Geographically speaking, the saucer-shaped state of Manipur is situated at the borders of Myanmar’s Sagaing region to the east and Chin state to the south. It is covered with hills on all the sides and a fertile valley/Kongba at the centre that occupies a mere 8% of the total land area of the state. Demographically, Manipur is inhabited by three different communities – the Hindu Meiteis and a small section of the Pangals (Manipuri Muslims) residing in the valley; and, the hill-based, Christian Naga communities such as Kabui, Tangkhul, Khoirao, Maring, etc. concentrated in Tamenglong, Ukhrul, and Senapati districts; and, the relatively smaller in number Kukis, e.g., Thadou, Paite, Hmar, Vaiphei, Gangte, Simte, Zou, etc.

Besides Manipur, the Kukis are spread across Mizoram, Assam, Tripura, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. They are also sometimes referred to as the Zo people or Chin-Kukis. In Myanmar, the Chins are recognised in its Constitution of the year 1947 as among the four founding groups of the Union of Burma, along with Shan, Kachin, and Burma. In the Scheduled Tribe list of Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Assam, a total of 37 tribes are recognised as belonging to ‘Any Kuki Tribe’. An important point to be noted here is that under this larger umbrella of 37 ‘Any Kuki Tribe’, there is a sub-tribe called Kuki.

Although the original home of the Kukis cannot be correctly ascertained, the term ‘Kuki’ itself is fairly new, the earliest written reference dating back to British records from the year 1777 when vanavasis launched a series of attacks against British subjects in the Chittagong area of present-day Bangladesh. ‘Kuki’ is nowhere to be found in any Burmese historical record, the Ahom Buranjis, or Meitei chronicles from 33 AD onwards. A popular belief is that the origins of the term ‘Kuki’ can be traced to the Bengali language, initially used to refer to the people of the hills, carrying bamboo baskets on their backs and engaged in jhum cultivation.

As per the Census of 1931, different groups and sub-groups among the Kukis were classified into two different categories – Old Kuki and New Kuki. While communities such as Hmar, Gangte, Anal, Vaiphei, and Kom constituted a part of the Old Kuki group, Ralte, Simte, Sukte, Thadou, and Paite were the New Kukis. However, influenced by the American Baptist Church and the narrative of a ‘cohesive Naga identity’ propagated by the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the Anals, like various other so-called “Naga” communities of the North-East such as Monpas, Mishimis, Nyshis, Sherdukpens, etc. today identify themselves as Nagas.

Other erstwhile Kuki communities such as Monsang, Maring, and Moyon have also embraced the ‘Naga’ identity. As a part of the separatist policies of the Isak-Muivah faction of the NSCN or NSCN (I-M) in short, several vanavasi communities from Manipur such as Aimol, Chiru, Chothe, Kharam, Koireng, and Kom were recently proclaimed as a part of the ‘Naga’ tribe. However, the names of the various sub-tribes among the Kukis are not definite and show a fluid pattern across different states and regions of the Northeast. For example, although the Paites call themselves Zomi in Myanmar, they identify themselves as Mizo in Mizoram. It is only in Manipur that they call themselves Paite.

It needs to be mentioned here that there has always been vehement opposition in Manipur against the inclusion of the term ‘Kuki’ as a tribe. A memorandum submitted in July 2021 by the Thadou Apex Body – Thadou Inpi – had raised several objections against the recommendation of the State Government of Manipur to include ‘Kuki’ in the list of recognised STs of the state. According to them, since ‘Kuki’ is not a tribe and does not even signify the name of a tribe, it does not deserve inclusion in the ST list. ‘Kuki’, for them, is a generic term used to refer to a number of different tribes. Manipur, at present, has a list of 34 tribes including two that are called ‘Any Mizo (Lushai) tribe’ and ‘Any Kuki tribe’.

In terms of their population, the Thadous constitute the largest group among the Kukis of Manipur, accounting for almost a quarter of the state’s tribal population, followed by the Tangkhul Nagas. Most of the other recognised numerically smaller sub-tribes within the Kukis such as Zou, Paite, Gangte, Vaiphei, Hmar, etc. prefer to call themselves Zo rather than Kuki. In a 1928 book on the Thadous written by Civil Services officer William Shaw, four great clans of the Kukis are named as Lushei, Suhte, Poi, and Thadou. It has been written in the book that various other smaller communities such as Lunkim, Gangte, Chiru, Kholhang, Lenthang, etc. are included within the broader community of the Thadous.

