Kuki Tribe: कौन हैं कुकी जनजाति, मणिपुर में इनके खिलाफ क्यों हो रही है इतनी हिंसा, ये है मुख्य कारण

Suraj singh जुलाई 21, 2023
People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

Kuki Tribe: कौन हैं कुकी जनजाति, मणिपुर में इनके खिलाफ क्यों हो रही है इतनी हिंसा, ये है मुख्य कारण

Manipur violence, Who are Kuki Tribe: मणिपुर (Manipur) में पिछले कई दिनों से हिंसा फैली हुई है. जातीय हिंसा और आगजनी की वजह से यहां तबाही फैली हुई है. तो जानिए कौन हैं कुकी समुदाय के लोग. कुकी, मैतेई और नागा समुदाय के बीच किन मुद्दों को लेकर हिंसा भड़क रही है.

Manipur violence, Who are Kuki Tribe: मणिपुर (Manipur) की हिंसा ने यहां के जनजीवन को अस्त-व्यस्त कर दिया है. जातीय हिंसा, आगजनी और तोड़फोड़ की वजह से यहां हालात भयानक हो गए हैं. इससे बचने के लिए हजारों लोग अपने मकानों को छोड़कर पड़ोसी राज्यों की ओर भाग रहे हैं. मणिपुर हिंसा (Manipur violence) की वजह से भारी तादाद में आर्मी और असम राइफल्स (Assam Rifles) के जवानों को तैनात किया गया है. लेकिन Manipur में इतनी भयानक स्थिति बनी कैसे? आइए जानते हैं कौन हैं कुकी समुदाय के लोग, हिंसा का मुख्य कारण, और के भौगोलिक-सामाजिक संरचना के बारे में...

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

कुकी जनजाति भारत के मणिपुर और मिजोरम राज्य के दक्षिण पूर्वी भाग में एक जनजातीय समूह हैं. कुकी भारत, बांग्लादेश, और म्यांमार में पाए जाने वाले कई पहाड़ी जनजातियों में से एक हैं. उत्तर पूर्व भारत में, अरुणाचल प्रदेश को छोड़कर वे सभी राज्यों में मौजूद हैं. उत्तर पूर्व भारत में कहा जाता है कि कुकी जनजातियों को बनाने वाले और उनमें शामिल होने वाले 20 से अधिक उप-जनजातियां हैं.

कुकी समुदाया ने क्या शुरू किया विरोध

भारत सरकार ने 1956 तक कुकी जनजातियों को "एनी कुकी ट्राइब" के रूप में मान्यता दी थी. भारत में करीब पचास जनजातियों को उनकी बोली बोलने और उनके मूल स्थान के आधार पर अनुसूचित जनजाति के रूप में मान्यता दी गई है.

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

कुकी और मणिपुर में उभरते विद्रोह के पीछे जनजातीय पहचान का संघर्ष है. यह दावा किया गया है कि कुछ विद्रोही कुकी समूह एक ऐसे कुकीलैंड की मांग कर रहे थे, जिसमें वो भारत का हिस्सा ना रहें, जबकि दूसरे कुकी समूह एक ऐसे कुकीलैंड की मांग कर रहे थे, जो पूरी तरह से भारत के अंदर आता था.

कब और कैसे शुरू हुई मणिपुर हिंसा

मणिपुर में हिंसा 3 मई को भड़की, जब पहाड़ी जिलों में "ट्राइबल सॉलिडैरिटी मार्च" आयोजित किया गया था, जिसमें मेइते समुदाय की अनुसूचित जनजाति (एसटी) के दर्जे के खिलाफ विरोध किया गया था. इस हिंसा में कई लोगों की जान जाने की खबर है. 

क्या है मणिपुर में हिंसा की मुख्य जड़ 

मणिपुर हिंसा (Manipur violence) के 2 मुख्य कारण हैं. पहला है बहुसंख्यक मैतेई समुदाय (Meitei Community) को अनुसूचित जनजाति का दर्जा दिए जाने का फैसला जिसका, इस फैसले का कुकी (Kuki) और नागा (Naga) कम्युनीटी के लोग विरोध कर रहे हैं. बता दें कि Kuki और Naga समुदाय को देश की आजादी के बाद से ही आदिवासी का दर्जा प्राप्त है. और दूसरा कारण है गवर्नमेंट लैंड सर्वे (Government Land Survey). बताया जा रहा है कि यहां भाजपा समर्थित राज्य सरकार ने एक अभियान चलाया है, जिसमें रिजर्व्ड फॉरेस्ट  (Reserved Forest) यानी आरक्षित वन्य क्षेत्र को यहां के आदिवासी ग्रामीणों से खाली कराने को कहा गया है. जिसका कुकी समुदाय के लोग कड़ा विरोध कर रहे हैं.

