Will PM Modi show path to peace in Manipur?

“Will he bring us a solution, a lasting peace?” That’s the question doing the rounds in the camps set up for over 60,000 displaced people across Manipur, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finally set to visit the state on Saturday, more than two years after it plunged into a fierce conflict between the Meitei and Kuki communities.

Hope jostles with fear and anger, and scepticism runs deep in the relief camps, both in the Meitei-dominated valley and the Kuki-dominated hill districts.

Singam Aboi Meetei, 42, looked restless as he sat under a shed outside a relief camp at Akhampat in Imphal East district. "We want to go back home. It's been more than two years. None here wants to stay like this,” Singam told DH. He was a driver in Kuki-dominated Moreh before he had to flee with his wife and four children as their houses were set on fire, allegedly by the Kukis, on May 3, 2023, the day the conflict broke out.

His is one of the 114 Meitei families, all from Moreh, which have been living in the camp at Akhampat for more than two years now. “All I want from Modi Ji is a solution that should come through talks and help us go home. There is no work here.”

The inmates are now being provided rice and Rs 80 per day by the government. “They don’t want the ration. They just want the Centre to end the conflict and facilitate their return to their own home,” Indian Navy veteran N Samarendra Singh, a convenor of the committee that manages the camp, said.

Nearly 20 km away from Imphal, in another relief camp at Kodompokpi sports complex in neighbouring Thoubal district, 490 people are similarly waiting to go back to Moreh. Shantipur Singh, secretary of the relief camp, told DH that six inmates, including his mother, died, either due to distress or lack of medical care.

The scene is similar at another camp at Tuibong, about 65 km away in Churachandpur district, where 125 people of the Kuki community have been residing since they had to flee the Meitei-dominated Imphal Valley. N Lamneihoi Baite, a BSc third-semester student, sat outside a hall, where 24 displaced families live in tiny makeshift tarpaulin enclosures. Unlike the inmates of the camps in the valley, most here don't want to go back to their original homes. “We cannot go back and stay with the Meiteis. We want a separate administration so that we can live peacefully in our own land,” said Lamneihoi, with distress writ large on her face. She, along with her family and neighbours, had to take refuge in the camp in September 2023, after, as she said, a Meitei mob burnt their village. “We are not sure whether the prime minister will make any announcement on our demand.”

Kenedy Haokip, the information secretary of Kuki Yuva Sanga, overseeing the camps, said that more than 16,000 displaced people of the Kuki community were staying in at least 81 camps in Churachandpur. “Another 15,000 to 16,000 are either staying in rented houses or with the families of the same community in the villages.”

Back in Imphal, Mukesh Kumar, originally from Bihar's Begusarai district, who runs a tea and snacks stall, said the conflict pushed his business to its worst phase. Kumar, who has been living in Manipur for the past 25 years, said that he would be forced to shut his shop if a solution could not be reached early. “Modiji is the only hope now,” he told DH.

In Churachandpur, the excitement among the Kukis about Modi's visit was palpable, as he would be the first prime minister to set foot in the hill district in four decades, since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. The tricolour barricades as well as traditional flags of various Kuki-Zo communities have been put up on both sides of the road leading to the Peace Ground, where the prime minister is scheduled to address a meeting on Saturday. He will also address a meeting in Imphal. He is likely to launch several development projects in both places.

The people, Kukis and Meiteis alike, however, are keenly waiting for him to speak more on the path to peace.