A Cabinet Cannot Govern a Room Full of Guns: Why Manipur Must Disarm Before It Can Talk

Representation Without Disarmament Is a Ceasefire on Paper

Manipur faces a question every divided society eventually confronts. Do you bring people to the same table first and trust that dialogue will lead them to lay down their arms? Or do you take the guns away first and trust that the table will then mean something?

The case for talking first There is a serious argument that political process must lead.

People in Manipur took up and held weapons because they did not trust the state to protect them. That fear was real: more than 6,000 weapons were looted from police armouries after May 2023. Disarmament demanded by a government a community distrusts looks to that community like being left defenceless.

The current government was built to answer that fear. Chief Minister Y. Khemchand Singh, a Meitei, governs with a Kuki-Zo deputy, Nemcha Kipgen and a Naga deputy, Losii Dikho. Every community has a voice at the top. The figures suggest it is working.

Security forces recovered 1,422 arms between February and August 2026, in the first six months of the elected government. India's own history offers a precedent: the ceasefire with the NSCN-IM in 1997 came long before any disarmament and it held.

The case for disarming first The other side is harder to ignore after 9 October.

Nine people were killed in one night across Kamjong, Kangpokpi and Ukhrul - eight months into representative government. This was not a Meitei-Kuki clash. It was Kuki-Naga violence, reopening a fault line that, between 1992 and 1997, cost an estimated 900 to 1,000 lives and displaced about 100,000 people.

That shows the deeper problem. Each armed community's weapons are a threat to every other community. A Kuki group arming against Meiteis also threatens Nagas and Naga groups respond. A cabinet seat does nothing to stop that.

In August, the Chief Minister gave a 15-day ultimatum for surrendering illegal arms. Earlier, in 2025, Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla made a similar appeal. Both were largely ignored. Blockades across the hills now choke essential supplies to civilians of every community.

Where this leaves us TAN's position is that Manipur must disarm first

• but disarmament must be impartial across all three communities and backed by the political arrangement, not imposed against it. The case for talking first is real and the recovery figures are genuine progress. But they also show the limit. Recovering 1,422 weapons in six months means thousands remain in private hands. The 1997 Naga ceasefire worked between the state and one armed movement. Manipur's conflict is now three-sided, with armed groups who see each other, not just the state, as the threat. No single ceasefire covers that. Dialogue requires that no side can win by force while talks proceed. While armed groups can still ambush on a highway, they hold a veto over every agreement. The cabinet's value is not as a substitute for disarmament. It is as the authority that makes disarmament fair.