Manipur, or for that matter any state in northeast India, hardly gets any national media attention until an act of violence plays out or a major sporting achievement brings in a deluge of love and ‘India is proud of you’ proclamations, while everything else gets swept under the carpet. And because media attention mostly comes from people outside the region with no real understanding or awareness of the area, a lot of media reportage gets blindsided or is totally off-the-track. A similar thing has happened after the deadly ambush of a military convoy of the 46 Assam Rifles in a remote area in Churachandpur, a district that shares a very porous border with Myanmar.
That the attack was carried out by a major armed group, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), along with the lesser-known Manipur Naga People’s Front (MNPF), has triggered a barrage of China-focused angles on the incident. But the fact is that the PLA of Manipur is an entirely different entity from the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China.
The PLA of Manipur was given tactical support and arms training by China’s PLA in the late 1970s, and the former’s flag colour is worked around the latter’s. But the fact is that the presence of Manipur’s armed groups largely depends on the mood and temperament in Myanmar’s border region.