Editorial: Without Justice there is No Peace: The Prime Minister’s Visit to Manipur Failed to Apply a Healing Balm
Oct 01, 2025By PUCL EdItorial Team
The visit of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi to Manipur on 13th September, 2025, addressing addressing public meetings in Kangla Fort, Imphal and in Peace Grounds, Churachandpur, failed to apply a healing balm to the bitter ongoing conflict in Manipur. This was a visit which was short in time (three hours), short in ideas and short in empathy for the suffering of the people of Manipur. It was also far too delayed, coming over 28 months after the conflict erupted on 3rd May, 2023. This only reinforced the perception that the north east is marginal to the Government of India and that the suffering of the people of Manipur was of little moment.
The violence has resulted in over 260 deaths, 60,000 displaced, sexual assaults and the destruction of homes, shops and places of worship. As a grim reminder that the conflict is far from healing, Manipur today is completely segregated between the Kukis and the Meiteis. Kukis cannot enter the Imphal valley and Meiteis cannot enter the hill regions.
Even till today, thousands live in relief camps, with the relief and rehabilitation measures for the violence-struck communities in Manipur, being grossly inadequate and unevenly distributed. Many relief camps suffer from poor sanitation and hygiene, inadequate healthcare, absence of mental health support and lack of livelihood and education restoration. The situation in the relief camps speak to a hopelessness which needs immediate redressal, which alas, the Prime Minister did not even acknowledge.
The constitutional responsibility for the scale of atrocities experienced by the people of Manipur (both Meitei and Kuki) vests with the State Government and the Union Government. As per the Report of the Independent People’s Tribunal on the Ongoing Ethnic Violence in Manipur, which was released on 20th August, 2025, the violence was not spontaneous, but planned, ethnically targeted and facilitated by state failures. The Report documents through the testimonies of victims and survivors, a deep-rooted belief, that the state either allowed the violence to happen or actively participated in it. Many deponents have attributed the flare-up of violence to the political and administrative decisions of former Chief Minister Biren Singh. The state government downplayed the violence, made no significant arrests of radical, armed groups like that of the Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun.
If the Central Government had taken seriously its constitutional responsibility to ensure that governance in the state of Manipur was carried out ‘in accordance with the provision of the Constitution’, then the state government would have been asked to resign for failure to ensure the most basic of constitutional responsibilities of any government, namely the protection of the right to life of the people of Manipur. The Union of India only awoke to its constitutional responsibility in February of 2025 (a year and nine months after the violence broke out) when Biren Singh was finally asked to resign and the state was put under President’s Rule.
The massive constitutional failure is visible in the fact of complete ethnic segregation which makes a mockery of the constitutional guarantee of non-discrimination as well as the right to freedom of movement. The Report of the Independent Tribunal makes clear that administration is segregated on ethnic lines with Kuki employees of Manipur being posted only in the hill regions and Meitei employees only in the valley.
The abject institutional failure is highlighted by the brutality of violence which continued without check. People were butchered, tortured, dismembered, disrobed and sexually assaulted in public, and then through social media displayed before the whole world. The Report documents widespread sexual violence during the conflict which occurred both in the Valley areas as also in the Hills. Many incidents of sexual violence were unreported due to fear, trauma and lack of institutional support. Even when women sought protection from the police and security forces, they were not only refused help, but there were instances when the police handed them to violent mobs. Due to the complete loss of trust in the state machinery, women survivors instead of reaching out to police stations, sought protection from their own communities. This displays the extent of state failure. There has been no accountability for this shocking failure of the state to ensure that women’s right to be free from sexual violence is guaranteed.
There is a complete breakdown of legal, judicial and constitutional mechanisms in Manipur. It is shocking that the delivery of justice has completely failed with Kuki lawyers unable to appear in the High Court in Imphal. The key symptoms of the collapse include the failure of the courts to issue urgent directives to protect life and property, delayed or absent investigation into serious crimes, FIRs being selectively filed, and active participation of law enforcement officers in the violence. The Report of the Independent Tribunal documents the extent of police complicity and failure of security forces to maintain neutrality and to enforce the rule of law.
This history of hurt and loss, continuing violation and the failure of the mechanisms of justice was not referenced by the Prime Minister in his tightly choreographed three hour visit to Manipur. The Prime Minister instead chose to focus on extolling Manipur as India’s crown jewel which will bring prosperity to the entire North East. He announced developmental projects worth 7300 plus crores and appealed to all to restore peace in Manipur. However this focus on the great and grand could not suppress the deep emotion of sorrow and pain, which broke through the surface, when a young girl broke down in front of the Prime Minister.
The question to be asked is what is expected when a high constitutional functionary such as the Prime Minister of India, visits a region which has suffered mass violence because of the unconscionable failure of his own administration, both at the level of the Union and the State?
