By Markson V Luikham
Imagine a granary in a Naga village, 1871. It holds a year of children’s food. In one night, it is ash. One hundred granaries burn. Ten men, ten women, eight children lie dead: their heads carried away as trophies. Three women and three children are dragged alive into captivity. The attackers are not a rival tribe settling a boundary dispute. They are a mercenary force, armed by a foreign empire, planted on land that was never theirs.
This is not a tragedy buried in history. It is a pattern still unfolding before our eyes. And yet, some still call it a Tangkhul war.
There is a narrative circulating among certain political and intellectual circles, but it is worse than mere circulation. It is being forcefed to the younger generation. Certain leaders and prominent figures have convinced themselves, and are now telling our youth, that the present conflict in Manipur is a “Tangkhul war” against the Kukis, that it can be settled through Christian ethics, humanitarian goodwill, and the model of peaceful coexistence that integrated a small number of Kukis into Nagaland decades ago.
This is not education. It is indoctrination.
This narrative is not merely incomplete. It is dangerous. It is built on a foundation of historical ignorance, political convenience, and a profound failure to understand the structural dynamics that have been unfolding in Manipur for over a century. If you believe that the KukiNaga conflict is a localized Tangkhul dispute that can be resolved through sermons on love, then the history has not been studied. Or worse, it has been studied and chosen to be buried.
We have too often let others name our wars for us. Our own ignorance has become a weapon in our adversary’s hands.
Before any conclusion is drawn about who is the aggressor and whose war this truly is, walk with me through the historical record. Let the archives speak. Let the evidence settle. And then, with an honest conscience, ask: is this a Tangkhul war, or has the conflict always been far larger than any single tribe? The answer will determine whether one remains part of the problem or becomes part of the solution for one’s own family.
I. The Colonial Blueprint: A People Planted as a Buffer
The Kuki presence on Naga land is not ancient. It is a colonial artifact. The name “Kuki” was first heard in Manipur sometime between 1830 and 1840. Between those years, the British administration planted the Kuki tribe in the Naga hills as a mercenary buffer force against Naga raiders. As Sir James Johnstone, Political Agent in Manipur, recorded in 1896: “Colonel McCulloch’s policy of planting Kuki settlement on exposed frontiers induced the government of Bengal to try a similar experiment, and large colonies of Kukis were settled in 1885 in the neighbourhood of Langting to set as a barrier for north Cachar against the raid of the AngamiNagas.” Alexander Mackenzie, in his seminal History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the NorthEast Frontier of Bengal (1884, pp. 213214), documented that in 185152, “a great band of 8000 (eight thousand) Kukis moved northward, the British colonial government armed them with guns and ammunitions to fight against the Angami Nagas.”
BC Allan, in his celebrated book Naga Hills and Manipur, wrote that “by 1845 the British administration in Manipur faced problems when the Kukis began to come in great numbers and started to ‘drive away’ many of the older inhabitant.” The British Political Agent W. McCulloch was entrusted by Maharaja Nar Singh to manage the tribal affairs of the hills. Land was given to the Kukis and they were allowed to establish villages under their chiefs. But this was not benevolence. Dr. Lal Dena has pointed out that the double purpose of Kuki settlement on the frontier was that the warlike Kukis had to “act as a buffer, first against Burmese and secondly against recalcitrant Nagas and Lushais tribes.”
In 1845, approximately 1,500 Thadou Kukiswere settled at Mombi by British Political Agent Major McCulloch, explicitly conditioned to serve as “sepoy villages.” As BC Allan further noted, the Kukis began to “drive away many of the older inhabitant.” They were not planted by Providence. They were planted by empire. Their presence was transactional, not ancestral. The United Naga Council has officially stated: “One of the many problems that we inherit from the British colonial rule is the issue of the planting of the Kuki tribe in the Naga hills. As a mercenary tribe, the British found the Kukis quite useful. Their total lack of attachment to any land and landscape was immediately recognised by the British, thus making them instrumental to crushing the indigenous communities of Manipur.”
The foundational texts of Naga ethnography (J.H. Hutton’s monographs, The AngamiNagas (1921), The Sema Nagas (1921), and The Lhota Nagas (1922); J.P. Mills’ detailed accounts of the Lhota (1922), Ao (1926), and Rengma Nagas (1937); T.C. Hodson’s The Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911); S.E. Peal’s twelve articles in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute between 1872 and 1897) all document a Naga world that predates and excludes any Kuki territorial claim. Hutton, who assisted in quelling the Kuki Rebellion between 1917 and 1919, wrote that about Kukis, colonial administrators “knew less.”
