Privileging indigeneity may be a convenient political tool to otherise the Kukis

Manipur continues to defy the logic of an effective double engine sarkar three years after the outbreak of violence on 3 May 2023. The latest killing of four individuals in two separate ambushes on the same day, that is 13 May 2026, reinforces the state of lawlessness in the state. While the first ambush, allegedly made by the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF)-Kamson faction at Zero point between Kotlen and Kotzim village in Kangpokpi district claimed the lives of three Kuki pastors and four critically injured, the second allegedly by an armed Kuki group at Joujangtek in Noney district claimed the life of a Chiru Naga and two critically injured. Seen against its immediate context, these killings stem from an unabated spiral of violence triggered by a drunken brawl at Litan Sareikhong village between a Kuki and a Tangkhul Naga three month ago. The stalemated suspense created by the capture and continuing detention of several individuals by rival parties following these ambushes, fourteen each of whom were released by both parties after two days, risks the danger of reviving the antagonistic Proustian memory of the two communities.

Not surprisingly, the Litan violence and this dastardly murder is seen by Kuki groups and some security experts as a proxy war launched by the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (IM) through its proxy, the ZUF, in cahoots with armed Meitei groups to bring to fruition the overarching political project to ethnically cleanse the Kukis from the foothills of the State. This position was unequivocally refuted by the Arambai Tenggol and the ZUF.

The subsequent violence and series of retaliatory attacks by rival armed groups since the Litan incident is seen by the United Naga Council (UNC) in early May 2026 as an ‘undeclared war’ and ‘targeted offensive’ launched by ‘Kuki militants’ operating under the shadow of ‘Suspension of Operation’. UNC contended that the ‘continued threats and attacks’ on Sakarphung, Litan, Thoyee, Sinakeithei and Ringui villages—all Tangkhul dominated villages—constituted a ‘challenge to Naga historical identity and territorial rights’. Taking this into account UNC, which is largely seen as a frontal NSCN-IM organisation, made a frantic appeal to Naga tribal hohos in Nagaland for ‘unity beyond tribal or geographical divisions’.  The ambush at Zero point and Joujangtek, and the suspense created by the capture and continued detention of several individuals by rival parties must be seen as a calculated attempt by vested interests to broaden the theatre of violence beyond the Kuki-Meitei violence by transforming the Kuki-Tangkhul violent conflict into a fully-fledged Kuki-Naga war.

At the heart of this complex and multidimensional nature of the violence in Manipur lies a competing politics of labensraum—an idea developed by Friedrich Ratzel to imply an expansive Nazi territorial project—and the politics of indigeneity engaged by the three parties—Meiteis, Kukis and Nagas. Even though the Nagalim political project (of establishing a greater sovereign Naga state) runs counter to the Meitei labensraum politics, majoritarian minded Meiteis and powerful Naga nationalist groups seek to politically harness this cycle of violence to bolster their labensraum politics by forging an overlapping consensus on the question of indigeneity in Manipur. This consensus is built upon the premise that only the Meiteis and Nagas are indigenous to Manipur, and that everyone else including the Kukis are seen as the unwanted migrant ‘others’ or as ‘foreign occupiers’—to wit the latest press release of NSCN-IM on the violence.

By arbitrarily invoking a specific historical moment of migration of the Khongsai (Khongjais in colonial records), a segment of the Kukis, who were recruited by William McCulloch, the British political agent, in the 1850s to establish sepoy villages in the foothills of Manipur to secure the valley from ravaging head-hunting raids of the northern Angami Naga group, the Kukis are sought to be permanently denied of indigeneity.

Such an arbitrary narrative is deeply problematic as it conveniently ignores the presence of the Kukis in the valley areas of Manipur before 1485, the year the Cheitharol Kumpaba (also Kumbaba), the Meitei Royal Chronicle, began its written official records. Local historians have attested to this incontrovertible historical fact, a point acknowledged by both Cheitharol and Sri Rajmala (the royal chronicle of Tripura). In its selective appropriation of history, this narrative seeks to permanently ‘settlerize’ the Kukis in ways which powerfully resonate what Mahmoud Mamdani, the influential US-based Ugandan political theorist, considers drives nativist politics in large part of the world.

Three policy instrumentalities are being invoked to aggressively push and institutionalise this narrative overtime, namely, the inner line permit system, Schedule Tribe (ST) Status for the Meiteis, and the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC). While the Inner Line Permit system was restored to the State in December 2019 and marks the first step to institutionally flatten the hills-valley binary, the attempt to push ST status for the Meiteis is seen as a similar institutional ploy to grant the Meiteis unhindered access to, and control over land, resources and jobs/employment opportunities in the state. Faced with an institutional gridlock and backlash from the tribal groups including the Nagas, this attempt has triggered the outbreak of an institutionalised violence in Manipur from 3 May 2023. This has since descended into a semblance of stalemated ethnic turf war between the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar and Meiteis.

While the internal tension in the narrative on indigeneity becomes increasingly apparent, its long-term and adverse potential to invert the group-differentiated citizenship rights ordained by the Indian constitution becomes unmistakable. Privileging ‘indigeneity’ may be a convenient political tool to ‘otherise’ the Kukis as the unwanted, ‘illegal’ (im)migrant, settler ‘others’ or ‘foreign occupiers’. Yet it runs the risk of going against the grain of existing international covenants and practise where ‘indigeneity’ is universally accepted as a bulwark against domination. The increasing intellectual focus on ‘relative indigeneity’ which is sensitive to relative power—social, economic, cultural and political—dynamics of communities with competing indigenous claims in deeply divided place like Manipur may be more in line with the constitutionally ordained citizenship rights regime across India. While the NRC is yet in sight, the imminent implementation of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state may culminate in massive disenfranchisement of Internally Displaced Persons across the divide. The writing on the wall is already apparent.

The jury is out if the saner voices cutting across the divides, who had been rendered voiceless in the wake of over three years of  violence in Manipur, could reclaim their agency and voice to address the structural source of this complex and multidimensional violence before all communities in the state are consumed by mutual hatred and violence.