As Manipur goes to the polls, one district is haunted by the dead it refused to bury

The town of Churachandpur tells its story through its posters. A year and a half ago, the main road and the bus stop of this town in Manipur were festooned with posters bearing pictures of nine people hailed as martyrs.

They were killed in 2015, after protests broke out against three bills suddenly passed by the state government. The bills effectively imposed an inner line permit system over the whole state, both the hills and the Imphal valley. Together, they regulated the entry of outsiders into Manipur and placing restrictions on their buying land or starting businesses.

The hills that rise up behind Churachandpur town reacted in panic. Manipur’s hill districts had older protections that cordoned them off from the Valley and exempted them from the land laws operating there. The new system, they felt, would dilute these special provisions and help the Valley encroach on the hills.

As protesters took to the streets and set buildings on fire, security forces retaliated with bullets. The town of Churachandpur, headquarters of Churachandpur hill district, became the epicentre of the violence.

Afterwards, the town refused to bury its dead until the government rolled back the three bills. More than 550 days later, eight of the bodies remain preserved in the morgue of the district hospital. One body, that of an 11-year-old Kuki boy, has been reclaimed by his family.

The posters on the main road have mostly disappeared. But makeshift memorials to the dead, set up in 2015, have become a permanent presence in the alleys. In some places, new posters have come up.

At one forlorn crossing on the main road, a poster pays tribute to a solitary victim: “Musician and artist, he left behind his wife and young son.” On the walls of the Churachandpur police station, there is a map outlining distinct tribal territories. “Total separation from Manipur the only solution,” it says.

The furies of the protest are long spent, but the town and the surrounding district are still haunted by it. It has left lasting divides between the hills and the plains. As Manipur goes into assembly elections, it has quietly shaped the political contest in the district.

Congress: counting on first-timers

To begin with, it has sent senior party leaders scattering from the Congress, distancing themselves from the dispensation that brought in the bills. Churachandpur district, which contains six assembly constituencies, has produced several Congress heavyweights. This year, the party is counting on TN Haokip, the president of the Congress state unit, to win Saikot constituency. But in two other seats, the party has been hit by defections.

The sitting MLA from Churachandpur town, Phunzathang Tonsing, had been a minister in the Congress government. In February, he announced his decision to contest the polls as a National People’s Party candidate. The Congress has found a hasty replacement in the low profile Haukhanthang, who is barely known in the town.

In Thanlon constituency, the Congress candidate defected to the BJP. The new candidate, Chinkholal Thansing, is a doctor who is contesting the polls for the first time. Thansing’s campaign carefully skirts the issue of the protests. The first-time candidate seems to count on public amnesia.

“The three bills that rocked Manipur have come to a standstill,” he explained. “The president has not given his assent to one of the bills and the lawmakers associated with the bills have migrated out of the Congress.”

Indeed, in its promises of development, its proclivity for acronyms, its public declaration of war against corruption and an entrenched political elite, Thansing’s campaign pitch is remarkably like those favoured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Indeed, he even admits to admiring Modi but says he joined the Congress as it was the only party that pursued a secular agenda, so vital to Christian-majority districts like Churachandpur.

The first-time candidate’s election plank rests on three Rs: reform, revive and rebuild. What is needed now, Thansing says, is not a change of party but a change in the old corrupt faces that have come to stand for status quo.

Still, it is not entirely drained of identity politics. Churachandpur is a Kuki-majority district, though each constituency has a mix of tribes. Thanlon alone is made up of seven different tribes. But in a region where votes are collected by appealing to clan and village loyalties, tribal identity matters.

Thansing first establishes himself as the foreign return. He has worked all over the world in organisations fighting AIDS, he is quick to tell you. He now runs the Touch of Hope Foundation in Delhi but his former office was in Los Angeles. “I was always at ease walking down Sunset Boulevard and walking down these dirty streets,” he remarked.

But the cosmopolitan is also the son of the soil who has come back to do his bit for the community. Thansing goes on to add that he recently gave up his post in the Kuki Inpi to contest polls and that his grandfather had founded Thanlon village.

BJP: playing to the gallery

If the Congress plays down the protest, the BJP is determined to rake it up, making it central to its electoral promises in the Churachandpur district.

V Hankhanlian, an import from the National People’s Party, is the saffron party’s candidate in the town this time. His main agenda, he said, was “to address the nine martyrs not buried for 500 days.” As for the one body that was buried, Hankhanlian has his own theories – it was “stolen by the present chief minister and buried.”

Hangkhanlial has twinned two agendas in his campaign: free the state from “15 years of loot” by the Congress and extend the Sixth Schedule to the hill areas in order to grant them greater autonomy.

With the latter, the BJP has channelled a demand that gathered momentum after 2015. Under protections granted to the Manipur hills by Article 371C of the Constitution, the state government is to consult this committee before passing a bill that would affect the hill areas. But the three bills were passed without the government consulting the hill areas committee. The clamour for autonomies under the Sixth Schedule grew after this.

“The bills should have been referred to the hill areas committee,” said Hangkhianlal. “When the BJP is in power, they will take the views of the stakeholders and not take a hasty decision.”

But even the BJP promises no definite action on the bills. “There is nothing to do at this juncture,” Hangkhanlial said cautiously. “The government should attend to the demands of the people, not only the bills. Since the bills are pending with the president, I cannot say anything.”

Indeed, the limbo created by the wait for the president’s assent has proved providential. Both the BJP and Congress seem to take refuge in it.

Corrections and clarifications: This article originally said TN Haokip was contesting from Saikul constituency. He is contesting from Saikot. The error is regretted.