'They Never Let Us Vote': Meiteis Displaced From Manipur’s Kuki-Dominated Hills See Hope In Lok Sabha Elections — A Ground Report

Life in the squalid relief camps that tens of thousands of Meiteis driven away from Moreh, Churachandpur and other places in the Kuki-dominated hill districts live in is miserable and quite hopeless. 

But amidst such gloom, there’s a little bit of excitement among a number of the inmates at these camps where humans eat, sleep and live cramped in foetid and filthy spaces in subhuman conditions. That excitement is over getting to exercise their franchise for the first time ever. 

No, the ones who are excited are not all first-time voters. Most of them are adults, some even sexagenarians and septuagenarians. 

They have never voted in the past because the Kukis never allowed them to vote! Now that the Kukis don’t control their destinies, they will cast their votes for the first time ever in their lives. 

Swarajya visited the Thongju Kendra Relief Camp at the Ideal Girls’ College at Akampat in Imphal East district where more than 900 Meiteis (an estimated 242 families) — all of them displaced from Moreh and Churachandpur — live in abject conditions. 

This relief camp has been in existence since May 10 last year and the Meiteis here don’t know when they can go back to the homes they have fled from. 

It is a different matter, of course, that those homes at Moreh and Churachandpur don’t exist anymore — after being looted and stripped of everything, Kuki mobs set them on fire and then flattened the charred remains with heavy earth-moving equipment. 

Khuraijam Khamba, 44, had a transport business in Moreh. “I had four mini-trucks and one Tata Sumo that used to ply between Imphal and Moreh transporting goods and passengers. I had two houses and also two shops and a godown in Moreh,” Khamba recalled. 

Trouble started from late afternoon of 3 May when groups of Kuki men started attacking shops and properties belonging to Meiteis. “I asked my employees to close the shops and hurried home. Then we saw properties belonging to Meiteis being burnt. The crazed and murderous mobs entered our locality and we would have been killed had the Assam Rifles and police not rescued us just in time,” he told Swarajya. 

Khamba and his family — his wife Bembem, daughter Lata Chanu and son Rakesh — along with about three hundred Meitei men, women and children spent the next five days inside the headquarters of the 5 Assam Rifles Battalion in Moreh. They were then escorted to Imphal by police and paramilitary forces. 

Never allowed to vote by Kukis

Khamba says that he has never voted in any election — panchayat, Assembly or Lok Sabha — till now. “The Kukis never allowed us to vote. We don’t know how to vote, we’ve never seen the inside of a polling booth,” he said. 

Kuki militants, he said, would collect their voter ID cards a few days before polling in every election and return them after the elections. “We knew that our votes were cast by Kukis impersonating us. But we couldn’t do anything about it. Raising our voices against such blatant rigging would have meant certain death,” he told Swarajya. 

It is not just Khamba and his wife who were denied the basic democratic right to vote by the Kukis. Tens of thousands of Meiteis like them living in towns and villages spread over Kuki-dominated Churachandpur, Kangpokpi and Tengnoupal districts have been prevented from voting in local, Assembly and Lok Sabha elections over the past thirty years or so. 

Chalamba Singh, 40, another resident of Moreh who has been staying in this relief camp since 10 May last year, told Swarajya that Kuki organisations used to tell them that they do not have the right to vote. 

Chalamba used to work as a cook at the police barracks in Moreh while his wife used to be an assistant at a grocery store in the Moreh market. They now lead a miserable existence, along with their two daughters and one son, at the relief camp. 

“They (Kuki organisations) used to tell us that we cannot vote since we are living in a Kuki-majority area. Only Kukis have the right to vote in Kuki areas, we were told,” Chalamba’s wife, Tamubi, told Swarajya. 

The terrible price for defiance

She recalled an incident from 2004 when a Meitei lady, who used to run a shop selling textiles at Moreh market, tried to defy the Kuki diktat. “She was brave and feisty, and decided before the 2004 (Lok Sabha) elections that she would cast her vote because that was her basic democratic right,” said Tamubi.

“When the Kukis went to her house to collect her voter ID card, she refused to hand it over and said she would vote. They (the Kukis) tried to intimidate her and even threatened her with physical harm, but she did not budge. Instead, she went to the police to lodge a complaint against the Kukis who had threatened her. 

“Two nights before polling, her shop was looted and her house was firebombed. She would have been charred to death had she not been rescued by the police. But she sustained severe burns and was taken to Imphal. She spent the day of polling in a hospital bed in Imphal. She hasn’t returned to Moreh because the Kukis have unofficially put a price on her head,” said Tamubi. 

A few more such incidents had taken place and all Meiteis of the prosperous town along the Indo-Myanmar border thus fell in line. No one has ever dared to defy the Kukis and vote in elections. 

But freedom existed before Kukis came

But this was not always so. When Kukis were a minority in Moreh, all communities — Meiteis, Nagas, Tamils, Marwaris, Nepalis, Bengalis and Biharis — used to live in harmony. 

Things changed after Kukis were displaced from other parts of the state by the Kuki-Naga conflict of the early 1990s started settling down in Moreh in large numbers. A huge number of Kukis from Myanmar also settled down, albeit illegally, in Moreh. 

