Manipur’s Unrest: The Politics Behind the Turmoil
OPINION & ANALYSISPOLITICS
Imphal: The simmering cold war between Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has now burst into the open, revealing deeper political fault lines shaping the unrest in Manipur. Singh’s recent post on X, where he slammed Conrad’s father, P.A. Sangma, for advocating the division of India into smaller states along ethnic lines, has reignited debates on the region’s fragile unity. Singh called the decades-old proposal a “dangerous” threat to India’s core principle of unity in diversity, directly linking it to the ongoing attempts to destabilize Manipur.
P.A. Sangam emerges out of the Parliament
The timing of Singh’s comments—posted at 5:36 AM IST on March 31—was no coincidence. It came amid escalating ethnic tensions in Manipur, which Singh attributes to a complex web of challenges, including illegal immigration, drug trafficking, deforestation, and the power struggles of select vested groups. The post, accompanied by a video clip of a 2014 parliamentary session chaired by M. Thambidurai during a Motion of Thanks discussion, accused certain forces of reviving Sangma’s divisive proposal to justify breaking up Manipur along ethnic lines.
N. Biren Singh, Former CM of Manipur
At the heart of the current unrest is Manipur’s delicate ethnic mosaic, home to 32 indigenous tribes. Singh’s post highlighted his government’s efforts to protect vulnerable communities through measures like the Inner Line Permit (ILP) system, a landmark policy introduced in 2019 to regulate the entry of outsiders. For Singh, the ILP symbolized a long-overdue shield for indigenous rights—a policy many in Manipur saw as a safeguard against demographic erosion.
However, Singh alleged that certain groups, feeling threatened by these protective measures, deliberately instigated violence to undermine the state’s stability. He pointed to the surge in unrecognized villages along the Indo-Myanmar border, claiming they were settlements of illegal immigrants linked to drug cartels and deforestation rings. The Chief Minister emphasized Manipur’s recent push for border fencing and stricter regulation of the Free Movement Regime (FMR) with Myanmar—a policy that allowed visa-free cross-border travel within 16 km, now seen as a security loophole.
The suspension of the FMR has become a flashpoint across the Northeast. Manipur firmly supports the move, viewing it as necessary to curb illegal immigration, while other Northeastern states remain divided. In Nagaland, Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio recently dismissed calls for Naga integration across state lines as impractical, distancing his government from the broader separatist rhetoric. In Mizoram, however, the situation is more complicated. Since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Mizoram has faced an influx of Myanmarese refugees, creating demographic challenges. While former CM Zoramthanga had requested asylum for over 1,000 refugees in a letter to PM Narendra Modi, the current Chief Minister, Lalduhoma, has expressed concerns over their long-term integration—revealing the broader regional struggle between humanitarianism and demographic stability.
Singh’s comments also referenced the Government of India’s border security policies, including the 2024 decision to fence the 1,643 km Indo-Myanmar border—spanning Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has prioritized the fencing and the scrapping of the FMR, which Singh hailed as a critical step to protect Manipur’s indigenous demography and combat the twin threats of drug trafficking and deforestation linked to illegal immigration.
Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma
Singh’s outburst on X was not merely directed at historical ideologies—it carried a sharp political edge. The National People’s Party (NPP), founded by the late P.A. Sangma, was an ally of Biren Singh’s BJP-led government in Manipur under the NDA alliance until recently. However, the NPP withdrew its support, demanding Singh’s resignation—a move allegedly influenced by Conrad Sangma’s growing ties with groups advocating for Manipur’s disintegration. Singh is reported to have viewed this as a betrayal, seeing Sangma’s political maneuvering as an extension of his late father’s separatist vision.
Singh accused Conrad Sangma of covertly aligning with forces seeking to divide Manipur along ethnic lines, using the ethnic unrest as a pretext. The timing of the NPP’s withdrawal, coupled with Sangma’s alleged support for factions pushing for self-governance, fueled Singh’s belief that his government was being deliberately undermined by both internal and external forces.
The ethnic turmoil in Manipur has once again underscored the broader tensions in the Northeast, where historical divisions, border insecurity, and immigration remain potent triggers of instability. Singh’s remarks, though rooted in Manipur’s realities, reflect a larger political struggle where regional leaders are divided between protecting local identities and balancing political posturing.
By calling out leaders like Conrad Sangma, Singh implicitly exposed the interplay of political ambitions and ethnic unrest, suggesting that the conflict in Manipur is not merely communal but also deeply political. His plea for regional leaders to stop interfering in Manipur’s internal affairs revealed the mounting frustration with what he perceives as opportunistic alliances and external meddling.
As Manipur continues to grapple with the aftermath of ethnic violence, Singh’s accusations have added a new dimension to the unrest—a clash of regional politics, historical grievances, and contemporary power struggles. The cold war between Biren Singh and Conrad Sangma symbolizes the growing fragmentation of the Northeast’s political landscape, where personal rivalries and ethnic interests increasingly shape governance and peace efforts.
In many ways, Singh’s tenure and his subsequent ouster reflect a larger paradox—a leader striving to defend his state’s unity against divisive forces, yet ultimately falling prey to the very politics he sought to overcome. His X post may have opened the floodgates for a larger debate on identity, immigration, and the politics of the Northeast, but it also exposed the uncomfortable truth: Manipur’s turmoil is not merely an ethnic conflict—it is a battle of competing political narratives, fought on the ground and on social media, where perception often trumps reality.