New Delhi
Multiple factors led to the ethnic conflict that erupted in Manipur on May 3 that left more than 60 dead, 231 injured, and 1,700 houses, many belonging to tribes of the Kuki group, destroyed.
The most recent was a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’, spurred by the Manipur High Court’s March 27 order (issued on April 19) that revived a decade-old demand of a section of the Meitei people that they be granted the Scheduled Tribe status for protecting their “ancestral land, traditions, culture and language”.
New Delhi rushed thousands of Central forces to the State as violence spread. An uneasy calm has prevailed over the State ever since, but the equations between communities remain tense.
Manipur, one of the eight northeastern States, covers an area of 22,327 sq. km and has a rich cultural, literary and administrative history.
The State’s territory, according to British-era maps in the 1850s, once extended up to the Ningthee or Chindwin river beyond the Kabaw or Kubo Valley in Myanmar.
The present-day Manipur can be broadly divided into two valleys that account for a little more than 10% of the landmass and the hills covering the rest.
