The PUCL report highlights the urgency of understanding Manipur’s conflict, but reconciliation cannot be imposed from Delhi. It must emerge through accountability, honesty, and dialogue within the state itself.
Manipur today stands at a difficult crossroads. A state long marked by insurgency, militarisation, and fragile inter-ethnic relations has now become a stage where the ideological battles of mainland India are being played out. It is no longer merely a matter of hills versus valley, or of insurgent versus state; Manipur has been pulled into a larger clash between secular liberalism and Hindu majoritarian nationalism. This new framing has arrived precisely when ethnic divisions within the state are at their sharpest, threatening the possibility of coexistence itself.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), with its recent report, has entered this charged moment. Its earlier interventions, especially against the excesses of militarisation, gave voice to those silenced by extraordinary laws. That legacy deserves acknowledgement. Yet the debate surrounding its latest report reflects a deeper unease about how Manipur’s crisis is understood and who gets to define its terms.
To insist on understanding the conflict, as PUCL does, is necessary. But if reconciliation is imagined as something framed externally, through directives, reports, or moral appeals from Delhi, it risks repeating familiar errors. Genuine reconciliation in Manipur cannot be dictated from outside; it must emerge from within, shaped by those who live or survive its consequences.
The report rightly foregrounds human rights, pointing toward a universal ethic of justice. Yet this lens alone cannot capture the complexity of the present crisis, which is layered by history, identity, and political choices. What is required is not simply moral appeals but a rethinking of how communities might share space and dignity without reducing one to victims and the other to oppressors.
The timing of PUCL’s report is significant. The conflict shows no signs of abating, and both sides must reflect on mistakes that neither they nor the Indian state can resolve by force or denial. The burden of prolongation falls most heavily on the very community that see itself as leading the struggle, for they endure displacement, mistrust, and the erosion of shared political life. The report, in this sense, is less an external prescription than a reminder that the real work of reconciliation requires introspection.
This does not mean the failures of governance should be excused. Responsibility must rest with those in power, without turning entire communities into scapegoats. Equally unhelpful is the politics of the “defensive saviour,” sometimes deployed by politicians or academics, which sustains a narrative of protection rather than accountability. Both forms of politics, whether demonisation or defensive guardianship, shut down the possibility of reimagining a different future.
Meanwhile, a quieter but more troubling transformation is underway in the state: the steady penetration of right-wing models inspired by the RSS. This shift threatens to fracture solidarities further and normalise exclusion as political destiny. To understand its implications, one must recall the longer trajectory of Manipur’s uneasy relationship with the Indian state. Since the contested merger of 1949, movements in both hills and valley have questioned Delhi’s authority, enduring militarisation, suppression, and coercion. To flatten this history into a story of “mainstream complicity” risks erasing the memory of resistance that continues to shape Manipur’s politics.
Fragmentation, in fact, has long been institutionalised as governance. Successive governments relied less on reconciliation than on division. What marks the present moment is the convergence of this governance-through-fragmentation with ideological penetration. Earlier, the state leaned on coercion; later, it reshaped consciousness through colleges, welfare networks, and religious organisations. Chauvinism seeped into the everyday, reorienting communities toward a homogenising imagination of India. To hold ordinary Manipuris responsible for this manipulation would be misplaced; they are not its architects but its subjects.
Civil liberties organisations, therefore, must tread carefully. Their task is not only to document violations but also to expose the structures that have produced conflict. To conflate state manipulation with popular complicity risks scapegoating the very communities they seek to defend.
Still, holding the state to account is only one part of the process. Reconciliation requires communities in both hills and valley to confront not only what has been done to them but also what they have done to each other. A shared polity cannot be imagined in abstraction; it must be grounded in acknowledgement of violence, displacement, and the destruction of trust. Without this recognition, reconciliation will remain no more than a slogan.
The alternative is bleak. Manipur risks becoming a permanent battleground for India’s ideological contest between secular and majoritarian currents. Its destiny will then be shaped not by its people but by the imperatives of national politics. So, any sorts of settlement must be pursued from within, by recognising shared histories, accumulated grievances, and the fragility of coexistence. Without internal reckoning, external interventions will only reproduce fragmentation.
Experiences elsewhere underscore this point. Theories of transitional justice remind us that reconciliation is not reducible to law or bureaucracy; it rests as much on recognition and dialogue as on accountability. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission worked not because it imposed verdicts but because it created space for confronting shared injuries. Manipur’s challenge is comparable: peace cannot be imported; it must be nurtured internally, through acknowledgement of complicities, betrayals, and traumas.
For those who imagine a future of shared polity, the path is clear: recognise the depth of what has happened; hold the state accountable for governance through coercion and division; and confront uncomfortable truths about local complicities. Only such honesty can make reconciliation more than rhetoric. Without it, Manipur will remain trapped in rupture rather than repair, with its people caught in cycles of misery and its future mortgaged to battles not of its own choosing.
The writer is an independent researcher holding a Ph.D. from the CSLG at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. His research focuses on questions of constitutionality, governance, and indigeneity in India’s Northeast, as well as issues related to insurgency and counterinsurgency.
