When the guns fell largely silent after the violent conflict that began on May 3, 2023 in Manipur, many in New Delhi – and much of the national press – framed the lull as a return to “normalcy.” Yet silence without return, security without rights, and checkpoints without accountability are not peace; they are the ingredients of a frozen conflict – violence suspended, grievances unaddressed, and populations locked into separate, securitised lives.
In Manipur today, the frozen condition is both lived and mapped – in buffer zones that act like invisible borders, in national highways that communities cannot cross freely, in tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) languishing in camps, and in a governance architecture that increasingly resembles control rather than care. The pressing question for scholars, policymakers, peace practitioners, and citizens is whether this freezing is an unintended consequence of state failure – or a deliberate design that advances particular political and strategic ends.
This essay critically examines Manipur’s frozen conflict through four linked prisms: chronology and structure (how the freeze came about); mechanisms (how it is maintained on the ground); political economy and incentives (who benefits and why); and politics of remedy (what genuine peace would require). It draws on local reporting, humanitarian data, and reportage from national and international outlets to show that the “silence” in Manipur is not the absence of conflict but its institutionalisation – and that both intentional and default elements coexist in ways that demand urgent interrogation and redress.
What We Mean By “Frozen Conflict” And Why Manipur Fits The Frame
“Frozen conflict” is a term used for territories that are neither at war nor at peace – where cessation of hostilities is accompanied by political stalemate, territorial partitioning, demographic displacement, and international or domestic forms of tutelage that freeze the status quo. Classic examples include Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, and Abkhazia. In each case, front lines harden, civilians remain displaced, and governance becomes layered – formal state institutions persist on paper while alternative systems of control operate in practice.
Manipur in the aftermath of May 2023 exhibits those characteristics. The open violence that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands has been substantially reduced by the heavy deployment of Central Security Forces and by exhaustion of the warring parties, and seemingly shifting strategy of the Kuki-Zomis for a renewed Suspension of Operation (SoO) agreement. But simultaneous phenomena indicate the presence of a freeze rather than a settlement: (a) the erection and entrenchment of “buffer zones” that divide valley and Kuki-Zomi dominated hill areas and prevent the free movement of communities; (b) the continued existence of more than 61,000 internally displaced persons in camps who are barred or fearful to return; (c) the effective closure of key national highways to unrestricted local traffic; and (d) the Central government’s imposition of President’s Rule and prolonged military-domination in the name of restoring order. Together, these features replicate the architecture of a frozen conflict – cessation of large-scale fighting combined with de facto partitioning and the institutionalisation of exclusion.
How The Freeze Was Produced: A Mix of Immediate Causes And Structural Failures
To understand whether the freeze is deliberate or accidental, we must reconstruct both the sparks and the conditions that allowed the violence to calcify.
The proximate cause – contested affirmative-action politics over Scheduled Tribe status for the Meitei community and counter-protests by hill tribal communities – set the tinder alight, which many Meitei civil bodies deny. With the Kuki-Zomi militants coordinated attacks against the Meiteis first in Churachandpur and its neighbouring district of Bishnupur, then Kangpokpi and its neighbouring villages Ekou, Pukhao, Leitanpokpi, Yengkhuman etc. in Imphal East district, and the international border town Moreh in Tengnoupal district that row quickly mutated into inter-communal violence between Meiteis and Kuki-Zomis, producing horrific episodes of arson, targeted killings, and communal reprisals. By official reckoning and humanitarian monitoring, hundreds died and tens of thousands fled their homes.
But the tinder lay on a combustible substrate – decades of uneven development, structurally produced contested land and forest rights, overlapping ethno-territorial claims, weak local governance, and the securitised legacy of insurgency-era laws and deployments, issue of illegal immigrants resulting in demographic imbalance, Chin-Kuki-Zomi immigrants from Myanmar and their poppy cultivation in Manipur Hills. Though all the ethnic groups have the equal rights before the merger of Manipur to Dominion India on October 15, 1949, the hills–valley divide in Manipur is not new as there was colonial divide and rule, and postcolonial statecraft deepened it, while successive development policies produced differential access to jobs, education and the state’s largesse. When violence spread in 2023, state institutions proved either, captured, biased, or incapable of rapid, impartial intervention – practically the state did not reign. The result was a breakdown of trust that made negotiated reconciliation nearly impossible.
