Satkhokai Chongloi pointed to a charred fragment of paper that survived the fire set by armed men at his Imphal Valley home in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur in May 2023. At first glance, it appeared to be nothing more than a blackened scrap. Upon closer inspection, a few faded letters revealed it to be his master’s degree in ministry. The flames consumed not only the 67-year-old Kuki church leader’s home and possessions but also the theology college he had nurtured since 2011.
Chongloi’s voice softened as he recounted the trauma his family has endured. One by one, he shared photographs of burned books and documents, of shards of shattered windows on the ground, of a mangled car with a broken windshield, and of a building reduced to rubble. The ethnic violence between the majority-Hindu Meitei and the majority-Christian Kuki people thrust Manipur into global headlines and threatened to erase Chongloi’s nearly three decades of work helping the state’s diverse ethnic groups—Meitei, Kuki, and Naga—coexist peacefully.
Image courtesy of Vikram MukkaLike thousands of others displaced by the violence, Chongloi fled the Imphal Valley—home to the majority Meitei—back to the hill district of Kangpokpi with little more than the clothes on his back. Nearly 30 years earlier, the Kuki leader had fled in the opposite direction—from Kangpokpi to Imphal—after his ancestral home burned down in territorial fighting between the Kukis and the Nagas, another Christian-majority ethnic group who live in the hills of Manipur.
Today, Chongloi finds himself caught in new violence as his fellow Kukis are again locked in conflict with the Nagas. Since May, mobs have set fire to villages and kidnapped members of rival communities, taking at least 48 people hostage. Thousands of residents struggle with road blockades that hinder access to essential goods and services. So far, 30 people have died in the Naga-Kuki violence.
Chongloi’s pain surfaced in the long pauses between sentences as he lamented that the church-led reconciliation dialogues he helped build after the Kuki-Naga conflict in the 1990s—which settled down amid government and community efforts to reduce tensions—did not produce a lasting peace. He still hopes the two groups’ shared Christian faith will eventually prompt them to bury their differences.
“As a Christian, I still have hope [that] peace will return,” Chongloi told Christianity Today. “I don’t think … a Christian can be against another Christian. … Because of our love for Christ, we must forgive and forget.”
Manipur borders Myanmar and the Indian states of Nagaland, Assam, and Mizoram. Its geography is sharply divided between the central Imphal Valley, where Meiteis live, and the surrounding hill districts, which are occupied by the Kuki and Naga. Meiteis make up 53 percent of Manipur’s population, while Kukis make up 16 percent and Nagas 24 percent. British missionary William Pettigrew first arrived in Manipur in 1894 and evangelized to the Kuki and Naga peoples. Today, 95 percent of the state’s Christians live in the hill districts.
Yet fighting for territorial control of the hills persisted. Between 1992 and 1997, fierce fighting between the Kukis and the Nagas claimed nearly 1,000 lives and forced up to 100,000 people to flee their homes. In the years that followed, church-led efforts helped persuade historically warring communities to reconcile their differences in the light of the biblical spirit of brotherhood to live side by side.
Kuki and Naga churches fasted and prayed for peace. Kuki and Naga pastors visited each other’s churches under a “pulpit exchange” program to seek forgiveness on behalf of their communities. They preached sermons on peace and brotherhood. Churches organized “peace soccer” matches for youth across the ethnic divide, and theology school graduates traveled from village to village conducting praise and worship events. Informal groups held peace dialogues and love feasts to heal divisions.
Such activities continue to this day but are overshadowed by new turbulence among groups in Manipur.
“No doubt church played a considerable role, but only in minimizing casualties,” said Jacob Luiram, an associate professor of history at Manipur University. “It is for the state to address the root of the conflict—territorial disputes and anxieties over belonging” that stem from competing historic claims to the region.
“Kukis and Nagas have intermarried. They love each other,” Chongloi said. “The recurring tensions are because of … outside forces. There is a lack of political will on the part of the government to settle the dispute.”
