A rare national media conversation with a former IAS officer and sitting Naga MLA opens a wider discussion on political power, migration, border security, development, distrust and the unresolved Naga political question

Part I: Security, Conflict and the Unravelling of Naga Neutrality

Author’s Note

This article is the product of a close reading and extended analysis of the video interview conducted by The Hindu journalist Vijaita Singh with Ram Muivah and published on August 20, 2026. The purpose is not to reproduce the interview as a conventional news report, but to examine its wider political meaning for a national audience.

Because Ram Muivah was speaking as a sitting MLA, a former senior civil servant and a politician operating within the constitutional structure of Manipur, some of his answers were necessarily politically cautious. As a Naga writer who has studied the Naga political question, the Northeast and the evolving Meitei-Kuki and Naga-Kuki conflicts, the author has attempted to read those answers within their broader political and historical context and to bring out what the author understands to be the deeper concerns he was conveying.

The distinction between Muivah’s statements and the author’s own analysis is deliberate throughout the article. Statements attributable to Muivah are presented as his account, while broader conclusions, interpretations and analytical arguments belong to the author. Where quotations from the video have been lightly edited for grammar, repetition or verbal stuttering inherent in spoken conversation, the meaning has not been altered.

There are interviews that tell us what a politician thinks about an event, and there are interviews that make us reconsider the event itself. The recent video interview conducted by The Hindu journalist Vijaita Singh with Ram Muivah, the Naga People’s Front MLA from Ukhrul and a former senior Indian Administrative Service officer, belongs to the second category. Published by The Hindu on August 20, 2026, and made available on its YouTube channel under the title “Naga MLA: Hills neglected, power centralised,” the conversation brings together the security, political and developmental dimensions of Manipur’s crisis, including immigration from Myanmar, young armed actors and sophisticated weapons, poppy cultivation and illicit economies, distrust of security forces, highway blockades, political autonomy and the unresolved Naga political question.

The format matters because this was a direct video conversation, not a newspaper report summarising Muivah’s remarks after the fact. Singh’s questions move from the Naga-Kuki confrontation and the Myanmar border to armed groups, narcotics, the Naga peace process, highway blockades, security forces and the political structure of Manipur. Taken together, Muivah’s answers amount to a political diagnosis of the conditions that, in his view, have allowed insecurity in Manipur to become recurrent.

Ram Muivah is unusually well positioned to have that conversation. The official profile of the Manipur Legislative Assembly identifies him as the MLA representing 44-Ukhrul (ST) and a member of the Naga People’s Front. It records 35 years of service in the Government of Manipur and the Government of India, including assignments in the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Urban Development and the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region. He served as Secretary of the North Eastern Council from 2015 to 2019, superannuated from government service in February 2020 and was elected to the Manipur Legislative Assembly in 2022. The Assembly profile also records his earlier service as Deputy Commissioner of Ukhrul, among several other senior administrative positions (Manipur Legislative Assembly, 2026).

Muivah is therefore not simply a politician commenting on administration from outside the system. He spent decades inside the administrative machinery of the Indian State and now speaks as an elected representative from one of Manipur’s principal Naga constituencies. He occupies a rare intersection of administrative experience, Central government experience, Naga political identity and constitutional politics in Manipur.

There is another reason I listen to him carefully, and I believe it is important to say that openly. I have known Oja Ram Muivah for approximately six or seven years through the Global Naga Forum, particularly since his retirement from the civil service. I hold no political office and do not belong to any political circle. Yet I have had the privilege of knowing him in person and interacting with him on several occasions. What has stayed with me is his humility. He is remarkably down to earth and, more importantly, unusually accessible. People can change once they acquire political office or public stature. People who were once easy to reach become distant, and those who once felt comfortable approaching them begin to think twice before making a call. My experience of Ram Muivah has been different. Even after becoming an MLA, he has retained the time and openness for people he knows or recognises. He does not behave like a VIP.

One recent incident says even more. A friend approached me desperately seeking assistance to obtain relief materials for people from our community affected by the violence. I had no means of helping him financially, but his appeal resonated with me and I wanted to do something. I called Oja Ram Muivah, explained the situation and asked whether he could help. He readily gave me the money, which I immediately handed over to the person who had sought assistance. Given the significant amount he contributed, I felt it was only proper that those who had taken the initiative acknowledge his generosity publicly. But Ram Muivah politely declined, telling me that he had not done it for publicity or recognition.

I do not recount this story to turn Ram Muivah into a saint, nor do I believe that personal generosity makes a person’s political arguments automatically correct. Character and political judgment are different things. I mention it because I know something about the person behind the public office. It gives me a reason to listen to him with trust, but it does not mean that I have to surrender my own judgment. Quite the opposite. Knowing him personally allows me to understand the difference between the language required by his office and the deeper political meaning of what he is trying to convey.

