How geography, demography and government have created a lasting injustice that only considerate leadership can resolve
Besesayo Kezo, IPS, Retd DGP
The fertile Imphal Valley, ringed by forbidding hills and pressed against Myanmar’s international border, has long been known by two names. To its ancient Meitei rulers and chroniclers, it was Kangleipak; to the wider world, and eventually to its own people under Hindu influence, it became Manipur. The distinction is more than nominal. It marks the transformation of a self-conscious Meitei kingdom into a multi-ethnic administrative unit whose internal tensions continue to test the Indian Union’s capacity to hold together peoples divided by language, faith, custom, and, above all, claims to land. Manipur is a sad story of injustice and grievance created by forces beyond its people’s immediate power: geography that concentrates the population in a narrow valley, demography that has never aligned with territorial claims, and a government that has frozen an unequal political and fiscal order. Leaders must address these burning issues with care and thoughtfulness, not dismissively or haphazardly.
The Meitei Kingdom and Its Distinctive Order
Tradition and the royal chronicle, the CheitharolKumbaba, place the founding of the Kangleipak kingdom in the first century of the Common Era under Nongda Lairen Pakhangba. The rulers belonged to the Ningthouja line, one of seven principal clans (yek salai) that, over successive centuries, were welded into a single Meitei polity. The Meiteis are a Tibeto-Burman people whose language, Meiteilon (commonly called Manipuri), belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family and has its own classical literature and script. Their social organization rested on seven clans, village and clan councils, and a standing military obligation known as the Lallup. Political authority was monarchical, exercised from the Kangla fort in the valley, yet tempered by customary law and the practical autonomy of the hill chiefdoms that paid occasional tribute.
Culturally, the Meiteis developed distinctive martial traditions, a rich literature, and polo. Social life centered on the salai and the sagei. The indigenous religion was Sanamahism. Sanamahi is the household deity; above him stands a more abstract creator principle. Sacred texts known as Puyas recorded cosmology and ritual. Even today, a minority of Meiteis continue to follow Sanamahi rites following a twentieth-century revival. The great majority, however, adopted Vaishnavite Hinduism.
The Turn to Hinduism and the Renaming of the Kingdom
Records of contact with Brahmins and Vaishnava preachers date to the late fifteenth century. The decisive transformation occurred under King Pamheiba (r. 1709–1748), who adopted the title Garib Niwaz. Influenced by the Ramanandi preacher Shantidas Gosai, the king made Vaishnavism the state religion. In 1729, the ancient Puyas were publicly burned in an episode remembered as Puya Meithaba. The Meitei script was replaced with the Bengali script, and the realm’s name was changed from Kangleipak to Manipur. The Meiteis were declared Kshatriyas. The conversion was neither wholly voluntary nor instantaneous; elements of Sanamahi practice survived within households. Yet the political and cultural reorientation was profound.
Burmese Invasions, the Seven Years’ Devastation and the Treaty of Yandabo
Geography made Kangleipak a prize contested by the Irrawaddy and Brahmaputra kingdoms. Repeated Burmese invasions culminated in the Chahi Taret Khuntakpa, the Seven Years’ Devastation of 1819–1826. The capital was occupied, the valley depopulated, and large numbers of Meiteis were carried into captivity or forced to flee. The catastrophe remains a central trauma in Meitei historical memory and weakened the kingdom’s capacity to assert authority over the hills.
The First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826) brought British intervention. Prince Gambhir Singh formed the Manipur Levy and drove the Burmese from the valley. The Treaty of Yandabo, signed on 24 February 1826, ended the war. The Burmese renounced all claims to Manipur and recognized Gambhir Singh as Raja. The treaty left the British free to treat Manipur as a buffer state under their paramountcy. Thereafter, Manipur remained a princely state. After the Anglo-Manipur War of 1891, the British briefly administered the kingdom directly. Upon Indian independence, the state acceded; in 1949, the merger agreement extinguished the monarchy and incorporated Manipur into the Union. The transition occurred without a comprehensive political compact among the valley and hill peoples.
Peoples of the Valley and the Hills: Settlement and Claims
The Kangleipak kings’ subjects were primarily the Meiteis of the valley. The Muslim Pangal community traces its origins to soldiers who settled in the early seventeenth century. Beyond the valley lay numerous Naga tribes, whose ancient village republics largely lay outside the Meitei kingdom’s sphere of influence. The Meitei kings never subjugated or ruled these sovereign village polities. Some Naga villages near the valley maintained tributary or intermittent relations with the kingdom, but they never experienced continuous direct rule. Kuki-Zo groups also inhabited the surrounding hills and arrived in successive waves from the Chin Hills.
The creation of the modern state of Manipur abruptly disrupted the ancient pattern of independent Naga village republics and limited, intermittent contact. The new administrative unit incorporated all the hill tribes without their knowledge or consent. What had been a more or less homogeneous Meitei kingdom was thereby transformed overnight into a heterogeneous state that inherited the complications and traditional baggage of suspicion and hostility among its constituent peoples. The resulting overlapping land claims have never been resolved by a mutually accepted standard. Any further expansion by any community beyond its traditionally occupied areas must be rejected as a threat to peace.
Demographically, the Meiteis constitute roughly 44 percent of the state’s population (2011 Census) yet are concentrated on approximately ten percent of its land—the valley. Together, the Naga and Kuki-Zo communities form about forty percent and occupy the hills that comprise the remaining ninety percent. Under colonial and post-independence law, the hill areas are largely reserved for Scheduled Tribes; Meiteis may not acquire land there, while tribals may purchase land in the valley. This asymmetry is the Meitei community’s single most persistent grievance and the hill tribes’ most jealously guarded protection.
