More than 220 people have been killed, scores are missing and approximately 60,000 have been displaced since communal and ethnic violence ripped through India's northeastern state of Manipur between the majority Meitei and minority Kuki in 2023, according to government officials and civil society groups.

A year after the first violent clashes, tensions between the two communities appear undiminished. Military camps now dot the landscape in a stark reminder of instability and insecurity gripping the region.

The religious divide is also apparent geographically — the mostly Hindu Meitei, who make up 53% of Manipur's population, tend to live in the valleys, while the predominantly Christian Kuki, with a 16% population share, live largely in the surrounding hills.

In Manipur, valleys are richer and more prosperous.

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"Things are far from normal in Manipur. One thing which was always starkly evident, and has not changed, is the absence of the authority of the state — both the provincial state of Manipur and the Indian state — in this conflict theater, leaving it up to people to fend for themselves," said Pradip Phanjoubam, editor of the Imphal Review of Arts and Politics web journal.

Phanjoubam has covered the deadly violence closely since the first clashes in May 2023. He is now concerned about the emergence of armed civil militias who pose as defenders of their respective........

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