A lesson could be taken from the United Nations which has dealt with situations of mass violence and has established a mechanism called the `Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice, Reparation, Memory and Guarantees of non-recurrence’ to deal with such situations. If one takes seriously the necessity of ‘truth’, ‘justice’, ‘reparation’, ‘memory’ and a ‘guarantee of non-recurrence’, then the imperative of political leadership is to begin by acknowledging the truth of what has happened.
In the Prime Minister’s responses, there was no acknowledgment of the suffering of the people of Manipur and the responsibility borne by his administration for the same. There was no acknowledgment that the people of Manipur have suffered an injustice and there was no reference to the imperative of justice for the wrongs suffered by the people of Manipur.
Neither was there any reference to the need for reparations for the wrongs suffered by the people of Manipur. Instead of the justice that ‘reparations’ implies there was the announcement of the rebuilding of houses and developmental packages. There was no acknowledgement of the perpetration of sexual violence and no reference to bringing the perpetrators to trial. The question of ensuring that sexual violence in the context of mass crimes does not happen again either in Manipur or anywhere else in India, thus never arose. The ethnic and geographic segregation in Manipur and the need to address it was never raised.
The people of Manipur are owed an apology. An apology is based on an acknowledgment of wrong doing and a promise to right the situation. Instead the Prime Minister seemed to assume that hurt as serious as murder, rape and destruction of homes can be remedied by a developmental package and an anodyne call for peace without even whispering the word called ‘justice’.
The Prime Minister could take a lesson from his predecessor Dr. Manmohan Singh who, as the then Prime Minister, apologised in Parliament on 11th August, 2005 for the horrific pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984. Although then PM Manmohan Singh’s apology was a case of too little too late, (coming 21 years after the horrific anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984), what he said is nevertheless significant: ‘What took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution.’ Similarly what took place in Manipur is a negation of the promise of rule of law and the responsibility of the state to protect the lives of all persons regardless of ethnicity or religion. If Manipur burned for almost two years it is because Biren Singh singularly failed to fulfil his constitutional responsibility to protect the lives of the people of Manipur regardless of ethnicity. The Union of India was complicit in the failures of the Manipur government.
What is required is to follow up an apology with concrete measures towards justice, reparations and non-recurrence. The report of the Independent People’s Tribunal on the Ongoing Ethnic Violence in Manipur, details a way forward based on the principles of truth, justice, accountability, dialogue and reconciliation. The Report captured the despair and pain felt by both Meitei and Kuki communities, and their demand for justice and accountability. The report draws upon the testimonies of 195 survivors, experts and other stakeholders which contain the experiences of strife and violence, their analysis of the causes of the conflict and the vital imperative of justice as a precursor to peace.
Critical steps have to be taken to pin accountability for what happened in Manipur. There must be investigation by a Supreme Court appointed SIT into the role of the armed forces, police and other security forces in the conflict and monitor the thousands of cases of arson, murder and assault, that continue to be in a limbo at the FIR stage. There must also be an investigation into the inflammatory and inciteful hate speeches given by political leaders and state functionaries, that occurred prior to and during the conflict.
The situation of people, living in limbo in the camps needs to be urgently addressed. With respect to this, the Tribunal recommended that a committee be formed to oversee all matters pertaining to relief, rehabilitation and restoration, including the creation of an action-plan to mobilise resources for the resettlement of the thousands of inmates in relief camps. At this crucial time, Manipur needs a region-sensitive health budgeting framework to address the hill–valley infrastructure and staffing gap. The state needs financial packages from the Central government for rebuilding and strengthening governance, recognising that the conflict has severely impacted Manipur’s primarily agrarian economy and reduced its fiscal capacity.
The question of peace requires a political imagination which brings people together. Even in a deeply polarized situation, there were instances documented by the Independent People’s Tribunal of how members from both the Meitei and Kuki community have ‘stood against raging mobs from their own community to either talk them out of their bloodlust or minimize the damage done to property and life’. The Report goes on to lament that ‘Such small yet important acts of solidarity keep on recurring throughout the last two years, yet we rarely take notice or give them the recognition they deserve’. The Prime Minister should have highlighted the role of those who embodied the constitutional value of fraternity even amidst the violence, thereby opening out a critical space for peace dialogues between the communities.
The visit of the Prime Minister failed to acknowledge any of these needs of the strife-torn state, and instead of addressing the justice deficit, worked on the morally flawed assumption that ‘development’ was the panacea to Manipur’s ills. The Prime Minister did not make even a symbolic gesture towards justice and peace by bringing Kuki and Meitei leaders together or visit any of the relief camps or promise that the segregation based on ethnic lines will end. The PM did not even meet MLAs of his own party representing different ethnicities of Manipur! Instead, he choose to talk about road infrastructure and tech parks, thereby invisibilising the country’s most recent and gravest humanitarian crisis and the suffering and pain of the people of Manipur.
Manipur’s healing requires more than a development package. What is required is a restorative justice framework for addressing grievances and promoting healing, that is hinged on acknowledging harm, reparations, and reintegration over mere punishment. Lasting peace in Manipur requires structural changes, community dialogue, legal accountability and sustained moral leadership.