Map the different types of ethnic conflicts that have emerged in 21st century India.

• Insider–outsider or sons-of-the-soil conflict, over land, jobs and demographic anxiety. Assam is the archetype: the citizenship question, the updated NRC exercise published in 2019, and recurring violence in the western districts, including the Bodo–Muslim clashes of 2012 and the killings of 2014.

• Tribe versus tribe, and tribal versus non-tribal. Manipur since May 2023 is the gravest instance — Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities separated into ethnically exclusive zones, with the demand for Scheduled Tribe status for the Meitei and control of hill land as proximate triggers.

• Autonomy and homeland movements within States. Gorkhaland in the Darjeeling hills, which produced the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration in 2011 and renewed agitation in 2017; Bodoland, settled for now by the Bodo Accord of 2020; and demands for Sixth Schedule status in Ladakh.

• Secessionist conflict in transition to negotiated settlement. The Naga movement, under ceasefire since 1997, produced the Framework Agreement of 2015 but no final settlement, with the flag and separate constitution unresolved.

• Displacement-driven ethnic conflict. The Bru-Reang, displaced from Mizoram, resettled in Tripura under the agreement of 2020.

• Linguistic and sub-regional assertion, which is largely non-violent and works through statehood — Telangana, created in 2014, is the successful case.

The common driver is competition over a fixed pool of land, reservation benefits and political representation, sharpened when identity is the basis of entitlement. Settlements have worked where they combined autonomy with resources; they have failed where they redrew boundaries without resolving who counts as local.