Thadou hegemony over these smaller Kuki sub-tribes needs to be understood further. The use of terms such as Kuki-Siki (Quarter Kuki) and Kuki-Makhai (Half Kuki) by the Thadous in the past to refer to these sub-tribes has alienated them further. Historically too, the disproportionate domination of the Thadous among all other Kukis over the politics and administration of Manipur has been real. Outer Manipur, i.e. the tribal Lok Sabha constituency of Manipur, has elected 17 MPs since 1952. An overwhelming 14 out of these 17 MPs have either been a Thadou or a Tangkhul Naga. In the bureaucracy too, the first person to have qualified for the IAS from Manipur was a Thadou – K Kipgen – in the year 1956.

Similarly, the first tribal IPS officer too, from Manipur, was a Thadou – T Misao – in the year 1965. Again, one of the first North-Eastern women named Nengcha Lhouvum from the Indian Foreign Services (IFS) to have served as an ambassador was a Thadou. Several senior-level bureaucrats and top-ranking police officers of Manipur have been from the Thadou community. The Thadous have also occupied a position of dominance in the intellectual discourse of not just Manipur but the entire Northeast. Many eminent professors and chair-professors in several Central Universities of India, writers and commentators on different issues concerning the North-East have been Thadous.

All these factors have led to feelings of animosity among the other smaller Kuki communities against the Thadous. Frequent skirmishes and conflicts between them have often turned violent. The Thadou-Paite clashes of the year 1997-98 killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands of them from their hearths and homes. Compelled by the gravity of the situation, the Central Government had to finally deploy the Army in order to bring the deadly situation under control. It was in the aftermath of this conflict that the insurgent group Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) consisting of numerically smaller Kuki communities such as Zou, Vaiphei, Gangte, and Simte was formed under the leadership of the Paites.

This was distinct from the other militant groups of the Kukis such as the Kuki National Army (KNA) which are under the control and leadership of the Thadous. There have been several occasions in the past when the Thadou Inpi has clashed with the apex body of the Kukis, i.e. the Kuki Inpi, declaring that the latter has no moral or legal authority to speak for and on behalf of the Thadous. During the current conflict as well that led to the violent sequence of events in the Kuki-dominated district of Churachandpur on May 3, the Thadou Inpi dissociated itself completely from the rally organised by the Kuki Inpi in protest against the Government’s eviction drive.

The Church-backed militants, however, have been the biggest beneficiary of this mess. This is especially true for those communities which do not identify themselves as either Naga or Kuki. In such cases, the NSCN (I-M) has declared them as Nagas. The recent spate of violence in Manipur seems to have united all Kuki-Chin-Zo people across Manipur and the neighbouring states again raising their demand for the creation of a separate Kuki-Zomi homeland. In this regard, history cannot be sidelined. The current conflict has several important dimensions related to drugs, guns, and missionaries that have played out in many different ways at multiple levels at different times.    

As of today, several other warring communities such as the Hmars, Paites, Thadous, etc. have joined hands and collaborated amongst themselves to fight against the Meiteis and expel them from Manipur forever. With the last remaining Meitei population of Manipur being confined to the Valley, they are continuously on the losing side. The places of religious and cultural importance in the Meitei Hindu pantheon are gradually dwindling over the years. Even during the ongoing violence, several temples of the Meitei Hindus in Churachandpur, Kakching, Kangpokpi, Bishnupur, Tengnoupal, and Imphal West have been vandalised, destroyed and looted by violent Kuki mobs in a series of well-planned attacks.

Kukis, Conflicts & Land

The Kukis are a nomadic community whose primary mode of survival is based on the shifting mode of cultivation. Their patterns of migration at different historical time periods have been chiefly determined by their nomadic way of life and the search for more and more land. The fertility of the soil has been the chief determining factor behind this migration. Hence, they do not carry much collective memory of and respect for a place and its people, traditions and customs. In other words, they do not have any sense of ‘belongingness’ over the land in which they settle. It seems wherever they go and settle that entire area becomes their land in due course of time.

They keep on moving from one place to another, continuously splitting themselves up into smaller villages and communities. This phenomenon can be seen in most border towns of Manipur such as Moreh, where the Kukis have dispersed themselves into several smaller villages, eventually leading to the displacement of various Naga communities from their ancestral lands. It is because of the fact that the wandering lifestyle of the Kukis often takes them closer to the habitations of other communities, causing friction and trouble. An important question that arises here is – is it justifiable to legitimise such a nomadic lifestyle of any community within the formal legal domain of the modern state structure?

