If you want to know why Kuki and Kacha-Naga go to war again and again in Manipur, don’t look at the jungles of Manipur. Look at Delhi. The Government of India has created two different laws in one state. For Kukis, the law is arrest of volunteers under UAPA and NSA, and locking Kuki armed groups inside SoO camps. For Kacha-Nagas, the law is ceasefire, freedom, peace talks, and free movement with arms. This selective justice by the Modi-BJP government is the only reason why Kukis and Kacha-Nagas can never have peace. You cannot have peace when justice itself is biased.
Today, the reality is shameful. A Kuki village volunteer who guards his village with a single-barrel gun because the state could not protect his mother and sister since 1990 is called a militant. UKNA leader Thangmang Haokip is hunted by the NIA, village volunteers are raided at midnight, even Kuki student leaders are arrested. But just a few hills away, Kacha-Naga militants, also known as the ISIS of Northeast India — NSCN-IM and ZUF-Kamson — roam with automatic rifles, set up checkpoints, collect taxes, and attack Kuki villages. India calls them ceasefire groups. India calls them peace partners. Tell me, what peace is this? When my brother defends his village at Twilang Lhang and kills two or three attackers in retaliation, Delhi files an FIR against him. When NSCN-IM kills more than 1,100 Kuki civilians since 1990, including pastors, pregnant women, and children, beheading more than 100 of them, Delhi calls it a ceasefire violation and forgives them. This is not law; this is political management to keep the Naga vote bank happy for the Naga peace accord.
This bias is 30 years old. Since 1990, more than 1,100 Kuki civilians have been massacred by NSCN-IM, NSCN-K, and ZUF-Kamson in the Kuki genocide. Joupi, Gelnel, Tronglaobi — entire villages were burnt, women were raped and beheaded. The Kuki Inpi has documented every name and date. How many arrests has India made for those 1,100 murders? Not one. Zero. Not a single NSCN-IM leader has been chargesheeted. The killers are given red-carpet treatment at Nagaland House in Delhi. But KNO and UPF, who signed the SoO in 2008 and kept their guns locked inside camps for 17 years trusting India, are locked like prisoners, their camps sealed, and humiliated on national TV. If you can talk to NSCN-IM for 27 years without disarming them, why do you lock KNO/UPF inside camps and call them illegal? Why is one ceasefire holy and another SoO a crime?
And this double standard has now become a three-front war against the Kuki people. Since May 3, 2023, when Meitei mobs and Manipur state forces burnt over 200 Kuki villages and killed more than 250 Kuki civilians under the watch of N. Biren Singh’s government, the Kuki have been fighting on three fronts. On the first front are the Meitei radical militias — Arambai Tenggol, state forces, Meitei militants, and Meitei Leepun — who looted 6,000 guns from police armouries, raped Kuki women, and paraded them naked. On the second front are the Kacha-Naga militias — NSCN-IM and ZUF-Kamson — collecting taxes, attacking Kuki villages in Kangpokpi, Ukhrul, Kamjong, Senapati, Noney, and Tamenglong districts, and trying to grab Kuki land in the name of Nagalim. On the third and most dangerous front is India itself.
Today, India is the third front against the Kuki. From 2023 to 2026, Delhi has filed more cases against Kuki village volunteers than against Meitei militants who looted police armouries. The NIA hunts Kuki leaders, the Assam Rifles raids Kuki villages, the Governor seals SoO camps and stops political dialogue, while Meitei militants who burnt Kuki houses roam free in Imphal with looted AK-47s and Kacha-Naga cadres extort money on NH-37 with ceasefire identity cards. This is why Kuki youth ask — is India our government too? When Meitei burns our church, India says, maintain peace. When Naga burns our village, India says, it is a ceasefire violation. When Kuki defends his own village, India says, he is a terrorist. You cannot survive this triple injustice.
If India is willing, the Kuki-Kacha-Naga conflict and even the Kuki-Meitei conflict in Manipur can end within a week. The solution is simple and Delhi knows it. First, deliver justice for 1,100 Kukis killed since 1990 and 200+ Kukis killed since 2023. Arrest at least one NSCN-IM killer and one Meitei radical who burnt Kuki villages and prove that Kuki lives matter too. Second, apply one law equally. If Kacha-Naga militants can carry arms under ceasefire ground rules, and Meitei militants can keep looted police guns, then Kuki volunteers must also have the right to defend their villages. Either disarm all three — Arambai Tenggol, Kacha-Naga militants, and Kuki Village Volunteers — or allow all to defend. Third, treat KNO/UPF with the same respect you give to NSCN-IM. Open their camps and start real political talks instead of using them as scapegoats for Meitei and Kacha-Naga appeasement. The gunfire, the burning of villages and churches, the killing of civilians — it was not started by Kuki or Kacha-Naga or Meitei; it came from Delhi’s double standard. Until India stops arresting Kuki volunteers while freeing Naga volunteers, Meitei radicals, and NSCN-IM, every week and month will bring more conflict, and the Kuki will be forced to fight a three-front war just to survive.
