Who Are the Real Manipuris?

Who are the real Manipuris? It is the Meitei, and also the Nagas, because the Nagas have close blood relations with the Meiteis and they have been around as long as the Meiteis have been around. We know Manipur has an ancient history. We have a record of kings that goes back at least 2,000 years—probably 3,500 years.

We know how most people see Manipur—Manipuri dance, one of our major classical dance forms, right? So we have the Manipuri language. We have the Manipuri list of kings. And we have the Manipuri classical dance.

To understand the Manipur issue and what is happening there, the first question to ask is this: out of these three ethnic groups—Meiteis, Kukis, Nagas—which ethnic group has provided all the kings of Manipur in the past two thousand-plus years? The answer is the Meiteis.

Which ethnic group is the speaker of what we call the Manipuri language? It is the Meitei. Which ethnic group has given us Manipuri classical dance and the various art forms of Manipur? Once again, it is the Meiteis. Everyone knows the MANIPURI LANGUAGE. The Manipuri language is the official state language of Manipur. It’s a language that has existed for at least 2000 years in various forms. And the question is, which ethnic group is the originator of the Manipuri language? And the answer is, it’s the Meiteis who are the originators of the Manipuri language.

The Vaishnava culture in Manipur, the king responsible for that was King Bhagyachandra, Rajarshi Bhagyachandra. Now, the Manipuri kings, they have a long and very complex history, lots of kings and all. The kingdom of Manipur has had various sizes and shapes over the past two or so millennia, sometimes it’s been larger, sometimes it’s been smaller, expansion, contraction.

There were times when Manipur, the kingdom of Manipur included parts of Nagaland, present day Nagaland, it included parts of present day Burma, at least up to Mandalay and further beyond, maybe even up to Rangoon. There were times when the kingdom of Manipur included parts of present day Yunnan, which is currently under Chinese occupation.

So, in the 17th century, the Manipuri king Khagemba conquered parts of Yunnan and brought back Chinese prisoners of war. So, that tells you how large Manipur was. If you go to Mandalay in Burma, you will see that there is an ancient fort there, that was built at least about a couple of hundred years ago and it is essentially a replica of the Kangla fort in Imphal. That tells you how much Manipur influenced Burma and other surrounding regions.

The term Nagas is an umbrella term created by the British to designate various hill tribes who were eventually Christianized by the British and then by the Indian government or with the help of the Indian government in the twentieth century, and the Kukis are another ethnic umbrella term to designate various ethnic groups and tribes, very often tribes that do not even understand each other’s language but are put under a single umbrella as Kukis or Nagas.

Earlier, in a media interview in September 2023, Abhijit Chavda had already highlighted the plight of the real people of Manipur when he said: Imagine you live in a country where the indigenous people are forced by law to live in only 6% of their ancestral territory. More than 90% of their territory is denied to them, and a foreign tribal group is given access and residence in 90% of your ancestral territory.

So as of today, currently, there are three major ethnic groups in Manipur: the Meiteis, the Nagas, and the Kukis. Now who are the Kukis?

If you look at the British records of 1900, around that time, census records of Manipur, how many Kukis were in Manipur? Less than one percent. Before 1850, there were zero Kukis in Manipur, so the British brought the Kukis in from neighbouring Burma (Myanmar).

Why did they bring the Kukis in? To punish the Meitei kings for fighting the British, for fighting the British occupation of the region. In 1891, there was an Anglo-Manipuri war that the Meiteis lost, the Manipuris lost, and as a punishment for fighting that war, the British did two things: firstly, they confined the Meitei people to about five percent, roughly, of the territory of the kingdom of Manipur, only five percent, everybody confined in that region, the Imphal Valley region; secondly, they pushed in lakhs of Kukis, not lakhs initially, thousands, but eventually the trickle became a flow, so they settled these Kukis, these foreigners, in Manipur.

And after 1949, when Manipur becomes part of India, the Nehru government said, oh my god, the British did the right thing, we have to follow what the British did because British are superior to us, so it continued, Kukis continued, and in the past decade or so, or fifteen years, lakhs of Kukis have come into the Manipur region because you can see the visible change in the satellite imagery, all these new villages cropping up like mushrooms out of nowhere.

So this is an invasion of India, it is an invasion of Manipur from Burma. Who are the Kukis? Do the Kukis speak the Burmese language? No. Do the Kukis worship Burmese gods? No. Do the Kukis follow Burmese culture? No.

The Kukis are not even Burmese, they came from somewhere further east of Burma, Yunnan or somewhere in China, and they occupied the region that is currently the bordering regions of Manipur, they are not even Burmese.

Some of the Kukis claim to be Jews and they have settled in Israel, Bnei Menashe, some and the rest claim to be Christians. This is the issue, this is a foreign invasion and occupation of at least half of the state of Manipur, that is the Manipur problem. 

A year before Sheikh Hasina was toppled in a Western-orchestrated coup, she issued a chilling warning: the United States wants to stitch together an artificial Christian nation from chunks of India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar—a promised “Kuki Land for Christ,” codenamed Project K.

The situation in Manipur is closely tied to broader strategic concerns. Myanmar holds significant importance for two key reasons. First, it enables power projection across the region. Second, it possesses vast reserves of rare earth minerals. Gaining control over these areas means controlling access to those resources—effectively cutting off supply to China. So, the issue isn’t just local; it’s driven by both economic and geopolitical factors. That, in essence, is the crux of the Manipur issue.

(An Exclusive In-Depth Analysis Based on Geopolitics Expert Abhijit Chavda’s Interview with ANI on October 30, 2025)