मणिपुर में क्या है कुकी, मैतेई और नगाओं की आबादी का गणित

मैतेई को मणिपुर का सबसे बड़ा समुदाय बताया जाता है. राजधानी इंफाल में भी इनकी एक बड़ी आबादी है. इन्हों आमतौर पर मणिपुरी कहा जाता है. 2011 की जनगणना के अनुसार ये लोग राज्य की कुल आबादी का 64.6 प्रतिशत हैं, लेकिन बता दें कि मणिपुर के लगभग 10 प्रतिशत भूभाग पर ही ये निवास करते हैं. इनमें अधिकांश मैतेई हिंदू हैं और 8 प्रतिशत मुस्लिम हैं.

इसके अलावा मैतेई समुदाय का मणिपुर विधानसभा (Manipur Legislative Assembly) में अधिक लीडरशिप भी है. ऐसा इसलिए है क्योंकि मणिपुर राज्य की 60 विधानसभा सीटों में से 40 इंफाल घाटी इलाके से हैं. बताया जाता है कि ये वो एरिया है, जहां अधिकतर मैतेई लोग रहते हैं.

दूसरी ओर, Manipur की आबादी में कुकी और नगा आदिवासी भी हैं. इनकी आबादी यहां करीब 40 फीसदी है. बता दें कि कम संख्या के बावजूद वो मणिपुर की 90 प्रतिशत जमीन पर बसते हैं. इस तरह, यहां के पहाड़ी भौगोलिक इलाके की 90 प्रतिशत जमीन पर राज्य की 35 प्रतिशन मान्यता प्राप्त जनजातियां बसती हैं, जबकि इस इलाके से सिर्फ 20 विधायक ही विधानसभा जाते हैं.

बता दें कि जिन 33 समुदायों को जनजाति का दर्जा मिला हुआ है, वो नागा और कुकी-जोमिस जनजाति के हैं, और मुख्य रूप से ईसाई हैं.  वर्ष 2011 की जनगणना के अनुसार, मणिपुर राज्य में हिंदुओं और ईसाइयों की करीब-करीब बराबर आबादी है. यानी कि इन दोनों की ही आबादी करीब 41 प्रतिशत है. बस पूरा मामला यही है.

हाल ही में आये विडियो जिसमे दो महिलाओ का बलात्कार कर नंगा घुमाया जा रहा हैं, यह पहली घटना नही 2 महींने से मनीपुर में यही चल रहा हैं.. ज्यादा हो गए इस जाति हिंसा को भडके हुए ज़िसका भुगतान बेबस माहिलाओ को करना पढ़ रहा हैं..

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

सैकड़ों की संख्या में लोग अपने घरों से बाहर निकल गए।  गाँव, यहाँ तक कि शरणार्थी शिविर भी गोलियों की तड़तड़ाहट से गूंज उठे। गुस्साई भीड़ ने पुरुषों, महिलाओं और बच्चों को पीटा और आग लगा दी।
भारत, दुनिया का सबसे अधिक आबादी वाला देश और सबसे तेजी से बढ़ती प्रमुख अर्थव्यवस्था का घर, अब एक युद्ध क्षेत्र भी बन गया है, क्योंकि सुदूर पूर्वोत्तर राज्य मणिपुर में कई हफ्तों की जातीय हिंसा ने लगभग 100 लोगों की जान ले ली है।

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

पूरे राज्य में अब सैन्यीकृत बफर जोन फैले हुए हैं, जिनकी गश्त स्थानीय महिलाएं करती हैं - जिन्हें पुरुषों की तुलना में कम क्रोधी माना जाता है - और हजारों सैनिकों को लड़ाई को दबाने के लिए भेजा गया है, जो चीन के साथ सीमा सहित भारत के अन्य हिस्सों में सेना को पीछे खींच रहे हैं।

