Sure A Not

Deadly violence has plunged Manipur, a scenic Indian state bordering Myanmar, into turmoil for more than two months. Clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities have resulted in their complete segregation. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas travelled to the tribal district of Churachandpur, where the violence began, to explore how the profound division has led to fury and isolation.

On a cloudy afternoon last week, hundreds of men and women congregated outside a hastily-built bamboo hut memorial in Churachandpur, nestled amidst Manipur’s picturesque hills in north-eastern India.

Mostly clad in black and many with war paint on their faces, the mourners belonged to the tribal Kuki group, who are mostly Christian. The hut walls were plastered with photographs of their own, who had died in a recent bout of ethnic violence with the majority Meiteis, most of whom are Hindus.

Clashes between the two communities sparked by an affirmative action controversy have roiled Manipur since early May. The violence has left more than 130 people dead, and nearly 60,000 have become refugees in their own land.

Now the Kuki have demanded “territorial autonomy” for the group, a euphemism for a separate, independent administration. The Meitei have warned that any dismemberment of Manipur is out of question.

At the memorial, Kuki mourners sobbed at the pictures of the victims who included a two-month-old boy and a 104-year-old man. Wreaths littered the bamboo strip floor. A whiteboard overflowed with condolence messages. Outside, a row of dummy coffins painted in black spilled out on to a highway linking Churachandpur with the Imphal valley, where the Meitei community lives.

“We want freedom! We want independence from the Meitei! We want independence from Manipur!” a protester shouted from the podium.

The crowd roared in approval. A woman belted out a country music-inflected protest song to a pre-recorded track. A group of masked Kuki men clad in black and wielding slender batons swiftly infiltrated the gathering, and appeared to seize control of the stage.

“Are they carrying guns?” someone in the crowd shouted.

“No, they aren’t,” said another protester, wearing an Iron Maiden tee-shirt.

Meanwhile, a local politician in sunglasses worked the crowd.

“We want justice for our innocent victims! Long live tribal unity!”

The ethnic divide in Manipur is bitter and deep. Churachandpur, a tribal district in the south of Manipur, sits atop the lush green hills, some 80km (49 miles) south-west of Imphal, the Meitei-dominated valley capital.

The Kukis and Meiteis bleed into each other as the sweeping hills descend into the valley. Today, however, the two groups are livid at each other, divided – and separated.

The compulsions of geography mean that an estimated 300,000 mostly Kuki people who live in Churachandpur are now isolated from the Imphal valley, where the Meitei majority also enjoys political dominance. Life and work between the two communities has stalled. Internet has been cut all over the state, further heightening the isolation.

“Our lives have been upended. It is like living in a constant siege,” said Mung Nihsial, a student in Churachandpur.

Leaving Manipur has become a nightmare for the Kukis. Those in Churachandpur say they cannot access their nearest airport in Imphal, a 90-minute-drive from the town, fearing attacks in the valley. A twice-weekly helicopter service to Imphal has found few local takers because “we fear for our lives even at Imphal airport”, according to Liawzalal Vaiphei, a Kuki who runs a non-profit organisation.

Instead the Kukis are forced to endure a gruelling 380km (236-mile), 14-hour-long road journey through a landslide-prone area to take a flight out of Aizawl, the capital of the neighbouring state of Mizoram. Using the same route heavy trucks take up to two days to ferry essential supplies from Aizawl to Churachandpur. Not surprisingly, prices of essentials have shot up in the local market. “Mobility has become our biggest problem, because we can no longer go to the Imphal valley. We have lost our primary lifeline,” said Suan Naulak, a policy consultant.

Doctors complain of a shortage of medicines – paracetamol, antibiotics, antacids, cough syrups – at the 114 relief camps housing more than 12,000 Kuki evacuees, including some with terminal illnesses and HIV-Aids. Three refugees have already died in the camps, including a man who had undergone surgery before the violence erupted. Nylon mosquito nets are suspended throughout the camps, creating a protective canopy shielding the inmates from endless bites.

Genminlian, a 40-year-old policeman living in a camp, is afflicted with HIV, diabetes, tuberculosis, and neurological problems. Although the local hospital has been supplying retroviral drugs to treat HIV, other essential medicines are scarce. “Our house has been burnt down, my husband is sick, we can’t get many of his medicines and we have six-year-old daughter. That’s how life is now,” said his wife, Grace.

The sprawling 61-year-old, 230-bed hospital in the town is facing an unprecedented manpower crisis. A third of its 74-member staff were Meitei, who have now left. The hospital has hired two dozen Kuki volunteers from a nursing school to help out.

