Muivah’s Homecoming: Delhi’s Politics of Unsettlement in Manipur
Written by Damudor Arambam
When Thuingaleng Muivah, the General Secretary of the NSCN-IM, attempted to visit his native village Somdal in Ukhrul in 2010, the then Manipur government under Okram Ibobi Singh responded with a heavy hand. Valley-based civil society, deeply wary of Muivah’s presence, pressured the Congress-led state government to prevent his entry. The attempt ended violently, with the deaths of two students and injuries to many others, leaving an enduring scar on Manipur’s political landscape. It symbolized not only the mistrust between Meiteis and Nagas, but also how the mere movement of a leader could trigger a full-blown crisis.
Now, more than a decade later, Muivah’s planned visit in October is unlikely to face the same resistance. Neither civil society groups in the valley nor the the state Congress or BJP appear eager to oppose him. The reasons lie in Manipur’s transformed political terrain. The dragging on Meitei-Kuki conflict has driven the Meiteis to seek a tactical rapprochement with the Nagas, particularly the Tangkhul. The very actors who once resisted Muivah’s symbolic homecoming now hesitate, calculating that antagonizing the Nagas may strengthen the Kukis instead. This shift in the reception of Muivah’s visit exposes the fragility of Manipur’s ethnonationalist movements, their tactical realignments, and their gradual shrinking into narrower identities.
The three major ethnonationalist movements, Meitei, Naga, and Kuki, present themselves as liberationist struggles. Yet, far from producing emancipation, they have settled into competing claims for territory, recognition, and autonomy. These diametrical pulls unsettle Manipur, but not in ways that destabilize Delhi’s hold. Rather, they feed into the Indian state’s strategy of governing its frontier: fragment to rule, unsettle to manage.
The Naga movement, represented most visibly by the NSCN-IM, once embodied a radical imagination of sovereignty that cut across colonial borders, envisioning Nagalim as a homeland uniting all Nagas under one political roof. The Kukis, in turn, have articulated a vision of Zale’n-gam, or Kukiland, encompassing contiguous areas across national and international boundaries. Meanwhile, Meitei groups initially joined the insurgent wave in postcolonial India with aspirations for independence, echoing anti-colonial rhetoric and challenging the legitimacy of Manipur’s merger with India in 1949.
Over time, however, these projects have contracted. Nagalim is increasingly reduced to bargaining for special arrangements within the Indian constitution. Kukiland remains more a rallying cry than a serious political horizon. And Meitei insurgency, once oriented towards sovereignty, now manifests largely as a defense of Manipur’s “territorial integrity.” The emancipatory aspiration to unite diverse communities against a common history of marginalization has given way to narrower ethnic claims. The broader liberation project has failed. What survives is ethnonationalism, increasingly insulated, defensive, and defined in opposition to its neighbors.
This narrowing is not accidental. It is a symptom of Delhi’s governing strategy in the Northeast. The Indian state has always preferred to deal with fragmented, competing movements rather than a unified liberation front. By recognizing, negotiating with, and occasionally rewarding groups selectively, Delhi has ensured that no single ethnonationalist movement dominates. The ceasefire with the NSCN-IM, the episodic surrenders of Meitei outfits, and the selective recognition of Kuki grievances all follow this pattern. Unsettlement becomes statecraft: ethnic movements are allowed to persist, but only in forms that exhaust themselves in mutual contradiction.
The 2010 episode surrounding Muivah was emblematic of this politics. The Manipur government, despite the signal of Delhi to allow, prevented his visit not only out of Meitei fears but because a symbolic assertion of Naga homeland within Manipur would upset the delicate balance of ethnic containment. Today, by contrast, Delhi benefits from allowing the visit to proceed. With Meiteis and Kukis locked in open hostility, tacit Naga-Meitei accommodation strengthens the narrative that ethnic fragmentation is natural and inevitable in Manipur. The Indian state appears as the only viable arbiter amid irreconcilable communities.