35,000 से अधिक लोग शरणार्थी बन गए हैं, जिनमें से कई अस्थायी शिविरों में रह रहे हैं।  इंटरनेट सेवा में कटौती कर दी गई है - जो भारत सरकार की एक आम रणनीति है - और यात्रा प्रतिबंधों ने बाहरी दुनिया के लिए इसे देखना मुश्किल बना दिया है।

यह विकास एक ऐसे देश के लिए चिंताजनक रहा है, जिसके 1.4 अरब लोग हजारों कभी-कभी प्रतिद्वंद्वी जातीय समूहों से संबंधित होने के बावजूद आम तौर पर एक साथ रहने का प्रबंधन करते हैं।  और यह भारत को एक उभरती हुई वैश्विक शक्ति के रूप में चित्रित करने पर केंद्रित राष्ट्रीय सरकार के लिए अस्थिरता की एक अवांछित छवि प्रस्तुत करता है।

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

“यह एक दुःस्वप्न है,” छोटे शहर के कैरियर काउंसलर मैरेम्बम रतन ने कहा, जो सेना की मदद से अपने घर से भाग गए थे।  "यह एक गृहयुद्ध है।"
मणिपुर अब प्रभावी रूप से जातीय क्षेत्रों में विभाजित हो गया है, क्योंकि दो समूहों - मेइतेई, जो राज्य में एक संकीर्ण बहुमत बनाते हैं, और पहाड़ी जनजातियाँ जिन्हें कुकी के नाम से जाना जाता है - के बीच लंबे समय से चल रहा तनाव बढ़ गया है।  गलत समूह से संबंधित नागरिक सुरक्षित रूप से पास नहीं हो सकते हैं।  कई लोगों ने अपनी जातीयता को दरवाज़ों पर चित्रित कर दिया है, ऐसा न हो कि ग़लत पहचान के कारण उनके घर जला दिए जाएँ।

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

लोग किसी पेड़ के नीचे बैठ जाते हैं या बैठ जाते हैं।  पृष्ठभूमि में और भी लोग एक स्कूल के प्रवेश द्वार के पास बैठे हैं।

जातीय हिंसा से विस्थापित लोग एक स्कूल में रह रहे थे जिसे मैतेई शरणार्थियों के लिए राहत शिविर में बदल दिया गया है।

एक महिला अस्पताल के बिस्तर पर करवट लेकर सोती है।

नर्स बनने का प्रशिक्षण ले रही 20 वर्षीय कुकी महिला एग्नेस नेइखोहाट हाओकिप पर मई की शुरुआत में भीड़ ने हमला किया था।

राज्य का गठन संघर्ष के शुरुआती दिनों में हुई लक्षित हिंसा को रोकने के प्रयास में किया गया है।  4 मई की शाम को, 20 वर्षीय नर्सिंग छात्रा, एग्नेस नेहखोहत हाओकिप, राज्य की राजधानी इंफाल में अपने छात्रावास में थी, जब लगभग 40 लोगों के एक गिरोह ने धावा बोला और उसे खींच लिया।

“उसका बलात्कार करो!  उस पर अत्याचार करो!  उसके टुकड़े-टुकड़े कर दो!”  जब हमलावरों ने सुश्री हाओकिप को मारा, तो मैतेई महिलाएं चिल्लाने लगीं, उनके सामने के दांत टूट गए और जब उन्होंने अपने दांत उठाने की कोशिश की तो उनके हाथों को काट लिया।

तीन सप्ताह बाद, सुश्री हाओकिप, जो कुकी हैं, गहन चिकित्सा इकाई में रहीं।  हॉल के नीचे, मुर्दाघर में, नागरिक संघर्ष के पर्याप्त सबूत थे, वह भाग्यशाली थी कि वह बच गई: 23 लाशें, जिनमें से अधिकांश की छाती या पेट पर गोली के घाव थे, अभी भी लावारिस हैं।

सुश्री हाओकिप ने अपने अस्पताल के तकिए में सिसकते हुए कहा, "मैं इतनी डरी हुई हूं कि मैं उस शाम को अपने दिमाग से दूर नहीं कर सकती।"  "मुझे अपने भविष्य की चिंता है।"

