As the events of the past two months have shown, Manipur is now a divided house. The seeds for this division were visible even before the merger of the state with the Indian Union in 1949. Today, in this insurgency-torn state, the liberation that a section of the population seeks is not the liberation another wants. The politics behind the 68-day economic blockade over the issue of revival of the Autonomous District Councils in the hill districts, which further hardened after the state government refused to allow the Naga nationalist leader, Thuingaleng Muivah, to visit his "home" village located in Manipur revealed the complex and antagonistic nature of ethnic aspirations that seem to make the state destined for conflict.