The violence that engulfed Manipur on May 3, 2023, still shows no signs of receding. Many Kuki and Meitei people have been displaced and forced to leave the houses they called their home for decades. The death toll has crossed 100 and yet, the state and the central governments are unable to devise solutions that could contain violence in the short and/or long term. Demands for separate administration of the Kuki and Zomi-inhabited areas have sprung up and the state machinery has broken down.
News reports of the violence have emphasised the scale of destruction and deaths in significant parts of Manipur. However, for many displaced people, the violence has also meant a loss of trust, friendships, and familial bonds, the loss of which is a much tougher pill to swallow.
But before we begin the story of Daisy, it is important to establish why all that has conspired over the past six weeks has hurt her so much. To know that, we begin with the story of her grandparents.
A story of love and harmony
Daisy’s maternal grandfather, John (name changed), met Sanatombi, her grandmother when she was studying in a nursing college. Sanatombi was from a small Meitei village along the Churachandpur-Imphal Road.
John was a contractor and had a crush on Sanatombi’s close friend. However, the friend didn’t like him because, in those days, the stigma against the tribals (derogatorily referred to as Hao) was very strong. “Hao macha ga nungshinaye” (He/she is in a relationship with a tribal) was a common insult Meitei people would use against any Meitei-tribal relationships.
However, Sanatombi found John really handsome and thus, took a liking to him. After some time, they fell in love, took a rented apartment together, and got married. Sanatombi’s family was staunchly opposed to the marriage because the prevailing sentiment was, “How can she get married to a Hao?” Slowly, they began to accept their daughter’s marriage to a Hao tribal.
Daisy remembers the cordiality and love with which they used to attend the social functions their grandmother’s family invited them to. In turn, they also attended the social functions organised by their tribal relatives.
Daisy’s paternal grandmother was a Liangmai (Zeliangrong) Naga married to a Paite man. Jokingly, her friends likened Daisy’s diverse ethnic heritage to a “tasty singju (a popular snack/salad) mixture.” After all, Daisy’s heritage represents the diverse ethnic situation of Manipur, the breakdown of which affects her family, their familial bonds, and their shared love. John passed away in 2012.
And then came May 2023.
The night it all began
Daisy is a 22-year-old Zomi girl originally from Churachandpur (Lamka) but was born and brought up in Imphal since her dad was in the state services for 33 years. Growing up in Imphal, she had more Meitei friends than from her own community. Also, her maternal grandmother (lovingly called Pipi) is, as mentioned earlier, from the Meitei community. Two of her maternal uncles also married Meitei women. Her grandmother also used to invite them to Ningol Chakkouba celebrations, an occasion they looked forward to.
Her family made Imphal their home and found a close network of friends and family members they could trust. Daisy decided to stay in Imphal to prepare for the coveted Manipur Public Service Commission (MPSC) exams after graduating from a top-tier women’s college at Delhi University. Before the violence, she remembers telling her close Maring friend that she won’t come back to Delhi. After all, she saw herself having a good and contented life in Manipur in the future.
Paite Veng had around 60 households which were razed to the ground in the past month. Her grandfather was one of the first Paite people to settle in the locality. For those unfamiliar with Imphal City’s layout, Paite Veng is located near the Imphal Airport and is surrounded by a Kabui (Naga) locality and other Meitei localities.
On the fateful day of May 3, Daisy went to attend a Meitei wedding and reached home somewhere between 5-6 PM. A Tribal Solidarity March organised by the All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur (ATSUM) was taking place in hill districts of Manipur. Because of rumours that tribals planned to hold the same march in Imphal, the Meitei people started blocking off roads, which led to traffic problems.
Meanwhile, her mom, who was in Delhi at the time, called her up after hearing about the violence in the Kangvai-Torbung area. Her mom sounded worried and warned her of social unrest in Imphal too. She asked Daisy, “Is anything happening in Paite Veng right now?” To calm her mother, she looked outside and replied, “Nothing.”
Daisy thought that the worst possible outcome could be burned tyres and vehicles. She said, “Who would have expected this to happen in 2023?”
She got another distressing call from her aunt, her mother’s elder sister. Her aunt frantically told her to keep the car in their compound and lock the gates. Her initial denial gave over to panic as she ran down the stairs and did what she was told.
Only when her dad reached home at 6:30 PM, did Daisy and her sister sigh in relief. As they were sitting in the living room, they got another call from her mother, who advised them to pack some essential belongings. Hearing this, her dad chuckled as the whole family didn’t think that would be necessary given that they had stayed together for so long with Meiteis.
The Beginning of the Rampage
Throughout the ordeal, she was in touch with a close Maring friend who informed her that her car had been burned down in New Checkon. At that very moment, her family heard a mob of around 300-400 people shouting in a murderous rage and attacking the locality. Hearing the mob trying to force open their gates, they ran to the house of their father’s cousin, married to a Meitei man. The locality was immersed in a cacophony of screams, and wails, the invading fires crackling and destroying, and bursting gas cylinders.
As they tried to keep in touch with their relatives, they saw their 87-year-old Pipi’s house burst into flames. The houses of her maternal uncles who married Meitei women were also not spared. Her maternal grandma lived with her youngest daughter nearby in the same locality.
Daisy’s aunt and her brother were caught and physically assaulted and saved in the nick of time by the police. Even then, the mob followed them to the police station shouting, “Moi Pithorako! Moi su eikhoi hatpa ngamradi, eikhoi su moi hatni” meaning “Bring them to us. If they (referring to the Kukis) can murder us, we can do the same too.”