Conflicts related to the ownership of land and property rights between the Kukis on the one hand and the Meiteis and the Nagas on the other have occurred several times earlier as well. Not just Manipur, but the states of Assam and Tripura too, have also been witness to such conflicts since the 1950s. In a majority of the cases, the Kukis have been the initial perpetrators, responsible for disturbing the existing social harmony. Unlike the Kukis, the Meiteis and the Nagas of Manipur maintain a close, sacred, and fixed affinity with the land they inhabit. They do not infringe upon the lands inhabited by other communities. This is the basic characteristic difference between the Kukis and other communities of the North-East.

Coming to the Meiteis’ perception and understanding of the land, it is based on the ideas of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘inviolable’. In the Meitei religious pantheon, there are 8 sacred directions designated by a specific idea of ‘space’ as the ‘frontier’. These are guarded and protected by the respective deities whom the Meiteis believe to be the dwellers of the sacred groves. In addition, there are two more directions upward towards the sky (ether or Soraren in Manipuri), and the point where the Self stands at the centre. But, the formidable four directions are marked both by an identified space (mountain in this case) and associated guardian deities who are believed to be the protectors of the land and its people.

These deities are Wangbren in the South-East, Thangjing in the South-West, Koubru in the North-West, and Marjing in the North-East. The Meitei cultural idea of ‘space’ is spread over the plains, hills, and water bodies. Invocation of Umang Lai and other ancestral deities of the Meiteis during the Lai Haraoba festival is built within these spaces. However, under the present-day circumstances, the legal discourse of the Westphalian modern state structure has limited the access of the Meiteis in terms of land and resources to only the Imphal Valley, strictly prohibiting them from accessing and protecting many of their sacred ancestral and cultural sites in the hills which are declining in number almost every passing year.

Conflicts between Kukis vs. other Communities

However, very casually walking past these historical and socio-political truths, many Kuki Professors and academics in some top Universities of India have been peddling a dangerous narrative in favour of illegal immigration on economic and humanitarian grounds. In their propagandist worldview, migration is a fact of human life and the idea of boundary exists only in the cultural and mental imaginations of different communities. In this way, they have tried to normalise the phenomenon of migration and pushed forward their partisan interests, overlooking the demographic challenges associated with immigration for any society and country to deal with. This is academically unethical.

A few Kuki “intellectuals” have even gone to the extent of denying the existence of an international border between India and Myanmar in Manipur. They have very conveniently been using the provisions of the Manipur Land Revenue and Reforms Act of 1960 to prevent the Meiteis from buying land and settling in the hills. This means that wherever and whenever it suits their nefarious political agenda, these same propagandists in the garb of “intellectuals” have relied upon the formal legal machinery of the modern nation-state. In other instances, they have hypocritically made use of fabricated versions of culture and cultural categories to justify any kind of illegal, anti-national activity. 

Kukis & Drug Trade

Certain bitter realities behind the eviction drive that initially began in Manipur in the year 2017 need to be taken into account in the context of the recent violence. Increasing deforestation caused by the cutting down of timber in the hill areas of Manipur and the resultant environmental imbalance, irregular rainfall, changes in temperature, flash floods, and droughts has become very common in several regions of the state. The issue had to be addressed by the Government keeping in mind the aims and objectives of disaster management in these eco-sensitive zones. This delicate scenario has been further worsened in recent times due to rampant poppy cultivation for nourishing the multi-billion dollar drug cartels.

As per Intelligence Reports, Kuki militant groups aided by the Church have been playing a very important role in facilitating the illegal entry of the Kuki-Chin-Zomis to India from Myanmar. After imparting them certain basic skills of reading and writing in the local language, they are sent for military training to the militant camps along the India-Myanmar international border in Churachandpur. Myanmar being a militarised society, these migrants are already well-trained in guerrilla tactics of warfare as a result of their first-hand experience in dealing with the military junta. They are later settled in the old villages whose villagers are then forced to shift to a new village.

The militants generally employ them in the poppy fields either as daily labourers or as gun dealers and small-time drug peddlers. This explains the phenomenal rise in the extent of areas under poppy cultivation in the Kuki-inhabited areas of Manipur over the past several decades. Interestingly, Kuki civil society organisations have been maintaining a deafening silence over this and many other issues including deforestation and increasing illegal immigration from Myanmar. The Manipur State Government’s drive against drugs and narcotics has thus been a critical contributing factor behind the Kuki opposition to providing ST reservation to the Meiteis. 

Details of Arrested Drug Traffickers

Source: India Today NE (May 16, 2023. Update: May 16, 2023, 23:06 Hrs IST)

The above figures shed light on the efforts undertaken by the authorities to curb drug-related activities in Manipur and thus safeguard the well-being of all. Arrests under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act has been categorised community-wise, thereby providing insights into the extent of involvement of different communities in the drug trade and the importance of collective responsibility in addressing this issue. It is noteworthy of mentioning that almost all the Kuki-dominated hill districts of Manipur are the hotbeds of poppy cultivation in the state. Since 2017, the Government has been able to destroy over 18,000 acres of poppy fields in these districts.