If the initial eruption was the product of political contestation and administrative failure, the move from violence to freeze involved distinct tactical and institutional choices – by both local actors and the Central state – which are discussed below.
The Mechanisms That Sustain The Freeze
Three principal mechanisms have converted episodic violence into a more durable frozen condition.
- a) Buffer zones and the mapping of separation
The Central Forces – CRPF, Assam Rifles, Indian Army and others – established “buffer zones” along fault lines between Kuki-Zomi dominated hill areas and valley areas ostensibly to prevent renewed clashes. These were emergency measures; they are now quasi-permanent. On the ground, buffer zones are manned checkpoints, sandbagged posts, iron barricades, and impassable strips that cut villages from their fields, block return routes for the displaced, and create new circuits of control. Where these buffer zones lie, they operate like de facto borders – they determine who has physical access to which land, whose identity papers are acceptable, and which economic corridors are usable. For many displaced Meitei households, return is officially and physically impossible till date. The buffer zones, therefore, are not neutral safety measures – they are instruments that partition mobility and entrench territorial control by default or design.
- b) Restrictions on movement along national highways
National Highway 2 (Imphal–Dimapur) and NH-37 (Imphal–Silchar) are lifelines linking Manipur to the Indian mainland and to regional trade routes. Since the 2023 violence, the free, non-discriminatory use of these highways by all citizens – particularly Meiteis – has been restricted, either by Kuki-Zomi militant holdouts, local bodies, or security forces, enforceable rules at buffer checkpoints. When national highways in a federal democracy function as zones of selective access, constitutional freedoms (such as freedom of movement) are curtailed in practice. The result is both humanitarian (higher prices, shortages, stalled medicines) and political (a community cut off from the rest of the nation). Judicial petitions challenging such restrictions have emerged, signalling the constitutional stakes.
- c) Centralisation of governance and the policing of normalcy
After months of unrest, New Delhi imposed President’s Rule in February 2025. Central administration, the argument goes, can act impartially and restore order. In practice, however, the central administration runs a securitised, opaque model of governance – decisions are centralised; local accountability is diminished; and information flows are tightly controlled. The consequence is “order without accountability” – peace enforced through surveillance and restrictions rather than negotiated accommodation and restorative justice. Combined with the buffer zones, President’s Rule converts emergency fixes into long-term governance templates that favour containment over reconciliation.
These mechanisms are mutually reinforcing – checkpoints make return risky; closure of roads makes economic recovery difficult; centralised rule makes local grievance redress distant and slow. Together, they solidify a status quo in which the violence that provoked them is rendered quasi-permanent without having been resolved.
Is the freeze by design: who benefits?
Answering whether the freeze is intentional requires identifying actors who gain from the status quo and understanding their incentives. Three overlapping sets of beneficiaries emerge.
- a) Political actors seeking short-term stability and electoral advantage
For the government and national political actors particularly the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), “normalcy” framed as restored order has immediate political utility – it allows claims of control, narrative closure, and the projection of competence. At the state level, certain parties and networks can consolidate power by presenting themselves as guarantors of security or by leveraging controlled relief and reconstruction contracts. Importantly, when displaced populations cannot return and electoral rolls remain frozen by absence, demographic outcomes that favour a certain political calculus may be inadvertently or intentionally protected. While proving electoral manipulation by deliberate partition is hard and would require specific evidence, the political utility of a frozen status quo is unmistakable.
- b) Security establishments and the logic of securitisation
Central Security Forces, accustomed to counter-insurgency roles, gain institutional justification from a prolonged presence. Buffer zones and “no-go” lists rationalise extended deployments, budgets and authority. Militarised containment also creates opportunities for surveillance and intelligence consolidation along a strategically sensitive border region that abuts Myanmar and China – aligning security imperatives with the Indian state’s broader geopolitical priorities. This is not conspiratorial – states routinely securitise troubled peripheries and, in doing so, routinise emergency powers that become hard to unwind.
- c) Local actors consolidating territorial control
On the ground, some armed groups and ethnic bodies (whether operating under SoO agreements or outside them) have used the freeze to entrench control over specific areas. For communities that were able to hold or reclaim territory during the violence, buffer zones effectively lock them into possession, complicating future negotiations over land, return, or political boundaries. For displaced communities, the freeze is a form of dispossession that, over time, becomes normalised.