Daisy condemned the police for their complicity in these acts of violence. When houses in Paite Veng were torched and burnt, the police pretended to shoot some tear gas, after which the mob would disperse. After some time, they would call each other by hitting the electric posts with rods and stones. The same cycle continued 4-5 times. Enraged, Daisy said, “I can still hear the piercing sounds in my ears – the most hateful sounds I’ve ever heard.”
She said, “Looking back, I didn’t pray for God to save me from harm. I prayed for him to accept me in Heaven if I got murdered by a mob.” As if the torment wasn’t already enough, the mob came back to Daisy’s house to loot and vandalise.
Fleeing to relief camps
Recovery teams came to pick the affected people. When attempting to cross over a high wall to reach a safe place, they got minor injuries and bruises. Daisy remembered being paranoid, thinking, “What if they take us all to a secluded location and kill us all together like the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre?”
One jeep, cramped full of people, came to pick them up around 2:30 AM. The first night, they couldn’t sleep. There was no proper drinking water and they slept on the floor without any blankets. They had to wait in long lines for the food, which was inedible. The rice was undercooked and the dal was watery.
Another incident of mass panic gripped the people stranded in relief camps. When the police told someone to close the windows, the entire camp misinterpreted that as a warning that the mob was on their way to attack. Everyone ran over each other and mayhem broke loose. During this whole fiasco, she still remembers how her dad told Daisy and her sister to act dead to escape the mob’s fury. Seeing her dad’s helplessness broke her.
Luckily, her aunts helped book an early flight to Delhi on May 5. The father of her friend from college was an army officer working in Imphal at the time and with his help, they managed to reach the airport, albeit unkempt and physically drained.
While already in the escort trucks, the police in the camps made them more vulnerable to mob assaults by doing a headcount thrice, delaying their evacuation.
They managed to board the plane with their PNR numbers and virtual copies of their Aadhaar cards. All their Aadhaar & PAN cards, college degrees, and laptops had been either looted or burned.
Trauma and pain follow in Delhi
Though Daisy and her extended family made it to Delhi, the lingering fear of violence refused to let go of them. Daisy recalls one incident where she had gone to the washroom and her dad started watching a video at full volume. Hearing this, her whole body entered full-panic mode and she felt an overwhelming sense of dread. “I immediately went to the door and locked it hard. I knew I wasn’t in Imphal anymore, but I still locked the door because that was the only way I felt safe,” she said.
Daisy lamented that the worst aspect of Manipur’s political crisis has been the loss of trust even between friends and neighbours, with hatred and bigotry replacing the void. The realisation that even your friends and neighbours can turn against you despite years of living together and tons of shared good memories has been the hardest to come to terms with. She’s still processing what happened, albeit with difficulty.
During the riots in Imphal, her maternal Meitei Pipi, her daughter, grandchildren, and sisters-in-law fled their houses.
They met a female Superintendent of Police (SP), who offered to keep them safe. When the SP asked their neighbours to shelter them for a while, the neighbours bluntly refused.
Daisy said she considers their neighbours’ lack of sympathy despite the obvious threats to their lives to be signs of Manipur’s impending collapse, of how living together in harmony feels like an impossible dream. The compassion they nurtured over the years was unfortunately weaker than the communal hatred that gripped people in the riots.
Even close Meitei friends who grew up with her since childhood didn’t even reach out to ask about her safety. Shaking with rage, she said, “I understand bias towards one’s own community. However, I’ve been their friend for more than 10 years. When I was running for my life, they didn’t even contact me. If I was in their place, I would’ve reached out and offered help.”
One did contact her but was too eager to find out Daisy’s exact location, due to which she became suspicious and blocked her number. More harassment over repeated calls from unknown numbers followed suit when she was in Delhi, leaving her paranoid.
Before the violence, Daisy’s grandmother used to finish her day by watching a Meitei movie at night. Like many Manipuri women, her favourite actor was the veteran actor Sadananda. But now, she no longer needs her daily dose of Manipuri movies: perhaps due to maladjustment to life in Delhi or a potent sense of betrayal by her community, a community she grew up loving.
She recently said: “I’m scared to call myself Meitei”, perhaps showing the unique and painful position of a woman marrying a man from the “other” community. The case of a young Kuki boy burned alive with his Meitei mother and aunt inside an ambulance, shook the world with its alarming barbarity.
Women married to the “other” community are treated suspiciously by both communities. Caught in between, they’re not safe anymore.
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When asked whether she still plans to settle in Manipur, Daisy said that ship has sailed. She remembers how indifferent and empty the roads felt when she was being evacuated to the relief camps even though hours earlier, she had driven on the same roads, feeling safe. Her sense of safety has dissipated and she hopes that they’ll get separate administration.
Of Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s role in the whole crisis, she said, “If he even has an iota of morality, he would’ve already stepped down.”
Daisy’s family is adjusting to their life in a new place. They rented an additional apartment, one floor below theirs to accommodate their huge extended family. Manipur’s worst political crisis has had massive ramifications on its Kuki and Meitei populace, whose pain and trauma would take years to heal. The only way forward has to be peace, engineered with the involvement of CSOs, the government’s genuine efforts at establishing trust, and most importantly, individual-level negotiations between the two communities. However, that reality is slipping away from our hands fast.
Schulu Duo is a Manipur-based freelance writer and storyteller.
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