The colonial administration itself understood the distinction with clinical clarity. T.A. Sharp, President of the Manipur State Darbar, issued a Standing Order declaring that “Kukis in the Naga areas in Manipur are Aliens and Refugees.” Standing Order No. 2 of 23 July 1941 (Manipur State Archives) bound Kukis to seek Naga Village Chief permission for settlement and to pay house tax to the Naga Chief. Order No. 11 of 18 August 1931 forbade issuing firearms to Kukis because of their “savagery nature against the Nagas.” These are not nationalist pamphlets. They are the official standing orders of a colonial state that knew exactly who belonged and who had been permitted.
What They Claim, and What the Record Says: Kuki revisionists contest the dominant narrative that their ancestors were brought from the KukiChin hills of Burma by the British to serve as a buffer. They speak instead of a precolonial Zale’ngam, or “land of freedom,” sprawling across large parts of India’s Northeast and contiguous areas in presentday Myanmar. Yet the earliest colonial ethnographers (Hutton, Hodson, Peal) mapped extensive Naga territories before any Kuki presence was recorded. The name “Kuki” itself, as the United Naga Council has documented, was unknown in Manipur until 18301840. A map drawn on someone else’s land is not a homeland. It is a declaration of war by cartography.
So, when someone tells you that the Kukis are “original inhabitants,” ask: original by whose calendar? The calendar of the land, or the calendar of the British Empire? If a people were planted as mercenaries by a foreign power, can a claim to indigeneity truly stand?
II. A Hundred Years of Harvest: Violence as a Pattern
What was planted did not lie dormant. It grew, and its growth was measured in corpses and ash. The archives do not whisper. They testify.
On 3 May 1871, MajorGeneral W.F. Nuthall, Political Agent of Munipore, wrote to Lieutenant J. Butler, Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills (National Archives of India, Foreign Dept. Political A, July 1871, Nos. 124127), reporting that approximately 450 Kukis from the village of Koodingmang attacked a Naga village, killing ten men, ten women, and eight children, carrying off their heads together with three women and three children alive, and burning eightyseven houses and one hundred granaries.
A granary burned is a year of children starved. This was not warfare. This was erasure by hunger.
Between 1880 and the 1890s, Kukis attacked many Naga villages without provocation. In 1880, Chingsow, a Tangkhul village, was attacked, killing 45 people: 20 men and 25 women. In 1892, Kukis attacked Chingjaroivillage and killed 286, mostly women and children; 187 of whom were women and children killed in a single night. The village of Chingjaroisubsequently requested neighbouring villages to give marriageable women to repopulate.
There is a quiet sorrow in that detail, a village so hollowed out that it had to borrow mothers to survive. That kind of wound does not heal in one generation.
In 1910, while more than 2,000 Naga men were away in France serving as labour corps for the Allied Forces, Kuki raiders took 250 heads from villages in the Naga Hills. The victims were predominantly women and children. A man who fights another man’s women and children while that man is away at war has written his own moral biography.
Then came the Kuki Rebellion of 1917 to 1919, an event Kuki revisionists now call the “AngloKuki War” to clothe a predatory rampage in the dignity of anticolonial resistance. The United Naga Council has set the record straight: it was “a savage episode of murdering, torching houses, plundering and enslaving women and children of indigenous Naga community in Ukhrul, Chandel and Tamenglong in Manipur.” The UNC further stated: “There is no record of AngloKuki War in the history of India (MHA). It was never a war but a mere rebellion.” Dr.Nelson Vashum documented that “the Kuki rebellion 19171919 was known in the oral history of the Tangkhul Naga as a ‘dark period’.” Arkotong Longkumer, lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, noted that the Kukis used the rebellion “as an opportunity to attack Zeliangrong villages, and ignited the ethnic tension that followed in the 1920s.” Colonial accounts describe the Zeliangrong people as “a group of Naga tribes from Manipur who were at the receiving end of violence by the Lushais and Kukis.”