The irony is stark. Insurgency in Manipur once claimed to resist Indian rule and recover self-determination. But decades later, these movements have been domesticated into ethnonationalisms that actually serve the logic of the Indian state. By competing with each other for recognition, territory, and concessions, they foreclose the possibility of collective struggle. Delhi no longer needs to crush insurgency with overwhelming force; it simply manages it, allowing unsettled movements to weaken one another.
What remains for ordinary people is disillusionment. Extortion continues under the shadow of armed groups. The politics of ethnicity dominates over class, gender, or other emancipatory frames. Even as violence has declined in statistical terms, peace is illusory, sustained only by stalemate and fatigue. Insurgents surrender, but not because their demands are met; rather, because the horizon of liberation has shrunk into a zero-sum ethnic game. The shrinking of the liberation project into Meitei nationalism is particularly telling. The Meitei insurgency, once the strongest ideological challenge to Delhi’s legitimacy in Manipur and even claiming to represent the “eastern region,” has narrowed into a defensive politics of preserving state boundaries. This politics finds itself strangely aligned with Delhi: both oppose any re-drawing of Manipur’s map. Thus, a movement born in opposition to the Indian state now finds its relevance precisely in defending a territorial integrity guaranteed by that very state. The radical demand for sovereignty has collapsed into a conservative demand for status quo.
For the Nagas and Kukis, too, the projects of Nagalim and Zale’n-gam have drifted from their radical origins. They survive more as tools of negotiation than as revolutionary horizons. Delhi engages them not as existential threats but as manageable claimants, forever deferring resolution while keeping the communities invested in the hope of concessions. The longer the negotiations drag, the more the movements lose their emancipatory core.
This is why Muivah’s upcoming visit is so symbolic. It marks not the resurgence of Naga nationalism, but the normalization of ethnic stalemate. Where once his attempt to presence in Ukhrul provoked a bloody confrontation, now it passes with relative calm, precisely because the ethnic equation has shifted. The Meiteis, embroiled in open conflict with the Kukis, tactically prefer silence over resistance. The Nagas, for their part, gain a symbolic victory without real progress towards sovereignty. Delhi, meanwhile, benefits from the spectacle: the unsettled balance of ethnic movements reaffirms its role as the ultimate manager of the Northeast.
Sanjib Baruah’s notion of the “security state” exposes the deeper truth behind Manipur’s fractured politics. In the Northeast, New Delhi doesn’t rule by inclusion but by coercion, through AFSPA and a constant militarized presence. Diversity itself becomes a tool of control: paraded as colorful proof of India’s pluralism, yet criminalized the moment it resists Delhi’s authority. This is precisely how the diametrical movements of the Meiteis, Nagas, and Kukis end up working in Delhi’s favor. What appear to be insurgencies against India are in fact the very mechanisms that stabilize its frontier politics. By splintering into ethnic nationalisms, these movements do Delhi’s job for it, turning what could have been solidarity into endless competition. The result is a politics that no longer dreams of emancipation but bargains for scraps of accommodation. The tragedy is not just that Delhi refuses to resolve conflict; it thrives on keeping Manipur suspended, always fragmented, always unsettled, never free.
To break this cycle requires dismantling the ethnonationalisms of the Meiteis, Nagas, and Kukis alike. As long as political projects are trapped within narrow ethnic frames, they will remain useful to Delhi but futile for the people. What is needed is a return to the unfulfilled promise of collective struggle, a movement that refuses to be divided into competing homelands, and instead seeks political justice for all the victims of the Indian state.
Absent such a reimagining, the unsettling will continue. Not as insurgency against Delhi, but as Delhi’s strategy of rule. Manipur will remain caught between fictional homelands and fragile integrity, while its people live in a state of permanent incompletion. The dream of liberation will shrink further into ethnic nationalism, leaving Delhi stronger and Manipur weaker.
(The author is an independent researcher and can be reached at damudor.arambam@gmail.com)
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of us