Meanwhile, another historic ethnic divide—one between the Kukis and the Meiteis—resurfaced in 2023. In April that year, the Manipur high court recommended the state consider tribal status for Meiteis, who by virtue of being majority Hindu are not considered a tribe in India. The change in status would empower the Meiteis to buy land in the hill districts, which Kukis fear would threaten their own land rights in the hills, reviving historical tensions between the two groups that date back to the 1890s.
Though the court’s recommendation on the Meitei tribal status initially triggered the most recent conflict with the Kukis, there are deeper historical tensions between the groups over land and resources. The Meiteis’ home of the Imphal Valley makes up 10 percent of Manipur’s territory, but 60 percent of the state’s population lives there. Alongside the ethnic divide, the religious differences of the two sides has also played a part.
The three-year conflict killed nearly 260 people, displaced 60,000 people, and burned down 700 churches. New Delhi placed Manipur under a state of emergency, which suspended local rule and allowed direct federal governance of the state. Nagas largely stayed away from this fighting.
By the beginning of this year, the state was limping back to normalcy. The federal government lifted the emergency in February to allow a new government to take charge in Manipur. Just when things appeared to stabilize, fresh violence broke out between Kukis and Nagas, plunging the state into another round of village burning, killings, kidnappings, and a hostage crisis.
Reports began to circulate in February of sporadic disputes between Kukis and Nagas. In one of the first such incidents, a Naga teacher in the Ukhrul hill district confronted a group of Kuki youth drinking by a roadside. An argument ensued. More reports followed of minor scuffles, protests, and arguments, leading to allegations, counterallegations, and physical violence from both sides.
The situation escalated on May 13, when unidentified armed men killed three Kuki church leaders in an ambush in the Kangpokpi district. The pastors from the Thadou Baptist Association were returning from a peace conference in Churachandpur and had led a delegation of Kuki Christian leaders to the neighboring Nagaland state to broker peace with the Nagas.
Following those killings, armed groups from both communities took captive 48 people—28 Kukis and 20 Nagas—from the Kangpokpi and Senapati districts. For nearly a month, the two sides engaged in intense negotiations amid protests, violence, and blockades. The captors eventually released 42 hostages, with the whereabouts of six Nagas unknown—until police recovered their mutilated bodies on June 10, sparking more protests and violence.
Kuki leaders acknowledged members of their community had been involved in the killings. The Kuki-Zo Council, which oversees the Kuki tribes in Manipur, described the act as a “great mistake” committed in an “outburst of emotion.”
Overlapping claims to the Manipur hills are at the heart of the Kuki-Naga conflict. The United Naga Council, an oversight group for Naga tribes, contends that the Kukis migrated from present-day Myanmar and that India’s British colonial rulers used the tribes’ “total lack of attachment to any land and landscape” to crush Naga groups in the region.
Kukis counter that they are native to the area and point to historical records and wars as proof of their long-standing presence. Insurgent movements of both groups demand separate homelands to preserve their respective cultures and histories, but overlap between the two proposed territories would set up further disputes between both sides.
Christian leaders and civil society members said digging up the past is bound to create multiple versions of history with an endless number of contesting claims, making peace elusive. “[Manipur] is for everyone: Kukis, Nagas, Meiteis,” said Ng Molarhring Monsang, director of the Manipur Baptist Convention’s Peace and Development department and an ethnic Naga. “We are all [made] in the image of God and cannot allow some vested interests to deny us harmonious coexistence.”
Despite the disputes between them, Kukis and Nagas remain deeply anchored in their shared Christian faith, with the church as a central feature in their personal and social lives. Christian leaders who spoke with CT said regular church attendance is high, businesses close on Sundays for worship, and roads remain empty.
For Haominlun Sitlhou, that shared faith offers a glimmer of hope for reconciliation, regardless of how difficult and distant it may seem. His father, Vumthang Sitlhou, was among the three church leaders killed in the May 13 ambush. In the days following his father’s killing, Haominlun Sitlhou publicly forgave the killers. “My heart is filled with anger and hatred, yet my father dedicated his life to peace,” he said at his father’s burial. “As a proponent of peace, I shall follow in my father’s footsteps.”