What They Claim, and What the Record Says: Kuki groups have promoted the “AngloKuki War” narrative as a heroic anticolonial resistance, erecting memorial stones across many Kuki villages during the 20172019 centenary. Yet the primary targets of the 19171919 violence were not British garrisons but Naga villages (Ukhrul, Chandel, Tamenglong) whose residents were massacred. The United Naga Council stated that the Kuki rebellion was “a mere rebellion with the colonial power,” not a war in defence of any political homeland. Rebranding a predatory rampage as liberation does not cleanse the blood from the soil.
The historian Gangmumei Kamei, in his History of Zeliangrong Nagas, recorded that Tintong, Chief of Laijang, raided Awangkhul village and took thirty heads before attacking Akhui, a Rongmei village, killing seventysix persons and burning it to the ground. In total, 289 Nagas and 4 Meiteis were killed, and 34 Naga villages were reduced to ash. The four Zeliangrong bodies (the Inpui Naga Union, Liangmai Naga Council, Rongmei Naga Council, and Zeme Naga Council) confirmed these figures in a 2019 joint statement. Many Naga villages were decimated. Hundreds of villagers were massacred. And during this entire episode, not a single British soldier was killed.
Now, let these numbers sink into the conscience. If this violence was always directed at Nagas (Angami, Tangkhul, Rongmei, Liangmai, Zeme) how can anyone call this a Tangkhul war? Was Chingjaroi a Tangkhulvillage? Were the Rongmei victims of 1917 Tangkhuls? The blood spilled is one blood. Do not let anyone convince you it belongs to one tribe alone.
III. The Unbroken Thread: From 1960 to the 1990s and Beyond
The territorial ambition did not end with the colonial period. It simply changed vocabulary. On 24 March 1960, Kuki Chiefs submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru demanding a “Kuki State” over Churachandpur, Senapati, Ukhrul, and Tamenglong, all districts with substantial Naga populations and ancestral territory. The demand was rejected. It has never been withdrawn. A demand that is never withdrawn is not a memory. It is a programme waiting for the right season.
That season arrived in 1992. Dr. Nelson Vashum, who was “collecting informations on human right abuses” from 1988 to 1995 as the NagaKuki clash “was unfolding concurrently,” documented the genesis with rare precision. He recorded that in March 1989, the Kuki National Assembly (KNA) circulated information to all Kuki headmen to “stop payment of land taxes to leaser Naga villages and at the same time not to sell any landed property to the Nagas.” Most damningly, a memorandum was submitted to Home Minister Buta Singh in which “the KNA vowed that Kuki community would subdue the Naga independent movement in 5 (five) years which the government of India failed to achieve in 40 years.” The memorandum was signed by late Major P. Kipgen as general secretary and president, KNA. Arms and money were urgently sought.
Dr. Vashum further revealed that a colonel of the Indian Army, whose wife was his patient, privately disclosed that “under the initiative of Defence Ministry, a batch of 250 Kuki youngsters were being trained for self defence and the band was named as Kuki Defence Force (KDF).” The recruits, under liquor, “bluntly came out with intent to fight with NSCN (IM) and Tangkhuls.”
When the state feeds the wolf and names it shepherd, the sheep must learn to read the hand that feeds.
The KukiNaga ethnic war was lit with a deliberate spark. In May 1992, the Kuki Student Organisation served a “Quit Notice” in Moreh, demanding that all Nagas leave the strategic border town within twentyfour hours, forcing “thousands of innocent helpless Nagas to abandon their homes and possessions.” A contemporaneous report in the Indian Express confirms that “the Kukis led by the KNA served a ‘Quit Naga’ order in Moreh.” In September 1992, the Kuki War Declaration Committee, led by C. Doungel and HolkhomangHaokip, formally declared war on the Nagaswithout provocation. In April 1993, the Kuki National Front launched unprovoked aggression against Naga villages in Chandel and Ukhruldistricts. By September 1993, the KNF had devised a “premeditated plan to completely annihilate the Liangmai Naga villages under Kangpokpi Subdivision.” On 10 September 1993, thousands of Kuki volunteers descended upon Makui village and reduced it to smouldering ruins. On 11 September, a second assault was launched at 5:00 a.m. with relentless gunfire continuing until evening.
The Kuki Inpi later submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister claiming 905 Kukis killed. Even accepting these contested figures, they must be weighed against a century of documented aggression: the heads taken in 1871 and 1910, the villages burned in 1918, the “Quit Naga” order of 1992, and the premeditated annihilation campaign of 1993.
So ask yourself: when a community vows to subdue the Naga movement in five years, trains its youth with state support, serves a quit notice, and formally declares war, who exactly is the aggressor? And who is defending ancestral land? If this were your village, your district, would it still be called a “Tangkhul war”?
