On the Manipur Crisis: India is already a failed state

On July 7, 2023, the US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said that “the United States has “human concerns” about the violence in Manipur and is “ready, willing, able to assist in any way if asked”; on July 12, 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that called on Indian authorities to take “all necessary” measures to stop the violence in Manipur and protect religious minorities, particularly Christians; and on July 21, 2023, the United States reacted. The incapacity of the Indian government to contain the crisis/conflict, which erupted into full conflict on May 3, 2023, heralds an unfavorable new chapter, and the open calling by the international community in the Manipur crisis indicates that India is already a failed state.

Manipur has been reduced to an almost pre-modern condition because of the fighting. In addition to the senseless property destructions, killings, tortures, and rapes between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zo/Chin-Mizo groups, the Manipur government partially lifts the internet ban, and announced the conditional restoration of broadband services in the state on Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 83 days after the internet shutdown was imposed in response to the violence that erupted on May 3, 2023, though mobile internet services remain suspended as of the writing of this perspective.

Despite the continuing conflict in Manipur, India is best described as a country in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fortified its power by undermining practically every institutional pillar of the potential of imposing “President’s Rule” in Manipur. Article 356 of the “Indian Constitution gives the President of India the authority to suspend state government and impose President’s rule over any state in the country if he is satisfied that a situation has arisen in which the government of the state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.” In functional terms, the state is taken over directly by the union government, and the governor is appointed as its constitutional head. There would also be no Council of Ministers, and the state legislature is either dissolved or prorogued.

The ruling BJP government in the center avoids imposing the President’s Rule because doing so would imply admitting the collapse of the state BJP government in Manipur. The handling of the crisis has demonstrated Delhi’s willingness to protect the state BJP government in the pursuit of its own institutional self-preservation, a case similar to Gujarat’s Godhra riots in 2002 when the BJP government in the union failed to impose President’s Rule when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time.

The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi doesn’t care about the ongoing conflict happening in Manipur. Since the full-scale conflict erupted on May 3, 2023, and until the writing of this perspective, Mr. Modi has yet to visit the state of Manipur, but – it’s been business as usual: red carpet travels overseas, and in India, to attend political rallies. He chooses not to speak out about the crisis, but after 79 days of silence, on July 20, 2023, it took a viral video of two women being paraded naked by a Meitei’s mob, filmed on May 4, 2023, sparked global outrage for Indian Prime Minister Modi to finally break his silence on the ongoing violence in the state of Manipur. Furthermore, Mr. Modi refuses to come to parliament and speak with fellow parliamentarians about the Manipur crisis, and as a test to his party and leadership, India’s parliament began debating a no-confidence motion that opposition parties have brought against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on July 26, 2023, but the BJP-led Modi government is least concerned about it because his BJP and its allies have a majority in parliament. On August 10, 2023, Mr. Modi refused to discuss the Manipur crisis in the Indian Parliament, however, Mr. Modi eventually addressed the issue in the Parliament after the opposition walked out, saying, “The Centre is working hard to give the harshest punishment to those involved in crimes in Manipur… people of Manipur – mothers, sisters, daughters – the country is with you. Together, we will face this difficulty and ensure peace returns. I promise the people of Manipur that the state will once again undertake the development journey.” However, the question remains: why did Modi just mention the unrest in Manipur state approximately 90 minutes into his two-hour speech, and not before the opposition walkout?

Providing timely and appropriate responses will become more difficult. The failure of both the federal and state governments to handle the problem is readily visible. According to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), MP Kanimozhi said on August 9, 2023, that despite the fact that Manipur has the highest ratio of police personnel to civilians in India and that 161 companies of central security forces, including the Assam Rifles, are present in the state, the administration/government has failed the people. The disparity in how the Manipur state forces/agencies and the central security forces/agencies strategized their priorities of support/reaction in Manipur may delay response times and lower the pace of any prompt response to any incidents. For example, the Manipur Police and Assam Rifles are at odds over what happened during a recent search operation in the violence-stricken state, with the Manipur Police filing a criminal case against the Assam Rifles on August 5, 2023, for “obstruction of duty” and “criminal intimidation.” This is not the first and will not be the last because of the strategic priorities of the ruling BJP government in both the state and the union, even though the security protocol drawn up by the ‘unified command’ (of state police, Indian Army, Assam Rifles, and central forces) is for ensuring state security.

The root causes of the conflict will be exacerbated, and it will be extended beyond. Among the most important drivers of the conflict were that both “Meiteis and Kuki-Zomi/Chin-Mizo groups defined the ongoing crisis using the approach of equality and fear, with the Meiteis keen to expand their area and dominate, this time through a potent proxy: fear of marginalization and the desire for protection through India’s Scheduled Tribes (ST) classification/status. While the Kuki-Zomi/Chin-Mizo groups successfully redefined and politicized a moral high ground ready to legitimize their claims, particularly the present Kuki-inhibited areas, this time through a formidable proxy: the dread of remaining within Manipur and demanding a separate administration under the constitution of India.” These root causes of the conflict cannot be resolved by granting a short-term demand or on grounds of humanitarian activities alone because simply granting ST status to the Meiteis or a separate administration to the Kuki-Zomi/Chin-Mizo groups by including ancestral Naga areas will simply aggravate the conflict. Until India can catalyze serious systemic change in dealing with the historical conflict existing in the region/state, prevailing conditions will intensify the drivers of instability. Within the BJP policy establishment, the view that Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren should not go, and the President’s Rule should not be imposed in Manipur — at all costs — has remained a bedrock principle. Despite the assurances of India’s Modi government that peace will be restored in Manipur, there is no good news in and about Manipur these days, and it is unclear how long the government will test and see till peace is entirely restored in Manipur.

Overall, based on how the Manipur situation has been handled, India is already a failed state, and it will remain such if the current government continues to tread on a dangerously thin line. If hope is to be found, it may not be wrong to say that there is still time to retool response approaches, or else the conflict may be extended beyond the current involving groups as the Manipur crisis enters a new phase – as on August 9, 2023, the Naga people in Manipur carried out “The Naga Peoples’ Rally for Resolving Indo-Naga Political Issue based on Framework Agreement” in all undivided Naga district headquarters of Tahamzam (Senapati), Ukhrul, Chandel, and Tamenglong under the auspices of the United Naga Council (UNC) to resolve the long historical conflict between India and the Naga people, a conflict that has existed since 1947.