The Frozen Seat Map, Disproportionate Representation and the Budget
Manipur’s 60-member Legislative Assembly is not apportioned strictly according to the current population. Approximately 40 seats are in the Imphal Valley and 20 in the hills. Nineteen of the hill seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Delimitation based on the 1971 census fixed this distribution, and it has remained essentially unchanged for half a century.
Under a pure population formula using 2011 figures, the hills (about 43 percent of the population) would be entitled to roughly 25–26 seats, and the valley (about 57 percent) to 34–35 seats. The existing 20:40 split therefore under-represents the hills relative to their population share and over-represents the valley. The disparity is even sharper when land area is considered: the hills cover roughly 90 percent of the state yet hold only one-third of the assembly. Many hill constituencies represent substantially more people, spread over far larger and more difficult terrain, than valley constituencies. Earlier attempts to reallocate seats based on the 2001 census stalled after protests, mainly from valley-based groups.
The same imbalance appears in the annual budget. Because the valley commands 40 of the 60 MLAs, the state continues to direct the majority of infrastructure, public employment, higher education, health facilities, and development schemes to the valley districts. A 2021 report by a government-appointed Committee on Funds Released to Hill Districts showed that the hills’ share of total developmental expenditure fluctuated between 31 and 46 percent over the decade 2011–21, rising to 45.8 percent in 2020–21. The valley therefore received the remaining 54–69 percent. Critics note that capital expenditure remains heavily skewed, with one recent assessment placing the valley’s share as high as 97 percent and the hills’ share as low as 3 percent in a single budget year. The result is visible underdevelopment in roads, schools, hospitals, and markets in the hills, which in turn reinforces the perception that government itself is an instrument of valley dominance. Geography concentrates people in the valley; demography and a frozen seat map turn that concentration into a lasting fiscal and political advantage; government has so far declined to fully correct the disproportion.
The Nature of the Present Conflict
The violence that has recurred since the 1990s and erupted with particular ferocity in May 2023 is not primarily a contest between religions. Religious affiliation has become an ethnic marker—most Meiteis are Vaishnava Hindus, most Nagas and Kukis are Christian—but the driving forces are territorial, demographic, and political. Hill communities view the Meitei demand for Scheduled Tribe status as a direct threat to their exclusive land rights. Kuki and Naga groups have long sought greater autonomy. Overlapping visions of homeland collide with the Meitei insistence on the territorial integrity of the historic kingdom. The frozen 40:20 seat distribution and the consequent budgetary skew compound the sense that political power and public resources remain valley-centered even as the demographic weight of the hills has grown. Any attempt by any community to expand its effective control beyond its traditional territory must face firm constitutional resistance.
Yet Manipur’s current administrative structure confers disproportionate political and economic leverage on the Meitei community. The valley concentrates the state capital, the bulk of public employment, higher education institutions, and the principal markets. Legislative majorities and bureaucratic leadership have historically rested with the valley population. Despite their vast area, the hill districts remain underdeveloped. This imbalance generates enduring distress among the Naga and Kuki-Zo communities. The ethnic problems will therefore persist so long as one community retains structural advantages within a single undifferentiated administrative unit and so long as contested demographic change and border porosity continue to be read as existential threats.
Logical Suggestions That Can Satisfy All Parties
No community should be allowed to expand beyond the territory it has traditionally occupied. A practical settlement that satisfies all parties rests on five interlocking measures. First, a transparent, jointly supervised land and settlement survey must, once and for all, establish the areas of long-standing occupation by Meiteis in the valley, by Naga tribes in the higher hills, and by Kuki-Zo groups in the foothills and lower ranges. Second, the existing Scheduled Tribe land protections in the hills must be retained, and reciprocal safeguards must prevent large-scale tribal acquisition of valley land that would alter the Meitei demographic compact. Third, the frozen 40:20 seat distribution must be replaced with a delimitation based on the latest census, so the hills receive representation closer to their population share, without abolishing Scheduled Tribe reservation. Fourth, the annual budget must be rebalanced so that hill districts receive a share of development expenditure proportionate to their population and territorial needs, ending the automatic fiscal dominance that flows from valley legislative majorities. Fifth, Naga and Kuki-Zo areas must be granted meaningful local autonomy—either strengthened autonomous district councils or a carefully designed Sixth Schedule application—so they control their own land, resources, and local development, while the Meiteis retain effective self-government in the valley.
These measures must be paired with effective border management to dispel suspicions of illegal migration and with accelerated economic investment in the hills so that protection does not become isolation. Separation into new states would merely multiply disputed borders and would not solve the security problem posed by the Myanmar frontier. A negotiated federal arrangement within Manipur, under the authority of the Indian Union, can give each community credible guarantees that the others will not erase its demographic and territorial existence. The Constitution already contains the necessary instruments—Article 371C, the Sixth Schedule, and the power to redraw constituencies and create autonomous bodies. What is required is political will exercised with care and thought, not dismissively or haphazardly.
The international dimension makes the question national, not merely local. Arms, narcotics, and insurgent cadres cross the Myanmar border; instability in Manipur affects the broader Northeast and invites external actors. New Delhi has at times treated the crisis as a law-and-order problem for state governments to resolve or as a temporary disturbance. The historical record and geography suggest otherwise. Kangleipak’s unfinished business—incorporating diverse peoples into a single polity without a mutually accepted compact—remains a matter of national integrity. Only a sustained, constitutionally grounded negotiation that freezes territorial expansion, corrects the seat map and the budget, grants local autonomy, and secures the frontier can hope to replace the prison of geography with a durable political order in which the peoples of the valley and the hills may live without perpetual fear of one another. Geography has made them neighbors; humanity will make them friends. The choice is theirs.
(The views expressed are those of the writer and not of the newspaper)