As the Kukis became the majority community in Moreh by the late 1990s, they started exerting themselves and driving away other communities systematically from Moreh to gain control of the lucrative border trade. 

A series of pogroms were launched by the Kukis against Nagas, Meiteis, Tamils, Marwaris, Biharis and Bengalis. “All these communities were targeted one at a time since the mid-1990s and by the turn of the century, the number of non-Kukis had decreased significantly. Kukis gained control of local bodies and the trade between India and Myanmar through Moreh,” said Khamba. 

In order to strengthen their grip and establish a stranglehold over the local political space, the majoritarian Kukis prohibited other communities from contesting elections to local bodies and even voting. 

But this was not limited to Moreh alone. In all areas of Manipur where they became a majority, Kukis established their totalitarian control and disenfranchised other communities, especially the Meiteis. 

Francis Keisham, 40, used to stay in Churachandpur till he fled that town along with his family — his wife, and three minor children — after the attacks, arson and mayhem by Kukis on May 3 and 4 last year. 

“We took shelter at the Deputy Commissioner’s office complex in Churachandpur for six days and came here (the relief camp) on May 10. We’ve been here since then, living alongside many other displaced people,” he told Swarajya. 

Life in the relief camp, he added, is extremely difficult. The government provides foodgrains and meals are cooked in the community kitchen here. And some charitable and Meitei organisations and individuals help us out from time to time with other needs. But getting by is very difficult because we have no means of livelihood here,” Francis, who was a labour contractor in Churachandpur, said. 

His wife makes incense sticks that he sells door-to-door in Imphal city. That yields a very low income. His children, aged 14, 8 and 5, go to a free school six kilometres away. 

“I’m waiting for a settlement that will allow us to return to Churachandpur. But this time, we want to live as free citizens without any controls and restrictions,” he added. 

Permission required to even celebrate festivals & birthdays!

Kukis, Francis and his wife told Swarajya, used to exercise total control over their lives. “Forget being allowed to vote, we were not even allowed to celebrate our festivals without prior permission from local Kuki organisations. Even for holding ceremonies inside our house like celebrating my daughter’s birthday or our wedding anniversary, we would be required to seek prior permission from the Kukis. Or else they would stop the celebrations and ceremonies,” said Francis. 

But permission always comes with a price. Meiteis would have to ‘contribute’ amounts ranging from a few hundred to thousands of Rupees to Kuki organisations in exchange for such permission. 

Francis’ accounts are corroborated by Phairembam Suresh, 26. Suresh used to run a grocery store and a restaurant in Churachandpur town. 

Suresh has deep roots in Churachandpur — he was born there, and so were his parents and grandparents. 

The youngest of six siblings — four of his five elder sisters are married and live with their respective in-laws in Imphal — Suresh watched in horror and agony as his grocery store and restaurant were torched by Kuki mobs on the night of 3 May last year. 

“The attacks on Meitei and Meitei-owned properties started around 5 pm on 3 May in Churachandpur town. All Meiteis in our locality huddled together in a Meitei house with high compound walls which we felt couldn’t be breached. We kept on calling the police and paramilitary forces stationed in Churachandpur, but help came only at dawn when we were rescued and taken to the deputy commissioner’s office complex. I saw from there the mobs setting fire to my properties. And the house we took shelter in was set afire just a couple of hours after we were rescued from there,” he said. 

Suresh, along with his wife Nganthoibi, one-year-old daughter Yaihenbi, his aged parents and one unmarried sister were escorted to Imphal and have been staying in this camp since 11 May. 

“Life is very tough here, but somehow we feel safe. Much safer than what we ever felt at Churachandpur. Ever since I was a kid, the shadow of Kuki majoritarianism loomed large over us. Our freedoms were restricted and yes, we were never allowed to vote,” said Suresh. 

The case of Churachandpur is exactly the same as Moreh. The Kukis were a minority, but a large minority, in the town till the mid-1990s. And everything was normal and harmonious till then. 

Kukis displaced from other parts of the state by the Kuki-Naga and Kuki-Paite clashes, as well as illegal Kuki immigrants from Myanmar, started settling down in large numbers in Churachandpur. Life took a turn for the worse for the thousands of non-Kukis there since then. 

Suresh, along with his wife, now run a small makeshift eatery inside the relief camp. “Our samosas and tea have become famous and people from even outside come here to have those,” he said. But the income is low, not enough to sustain his family at the camp. He gets by with help from his four married sisters. 

19 April — a red-letter day

Suresh, Chalamba, Francis, Khamba and a couple of thousand Meiteis like them who were displaced from Moreh and Kuki are now looking forward to 19 April. That is the day they will head to the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) campus about 700 metres away from their relief camp to vote for the first time in their lives. 

The NIELIT has been designated as a special polling station for the displaced Meiteis staying in the relief camp and other areas of Imphal. For them, 19 April is a red-letter day and they are looking forward to it.

Next week, officials from the state chief electoral officer’s office will visit the relief camp and demonstrate how to cast their votes in an electronic voting machine (EVM). 

All of them are determined to cast their votes this time. Because there are no Kukis around to hold a gun to their heads and order them to stay indoors on polling day.