Manipur and the Blood on Delhi’s Hands

This representative image was generated using Google Gemini.

For more than three years, the Manipur conflict has been narrated as a tragedy between communities. The story usually begins with ethnic tensions, proceeds through mutual distrust, and ends with New Delhi portrayed as a patient mediator trying to restore order. It is a convenient narrative. It is also incomplete.

The central question that India has spent years avoiding is deceptively simple: can the Government of India honestly claim to be a neutral arbitrator in a conflict whose institutional foundations it helped construct?

To ask this question is not to absolve any community, armed group, political actor, or local institution of responsibility. It is to recognise that the Indian state is not an external observer. It is a constitutional actor whose decisions, policies, agreements, security doctrines, and political calculations have shaped the terrain upon which the conflict unfolded.

Under Articles 355 and 256 of the Constitution, the Union Government bears a direct responsibility to ensure governance and security. Yet throughout the conflict, Delhi has often appeared more comfortable managing perceptions than confronting accountability. The violence has been treated as a law-and-order problem, an ethnic dispute, a border-security challenge, or a humanitarian emergency. Rarely has it been discussed as a failure of statecraft.

Article 256: Obligation of States and the Union

The executive power of every State shall be so exercised as to ensure compliance with the laws made by Parliament and any existing laws which apply in that State, and the executive power of the Union shall extend to the giving of such directions to a State as may appear to the Government of India to be necessary for that purpose.

Article 355: Duty of the Union to Protect States Against External Aggression and Internal Disturbance

It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the Government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

The architecture of contemporary Manipur bears Delhi’s fingerprints everywhere. The Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreements signed with armed groups were negotiated, funded, and supervised by the Union Government. These arrangements undoubtedly reduced insurgent violence in some respects, but they also transformed armed organisations into recognised political stakeholders. The fact that they were not waging war against the Union in the first place is another story altogether. Over time, different communities came to believe that the state was selectively empowering some actors while neglecting others.

Similarly, the Framework Agreement with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak–Muivah) generated profound anxieties about territory and identity across Manipur. Whether justified or not, these anxieties became part of the political environment within which later conflicts emerged. They did not appear spontaneously. They were consequences of negotiations conducted by Delhi.

The same applies to security governance. Weapons did not disappear from police armouries in a vacuum. Militias did not emerge overnight without institutional failures. Border management did not become a political controversy without decades of inconsistent policy. If state institutions are strong enough to regulate citizenship, land ownership, insurgency, and national security, they must also accept responsibility when those institutions fail.

The argument becomes even stronger when one considers the question of resources.

Recent developments have added this layer to public suspicion. The Ministry of Mines has increasingly highlighted India’s push for critical minerals, rare earths, and strategic resource exploration. Government communications regularly frame mineral extraction as essential for national development, technological self-reliance, and energy security. The ministry’s public celebration of mineral potential in Manipur has therefore been viewed by some observers as politically insensitive in a state still grappling with displacement, insecurity, and unresolved ethnic wounds.

Beneath Manipur’s hills lies a geological story still unfolding.

From chromite, nickel and cobalt occurrences to limestone belts, jadeite zones, and other strategically important minerals, the state holds significant untapped mineral potential waiting to be explored responsibly… pic.twitter.com/4qXWdWf8Ji

— Ministry of Mines (@MinesMinIndia) May 13, 2026

This is why official celebrations of Manipur’s mineral wealth have been received with scepticism and anger by many observers. While thousands remain displaced and communities remain segregated, government agencies continue to promote discussions of strategic minerals, development corridors, and resource potential. Such messaging may be intended as a statement of economic opportunity. Yet in a conflict zone, it can easily be interpreted as evidence that territory matters more than people.

If there is one demand that should unite every genuine peace initiative, it is transparency.

The Government of India must move from arbitrator to accountable party. It must publicly disclose what decisions were taken after May 3, 2023; who authorised them; what intelligence was available; how security responses were coordinated; why critical failures occurred; and what lessons have been learned. The public deserves more than extensions of commissions and committees.

The BS Chauhan Commission of Inquiry has received repeated extensions. The Justice Gita Mittal Committee continues its work on relief and rehabilitation. Multiple investigative agencies, including the CBI and NIA, remain active. 

Massive Anti-Terror Agency NIA's Crackdown Across Manipur, 10 Arrested

19 June, Imphal: In one of the biggest coordinated crackdowns in recent months, combined teams of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Manipur Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) conducted extensive raids across several districts of Manipur, arresting 10 accused persons in connection with multiple high-profile cases. (Source: accessed NDTV, 21 June)

Yet despite dozens of reports, investigations, and institutional interventions, public trust remains extraordinarily low. The problem is not merely administrative delay. It is the absence of a coherent political explanation.

The essence of Ajay Kumar Bhalla as Governor further sharpens this question. As former Union Home Secretary, he possesses unparalleled institutional knowledge of the Centre’s decisions during the conflict. That knowledge remains largely inaccessible to the public. If reconciliation is the objective, secrecy cannot remain the governing principle.

Ultimately, peace in Manipur depends on answering a question that only New Delhi can answer: What political end-state does India seek?

Does it envision a genuinely integrated, multi-ethnic state supported by meaningful autonomy and constitutional guarantees? Does it intend merely to manage instability until electoral conditions improve? Or is the objective simply to maintain a fragile equilibrium while avoiding difficult political choices?

Until that question is answered, Delhi cannot credibly claim the position of neutral referee. It is one of the principal stakeholders in the crisis. And if responsibility accompanies power, then accountability must accompany peace.

The path to reconciliation begins not with another committee or another security operation, but with an admission: Manipur’s tragedy is not only a failure of communities to coexist. It is also a failure of the state to govern wisely, transparently, and justly.

More on the topic on this blog

• Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis: The 4Ds of Disconnection, Drugs, Demography and Diversions in Manipur
• Lines Drawn in Blood: Ethnonationalism in Manipur
• Is Hodophobia Prevailing in the Town?
• Internet in the Local and General Mediascape
• The Unspoken Violence of Waiting in Manipur
• The Long Road Home: Ten Ways to Resolve the Manipur Conflict
• The Indian Connection with Manipur Conflicts

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