THE BJP’s passion for identity politics has set off communal polarisation between the mainly Christian Kuki tribespeople and the predominantly Hindu Meiti majority in India’s northeastern state of Manipur. More than 50 persons have been killed, churches burnt down, and thousands displaced in the violence that broke out on Wednesday in the BJP-ruled state. The trigger was a plan by Kuki students to hold street protests against moves to declare the majority Meitis a tribal community at par with the Kukis, something the prosperous and better-educated Meitis had never wanted previously. Ethnic fault lines are not new to the volatile state that borders Myanmar. But the hardening of the religious Hindu identity among many, though not all Meitis is new. Yet, the underlying factors for the Christian-Hindu stand-off are scarcely religious. It is about land. As revealed recently by the BJP’s former governor of India-held Jammu & Kashmir, political and economic interests often converge for the BJP to destabilise social cohesion for private profit. The garb of Hindu nationalism was a decoy to promote crony business interests in Kashmir, as per the governor’s bold interview.

Pressure on land has been growing in Manipur, and one of the reasons given for the Meiti quest for tribal status relates to the community’s need to move beyond its overpopulated base in the state capital of Imphal, to seek land in the hill forests, hitherto reserved for tribespeople. It is feared the tussle could open the door for big business to exploit. The current Meiti chief minister leading the state’s first BJP government is a defector from the Congress party. The man who supervised the defection was curiously also named by the former J&K governor as a conduit between Hindutva ideologues and business interests close to India’s ruling establishment. Corporate greed apart, a growing refugee crisis with roots in Myanmar, and lives disrupted by climate change are compounding Manipur’s pain.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2023