Personal account: A journalist from Manipur recounts the recent years of conflict in her home state

The Editors Guild of India (EGI) had received several reports indicating that the media in Manipur was playing a divisive role in the ongoing ethnic conflict between the majority Meitei community and the Kuki-Chin minority. The reports alleged that media in the Imphal Valley were engaged in the “outright misrepresentation of facts”. On July 12, 2023, over two months into the conflict, the EGI also received a formal complaint from the Indian Army’s 3rd Corps headquarters. The complaint highlighted specific instances where the media was accused of playing “a major role in stirring emotions and preventing sustainable peace from taking root.”

Given the mounting concerns about the media’s role in exacerbating the crisis, the EGI decided to send a fact-finding team to Manipur. The team, consisting of three veteran journalists, Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor, was dispatched to Manipur from August 7 to 10 to assess the situation first hand. When I learned of this, I was confident that their involvement would not just bring clarity but would be a fair representation of what was happening on the ground. Sure enough, the team’s report was a revelation. But the report was met with a vehement rebuttal mostly from the Meitei community. In September 2023, the Government of Manipur filed an FIR against the president and three members of the Editors Guild of India, accusing them of attempting to escalate the ongoing ethnic strife.

On September 6, 33 “professionals” mostly from the Meitei community sent a letter accusing that the EGI report “talks in detail about internet ban and fake news, the team ends up providing selective information…” In the end, the Supreme Court intervened in September 2023 itself, granting protection to the Editors Guild of India and the three journalists from arrest. The statement, “It’s a report after all, not an offence committed on the ground,” was self-explanatory andhelped quiet much of the noise surrounding the issue.

As the crisis in Manipur dragged on, I noticed something deeply unsettling: no one seemed eager to report on it anymore. When I reached out to friends in the media – many of whom had once covered conflict zones with conviction – their responses were frustratingly familiar.

“We’re being accused of bias.”

“People are tired of hearing about it.”

“It’s too complicated.”

It was disheartening. Not because I didn’t understand the pressures they were under, but because I couldn’t accept that fatigue – or fear – was now dictating coverage of one of the most prolonged and painful conflicts in recent memory.

Since then, the public discourse around Manipur has swayed unpredictably, swinging between fleeting bursts of sensationalism and long stretches of silence. Neither mode ever managed to capture the true scale, complexity, or human cost of what was unfolding on the ground.

Even when conversations did happen, they often lacked depth. Television debates became battlegrounds for soundbites, stripped of empathy or context. There was no space for real dialogue, no room for uncomfortable truths. There were, however, a few serious and earnest individuals who reported the truth with integrity. It was through their efforts that the matter eventually reached the public domain. But even that wasn’t enough.

Offline, in community halls and closed-door meetings, there were efforts – gatherings where members of both communities sat together. I attended some of them, hoping for candour, for healing. But instead, I found rooms heavy with caution and rehearsed restraint. Everyone spoke in guarded terms. No one truly spoke from the heart. No one dared to name the pain.

It felt as though the violence hadn’t just fractured Manipur’s landscape – it had fractured the voice of its people. As if the silence was not just an aftermath of fear, but a symptom of something deeper: exhaustion, distrust, and grief that had no outlet.

Long before the Editors Guild of India released its report, there came a point when I felt utterly helpless. The violence in Manipur had spiralled far beyond control, and the government’s response felt disturbingly inadequate.

In the relief camps, people were not just displaced they were languishing, trapped in a state of prolonged suffering with no end in sight. Meanwhile, those who had resettled in Lamka faced a different kind of isolation: the sheer difficulty of connecting with the outside world. Communication was patchy, access to basic services inconsistent, and for the sick, the ordeal was especially cruel.

Patients in need of urgent medical care were forced to undertake a treacherous 15-hour road journey to Aizawl, just to catch a flight and seek treatment elsewhere. These weren’t isolated cases, they were part of a larger, ongoing humanitarian crisis that barely made it to the national radar.

And through it all, I kept asking myself: Who really understands this pain? Who is truly listening?

Excerpted with permission from Stories the Fire Could Not Burn: A Personal Account of the Manipur Crisis, 2023-25, Hoihnu Hauzel, Speaking Tiger Books.