Ethnic Conflict in Northeast India

A Rising India Is Also, in One Remote Pocket, a Blood-Soaked War Zone​

An outburst of ethnic hatreds has fractured an ancient kingdom and turned neighbors into enemies.

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs.

India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives.

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More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common

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— and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in.

The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power.
“It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.”

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The state has been carved up in an effort to prevent the targeted violence that engulfed it in the conflict’s early days. On the evening of May 4, a 20-year-old nursing student, Agnes Neihkhohat Haokip, was in her dormitory in the state capital, Imphal, when a gang of about 40 men stormed in and dragged her away.

“Rape her! Torture her! Cut her into pieces!” Meitei women shouted as the attackers pummeled Ms. Haokip, knocking out her front teeth and biting her hands as she tried to pick up her teeth.

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H2O said:

Is this where Hindus were attacking Christians? Or, was that another event?

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CMP said:

Any speculation as to where these Christian forces are receiving support? There are of course the usual suspects, but I am wondering if we have any facts to go off of.

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