IV. The SoO Shield: StateSponsored Impunity
The Suspension of Operations agreement was signed on 22 August 2008 between the Government of India, the Manipur government, and twentyfive Kuki militant groups under the umbrella bodies of the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and United Peoples’ Front (UPF). It requires cadres confined to camps, arms under double lock. The reality is a mirror image. Militant groups recruit, arm, and attack while drawing a monthly stipend of Rs 6,000 per cadre from the Indian state. The Global Naga Forum has documented that this stipend is “being misused by certain Kuki militant groups for the procurement of arms and ammunition.”
Civil society organisations in Manipur have repeatedly alleged that the SoO pacts have been “repeatedly violated, thus impeding efforts to restore peace in the violencehit state.” The Manipur government officially abrogated the SoO agreements with the Kuki National Army (KNA) and Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) in March 2023, and formally opposed their renewal in January 2024.
On 29 February 2024, the Manipur Legislative Assembly unanimously resolved to urge the Union Government to abrogate the Suspension of Operations pact with KukiZo insurgent groups. The resolution passed with the support of the BJP majority. The Centre ignored it. Despite the state’s withdrawal from the pact, the Ministry of Home Affairs resumed talks with KukiZo insurgent groups on 1 May 2026. When the people protest, they meet silence. When village guards are ambushed, the state looks away. When women storm army camps demanding accountability, as they did at Sinakeithei on 8 May 2026, the system offers condolences without consequence.
There is a particular cruelty in that image: an armoured vehicle parked fifty metres from the gunfire, and nothing done. The silence of the state is not neutral. It is a decision.
Consider this carefully: if the SoO agreement is meant for peace, why are arms multiplying under its shelter? Why is every ambush met with state silence? Who is being protected, and who is being sacrificed? Is this the peace one would want for one’s children?
V. The Nagaland Model Is a False Parallel
Some point to Nagaland, where a handful of Kukis have been integrated into society without conflict, as a model for Manipur. This comparison collapses under the slightest scrutiny. The Kukis in Nagaland are a negligible minority without territorial claims, without armed cadres, without a demographic project, and without a political demand for a separate homeland. They do not claim 12,958 square kilometres of Nagaland as “Kukiland.” They do not operate fortified bunkers. They do not shell Naga villages daily.
The situation in Manipur is fundamentally different. The Kukis in Manipur, particularly in the hill districts, are not merely a small, integrated minority. They are subject to a political project driven by an armed leadership that enjoys state acquiescence through the SoOmechanism. The Kuki State Demand Committee (KSDC), supported by the Kuki National Army, has drawn a map claiming 12,958 square kilometres (more than 60 percent of Manipur’s territory) for a “Kukiland” that includes the SadarHills, Churachandpur, Chandel, and portions of Tamenglong and Ukhrul, all ancestral Naga lands. The KSDC has contended that the tribal areas “are yet to be a part of the Indian Union.”
Militant cadres operate freely under the protection of the SoO agreement. The chairman of the Kuki National Front (Presidential), ST Thangboi Kipgen, is married to the sitting Deputy Chief Minister of Manipur, NemchaKipgen. This politicalmilitary apparatus is not seeking peaceful coexistence. It is pursuing territorial conquest.
Think about this honestly. Can a handful of integrated families truly be compared with a politicalmilitary machine that has drawn maps, built bunkers, and placed its leadership in the corridors of power? Look at the map of “Kukiland.” It consumes ancestral lands, every hill, every village. Does that look like peaceful coexistence, or does it look like a project of absorption?
VI. The Quiet Conquest: Demographic Transformation
The demographic transformation of Manipur is a conquest conducted through census columns and village records. According to the Census of India, in 1881 the ChinKukiZo population was 17,204 souls. By 2011, it had multiplied twentysix times to 448,214. The Naga share of the tribal population fell from 70.24 percent to 51.14 percent. The New Kuki share nearly doubled from 20.17 percent to 37.73 percent. Annual growth rates tell the same story: Meitei at 7.17 percent, ChinKukiZo at 15.82 percent, a rate more than double.