सदियों से, मणिपुर एक स्वतंत्र राज्य था जो म्यांमार और जिसे स्थानीय लोग अभी भी भारतीय "मुख्य भूमि" कहते हैं, के बीच जंगली पहाड़ों में एक उपजाऊ घाटी पर कब्जा कर रहा था।  संस्कृति का एक बहुभाषी उद्गम स्थल, यह क्षेत्र - दिल्ली की तुलना में वियतनाम के करीब - पूर्वी एशियाई निवासियों द्वारा लाई गई भाषाओं और रीति-रिवाजों के साथ भारत से आयातित दरबारी परंपराओं को मिश्रित करता है।

वर्तमान संघर्ष संसाधनों और आर्थिक अवसरों की कमी को दर्शाता है जो आज भारत के बड़े हिस्से को परिभाषित करता है।

3 मई को, एक छात्र-नेतृत्व वाले समूह, जिसमें ज्यादातर कुकी थे, ने एक अदालत द्वारा मैतेई लोगों के पक्ष में फैसला सुनाए जाने के बाद विरोध में मार्च निकाला और मांग की कि उन्हें "आदिवासी" के रूप में वर्गीकृत किया जाए और एक विशेष दर्जा दिया जाए जो उन्हें पहाड़ियों में जमीन खरीदने और सरकारी नौकरियों के आवंटन की गारंटी देने की अनुमति देगा।  सशस्त्र झड़पें हुईं और पुलिस शस्त्रागारों पर छापा मारा गया।  दो दिनों के भीतर कम से कम 56 लोग मारे गये।

हालाँकि वह हिंसा का सबसे बुरा उदाहरण था, एक महीने से अधिक समय बाद भी रक्तपात बंद नहीं हुआ है, जिसमें कुकियों की अधिकांश मौतें हुई हैं।

राजनीतिक नेताओं द्वारा दोनों समूहों के बीच नाराजगी को हवा दी गई है।  37 लाख की आबादी वाले राज्य मणिपुर की सरकार पर मेइतीस का नियंत्रण है।  प्रधान मंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी द्वारा नई दिल्ली में अपनी भारतीय जनता पार्टी को सत्ता में लाने के बाद, राज्य के मुख्यमंत्री एन. बीरेन सिंह और उनके मैतेई अनुयायी उभरती हुई भाजपा में शामिल हो गए।

श्री सिंह ने मेइतेई की शिकायत पर कड़ा प्रहार किया है।  पिछले साल, उन्होंने म्यांमार में गृह युद्ध से आए प्रवासियों को उनके कुकी जातीय रिश्तेदारों के साथ मिला दिया, जिससे मेइती लोगों में शरणार्थियों की आमद का डर पैदा हो गया, हालांकि मणिपुर में बहुत कम लोग हैं।

उन्होंने राज्य की नशीली दवाओं की लत की समस्याओं के लिए म्यांमार के प्रवासियों को जिम्मेदार ठहराया है और उन पर पोस्ता की खेती करने का आरोप लगाया है। और चूंकि भारत के इस हिस्से में जंगल पर्यटन, लकड़ी और ताड़ के तेल के बागानों के लिए भूमि के रूप में प्रतिष्ठित हो गए हैं, श्री सिंह ने कहा है कि वनों की कटाई के लिए प्रवासी जिम्मेदार हैं।

उनके कार्यालय ने टिप्पणी के लिए बार-बार अनुरोध का जवाब नहीं दिया।  लेकिन मई में हिंसा भड़कने के बाद, उन्होंने हथियार उठाने वाले कुकियों को "आतंकवादी" कहा, जो "मणिपुर को तोड़ने की कोशिश कर रहे थे।"

मैतेई का प्रतिनिधित्व करने वाले सबसे बड़े नागरिक समाज समूह के प्रवक्ता खुराइजम अथौबा ने आरोप लगाया कि जिसे वे "कूकी उग्रवादी" कहते हैं, वह केवल संख्या के आधार पर मैतेई पर हावी होने के लिए अवैध आप्रवासियों को ला रहा है। बुधवार को, श्री अथौबा के समूह ने एक सम्मेलन आयोजित किया जिसमें "अवैध नार्को-आतंकवादियों के खिलाफ युद्ध की घोषणा की गई।"