Weekly visits by oncologists, neurologists and urologists from Imphal to attend to local patients have ceased, as the hospital faces a scarcity of specialised doctors. A Kuki man recently admitted with gunshot injuries had to be airlifted to Guwahati, the capital of Assam – and not Imphal – more than 500km away, for emergency surgery. (He survived.)

In normal times, an ambulance would travel to Imphal once a week to pick up the hospital’s stock of medicines. Since May, the hospital has been reliant on a mere three deliveries of medicines from the government, transported via army convoys from Imphal. A group of private doctors have sent two deliveries from neighbouring Mizoram. “God forbid if a Kuki suffers from a heart attack or is grievously injured in a road accident here. We can’t take him down to Imphal for emergency treatment,” said Dr Lonlei Vaiphei, the superintendent of the hospital.

The ethnic separation also evoked a sense of disruption and loss. Manghaulian, an 18-year-old Kuki teenager, was forced to escape from a school for the blind in Imphal as violence erupted in the valley. The school had been his home for five years and he was learning to play drums. As his community became targets of Meitei attacks the school authorities put him in an SUV and returned him to his family home to Kangpokpi, a tribal-dominated hill district.

When their village in Kangpokpi faced an attack, Manghaulian and his family had to flee once again, this time in a bus, more than 100km away to a relief camp in Churachandpur. “I just want to go back to Imphal and learn to play drums at my school. I don’t know what is going on,” he said.

Churachandpur was the ground zero of violence, which broke out on 3 May.

Mobs set fire to homes and businesses belonging to the Meiteis in the town, prompting the evacuation of 9,000 community members from 13 neighbourhoods under the protection of the army. The evacuees were then taken under protection to Imphal.

Around the same time, army convoys ferried uphill to Churachandpur some 15,000 Kuki evacuees from Imphal, where they had become the target of the Meiteis. A few thousand – mostly government workers and businesspeople- rented homes or moved in with their relatives; and the rest moved into relief camps. “There hasn’t been much of administrative support from Imphal. There are scarcities,” a senior army official, who preferred to remain unnamed, said.

Things are so dire that the army has taken weapons from police stations and explosives used by roadworks contractors so that they don’t fall in the hands of vigilantes and insurgents. More than 900 rebels belonging to two dozen Kuki groups seeking greater self-determination within Manipur are lodged in seven security camps in Churachandpur under a “suspension of operations” agreement with the government since 2008. But there are allegations that many rebels have escaped from the camps following the violence and have subsequently joined the ongoing conflict, a claim denied by the security forces.

At Kangvai, barely 20 minutes from the town centre, security forces now patrol a buffer zone separating Kuki and Meitei villages. These villages – some of them separated by just a 200m strip of a road – were abandoned by most residents during the violence. Farmers from both groups frequently cross over to cultivate their plots that lie in what is now rival territory. More than 500 troops are engaged here to keep peace.

A semblance of normalcy has indeed returned to the frayed Churachandpur town. The bustling main market opens thrice a week. People sell petrol in plastic bottles in the black market; women hawk vegetables under garden umbrellas; shops selling bedsheets, shoes, stationary and toys do business and there are small queues outside cash machines. A trickle of farmers have begun returning to their fertile farms that grow paddy, ginger, cabbage, cauliflower, pumpkin and more.

It all looks almost normal, until you realise it isn’t.

Inside the town, most Meitei houses and settlements have been burnt to cinders. The name Churachandpur has been blackened out on business and residential signs, replaced by spray-painted letters proclaiming “Lamka,” which many Kukis assert as the original name of the place.

Kuki children have begun playing war games with toy guns. “How they want to play with their friends has changed. I have never seen this here before,” said Muan Mgaiht, a local. Since schools are shut, many students are joining volunteer forces to protect their villages. (Most village homes have licensed single-barrel guns used for hunting.)

“Peace is extremely fragile here. Things can turn bad very quickly. The communities are completely separated,”the army officer said.

Mr Naulak himself is a stark example of this separation. He was working as a private consultant to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s ruling government, headed by Chief Minister Biren Singh, on programme to modernise state-run schools. He says he was sitting with six of his friends in his rented two-storey home in Imphal when a Meitei mob attacked it and torched his car. They fled by scaling the backyard fence into a neighbour’s home who happened to be a Kuki police officer. Army trucks drove them to the airport, from where they took a flight out to Delhi.

A third of the top bureaucrats and police officers running the government in Imphal were Kukis, and left the city after the violence, a top government official, who preferred to remain unnamed, said. Mr Naulak, who has returned to Churachandpur, said he could not think to returning to his old job and home.

“It now seems we [Kukis and Meteis] don’t know each other at all. We are completely separated.”

This is the first of a two-part series of ground reports from violence-hit Kuki and Meitei areas.

BBC News India is now on YouTube. Click here to subscribe and watch our documentaries, explainers and features.