Reconciliation is a word used often in discussions about Manipur’s path forward, and rightly so. But reconciliation that skips over specific acknowledgment of loss, whose homes were burned, whose families were displaced, whose losses remain uncompensated, risks becoming a vague gesture rather than a genuine process.

For Meitei families who fled places like Kanto Sabal and have not been able to return, generalized calls for “moving forward” can feel like an erasure of what actually happened to them. Acknowledgment does not have to mean assigning blame in every individual case; it does mean naming losses honestly, in official statements and in relief planning alike.

Trust between communities in Manipur will not be rebuilt through euphemism. It will be built, slowly, through specific, honest accounting of what was lost and a credible plan to address it.