Ethnoreligious Violence Continues to Rock India’s Manipur State

Recent weeks have seen a spike in ethnoreligious violence in northeastern India’s Manipur state after a period of relative calm.

Widespread unrest tore through the state in 2023, dividing residents along ethnic and religious lines and leading to hundreds of deaths, the destruction of more than 300 churches, and the displacement of at least 60,000 mostly Christian residents.

According to reports, the recent violence was sparked by the murder of a young Kuki woman, whose body was found abandoned in a river. The Kuki people are a minority ethnic group concentrated in Manipur’s hill country. They are mostly made up of Christians, while the majority are Meitei, a Hindu-majority ethnic group concentrated in the state’s valley.

Reports that emerged during the violence of 2023 indicated that dozens of Meitei churches were among those destroyed by Meitei attackers, suggesting that Meitei mobs and militias were targeting communities based not only on their ethnicity but also based on religion.

More than a dozen people were reportedly killed in this month’s flareup, and half a dozen churches were torched.

The violence in 2023 sparked when the Manipur High Court recommended that the executive branch of the state government make the majority Meitei people eligible for Scheduled Tribe benefits, including access to land traditionally reserved for the minority Kuki community and other historic indigenous tribes. The Meitei have been pushing for this for more than a decade.

Still, they have not historically been considered an indigenous tribe and have not traditionally desired Scheduled Tribe status, given certain stigmas associated with that designation.

The first and second largest religious minority communities in India respectively, Muslims and Christians have long faced persecution from government authorities and Hindu radicals in the communities around them.

India’s Christian population faces significant hurdles, including legal structures that limit them economically and a judicial system that grants impunity to attacking Hindu radicals.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has steadily declined in democratic and religious freedom. A 2024 U.S. Department of State report on India found that “attacks on members of religious minority communities, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, occurred in various states [across India] throughout the year.” A previous report discussed the issue of state-level laws that criminalize minority religious activity and highlighted “numerous reports during the year of violence by law enforcement authorities against members of religious minorities in multiple states.”

A long-term solution to the violence in Manipur must do more than quell the immediate violence — it must address the root issues at stake, including religious tensions where applicable. Though religion is not the only issue at play, it is a serious one and cannot afford to be ignored moving forward.

This article was originally published on https://www.persecution.org/2024/11/27/ethnoreligious-violence-continues-to-rock-indias-manipur-state/