The village data from Sadar Hills is a chronicle of silent displacement. In Sadar Hills West, Naga villages grew from 34 to 49 while Kuki villages surged from 13 to 69 between 1971 and 2001. In Sadar Hills East, Naga villages edged from 114 to 124 while Kuki settlements exploded from 59 to 171. In Saitu Gamphazol, Naga villages increased from 41 to 61 while Kuki villages multiplied from 29 to 115. Number of Kuki villages doubled in all of Sadar Hills and some even tripled, while Naga villages remained almost the same even after 40 years. This is not organic growth. This is a systematic strategy of demographic occupation.
The Kuki demand for a separate Sadar Hills district was once dismissed as extremist fantasy. That district now exists as Kangpokpi, a fait accompli achieved not through legal adjudication but through the patient arithmetic of population replacement. The Congress government of Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh declared the Kukidominated Sadar Hills, part of the Nagadominated Senapati district, as a separate district in the face of strong opposition from the United Naga Council. Every demographic victory is a down payment on the next political demand.
When the census shows a community doubling its share of the population in a few decades, when villages multiply not organically but in patterns of displacement, is that mere migration or conquest by another name? The numbers do not lie. What will be said to the next generation when they ask why their ancestral villages no longer appear on the map?
VII. The Contemporary Violence: A Sustained Campaign
The historical record is not an abstraction. It is written in the charred timber of Sinakeithei, in the bodies of village guards killed on patrol, in the terror of mothers and children pinned down in their fields by sniper fire. Sinakeithei, a Tangkhul Naga village in Ukhrul district, has been subjected to repeated armed attacks. In April 2026, three people from the TangkhulNaga and Kuki communities were killed in separate incidents of firing between armed groups in Ukhrul district, with one person killed in the first attack on Sinakeithei by suspected Kuki armed militants. Villagers reported that “repeated armed attacks in and around their village have terrorised residents.” Women, children, and the elderly have been forced to flee into the deep jungles, abandoned without food, shelter, or medical care.
On 18 April 2026, two unarmed Tangkhulcivilians were murdered on National Highway 202 at TM Kasom: one, SW Chinaoshang (46), a retired personnel of the Naga Regiment and resident of Tashar village. The Global Naga Forum described the incident as “a heinous and premeditated attack on unarmed civilians.”
On 7 May 2026, Myanmarbased KNAB militants, allegedly along with allied People’s Defence Force (PDF) groups, crossed an international border with drones and militarygrade weapons to burn Naga homes in Choro, Namlee, Wanglee, and Ahang Khullen in Kamjong district. The United Naga Council stated that “more than 100 armed militants breached the international border around 4 am on May 7 and launched coordinated attacks on villages in the area.”
On 8 May 2026, a large group of women from Sinakeithei stormed the camp of the 4 Mahar Regiment, demanding accountability from security forces. They questioned “how armed militants were able to launch attacks despite the continued presence of central forces.” An armoured Casspir vehicle was stationed barely 50 metres from where firing originated, yet no effective response was made.
On 13 May 2026, three senior leaders of the Thadou Baptist Association were ambushed and killed between Kotzim and Kotlen in Kangpokpidistrict while returning from a TBA conference in Churachandpur. Those killed were Reverend Vumthang Sitlhou, president of the ThadouBaptist Association and former general secretary of the Manipur Baptist Convention; Reverend Kaigoulen Lhouvum; and Pastor Paogoulen Sitlhou.
Within hours, approximately 20 Naga civilians (all Liangmai Nagas, mostly from Konsakhulvillage) were abducted from Leilon Vaiphei and nearby areas. While some were later released through exchanges, six men remain missing. Their whereabouts are still unknown as of 20 May 2026. One of the missing men has been identified as Reverend Manu Thiumai, a pastor. Naga leaders have said that even if the men are no longer alive, their bodies should be returned to their families for last rites.
Mass protests have followed. Thousands of women from the Naga community staged sitin protests across Nagainhabited areas of Manipur (Senapati, Ukhrul, Chandel, Tamenglong, and Noney) demanding the immediate release of the six missing men. Naga and Meitei groups have formed a joint committee calling for the abrogation of the SoO agreement and the removal of the Assam Rifles from Manipur.
This is not a localized Tangkhul war. This is a sustained campaign of ethnic violence, prosecuted by militant groups that enjoy SoOprotection, systematically targeting civilians.
Now, look at the present. The daily shelling. The ambushed civilians on the highway. The abducted men never returned to their wives and children. If this were happening in your district, your village, would it be called a “Tangkhulproblem”? Or would it be called an attack on an entire people? The bullets do not ask which tribe you belong to. They only ask if you are Naga.