देश के शीर्ष वर्दीधारी सैन्य अधिकारी जनरल अनिल चौहान ने इस दावे को खारिज कर दिया कि कुकी आतंकवाद में लगे हुए थे। उन्होंने कहा, "मणिपुर में इस विशेष स्थिति का आतंकवाद विरोधी कार्रवाई से कोई लेना-देना नहीं है और यह मुख्य रूप से दो जातियों के बीच संघर्ष है।"

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in. The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power. “It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.” ||||| Manipur is now effectively divided into ethnic zones, as long-simmering tensions between two groups — the Meiteis, who form a narrow majority in the state, and hill tribes known as the Kukis — boil over. Citizens who belong to the wrong group may not safely pass. Many have painted their ethnicity on doors, lest their homes be burned in a case of mistaken identity. image People squat or sit under a tree. More people are in the background, sitting near the entrance to a school. People displaced by ethnic violence were staying at a school that has been converted into a relief camp for Meitei refugees. Image A woman sleeps on her side in a hospital bed. Agnes Neikhohat Haokip, a 20-year-old Kuki woman training to be a nurse, was attacked by a mob in early May. The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away. “Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth. Three weeks later, Ms. Haokip, who is a Kuki, remained in an intensive care unit. Down the hall, in the morgue, lay ample evidence of the civil conflict she had been fortunate to survive: 23 corpses, most with bullet wounds to their chests or stomachs, still unclaimed. “I am so scared that I cannot push that evening away from my mind,” Ms. Haokip said, sobbing into her hospital pillow. “I worry for my future.” For centuries, Manipur was an independent kingdom occupying a fertile valley in the forested mountains between Myanmar and what locals still call the Indian “mainland.” A polyglot cradle of culture, the territory — nearer to Vietnam than to Delhi — blended courtly traditions imported from India with the languages and customs brought by waves of East Asian settlers.||||||||| The current conflict reflects the scarcity of resources and economic opportunity that defines large parts of India today. On May 3, a student-led group, mostly Kukis, marched in protest after a court ruled in favor of Meiteis demanding to be classified as “tribals” and given a special status that would allow them to buy land in the hills and guarantee an allotment of government jobs. Armed clashes ensued, and police armories were raided. Within two days, at least 56 people were dead. While that was the worst of the violence, the bloodshed has not ceased more than a month later, with Kukis suffering most of the deaths. Resentments between the two groups have been fanned by political leaders. The government of Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people, is controlled by Meiteis. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi guided his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in New Delhi, the state’s chief minister, N. Biren Singh, and his Meitei followers joined the ascendant B.J.P. Mr. Singh has come down heavily on the side of Meitei grievance. Last year, he conflated migrants from the civil war in Myanmar with their Kuki ethnic kin, stoking fears among Meiteis of an influx of refugees, though very few are in Manipur. He has blamed Myanmar migrants for the state’s drug addiction problems, accusing them of cultivating poppies. And as forests in this part of India have become coveted as land for tourism, timber and palm-oil plantations, Mr. Singh has said migrants are responsible for deforestation. His office did not answer repeated requests for comment. But after the violence broke out in May, he called the Kukis who took up arms “terrorists” who were “trying to break Manipur.” Khuraijam Athouba, a spokesman for the largest civil society group representing the Meitei, accused what he called “Kuki militants” of bringing in illegal immigrants to overpower the Meiteis by sheer numbers. On Wednesday, Mr. Athouba’s group organized a convention that “declared war on illegal narco-terrorists.” Gen. Anil Chauhan, the country’s top uniformed military officer, rejected the assertion that the Kukis were engaged in terrorism. “This particular situation in Manipur has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and is primarily a clash between two ethnicities,” he said. Outside of the army, the national government did little on the ground during the first three weeks of Manipur’s conflagration. Mr. Modi said nothing publicly about it, as he was busy campaigning for his party in state elections far away. His right-hand man, the home minister, Amit Shah, arrived in Imphal on May 30 and tried to make peace between the warring parties. It was not far from Manipur in 2019 that Mr. Shah, at a campaign rally, implied that many of the Muslims who live in the neighboring state of Assam were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh who ought to be driven into the sea. While sowing religious divisions has been an election-season stock-in-trade of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., the lines are drawn differently in Manipur. The Meitei people are mostly Hindu, and the Kuki people are mostly Christian. But religion has relatively little to do with the animosity between them. Ms. Haokip, the woman who was beaten by a mob, is recovering in a hospital in the hills where Kukis predominate. She worries that she will not be able to return to Imphal to finish her nursing studies. Another Kuki, Chamelen Hangshing, 30, said he and his fellow villagers had exchanged gunfire earlier this week with Meitei vigilantes. A 7-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet while taking shelter with his family in a government camp. An ambulance tried to take him to a hospital across the Meitei lines, but it was stopped, and three of its passengers, including the boy and his mother, were beaten and burned alive, according to the boy’s uncle, Jeffrey Hangshing. Meiteis, too, have shared some of the hardship. Robita Moirangthem, a 30-year-old teacher, and her mother fled their home and spent a night hiding in a latrine. “Everything is finished. We don’t have a home anymore,” Ms. Moirangthem said. “Let us live our lives where our homes are,” she pleaded. “Why take out animosity against us ordinary people?”

