‘I was consumed by rage, but as time has passed, I have forgiven everyone’: The story of a Kuki man

It was a muggy mid-monsoon evening in July. More than two and a half months had passed since Manipur was ripped apart by the ethnic savagery that rapidly grew into a full-scale civil war between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo people.

I was in Manipur in our societal initiative for healing, solidarity and justice, the Karwan e Mohabbat. We had met many internal refugees in Meitei camps in the valley and now were in the hills.

We were seated on benches in the courtyard of the Songgel Evangelical Church in Churachandpur district of Manipur. Here the church had organised a relief camp for around 150 Kuki-Zo refugees who had fled after their villages had been attacked.

This was one of the few hundred similar camps, all established in church campuses in the hills. The state was completely absent from the relief camps. An uncompromising border, guarded by a succession of check-posts of both military and civilian militias, had been established between the Imphal valley and the hills. It was dangerous for the Kuki-Zo people to travel to the valley as it was for the Meitei people to journey to the hills.

In the Songell Church relief camp, we met a young man in his early...

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