VIII. The International Legal Framework: A Crime Before the World
Beyond the archives and the battlefields, the Naga position finds unequivocal support in the framework of international law. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted by the General Assembly on 13 September 2007, provides a legal architecture that speaks directly to every dimension of this conflict.
Article 10 declares: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.” The 1992 Quit Notice in Moreh, the premeditated annihilation of Liangmai villages in 1993, and the ongoing shelling of Sinakeithei are all prima facie violations of this prohibition. No Naga community ever gave free, prior, and informed consent to be driven from their homes.
Article 26 affirms: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources.” The colonial Standing Orders (Sharp’s declaration that Kukis in Naga areas are “Aliens and Refugees,” the house tax obligations to Naga chiefs, the prohibition on Kuki firearm ownership) all constitute legal recognition of Naga territorial sovereignty. These are not nationalist pamphlets. They are the boundary stones of international law.
Article 28 provides: “Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.” The 12,958 square kilometres claimed as “Kukiland” (territory encompassing Churachandpur, Chandel, SadarHills, and portions of Tamenglong and Ukhrul) represents the single largest attempted land confiscation in the history of the Naga people. Under Article 28, the Nagas are entitled not merely to protest but to restitution.
This reframing matters for an essential reason. When Naga representatives approach UN special rapporteurs, international human rights bodies, foreign governments, and global civil society organisations, they no longer need to argue a parochial ethnic dispute. They can invoke a universal legal standard, one that India itself voted to adopt in 2007. The colonial “planting,” the quit notices, the demographic occupation of Sadar Hills, the crossborder attacks of May 2026, and the daily shelling of Sinakeithei are not merely historical grievances. They are ongoing violations of a binding international human rights framework.
IX. The Christian Imperative: Peace Without Truth Is Not Peace
Some invoke the teachings of Christ (turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven) as a basis for accepting a compromised resolution. But the same Christ who spoke of forgiveness also drove the money changers from the temple. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” yes, but the peacemaker must know the difference between peace and surrender. The prophet Jeremiah thundered against those who “dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
A peace that demands the forfeiture of ancestral territory, ratified by colonial courts and customary law, is not peace. It is pious surrender dressed in the language of reconciliation. “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors,” commands Proverbs. What are the Lousalceremony, the colonial standing orders, and the unbroken chain of judicial rulings from 1939 to 1980 except the boundary stones of a people?
Forgiveness of past wrongs is a sacred act, but forgiveness does not erase truth. Reconciliation requires accountability and the restoration of what was taken. Political surrender is not a Christian virtue. To forgive is not to hand over the inheritance of one’s children. The gospel calls for truthful peacemaking, not for victims to quietly accept their own disappearance.
Dr. Nelson Vashum, whose article Genesis of Naga Kuki clash in early nineties was a courageous act of historical preservation, wrote that “celebrating an ugly past is unbecoming of people who follow Jesus Christ, the prince of peace.” Yet equally unbecoming is a peace that sanctifies theft, that baptises encroachment, that demands the victim forgive while the perpetrator continues to strike. “The conflicts,” Dr. Vashumwrote, “were blatant displays of satanic influence overpowering the Christian faith of both sides.”
As people of faith, we must ask: does the Bible command the handing over of an ancestral inheritance to those who seek erasure? Forgiveness is holy. Surrender is not. Reconciliation without truth is not peace; it is spiritual manipulation. Do not let anyone use faith as a weapon against your own people.
X. The Fire That Must Not Be Inherited
Manipur’s conflict is far from over. It may continue long beyond our own lifetime, perhaps even beyond our grandchildren, if its history, causes, and dynamics remain misunderstood, undocumented, or deliberately distorted. If we fail to equip future generations today with facts, records, scholarship, legal documentation, ground reports, and historical understanding, they too will inherit the same confusion, propaganda, division, and vulnerability that continue to haunt us now.