सेना के अलावा, राष्ट्रीय सरकार ने मणिपुर की लड़ाई के पहले तीन हफ्तों के दौरान ज़मीनी स्तर पर बहुत कम काम किया। श्री मोदी ने इस बारे में सार्वजनिक रूप से कुछ नहीं कहा, क्योंकि वह दूर राज्यों के चुनावों में अपनी पार्टी के प्रचार में व्यस्त थे। उनके दाहिने हाथ, गृह मंत्री, अमित शाह, 30 मई को इंफाल पहुंचे और युद्धरत पक्षों के बीच शांति बनाने की कोशिश की।

यह 2019 में मणिपुर से ज्यादा दूर नहीं था जब श्री शाह ने एक अभियान रैली में कहा था कि पड़ोसी राज्य असम में रहने वाले कई मुसलमान बांग्लादेश से "घुसपैठिए" थे जिन्हें समुद्र में खदेड़ दिया जाना चाहिए।

लोग यह भी जानना चाहते हैं
What is happening in Manipur 2023?
मणिपुर 2023 में क्या हो रहा है?
What is the Manipur incident?
What is Manipur video case?

जबकि धार्मिक विभाजन बोना हिंदू राष्ट्रवादी बी.जे.पी. का चुनाव-मौसम का व्यापार रहा है, मणिपुर में रेखाएँ अलग तरह से खींची गई हैं। मैतेई लोग अधिकतर हिंदू हैं, और कुकी लोग अधिकतर ईसाई हैं। लेकिन धर्म का उनके बीच की दुश्मनी से अपेक्षाकृत कम लेना-देना है।

सुश्री हाओकिप, वह महिला जिसे भीड़ ने पीटा था, कुकी बाहुल्य वाली पहाड़ियों के एक अस्पताल में ठीक हो रही है।  उसे चिंता है कि वह अपनी नर्सिंग की पढ़ाई पूरी करने के लिए इंफाल वापस नहीं लौट पाएगी।

एक अन्य कुकी, 30 वर्षीय चमेलेन हैंगशिंग ने कहा कि उन्होंने और उनके साथी ग्रामीणों ने इस सप्ताह की शुरुआत में मैतेई निगरानीकर्ताओं के साथ गोलीबारी की थी। एक सरकारी शिविर में अपने परिवार के साथ आश्रय लेते समय एक 7 वर्षीय लड़के के सिर में एक आवारा गोली लग गई। लड़के के चाचा जेफरी हैंगशिंग के अनुसार, एक एम्बुलेंस ने उसे मेइतेई लाइनों के पार एक अस्पताल में ले जाने की कोशिश की, लेकिन उसे रोक दिया गया और लड़के और उसकी मां सहित उसके तीन यात्रियों को पीटा गया और जिंदा जला दिया गया।

मेइतीस ने भी कुछ कठिनाई साझा की है। 30 वर्षीय शिक्षिका रोबिता मोइरांगथेम और उनकी मां अपने घर से भाग गईं और एक शौचालय में छिपकर एक रात बिताई।  “सबकुछ ख़त्म हो गया है. हमारे पास अब कोई घर नहीं है,” सुश्री मोइरांगथेम ने कहा।
उन्होंने विनती करते हुए कहा, "हमें अपना जीवन वहीं जीने दीजिए जहां हमारे घर हैं।"  “हम आम लोगों से दुश्मनी क्यों निकालें?”
news source-newyork times and Zeenews


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