Meitei, Thadou leaders meet in Delhi for ‘community understanding’

Leaders of Meitei and Thadou communities in Manipur meet in New Delhi to promote peaceful coexistence and community understanding.

Leaders representing the diaspora Meitei community and select leaders of Manipur’s Thadou community on Friday (March 7, 2025) met in New Delhi to arrive at a “community understanding” for peaceful coexistence in the State, besides issuing a joint press statement in this regard at a press conference.

While the Thadou community is one of the Scheduled Tribes of Manipur that has commonly been understood to be part of the Kuki-Zo group of communities involved in the ongoing ethnic conflict, the leaders representing the Thadou Inpi Manipur (TIM) insisted that they are “separate” from Kukis.

However, the Thadou leaders who attended the meeting in New Delhi and later issued the joint press statement, asserted at the press conference: “This is not a peace agreement. It is a community understanding.”

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The General Secretary of TIM, Michael Lamjathang Haokip, and the President of TIM, James Thadou, were present at the meeting, which was held with representatives of the Meitei Alliance, a coalition of civil society organisations representing Meitei people outside of Manipur.

At the press conference, Mr. Haokip said that their body is not particularly opposed to the idea of a separate administration, the principal demand of the Kuki-Zo communities, saying, “Any community can demand peacefully what they want in terms of democratic rights. Other communities are doing the same too. Let them pursue it.”

In the joint statement, the Meitei Alliance and TIM said they had agreed on preserving Manipur as a “cohesive and harmonious multi-ethnic society” and to updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) so that “original inhabitants of Manipur, including all its original communities” can be recognised. The statement also called for the deletion of “any Kuki tribes” from the ST list of Manipur.