That distinction is essential to how this interview should be read. Muivah is a sitting MLA in Manipur and a former senior civil servant. He cannot always speak with the language of a movement leader outside the State structure. He must remain within the constitutional vocabulary of an elected representative, even when addressing realities that lie beyond the comfort of that vocabulary. The task, therefore, is to examine what he says in its political and institutional context and consider what his carefully chosen language reveals about the deeper crisis in Manipur.

The interview speaks directly about migration from Myanmar, young armed actors, weapons, poppy cultivation and the wider security environment. The analysis does not dismiss these matters simply as “allegations.” Muivah speaks from decades of administrative experience, his knowledge of the ground and his interaction with communities and security institutions. The details he raises deserve to be taken seriously. At the same time, statements made in an interview should remain distinguishable from independently verified facts.

Taken together, Muivah’s observations reveal a system in which security, development, representation, territorial anxiety and political power reinforce one another. His central diagnosis is the “absence of power sharing.” His observations about the border, armed groups, narcotics, development and political autonomy can be read as different expressions of that underlying problem.

Much of India has understood the crisis in Manipur primarily through the Meitei-Kuki conflict since May 3, 2023. That is an important part of the story, but it does not exhaust the political reality of Manipur. The Nagas have their own historical relationship with the State, their own political aspirations, territorial concerns and memories of conflict. The emergence of the Naga-Kuki confrontation therefore adds another layer to a crisis that was already deeply fractured.

Muivah says the Nagas initially sought to remain neutral after the larger conflict erupted in 2023, but that violence subsequently entered Naga areas and the situation spread from one locality to another. His account raises a question rarely asked in national discussions: how does a community move from neutrality to confrontation? What happens between the point at which they say, “This is not our fight,” and the point at which they begin to believe that remaining outside the conflict is itself dangerous?

Such a transformation rarely results from one event alone. Fear accumulates. Local incidents acquire a larger ethnic meaning. Rumours begin to circulate. Communities interpret new attacks through memories of older grievances. If people become convinced that the State cannot protect them, they begin organising for their own security, and the distinction between self-defence and militarisation can become increasingly difficult to maintain. A conflict that began elsewhere can thus acquire its own momentum in communities that initially wanted no part in it.

Muivah identifies the Litan incident of February 7, 2026 as an important turning point in the subsequent Naga-Kuki confrontation. He describes Litan as a mixed-population area where Nagas and Kukis had lived together for decades. He says a schoolteacher was confronted and badly beaten after pointing a torchlight towards some Kuki men during a night of darkness and confusion.

According to Muivah’s account, he went to Litan with Saikul MLA Kimneo Hangshing and another colleague to intervene. They went to the police station and attempted to facilitate a peaceful settlement. Even while the meeting was taking place, however, houses were set on fire and the confrontation developed into a larger fight. The attempt at settlement failed, and before another meeting could be held, the violence spread to neighbouring villages.

The sequence is revealing. A local dispute occurred, an attempt was made to settle it, that mechanism failed, houses were burned, the dispute became communal and the violence spread. What began as an individual confrontation acquired a collective ethnic meaning. Communities do not necessarily need perfect institutions to live peacefully. They need credible mechanisms capable of containing disputes before they become symbols of collective grievance. Once an individual act is understood as an attack on an entire community, fear becomes political, retaliation becomes communal and the geography of conflict expands.

Litan also sits within a much older land and boundary dispute between Sikibung/Sharkaphung, a Tangkhul Naga village, and Sareikhong, a Kuki settlement. The dispute dates back to the late 1940s. In its order dated 25 March 2021 in W.P. (C) No. 302 of 2021, Wungreikhan Kasar v. State of Manipur, the Manipur High Court recorded that, in Civil Appeal Case No. 5 of 1947-48, the SDO/Executive Magistrate, Ukhrul, had settled the boundary between Sikibung and Sareikhong at Khoirulok and directed the removal of any encroachment by Sareikhong villagers on Sikibung land. The Court further recorded that, after continued occupation of the disputed land, the District Judge, Manipur, in Civil Appeal Nos. 84 of 1960, 44 of 1962 and 58 of 1964, ordered that the Sikibung headman was entitled to possession of the suit land. The High Court specifically noted that those orders had attained finality and that the boundary between the two villages had consequently been recognised (Manipur High Court, 2021).

