why did it take a viral video to get India to take notice?

New Delhi speaks of an emerging India — strong, confident and global. Manipur tells another story: citizens unable to return home, women unable to rely on the state, families trapped in camps, villages divided along ethnic lines, and security forces unable to restore trust.

This is not national unity.

This is fracture management.

So is Manipur slipping away from India?

Yes – but not in the way people imagine. India still has the army, constitution and political machinery to control Manipur. But states aren’t just lost through maps. They are lost when citizens stop believing that the government sees them as equals. When people trust armed gangs more than the police, they lose. When aid camps feel safer than home, they get lost.

By this measure, Manipur is already slipping.

Control is not concerned. The area is not consented. A constitution cannot compel people to feel protected by a state that has failed them.

No need to control Manipur. He needs justice. He needs protection. It needs accountability. It needs freedom from fear, military rule and the feeling of being considered a frontier rather than a homeland.

A country is not held together by soldiers alone. It is held together with trust.

And that trust has been broken in Manipur.

India can put Manipur on its map. But maps do not prove fidelity. The relationship with the administration is not proven. Silence does not prove peace.

The real danger for India is not that tomorrow Manipur will disappear from its map.

The real danger is that many of his people are already feeling lost.

And when people don’t feel safe, respected or heard, freedom becomes a dream.

It becomes the only way forward.

The post What is Manipur facing now? Is it slipping out of India’s hands? appeared first on Daily Pakistan English News.

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