On 4 May, 2023, an armed 1,000-strong mob surrounded and attacked a village in Kangpokpi district of Manipur. They looted houses. They killed men and raped women. They abducted two women and frogmarched them naked in a parade which was filmed in a mobile phone. Close to three months later, that video went viral across the globe.

Prime minister Narendra Modi said, but not in Parliament, which was in session, that he had been shamed. He did not act further. The Chief Justice of India, Dr D.Y. Chandrachud, too took notice of the video, said he had been shamed together with the nation, and then proceeded to act. He summoned the Director General of Police of Manipur to his court. He chastised those who sought to indulge in whataboutery citing rapes and gang-rapes in Congress-ruled states Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and in Trinamool-ruled Bengal. 

On Monday, 7 August, the Chief Justice appointed two high powered committees, a judicial all-woman one, and a senior police officer to look into the crime aspect of the ghastly deeds. The video-maker has been arrested, along with three others.

The Chief Justice chose Justice Gita Mittal, a former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court, to head the three woman judges panel to provide the “healing touch” in Manipur. With her are Justice Shalini Phansalkar Joshi, a retired Bombay High Court judge, and Justice Asha Menon, a former Delhi High Court judge. “This will be a broad-based committee which will be constituted to supervise, intervene and monitor relief and rehabilitation, restoration of homesteads, religious places of worships, better relief work, etc,” Dr Chandrachud, heading a three-judge Bench, said.

He also asked six other state governments to delegate officers of the rank of deputy inspector general of police to monitor the work of the 42  special investigating teams the Manipur government now says it will set up investigate the cases.

Chief Justice Chandrachud restores confidence in the apex court, for sure. The three woman judges, who are monitoring relief and rehabilitation and not really investigating the gang rapes, may intervene to avert an immediate public health crisis in the Kuki-Zo camps in Churachandpur. It is a moot question how many of the killers will be apprehended, how many rapists will go to jail, how many of the tens of thousands of weapons looted in the valley from the police will be recovered. 

I went to Manipur as part of Karwan-e-Mohabbat, founded in 2017 by Harsh Mander, a former officer of the Indian Administrative Service. We visited various parts of the state, including of course the Meitei-dominated valley,  the Kuki home of hills of Churachandpur, and other districts, and two institutions of  the Nagas in the hills around north of Imphal.

It remains a depressing scenario. It should be. There really are no Kuki-Zo left in the valley, barring the occasional government official. And there are no Meitei left in the hills inhabited by the Kuki-Zo.

My own brief visit tells me very clearly that the situation remains very fraught, with an explosive future, unless instant steps are taken to restore an essential confidence between the two groups, which have grown so far apart as to seem totally irreconcilable.

Churachandpur, named after a past maharaja of Manipur, has now been brushed out by the Kuki-Zo. They now call their home hills Lamka, specially the district capital of the same name. That explains the chasm between the two communities. 

Explaining it further are the seven checkpoints on the Imphal-Churachandpur Highway that keep the two apart. They are manned by the politically very powerful Meitei women, the Manipur Police, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Assam Rifles, the Border security Force, the Indian Army and the Kuki-Zo women. The military and paramilitary forces are armed as if for war. The police forces don’t have armament and mortars but are no less heavily armed. The women are not armed, but are supported by young men who nonchalantly carry guns swinging from their shoulders.

The data speaks of the magnitude.  More than 150 lives have been lost. More than 69,000 are homeless. Some 6,200 houses have been burnt, 350 or so churches destroyed, belonging not just to the Kuki-Zo, but also to the small community of Meitei Christians. Some 170 villages have vanished in flames — Meitei villages in the Kuki region, and Kuki villages and urban clusters in the Imphal valley, including houses of some of the most affluent Christians in the state.

The situation in Manipur is a terrible witness for India. And it gives the lie to India's claim that it is a heaven of communal harmony, and that it is a nation in the world where people don't fight people based on religion.

The Prime Minister still refuses to speak, thereby telling the state and the world that he lacks the political will and possibly the political will to resolve this very complicated situation in the north-eastern state. 

The political solution may take a long time, months, possibly years, but the human crisis is a tragedy that demands a solution right now.

The refugee camps of the Kukis in the church compounds are running short of food for the children, short of proteins and crucial vitamins, and above all, of all medical care. There are no medicines worth speaking about, particularly when it comes to serious illnesses and life-threatening situations.

It is also an unfortunate fact what Mr Modi’s inaction has encouraged extreme right wing religious cadres in the valley and other elements to strengthen their position and mount a second wave of hate campaign against the Kukis.

One result is that even the dead have not been allowed to be buried. The Kukis wanted to bury more than 30 bodies which have been lying in the mortuaries for almost 3 months. They had sought land for the burial from the government, but the Meitei community led by its women made it sure that the burial did not take place. While a token virtual burial was organised in Churachandpur, the bodies remain as they were.

It is quite clear that these are symbolic situations which I speak of hardened lines between the Kukis-Zo and the Meitei.

