The Northeast of India is not merely breaking down into intermittent instability; it is turning into a terrain of intensifying, often antagonistic, contestations around demands for separation. The continued existence of the Nagas, Meiteis, and Kukis within the Indian Union is systematically being replaced by a set of parallel political visions: one of separated, autonomous existence. And this is not happening due to chance.
It is the logical culmination of a life of policy failure, procrastination and political disinterest in the current regime. In May 2023, the crisis erupted in Manipur into violence between Meiteis and Kukis following the pacu (aggressive demand) for Scheduled Tribe Status to Meiteis.
Over 100 lives were lost and scores of people were uprooted within weeks. Since then the crisis has acquired a long-drawn character. As of early 2025, the death toll crossed 250 and displaced persons crossed 60000. Manipur was turned into a de facto conflict zone. However, behind these figures is a more pernicious phenomenon: an implosion of a shared political identity.
Kuki Demand: Separation as Survival
For Kuki-Zo Politicians community, demand for separate administration is no longer a rhetorical but a definitive political stand. As early as May 2023, 10 Legislature of Kuki- Zo has demand for a separate administrative head to avoid coexistence with Meiteis which is precipitous. This bitterness has only grown with the escalation of violence.
The burning of villages, rape of women and forced segregation into enclaves all have strengthened this bitter attitude. Human Rights Watch reported a wide range of abuses from killing of several village heads to burning of several villages and systematic targeting of civilian population for a number of years, which many saw as a direct failure by the state authorities. When a community begins to see separation not as aspiration but as survival, it signals a complete failure of governance.
Meitei Assertion: Majoritarian Nationalism in the Valley
Meanwhile, Meitei populations have adopted a more hardened and nationalist stance. In civil society, like COCOMI, going as far as announcing a “national war”, framing the conflict as a matter of survival. Militias trained in arms, representing Meitei interests, have been at the core of the increase in violence.
More than 6,000 firearms and 600,000 rounds of ammunition were stolen from the state armories, signifying not just disorder but a failure of state control. Far from reducing tensions,
the polity has provided space for the restatement of majoritarian frameworks. The state government, the complainants say, was viewed as inadequate; led by a BJP chief minister, it was seen as a partisan institution reinforcing the demands for separation.
Naga Question: The Longest Running Demand
Though the Meitei-Kuki conflict has grabbed the headlines, the Nagas’ call for ‘Greater Nagalim’ is one of the oldest and most tenacious secessionist movements in South Asia. It demands the unification of all the Naga inhabited areas in the states of Nagaland Assam Arunachal and the Manipur.
There have been serious inter-ethnic conflicts between the Nagas and the Kukis that reflect the seriousness of the fault lines. Over 470 Kukis and 200 Nagas lost their lives in inter-ethnic violence in the 1990s.
Thousands of houses were razed during the inter-ethnic violence. And even now, do they not clash?
Naga protests against Kuki construction work on the border infrastructure and opened up surrounding areas would suggest that it is a region where borders physical and political are continually disputed. The Naga problem shows that the agitation for separation in the Northeast is not new but it is intersecting with other ethnic movements, thus putting the entire region on multi-front crisis.
BJP’s Governance Failure: Delay, Denial, and Division
It is this crisis of governance that lies at the core of this fragmentation. Several independent analyses have identified the failure of the central authorities to bring the crisis to an end in time as the reason for the situation turning into an outright war.
Indeed, the Indian Supreme Court itself stated that there was an “absolute breakdown of law and order” thus casting doubt on the ability and/or willingness of state machinery to bring about peace.
The life term of the BJP chief minister and the imposition of President’s Rule in Manipur ultimately served only as a bow to reality.
For others in the Northeast, this sequence of events reaffirms a common perspective: that New Delhi comes to the Northeast only when the problems have snowballed beyond control and even on these occasions, ceases to address its fundamental cause.
A Region Divided Beyond Repair?
Home now, and physically and psychologically parted. Meiteis reign in the valley, Kukis govern the hills, and the two communities are almost entirely segregated.
Worse still is that such a division has now become normalized : armed buffer zones, parallel security arrangements and ethnically segregated enclaves are no longer short term arrangements but increasingly a transition to permanent realities.
And in such an environment, demand for separation is not simply political, it’s inevitable.
Conclusion: The Cost of Ignoring the Periphery
This Naga, Meitei and Kuki politics of separatism is not unique. It is a pure result of passive governance and budget mismanagement. When governance fails, the identity takes its place. When justice suffers, the separation is the alternative.
The Northeast is effectively declaring that a “love-the-country-or-leave-the-country” approach just doesn’t work: that the United States of America can’t force mono-ethnic harmony, just as it can’t expect cultural pluralism to endure under painstakingly circumscribed power. The farther this dissatisfaction is allowed to go unremedied, the louder will become the demand for separation-in a not-so-distant second to sedition.
And this is the severest indictment of all.
