Lingneifel Vaiphei collapsed to the ground in agony after seeing her toddler’s lifeless body lying on a cold steel stretcher at a mortuary in Chennai, the capital of India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Steven’s body was tightly wrapped in a striped wool shawl traditionally worn by the Kuki-Zo tribe in the northeastern state of Manipur. His face had turned blue. He was only six months old.
The 20-year-old mother cried hard and repeatedly kissed her child’s face as she carried his body to the ambulance, with her husband Kennedy Vaiphei walking beside her. Amid sobs and muted anger, the family made their way to a grave site about seven kilometers away and laid their only child to rest there. Nine months after Lingneifel and Kennedy moved to Chennai in search of a fresh start away from the violence, they were struck by a nightmare they could never have imagined.
Less than 24 hours earlier, on the night of April 25, the couple had rushed Steven to Kilpauk Medical Hospital in Chennai after his week-long fever refused to subside and continued to worsen.
But the infant died in his mother’s arms on the way – before the family could even reach the hospital.
A year of deadly violence
Steven was born last winter in Chennai, nearly 3,200 km (1,988 miles) from what his parents call Manipur, where deadly ethnic clashes have since raged between the predominantly Hindu Meitei and predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribes now a year.
The Meiteis – about 60 percent of Manipur’s 2.9 million people – are concentrated in the wealthier valley areas around the state capital Imphal. The Kuki-Zo and the Nagas, another significant tribal group, live mostly in scattered settlements in the hills surrounding the valley. The tribes make up about 40 percent of the Himalayan state’s population.
The Meiteis are politically dominant. The state government is headed by Prime Minister N. Biren Singh, a Meitei and member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). There are 40 Meitei in the 60-member Manipur Legislative Assembly.
The Kuki-Zo and the Nagas are protected by Scheduled Tribe (ST) status enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which makes them eligible for various government support programs. The status grants them quotas in state educational institutions and government jobs – a provision that has caused tension between the tribes and the Meities for decades.
These tensions came to a head in March last year when a local court recommended that ST quotas be extended to the Meiteis. The court order angered the Kuki-Zo and Naga groups, who, fearing that their claims would be taken over by the majority of the Meiteis, staged protest marches, especially in the mountainous districts, demanding that the court order be repealed. The protests led to threats of a Meitei backlash.
During a Kuki Zo rally on May 3, 2023 in the hill district of Churachandpur, a centenary gate built to commemorate the tribe’s uprising against the British colonial rulers in 1917-1919 was allegedly set on fire by a Meitei mob . The incident immediately sparked deadly clashes between the two communities across the state.
In addition to the murders, mutilations and lynchings, there were also several allegations of sexual assaults on Kuki-Zo women and the burning of dozens of their villages and churches. The internet remained blocked across the state for months and the army was called in to stem the bloodshed.
A year later, however, the violence has not abated – making it one of India’s longest-running civil wars, having already claimed more than 200 lives and displaced tens of thousands, mostly Kuki-Zo.
Those displaced included Lingneifel and Kennedy, who moved to Tamil Nadu in July last year after their villages were burned in the first week of clashes. As they rebuilt their lives in a new city despite language and cultural barriers, the struggle for a living outweighed their concerns about violence in their homeland.
Lingneifel, who works at a restaurant in Chennai that serves local cuisine, had to return to work days after Steven’s death, fearing she would be fired for absenteeism. Kennedy hasn’t found a job yet.
“When we first came to Tamil Nadu, we didn’t know anyone here. We didn’t even know what to do when our baby got sick,” she told Al Jazeera, complaining that her long hours at the restaurant meant she could barely have time for her son.
However, a larger support network is slowly emerging for the displaced Kuki-Zo. The network consists of community professionals and is now present in the cities of Chennai, New Delhi and Bengaluru, helping them find housing and work.
Haoneithang Kipgen, 26, is a member of the network. He reached Chennai last June.
Days before the violence erupted, Haoneithang had borrowed 300,000 rupees ($3,600) from a local moneylender to set up a customer service business in his village of K Phaizawl in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. But his shop was burned down along with the rest of the village.
However, the debt had to be paid, forcing Haoneithang to migrate to Chennai, where his small rented apartment also serves as temporary accommodation for other Kuki-Zo displaced by the violence.
