Why has a supposedly simple error triggered the Meitei political elite and civil society in Manipur, which has been roiling in an intense ethnic armed conflict between the Meitei and Kukis since May 2023? What is the historical significance of this mistake?

Ethno-territorial mixup

The most obvious aspect of the error is its historical inconsistency – there is no evidence to indicate that any administrative or political unit by the name of “Chin State” existed in the territory that has been known as “Manipur” through various periods of history. In fact, “Chin State” is a political unit in present-day Myanmar, bordering Mizoram and a small stretch of southern Manipur.

Interestingly, towards the final decades of the 19th century, the British colonial administration almost ended up creating what the NEC erroneously referred to as the “Chin State of Manipur”. In 1881, a British colonial administrator in the Northeast, Sir James Johnstone, officially recommended the annexation of the Chin Hills into the Meitei-ruled kingdom of Manipur. This would, he believed, subdue the “barbaric” tribes living in these hills.

However, the idea was shot down by Johnstone’s superiors, including Fitzpatrick and Sir Robert McCabe, who were the then chief commissioner and deputy commissioner of Assam, respectively. While the Manipur-Chin Hills Boundary Commission appointed in 1893 did give a few Chin-Lushai villages to Manipur (dominated by tribes that eventually adopted the ‘Kuki’ super-identity), the British government had decided just a year ago that the Chin Hills would remain under the control of the colonial administration in Burma.

In fact, in 1894, the Boundary Commission demarcated the Manipur-Chin Hills boundary with eight stone pillars in an attempt to concretise a map of the Indo-Burma frontier drawn by R.B. Pemberton in 1834. This cartographic project not only drew a permanent line between Manipur and what went on to become “Mizoram” and “Chin State” in India and Myanmar, but it also fractured what the “Zo” people (including the Chin and Mizos) considered as a continuous historical homeland.

Present-day territorial contestations

The key reason why the NEC’s mix-up has angered Meitei groups is that it seemed to validate demands for a separate administration that Kuki-Zo groups have been raising since the current ethnic conflict began last year May.

The Meitei see this demand as separatist, and an attempt to usurp the “territorial integrity” of Manipur. For the Kuki-Zo, however, it is the only way to free themselves from the discriminatory control of what they see as a pro-Meitei government in Imphal and govern themselves better. Many of them argue that such a territorial split is now inevitable, even as the Meitei political class and civil society refuse to cede any ground.

This clash of two ethno-territorial visions, rooted in the Kuki-Zo disenchantment of the Imphal-based political class and civil society, continues to perpetuate the violent conflict in Manipur. In many ways, it has completely reshaped the state’s modern political geography by partitioning it along neat ethnic lines.

Yet, the roots of this split can be traced to the colonial policy of drawing and redrawing arbitrary lines on the map of the Northeast for its own administrative convenience and in the process, undertaking what academic Pum Khan Pau has called a “reordering of indigenous space”. These lines not only conjured up new political units but also created divided lifeworlds that continued to fuel inter-ethnic friction more than a century later.

Need to settle anxieties

The current controversy reaffirms the fact that the Manipur conflict is inherently tied to conflicting geographical imaginations of space and society. The Meitei elite finds it nearly impossible to imagine a distinct Kuki-Zo (or Chin) political unit within their state, even in distant history. The Kuki-Zo still reminisce about a single contiguous homeland.

Yet, the long history of colonial reconfiguration of territory, followed by postcolonial processes of reifying those divisions, has complicated the process of collective reconciliation of space. The Manipur conflict is a good opportunity for all sides to take a fresh look at their shared anxieties and settle them through multi-stakeholder consultations with an open mind.

Angshuman Choudhury is a New Delhi-based researcher and writer, formerly an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and focuses on Northeast India and Myanmar. The views expressed are personal.