To Weaken China, Modi Must Strengthen Manipur

The enduring travesty of colonialism is not the blood that has been spilt of indigenous populations, but the festering wounds of identity politics the invaders left unhealed.

- Ravi Shankar

The British may have packed their bags in 1947, but their lethal legacy occupies the Northeast's ethos where any non-tribal is considered an outsider, and nationalism an alien belief.

Home Minister Amit Shah was compelled last week to leave election meetings in Maharashtra to fly to Manipur and turn down the heat.

Last year he had ordered 10 km of the Manipur-Myanmar border—which has both Hindu Meitei and predominantly Christian Kuki-Naga-dominated regions—to be fenced, with an additional 80 km to follow.

A survey to close off the rest of the Manipur-Myanmar border has been initiated.

Land can be fenced, but minds cannot.

To understand conflict, especially religious or ethnic, interlocutors must intuit native pride and its turbulent history.

Until 1826, Manipur was under Burmese rule, which it overthrew with the help of the East India Company.

To cut a long story short, there were many palace coups, and in the 1891 Anglo-Manipuri War, Manipur lost.