It is also clear that whether it is government or civil society, or the senior Meitei Mothers, there seems to be a concerted, united, and coordinated effort to deny the Kukis their humanity, their customary, traditional tribal identity, and their citizenship.

Wherever you go there is only one phrase that is used by the Meitei, irrespective of rank, age, and social standing, to describe the Kukis. It is “Chin-Kuki-narco-terrorist”. They say it in one breath. It may be recalled that political groups created similar names to demonise Muslims in Bombay and Gujarat, along the Pakistan border, and in Assam and Bengal, painting them as illegal immigrants, terrorists and  criminals. They were chased as people who had infiltrated from other countries into India.

The children of today, the political forces, and even human right groups, have now been educated in this new idiom again the Kukis.

More than ever before, rumours are being manufactured and it is easy to believe that many of the militia and paramilitary forces may have also taken the same attitude towards the Kukis.

This can only add to the suspicion that the Kukis have towards the state government, towards the Meitei as a group, and towards the central government, assuming that all of them are enemies who are denying them human identity and denying them their existence on a land which has been their home for as many years as anybody else can claim.

This requires of the central government, and particularly of Mr Modi, a deep humane touch. He has to prove to us that he is in possession of these two traits, and that he has the political will to resolve this crisis to the satisfaction of all groups involved.  

A long-lasting solution of the crisis demands that status quo ante be maintained. Nothing should be done to change the geography of the Meitei, Naga and Kuki-Zo communities; nothing should be done to change the boundaries of the state.

In fact, the Nagas were not involved in the current confrontation. The Kuki-Zo  and Meitei have to be reassured that the government is neutral and has their best interests at heart.

The Kuki-Zo have to be reassured that the government is not conspiring to throw them out by defining them as infiltrators from Burma.

In terms of religion, since the Meitei community is largely Hindu, the Kukis and the Nagas are almost entirely Christian, seamless efforts have to be taken to restore communal harmony.

The situation in the refugee camps and the Kuki areas of Churachandpur itself shows what terrible scars have been made on the psyche of the people, and that it will take a very long time for these scars to disappear.

The medical specialists who were part of our group in Manipur have noted the threats to public health, particularly to the long-term health of the children of the Kukis. 

They note that the camps for displaced persons in Meitei areas are in public premises in Imphal valley, and tend to be larger, though with severe overcrowding. In some cases, the premises are being used simultaneously for their educational purposes. 

The camps in the Kuki areas are in church compounds. Just now relief cannot be reached to the Kukis. The government must deploy military aircraft if necessary to ensure that medicine and food are available to the Kukis. The government must ensure that medicines for serious illnesses or issues like tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases are easily available. It must ensure that medical staff is available.

Just now everybody will tell you they have got rations for 2 days, and medicine for one day.  This is not a confidence restoring situation.

Some of the police and paramilitary forces have taken sides, as is evident from what people say on both sides. It is important that the fracas show they are capable of being neutral and of disarming them. House to house surveys and searches will have to be made. 

We know now that machine guns, sub-machine guns and automatic rifles were robbed from government armouries; tens of thousands of ammunition for small arms to machine guns are now available to the common people, not just to the underground militants of both communities. This is not conducive to peace.

The Union and state government, both controlled by the Bhartiya Janata Party, need to regain confidence among the people.

The state has been without Internet for 3 months. Information flow may seem dangerous, but at the end of the day it is necessary to ensure peace and to ensure that rumours don't fly. When rumours fly, violence and hate seem to become inevitable.

The political process must start at some time. There are 10 elected BJP Kuki members of the state Assembly. They are demanding separate administrative area. They are hinting at the need for a union territory for the Kukis, the Nagas and the Meitei. This may or may not be possible, but it is clear that the Kukis would have to be assured that the places they are living in will not be violated, will not be over-run, and they will not be denied their home.

This is most necessary. The Kuki fear they are being displaced from the hills firstly by Meitei seeking schedule tribe status, and secondly by demonising them and painting them as migrants or intruders, or invaders from Burma.

Although Members of Parliament from the Opposition have taken a delegation to Manipur, and have come back, Parliament must be involved in the process.

There must be a fair, frank, and thorough discussion on the situation so that all dark spots can come to light, so that Manipur can understand that it is not a foreign land, it is not far from the heart of Indians, that it is very much a part of the rest of the country. 

Communalism, targeted hate, and targeted violence are the same everywhere — in Manipur now, in Gujarat, in Orissa, Kandhamal. Another commonality is that people cornered because of ethnicity, based on religion. The third commonality in all these areas has been the role of right-wing Hindutva organizations, whatever their name may be.

In Manipur there are two different names for the right wing outfits. In Gujarat and Kandhamal we have known them as Sangh Parivar. There must be a law against hate, and there must be a law against targeted violence. People must not be allowed to benefit politically, socially, or economically by targeting another, smaller more vulnerable minority group — whether it is a religious minority,  or it is an ethnic minority.