Today, as I write, I am guided by the published articles, documented histories, and books of those who have gone before: Tangkhul scholars such as A.S.W. Shimray (History of the Tangkhul Nagas), M. Horam (Naga Polity), R. Vashum (Nagas’ Right to SelfDetermination), A.S. Atai Shimray (Let Freedom Ring), and R.R. Shimray (Origin and Culture of Nagas); scholars such as Gangmumei Kamei (History of Zeliangrong Nagas), Kaka D. Iralu (The Blood and Tears), Temsula Ao, Easterine Kire, and Mayangnokcha Ao; the British colonial administratorscumanthropologists J.H. Hutton, J.P. Mills, T.C. Hodson, and S.E. Peal; and most critically, Dr. Nelson Vashum, whose Genesis of Naga Kuki clash in early nineties provides an eyewitness account of the Indian state’s covert arming and training of Kuki militants to fight the Nagas. To them, and to the countless elders whose oral histories remain unrecorded, I owe a debt that can only be repaid by adding my own contribution to the growing archive of our people’s truth.
Even today, many of our own leaders and educated sections across borders, especially in Nagaland and beyond, still do not fully understand the deeper historical context and conflict dynamics unfolding in Manipur. Some continue blaming fellow Nagas in the conflict zones without fully understanding the demographic, political, historical, and strategic realities on the ground. This is precisely why documentation, research, publication, and intellectual engagement are no longer optional.
If we do not preserve and explain our own history with clarity, discipline, and evidence, others will define it for us, and future generations will inherit narratives written by those who neither lived our realities nor protected our truths.
If this history is not documented, who will do it? If others are allowed to name our wars and define our enemies, what will our grandchildren know of us except what our adversaries wrote? The fire that consumes Manipur was lit in London, but it has been fuelled by our silence. It will not die because we ignore it. It will grow. And it will consume our children’s future. Will the truth be passed on, or will ashes be passed on?
XI. Conclusion: Remember, Unite, Act
So this is spoken directly to you, wherever you are: in Dimapur, Kohima, Mokokchung, Mon, Wokha, Zunheboto, Tuensang, and beyond. You who have heard the whispers that this is a Tangkhul war. The evidence has been laid out. Now the verdict is yours.
To the leaders who believe this is a Tangkhulwar that can be settled through Christian goodwill: you are wrong. You are wrong historically, because the Kuki presence on Naga land began as a colonial mercenary project, armed and directed by the British against Nagas. You are wrong factually, because the data shows a systematic strategy of demographic occupation spanning over a century. You are wrong politically, because the Kuki project is not seeking coexistence but territory—12,958 square kilometres of it, claimed under a map that consumes ancestral Naga lands across four districts. And you are wrong theologically, because the God of scripture does not command the oppressed to surrender their inheritance.
A peace that requires a people to forget is a peace that writes the next war. What is won by the sword can be lost by the sword. But what is surrendered in the name of a false peace is lost forever. Under no circumstances should peace be earned by compromising the rights of a people: rights to land, to political voice, to existence as a people in the land of their ancestors. If we do, we have not made peace. We have only postponed the fire, and made it larger for our children.
The path forward demands three commitments. They are not optional.
Remember. Preserve the records, the testimonies, the land maps. Never let the boundary stones be moved in memory first. The Lousal ceremony, the colonial Standing Orders, the unbroken chain of judicial rulings from 1939 to 1980, these are the deeds to our homeland. Document the oral histories of elders before they are lost. Support scholarship, archiving, and publication. A people that forgets its boundaries will soon have none to remember.
Unite. Recognize that this war is not Tangkhul, not Zeliangrong, not Angami: it is against the Naga people. Tribalism in the face of a map that swallows all our hills is selfimmolation. The KSDC map does not distinguish between Ukhruland Tamenglong, between Senapati and Chandel. It consumes everything. Our adversaries have already united their political project. Our fragmentation is their greatest strategic asset. To quarrel over which Naga tribe bears the heaviest burden while the map of “Kukiland” encircles every Naga village is to negotiate the terms of our own dissolution.
Act. Support factfinding missions that document the ongoing violence. Petition international bodies under UNDRIP Articles 10, 26, and 28 for recognition of Naga territorial rights and redress for lands confiscated without consent. Challenge illegal settlements and SoO abuses through legal and parliamentary channels. Demand that the Government of India honour the unanimous 29 February 2024 resolution of the Manipur Legislative Assembly and abrogate the SoO pact with all Kuki militant groups. Support Naga civil society organisations (the United Naga Council, the Global Naga Forum, the Tangkhul Naga Long, the Zeliangrongbodies) in their advocacy before national and international forums. Demand from your representatives in Nagaland not sentimental solidarity but political solidarity: material support, legal resources, and diplomatic pressure. The international legal architecture exists. It must be used.
