The Demand for a Kuki Homeland

Context: 

Days after clashes between Manipur’s Kuki-Zomi tribes and the majority Meitei community, the state’s 10 Kuki-Zomi MLAs demanded “a separate administration under the Constitution”.

About Kuki Homeland:

• The demand for a separate “Kukiland” dates back to the late 1980s, when the first and largest of the Kuki-Zomi insurgent groups, the Kuki National Organisation (KNO), came into being.
• The Kukiland demand is rooted in the idea of the Zale’n-gam, or ‘land of freedom’.
• In 2012, an organisation called the Kuki State Demand Committee (KSDC) announced a movement for Kukiland.
• The KSDC claimed 12,958 sq km, more than 60% of Manipur’s 22,000 sq km area, for “Kukis and Kukiland’’. 
• The territory of “Kukiland” included:

• • the Sadar Hills (which surround the Imphal valley on three sides)
  • the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district, Chandel, which has a mix of Kuki and Naga populations, and 
  • parts of Naga-dominated Tamenglong and Ukhrul.

• The KSDC and sections of the Kuki-Zomi community have maintained that the tribal areas are yet to be a part of the Indian Union. 
• They have contended that after the defeat of the king of Manipur in the 1891 Anglo-Manipur war, the kingdom became a British protectorate, but the lands of the Kuki-Zomi were not part of the agreement.
• The KSDC also said that unlike the Naga demand for a separate country, it was only seeking a separate state within the Indian Union.

News Source: Indian Express