In short, while the freeze may not have been the declared aim at the start, it creates winners and losers. Where the powerful can turn emergency measures into durable control instruments, design and default merge – ad-hoc decisions become institutionalised policies because they serve entrenched interests.
The human costs of freezing and why “silence” is not peace
The human consequences of the freeze are stark and immediate. Humanitarian monitoring placed the displaced in the tens of thousands (figures around 60 – 67,000 in different reports), with prolonged stays in makeshift (relief) camps and prefabricated housing. The economic squeeze of blocked roads has led to skyrocketing prices, loss of livelihoods, and the collapse of small businesses. Reports of forced renaming of localities, occupation of abandoned homes, and selective arrests of local community volunteers intensify the sense of injustice. For those who lived through the violence, silence is the silence of dispossession – food lines, denied returns, and the erosion of civic rights.
Legally and ethically, the freeze violates core democratic principles – the right to liberty, freedom of movement, property rights and, crucially, the right to a remedy for victims. When the state’s response prioritises containment over justice, it risks entrenching impunity and fermenting conditions for future flare-ups.
Can the freeze be unwound – policy pathways for unfreezing Manipur
If the freeze contains both design and default elements, the remedy must be both structural and immediate. Five mutually reinforcing pathways are outlined below:
- Roads to return, not just to trade. Reopen national arteries under guarantees of safety and neutral oversight (judicial or multi-stakeholder monitoring) so displaced communities can return, access markets, and re-establish livelihoods, Meiteis can resume normal activities by connecting with the rest of the country. Court supervision and transparent return protocols can prevent selective access that privileges some over others.
- Time-bound, rights-centred demilitarisation. Security should enable political space for local reconciliation rather than become the final arbiter of territorial claims. AFSPA and other special powers need to be reviewed in consultation with civil society, community bodies and state actors, and their use should be time-bound and subject to independent accountability.
- Transitional justice and restitution. A credible commission – with local participation, victim representation, and powers to recommend reparations and prosecutions – is necessary to redress crimes committed during the violence and to undercut narratives of impunity.
- Decentralised governance and institutional rebuilding. Reconstitute local institutions (Municipal Bodies, Panchayats, District Councils) with real resource control, strengthen judicial access in the hills and valleys, and ensure transparency in relief and reconstruction contracts so development is a tool of rebuilding trust rather than rent-seeking.
- A comprehensive political settlement beyond policing. This requires sustained dialogue among Meitei, Kuki-Zomi, Naga and other stakeholders over land rights, administrative boundaries, and affirmative action. The settlement must be pluralist and binding, not ad-hoc or imposed under duress. External mediation, where acceptable to parties, could help, but domestic ownership is essential.
Conclusion: Listen, Restitute, Rebuild
A frozen Manipur is not merely a local tragedy; it is a national liability. Strategically, a region that is partitioned in practice undermines India’s Act East ambitions and complicates relations with neighbours and with Myanmar. Morally, a state that tolerates long-term displacement and curtails citizens’ constitutional freedoms erodes the legitimacy of democratic governance.
Whether the freeze was fully planned or partly accidental is less important than recognising that it is now self-sustaining – supported by bureaucratic routines, security rationales and political inertia. Unfreezing Manipur will not be easy; it will require political will and courage in New Delhi and patient, rights-based engagement on the ground. The alternative is bleak – silence that deepens into a normalized partition, scars that harden into cycles of recrimination, and a democracy that sacrifices its peripheries to the logic of containment.
The silence in Manipur cannot be allowed to be mistaken for peace. The buffer zones that cleave highways, the displaced families waiting to return, the elected representatives sidelined by centralised rule – these are not temporary inconveniences. They are the scaffolding of a new, perilous normal. India’s task is to convert its “normalcy” narrative into a programme of justice – return, restitution, reconciliation, accountable governance, and a genuinely inclusive political settlement. Anything less risks converting a fragile pause into a slow normalised partition.
If the Indian nation values its democratic ideals and its claim to inclusive pluralism, it must act to unfreeze Manipur – now, decisively and with empathy. Otherwise, silence will calcify into separation, and the cost will be paid by citizens whose only crime was to live where the road meets the frontier.
Senior Editor: Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