In fact, after the launch of the ‘War on Drugs’ Campaign by Chief Minister N Biren Singh in 2017, along with the arrests of thousands of people, a total area of 15,496 acres of poppy cultivation in the hills was destroyed of which the Kuki-Chin community recorded a significant 13,121.8 acre area. In contrast to this, the Nagas accounted for 2,340 acres, and other communities only 35 acres during the period 2017-2023. The Government of Manipur has announced various schemes and financial assistance packages to encourage poppy cultivators to switch over to other alternative crops in order to check the problem of drug abuse in the state.

Poppy is easy to cultivate, requires less maintenance and a much lesser amount of investment. It is an easy source of income for a large number of people in Manipur since it is used for the production of many drugs including morphine. Many top politicians and bureaucrats, besides militants and drug lords from Manipur, Mizoram, and Myanmar are both overtly and covertly associated with this immensely lucrative narcotics business. They threaten the villagers with dire consequences if they do not tow their line. It may be recalled here that in a sensational incident, poppy seeds were seized from the house of a Kuki druglord at Mantripukhri in Imphal West district on May 8, 2023.

A picture of Kimneo Haokip Hangshing enjoying herself amid poppy fields somewhere in Manipur had gone viral on social media sometimes back. Hangshing represents the Kuki People’s Alliance (KPA) in the Manipur Legislative Assembly from Saikul Assembly Constituency. She is married to David Hangshing, Chairman of the militant group Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA). The problem began when this year because of the Government crackdown, the poppy could not be successfully harvested. The plants were destroyed at the time of flowering. This was the beginning of the tension which gradually inflated into the deadly situation that Manipur is going through right now.

As a result of this, the poppy cultivators, local and Myanmar-based drug mafias, the illegal immigrants from Myanmar, and several cross-border terrorist groups of Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur involved in the drug trade suffered huge financial losses. The drug cartels of the infamous ‘Golden Triangle’ in South-East Asia soon felt the heat. Eviction of the land encroachers (mostly Kukis) from the protected forest lands intensified their brewing anger and added to their woes. All these factors finally led to the outbreak of the ghastly violence. The fact that the Government of Mizoram has been maintaining complete silence over the issue despite poppy cultivation being widespread throughout Mizoram speaks a lot.

Besides Manipur, Mizoram also happens to be a major hotspot of drug trafficking and gold smuggling in the Northeast. Interestingly, most of the poppy cultivators and others associated with them in this drug business in Mizoram and the districts of Churachandpur, Tengnoupal, and Kangpokpi in Manipur are people exclusively from the Kuki-Chin-Mizo communities. Is there a nexus between the political leadership, armed militants, and drug mafias of Mizoram and Manipur? The underground, illegal narco-business and the smuggling of arms and weapons have deep connections with the insurgency in the Northeast and illegal immigration.

The different ways in which the politics of the Church has become entangled in this dangerous web of drugs and guns on the one hand and immigrants on the other, thereby posing a serious threat to India’s economy and national security, must be investigated in detail by the Union Home Ministry. They are a cause of concern for the entire country and not merely the Northeast or the Government of Manipur for that matter. If left unattended, it may lead to a situation of irreparable loss of national security and safety at a later stage. The North-East being a sensitive border region of the country, these issues magnify here further.

Although insurgent organisations such as the Kuki National Army (KNA), Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA), etc. are under a Tripartite Ceasefire Agreement – Suspension of Operation (SoO) - with the Government of India and the Government of Manipur since 2008, there have been many instances when they have not adhered to their terms and conditions. Most importantly, because of the SoO, their movements across the international border between India and Myanmar in Manipur remain unchecked. The active involvement of these terrorist groups in funding the cultivation of poppy and drug trafficking has led the Government of Manipur to unilaterally break the SoO.

In several border villages of Churachandpur and Kangpokpi districts, it seems as if the Central paramilitary forces have failed the common people and the militants are having a free run in doing whatever they want. With every passing day, it is becoming too difficult for the security forces to fight against the anti-national activities of the Kukis. Out of dire frustration, villagers have sought arms to defend themselves because of the failure of the security forces in intervening and addressing the aggression of the Kuki militants over the common people. In short, there has been a complete failure of law and order in the Kuki-dominated areas of Manipur during the ongoing crisis.

Image source: Since Independence