A Rising India Is Also, in One Remote Pocket, a Blood-Soaked War Zone

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Villages, even refugee camps, raked with gunfire. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs.

India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives.

Militarized buffer zones now crisscross the state, patrolled by local women — who are seen as less hotheaded than men — and the thousands of troops who have been sent to quell the fighting, drawing down forces in other parts of India, including the border with China.

More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in.

The development has been jarring for a nation whose 1.4 billion people usually manage to get along despite belonging to thousands of sometimes rivalrous ethnic groups. And it presents an unwelcome image of instability for a national government focused on portraying India as a rising global power.

“It is a nightmare,” said Mairembam Ratan, a small-town career counselor who escaped his home with help from the army. “It’s a civil war.”