When wounds fester, hoping is not enough. One needs proactive, engaged healing. Manipur is a good example. A visit to the state reveals a divide so deep and hatred so alive that a rapprochement between two communities that coexisted for centuries now seems nearly impossible.

The geographical separation, too, is now clinical and complete. You will not find a single Kuki in Imphal or the surrounding valley. Students, government officials, shop owners, vendors, and daily-wage labourers have all retreated to the Kuki-inhabited hills. Houses where Kukis once lived now stand ravaged and abandoned in Imphal.

Kukis are so afraid to enter the Meitei zone that instead of using the Imphal airport, which is just over an hour away, they travel 12–13 hours to Aizawl. Similarly, you will not find a single Meitei in the Kuki-inhabited town of Churachandpur and the surrounding hills. Hundreds of Meitei families who moved out of Kuki zones now live in shabby displacement camps.

Kukis even refuse to acknowledge the Meitei origins of the town’s name (after Maharaja Churachand Singh) and call it Lamka, its Kuki version.

Competing victimhood rages in both communities. Pain and distrust have distorted reality so much that an........

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