Haoneithang said many members of his tribe are also sending part of their salaries to a fund to support volunteers back home guarding the Kuki Zo villages after government troops withdrew from many areas of a buffer zone between the hills and the valley have. These areas were most at risk in the conflict.
But Haoneithang also stressed that he could not regard all Meitei people as his enemies.
“During my first job at a restaurant, my roommate was a Meitei. We were away from our state, our communities were at war, but that wasn’t the case,” he told Al Jazeera. “So many of them are my friends, how can I? My problem is with [Chief Minister] Biren Singh and the Government of Manipur.”
Singh’s government has been accused of enabling the violence for political reasons – an accusation the prime minister and the BJP have rejected.
Most displaced Kuki-Zo across India share a similar opinion. “We don’t want to go back now, the violence is just increasing and the government is doing nothing,” Kennedy said.
Thanggoulen Kipgen, a professor of sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai, said the violence had set Manipur back by decades.
Thanggoulen pointed to both the collapse of the economy and the distrust between communities and saw migration as the only option for those affected by war and those seeking survival.
“The Meitei are also fleeing the state to protect their families from being drawn into the violence. “The Kuki-Zo have no choice but to emigrate and work to support their families back home,” Thanggoulen told Al Jazeera.
Decision on BJP’s ‘denial’
Critics of the BJP say the scale of death and displacement faced by Manipuris on both sides of the ethnic divide has been largely overlooked in the prime minister’s narrative.
In an April 8 interview with a newspaper based in the neighboring state of Assam, Modi said “timely intervention” by the federal and state governments had led to a “significant improvement in the situation.”
“We have deployed our best resources and administrative mechanisms to resolve the conflict,” the prime minister said. “The remedial measures taken include a financial package to support and rehabilitate people living in shelter camps in the state.”
But less than a week after Modi’s statement, videos showing the mutilated bodies of two Kuki Zo men went viral on social media. And on April 27, an army post in Bishnupur district was bombed by unidentified men, killing two paramilitaries and injuring two others.
The violence forced authorities to hold the ongoing assembly elections in Manipur’s two seats in two phases – on April 19 and April 26. But despite massive security measures, several incidents of violence and suspected election manipulation were reported from there, forcing authorities to re-investigate polls in several of about a dozen voting booths.
Many in Manipur accuse Arambai Tenggol, an armed militia allegedly backed by the ruling BJP, of violence and election rigging. The opposition Indian National Congress complained in a news conference on April 19 about “unprecedented mass violence and the capture of booths by armed groups in the valley region.”
At least three witnesses Al Jazeera spoke to claimed they saw Arambai Tenggol members in the valley districts forcing voters to vote for the BJP. The group and the BJP have denied the allegations. BJP vice-president Chidananda Singh told Al Jazeera that the party “always stands for free and fair elections”.
But Manipur Congress politician Kh Debabrata said the crisis had only worsened under the BJP.
“There is a total collapse of the economy and a complete militarization of society, armed groups are in power everywhere. “This is far beyond the control of the BJP government,” he said, demanding the sack of the state’s chief minister and the imposition of President’s Rule – an administrative provision that places a state under the direct control of New Delhi during a political or security crisis brings.
“If we have to address this mountain-valley divide, the CM [chief minister] Must go. There is no other option,” said the Congress politician.
BJP’s Chidananda Singh dismissed the allegation and accused the Congress of being unaware of the realities of Manipur. “It is part of their policy to blame only us,” he told Al Jazeera.
However, many in Manipur, including Meiteis, accuse the BJP of militarizing their community through groups like the Arambai Tenggol.
Disillusioned by the violence, Amar L* left his home in Imphal and settled in New Delhi to study history as “staying in Imphal would have hindered my education”.
“The way the Arambai Tenggol welcome so many young men into their fold is frightening. Our ambitions for Manipur were and are different,” the 20-year-old told Al Jazeera.
Patricia Mukhim, editor of The Shillong Times newspaper, said persistent political incompetence has failed to curb violence in Manipur.
“It is the nature of politics to promote division and fear-mongering,” she said, urging warring communities to discuss their problems “without relying too much on the government or armed groups.”
“There is no alternative to peace,” she said.
*Name has been changed to protect the individual’s identity due to fears of backlash.