Towards a Win-Win Strategy for Meitei and Kuki in Manipur

The only lasting way out of Manipur’s agony is a genuine win-win settlement between the Meitei and Kuki communities. Yet every honest observer knows that such a settlement will never emerge from the offices of politicians, the bunkers of militants, or the press statements of civil society organisations. 

It can only emerge from one place: the relief camps where thousands of internally displaced families—both Meitei and Kuki—live in congested single room, share the same hunger, and nurse the same unspoken hope of returning home one day. 

If Manipur is to be healed, the very first step must be breathtakingly simple yet profoundly difficult: let the IDPs speak, let them be heard, and let no one—absolutely no one—be allowed to silence them again.

The deepest tragedy of the present conflict is not merely the violence that erupted in May 2023; it is the systematic silencing of those who suffered it the most. Ordinary mothers, farmers, students, and small traders—people who never wanted war—have been reduced to mute exhibits in someone else’s political theatre. Their pain has been photographed, their tears televised, their camps counted, but their actual words, their actual desires, their actual proposals for peace have been deliberately suppressed. And the suppression has not been equal. 

While Meitei IDPs in the valley have faced intimidation and social pressure for their outspoken and challenges to the administration for not listening to them, Kuki IDPs—especially those living in camps under the influence of armed groups or ambitious leaders—have faced something far worse: threats, physical violence, and in several undocumented cases, deprived of their basic rights. 

Those who dared to say “we only want to go home and live with our Meitei neighbours again” have been branded traitors, their families threatened, or worse. Rumors is that, these brave IDPs have to deprived of basic needs in the camps, mentally tortured not to raise the voice again. This is not conjecture; it is the lived reality reported again and again by displaced persons who still afraid to give their real names.

The consequences of this silencing are catastrophic. When the people who most desperately want peace are prevented from advocating for it, the field is left open to those who profit from perpetual conflict. Militants finds new recruitment easier. Politicians find it easier to postpone elections and cling to power. Well-to-do families living safely in Delhi, Guwahati or abroad find it easier to keep posting incendiary content on social media while their own children study in elite schools far from any relief camp. The longer authentic voices remain gagged, the longer Manipur will bleed.

Yet there are unmistakable signs of hope, even in the darkness. When Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla made a direct appeal in February 2025 for the return of looted weapons, Arambai Tenggol—one of the most powerful Meitei armed organisations—responded almost immediately by beginning the process of surrender. 

No prolonged negotiations, no pre-conditions, no “ifs and buts.” Weapons were returned because a credible authority spoke directly to stakeholders who genuinely wanted an excuse to step back from the brink. This single act proved something vital: when a sincere call for de-escalation is made, at least one side is ready to reciprocate without hesitation. 

The Meitei community, through this and many quieter gestures, has repeatedly signalled openness to reconciliation. The challenge now is to create the conditions in which the Kuki side—especially its displaced families—can express the same openness without risking their lives.

The heart of any authentic win-win strategy must therefore be direct, uncensored, unmediated interaction between displaced Meitei and Kuki families. Not talks between CSOs, not talks between MLAs, not talks between militant commanders—talks between the actual sufferers. 

Imagine a series of carefully secured interaction meetings where a group of Kuki mothers from New Checkon, now sheltering in Churachandpur sits across from Meitei mothers from Khumujamba Leikai in Churachandpur, where they are free to weep, to argue, to embrace, to propose solutions, and where the only rule is that no outsider—no gunman, no politician, no self-appointed “community leader”—is allowed to interrupt or intimidate. 

Such spaces would achieve in weeks what years of elite-level negotiations have failed to achieve. They would humanise the “other,” dismantle stereotypes, and most importantly, generate grassroots solutions that actually reflect ground realities rather than political fantasies.

We already know these interactions are possible because, away from cameras and slogans, they are already happening in small, defiant ways. Kuki farm owners in the hills continue to receive their annual lousal (cash share) from Meitei tenants who cultivate their fields in the valley.  Mixed Meitei-Kuki families continue to celebrate Ningol Chakouba and Christmas together in private homes. Elderly Kuki women displaced to Churachandpur speak with aching fondness about the Meitei neighbour who once helped carry firewood, and silently pray for the day they can return the favour. 

How will anyone stop those Kuki and Meitei players who run side by side on the football field, scoring goals together and bringing laurels for the State and the Nation? Who has the audacity to sow communal hatred among Kuki and Meitei students who sit in the same classrooms every day, sharing books, laughter, and dreams, while politicians and CSOs outside settle their own scores? 

The bonds of friendship, teamwork, and shared learning are far stronger than the divisive rhetoric of a few. These young people already embody the unity that the elders are struggling to rediscover—they prove daily that coexistence is not only possible but natural.  

There are many wise Kukis who lost everything in Imphal yet remain silent—not out of fear, but out of hope. They wait for the day when Meitei neighbors will come forward to support them, to welcome them back. Their silence is not surrender; it is faith in humanity. 

Similarly, Kuki husbands and Meitei wives continue to raise their children lovingly, proving that family bonds are stronger than communal boundaries. Meitei businessmen rely on their Kuki friends to safeguard abandoned properties in the hills, and vice versa. These acts of trust and solidarity are the true fabric of Manipur, woven quietly while the loud voices of division dominate the airwaves.

