The state, sharing a 400km- (250-mile-) long border with Myanmar, is bitterly divided between the mainly Hindu Meitei majority, who live in the valley, and the predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo community that mostly lives in the hills.The renewed violence is the latest chapter of a three-year-long civil conflict that has torn the state apart, leaving communities living in deep segregation, and raising questions about the apparent inability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to put an end to the fighting.
Over this period, the state has seen a year of federal rule, and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – which rules the state – changed the chief minister. Yet none of those moves has been able to resolve the conflict or rebuild bridges between communities that have lived by each other for centuries.