A map drawn on someone else’s land is not a homeland. It is a declaration of war by cartography. The fire that consumes Manipur was lit in London, but it has been fuelled by our silence.
The question now rests with each one who has read this. What will be done with what is now known?
References
Archival Sources
Manipur State Archives. Order No. 11 of 18 August 1931 (prohibition of firearms to Kukis).
Manipur State Archives. Standing Order No. 2 of 23 July 1941 (Kukis in Naga areas as aliens and refugees; house tax to Naga chiefs).
National Archives of India. Foreign Dept., Political A, July 1871, Nos. 124–127 (Nuthall to Butler, 3 May 1871).
Sharp, T. A. Standing Order of the Manipur State Darbar(Kukis in Naga areas declared “Aliens and Refugees”).
Government & International Documents
Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs. Suspension of Operations (SoO) Agreement, 22 August 2008.
United Nations General Assembly. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Resolution 61/295, 13 September 2007.
Books & Monographs
Allen, B. C. Gazetteer of Naga Hills and Manipur. Assam District Gazetteers, Vol. 9. Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1905. Reprint 2002.
Hodson, T. C. The Naga Tribes of Manipur. London: Macmillan, 1911.
Horam, M. Naga Polity. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1975.
Hutton, J. H. The Angami Nagas. London: Macmillan, 1921.
Hutton, J. H. The Sema Nagas. London: Macmillan, 1921.
Iralu, Kaka D. Nagaland and India: The Blood and the Tears. 2003.
Johnstone, Sir James. Manipur and the Naga Hills. London, 1896.
Kamei, Gangmumei. A History of the Zeliangrong Nagas. Guwahati/Delhi: Spectrum Publications, 2004.
Mackenzie, Alexander. History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1884.
Mills, J. P. The Lhota Nagas. London: Macmillan, 1922.
Mills, J. P. The Ao Nagas. London: Macmillan, 1926.
Mills, J. P. The Rengma Nagas. London: Macmillan, 1937.
Shimray, A. S. Atai. Let Freedom Ring: Story of Naga Nationalism. New Delhi: Promilla & Co., 2005.
Shimray, A. S. W. History of the Tangkhul Nagas. New Delhi: Akansha Publishing, 2001.
Shimray, R. R. Origin and Culture of Nagas. New Delhi: Pamleiphi Shimray, 1985.
Vashum, R. Nagas’ Right to Self-Determination. New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2000.
Journal Articles & Academic Papers
Peal, S. E. (1872–1897). Twelve articles on the Nagas in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Vashum, Nelson. “Genesis of Naga Kuki Clash in Early Nineties.” e-pao.net.
Longkumer, Arkotong. “Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging.” The Indian Express, 17 November 2019 (discussing Zeliangrong during the Kuki Rebellion).
Statements, Reports & Press Releases
Global Naga Forum. Statement on misuse of SoO stipends for arms procurement, April 2026.
Inpui Naga Union, Liangmai Naga Council, Rongmei Naga Council, Zeme Naga Council. Joint statement on Kuki Rebellion, 2019.
Kuki National Assembly. Memorandum to Home Minister Buta Singh, 1989.
Kuki State Demand Committee. Map of proposed “Kukiland,” 2012.
United Naga Council. Official statements on colonial planting of Kukis and the Kuki Rebellion (1917–1919).
News Articles (selected)
The Hindu. “End pact with Kuki-Zo groups, Manipur Assembly tells Centre.” 29 February 2024.
The Indian Express. “The demand for a Kuki homeland, its history and rationale.” 16 May 2023.
India Today NE. “The Silent Crisis: Unchecked Migration And Its Impact On Manipur’s Identity.” 18 June 2025.
Hindustan Times. “Houses torched as militants raid villages near India-Myanmar border.” 7 May 2026.
Hindustan Times. “3 killed by suspected militants in ambush in Manipur’s Kangpokpi.” 13 May 2026.
Times of India. “Mass protests erupt in Manipur hill districts over 8-day hostage crisis.” 20 May 2026.
Assam Tribune. “Nagas, Meiteis unite in Imphal protest over 6 missing civilians.” 25 May 2026.
Census & Data
Census of India, 1881. “Khongzais in Manipur had population of 17,204.”
Census of India, 2011. Chin-Kuki-Zo population 448,214; tribal share shifts.
Online Resources
e-pao.net. Various articles by Khomdon Lisam, Nelson Vashum, and the “Anglo-Kuki War fictitious” joint statement (2019).