A subsequent settlement is cited in community records. On 7 September 1973, an agreement was reached between Sikibung/Sharkaphung and Sareikhong in an attempt to maintain cordial relations, peace and tranquillity, with the Sareikhong chief required to pay ₹20,000 to the Sikibung/Sharkaphung headman by 31 July 1974. A later administrative order issued by the Wung Tangkhul Region of the GPRN on 8 October 2024 stated that only part of the stipulated amount had been paid and treated the settlement as having been breached, while reaffirming Litan/Litan Bazar as part of the traditional territory of Sikibung/Sharkaphung (Wung Tangkhul Region of the GPRN, 2024; Imphal Times, 2024). The February 7 confrontation therefore became a spark falling on an already dry field of unresolved land, boundary and inter-village grievances.

The interview then introduces another layer. Muivah speaks about people he says have entered Manipur from Myanmar and about Kuki armed elements who, in his assessment, belong to a much younger generation than those associated with the older armed groups.

One detail is particularly striking. Muivah says that many of the Myanmar-origin fighters he describes are below twenty, “mostly teenagers”, and are carrying heavy weapons. He says that the 1997 ceasefire generation would now be roughly thirty-eight to forty years old, whereas these armed actors are much younger. This distinction is important. He is not describing the continued presence of the same generation associated with the older Naga ceasefire period, but a newer armed phenomenon involving younger actors from across the Myanmar border (Singh, 2026). The reference point for this comparison should not be confused with the separate Suspension of Operations framework involving Kuki armed organisations.

The emergence of a younger generation of armed actors amid instability in Myanmar could alter the security equation inside Manipur and introduce a new dimension into a conflict already burdened by local grievances, ethnic mobilisation and competing political claims. This is an inference from Muivah’s account rather than a separate claim made by him.

The India-Myanmar border cuts through communities with historical, ethnic and familial connections that long predate the modern international boundary. Myanmar itself has experienced prolonged armed conflict. Cross-border movement, displacement, weapons, armed networks and illicit economies can therefore interact with grievances that already exist within Manipur.

The answer cannot be to treat everyone crossing the border as an enemy. Refugees, migrants, traders, long-established cross-border communities, traffickers and armed combatants are different categories and must not be conflated. India cannot treat instability along an international border as having no consequences for India’s internal security, particularly when developments across the border can affect other States and regions beyond Manipur.

Muivah calls for border fencing, particularly in vulnerable districts, while acknowledging the historical movement of Nagas and Kukis across both sides of the frontier. He argues that the border must nevertheless be managed more effectively to check immigration. That is his position, not a claim that all people crossing the border are security threats.

When the interviewer raises the role of Kuki armed organisations under the Suspension of Operations arrangement with the Government of India, Muivah does not make a blanket accusation against the Kuki community. He says directly, “The Kuki militants are the ones creating havoc. These are the problem-makers.” He says they are carrying sophisticated automatic weapons, mostly from Myanmar, and that he has suggested to the Government that such people should be located far away from villages. He separately says that he is not authorised to speak for the NSCN (IM), but that, in his understanding, it wants to preserve the 1997 ceasefire and the Framework Agreement.

This distinction is important. Muivah is discussing Kuki militants in one part of the answer and the NSCN (IM) and Naga peace process in another. The two should not be merged simply because they arise in the same question.

The discussion of poppy cultivation follows the same security-to-economy connection. Muivah says that immigrants from Myanmar are cultivating poppy on a large scale and that local village chiefs provide them shelter and land for cultivation. He says he has been told that Myanmar families pay Kuki village chiefs in connection with poppy cultivation and protection, and he describes the resulting growers as becoming relatively wealthy. He also describes settlements on mountain tops, generators and satellite television, and argues that extensive poppy cultivation has severely denuded the hills (Singh, 2026).

Such illicit economies thrive where profits are high, enforcement is uneven and legitimate economic alternatives are weak. In remote hill regions, poor transportation, limited market access and inadequate infrastructure can make legal agriculture far less competitive. Eradication alone, therefore, cannot address the political economy sustaining the trade. The broader economic implication is that illicit economies can thrive where profits are high, enforcement is uneven and legitimate alternatives are weak.

Border insecurity, narcotics and economic deprivation therefore feed into the wider political problem. Even if immediate security threats were contained, the deeper instability would remain because Manipur’s crisis is not merely about armed actors. It concerns power, representation, autonomy and the terms on which very different peoples are expected to live under the same State.

Sources

Vijaita Singh, The Hindu, “Naga MLA: Hills neglected, power centralised,” video interview with Ram Muivah, 20 August 2026.
Manipur Legislative Assembly, Profile of Ram Muivah, updated 30 July 2026.
Manipur High Court, W.P. (C) No. 302 of 2021, Wungreikhan Kasar v. State of Manipur, order dated 25 March 2021.
Wung Tangkhul Region of the GPRN, Administrative Order dated 8 October 2024; Imphal Times, 11 October 2024.
Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, “Suspension of Operations agreement signed with KNO,” 23 August 2008; Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2008-09.

(The views expressed in the article are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the vision, policy, or editorial position of Ekhon.)