These are not exceptions; they are the rule that divisive forces are desperate to hide. Ordinary Manipuris have never stopped trusting each other; only a few hundred influential families—safely removed from relief-camp realities—have stopped trusting on their behalf.

It is time to bury once and for all the divisive labels “Meitei IDP” and “Kuki IDP.” There is only one accurate descriptor for around 60,000 people living in relief camps and another thousands in non camps today: displaced Manipuri. Their suffering is identical—shared room in a community hall, children missing years of schooling, elders dying for want of timely medicine, the daily humiliation of depending on erratic government rations. 

By presenting themselves as one collective, IDPs can demand protection, rehabilitation, and reconciliation from the Centre. Their voice would carry moral authority, rooted not in political agendas but in lived experience. 

For their aspirations are identical—return home, rebuild the house, send children to college, grow old among familiar faces and live again with dignity. Their enemies are identical—militants who issue death threats to peace advocates, politicians who postpone rehabilitation to prolong their own relevance, and social-media warriors who type hatred from air-conditioned rooms. 

When displaced families unite under the single identity of “IDP,” they strip away the last excuse that elites use to keep the conflict profitable.History offers abundant proof that this approach works. 

After South Africa’s apartheid nightmare, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not begin with politicians negotiating power-sharing formulas; it began with ordinary victims—black and white—telling their stories in public for the first time. The act of being heard, of having suffering acknowledged without denial or justification, proved more healing than any constitutional amendment. 

In Rwanda, the gacaca courts forced neighbours who had participated in genocide to face the families of their victims in community settings. The process was painful, sometimes explosive, yet it allowed an entire nation to move forward where elite-level justice alone would have failed. 

Similarly, in Northern Ireland, it was not the Good Friday Agreement by itself that ended violence; it was thousands of small, stubborn, community-level initiatives—mixed housing estates, shared schools, joint victim groups—that slowly rebuilt trust. 

Manipur does not need to copy these models exactly, but it must learn the core principle: peace imposed from above collapses; peace grown from below endures.What would this look like in practice?

First, the immediate establishment of elected IDP Councils in every major relief camp cluster, with representatives chosen directly by displaced families through secret ballot. These councils would become the authentic voice of the displaced, articulating demands for security, rehabilitation packages, and above all, the right to speak without fear.

Second, a series of professionally facilitated but completely IDP-led interaction camps—joint medical camps, joint vocational training workshops, joint sports events for children—where Meitei and Kuki displaced families work side by side on practical tasks. 

Third, proactive, visible protection by central forces for every single IDP—Kuki or Meitei—who publicly advocates return and reconciliation. If even one more person is threatened for saying “I miss my Meitei neighbour,” the peace process loses credibility. The Ministry of Home Affairs must make it clear that targeting peace advocates will be treated as a direct attack on the Indian state itself.

Fourth, a complete overhaul of information flow. A medium like community radio stations  run from relief camps, video diaries uploaded to a neutral platform, newsletters compiled and printed by IDPs themselves—these must replace the current toxic monopoly of WhatsApp forwards and Facebook pages controlled by people who have never spent a night under plastic roofing.

Fifth, economic rehabilitation that deliberately ties the two communities together rather than apart. Joint markets on neutral ground, cooperative farming on contested foothills, shared micro-credit societies—prosperity that requires cooperation is the most durable antidote to conflict.

And lastly, perhaps most importantly, a formal commitment from the Centre that no political decision about Manipur’s future—whether administrative reorganisation, development packages, or electoral delimitation—will be taken without direct consultation with these IDP Councils. 

The era of a few Delhi-based leaders or  MLAs deciding the fate of more than 60,000 displaced people must end. Proposals for “separate administration” or “separate budget heads” dressed up as solutions must be rejected without ambiguity. They are not solutions; they are surrender documents that reward violence and punish moderation. 

Every demand for separation is built on the premise that Meitei and Kuki can never live together again—an insult to the thousands of mixed families, shared villages, and continuing economic ties that prove the opposite every single day. 

The displaced themselves overwhelmingly reject separation when they are allowed to speak freely; only those who fear the authentic voice of the people keep repeating the slogan.

Manipur’s future will not be decided by the few hundred influential families who flood social media with hatred while their own children study abroad. It will be decided by the mother in Akampat relief camp who still keeps her Kuki neighbour’s photograph secretly in her purse, by the Kuki elder in Kangpokpi who refuses to sell his land in Imphal because “one day my Meitei friend will come back,” by the teenagers playing football together in a makeshift ground between two camps because children understand what politicians forget: that the other side also bleeds red.

Let the IDPs speak. Let them meet. Let them embrace or argue or cry until exhaustion gives way to hope. Protect them when they do. And then get out of their way.

Because when displaced Manipuris—stripped of every political label except their shared humanity—are finally allowed to write their own peace, they will not draw new borders. They will draw the old footpaths that once connected valley to hill, Meitei home to Kuki hearth, and they will walk those paths again, together.

That is the only win-win Manipur needs. And it is within reach the moment we decide that the relief-camp mother’s voice matters more than the militant's gun, more than the politician’s ambition, more than the elite’s keyboard.