Ethno-federalism and the Crisis of State Authority: Ethnic Territoriality in Manipur

Abstract

This article examines the Manipur crisis from 2023 to the present as a structurally rooted crisis of state authority rather than a spontaneous ethnic conflict or episodic law-and-order failure. It argues that the immediate violence was triggered by the judicial intervention of the Manipur High Court directing consideration of the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the Meitei community, which destabilized already fragile ethnic, legal and territorial equilibria. Situating this trigger within Manipur’s long-standing hill-valley-divided, differentiated land regimes and asymmetric federal governance, this article demonstrates how ethno-territorial institutional arrangements have fractured sovereign authority. Drawing primarily on Manipur-specific legal, demographic and institutional evidence, rather than on excessive global abstraction, this article shows how competing Meitei, Naga and Kuki territorial projects have produced de facto partition, parallel governance and erosion of the state’s monopoly of violence. Framing Manipur within broader debates on ethnic federalism, frontier governance and state fragility, this article highlights the importance of rethinking institutional designs that merge ethnicity with territory in regions marked by deep pluralism and historical contestation.