Screengrab of viral video of house of Naorem Ibomcha Meitei being bombed in Churachandpur
Naorem Ibomcha Meitei, 43, was born in southern Manipur's hill district Churachandpur. He and his family fled from this Kuki tribes-dominated area when ethnic violence broke out in May 2023. Today, Mr Ibomcha said, he saw a viral video of his four-storey house in Churachandpur razed to the ground in a massive, surgical explosion.
"Yes, that's our house. We were a joint family," Mr Ibomcha told NDTV. "In September last year, a friend in the aid services told me the house my family built had been demolished by the Kukis. This is the first time I am seeing the video," he said, and choked up.
Mr Ibomcha said he doesn't know when exactly the bombing happened, but it was definitely between May and September 2023.
The video shows the four-storey house being blasted surgically with explosives strapped to the pillars, indicating the alleged involvement of hands trained in specialised demolition activity. Some voices are heard talking in the Paite tribes dialect.
He said his family ran a licenced gun shop for eight years, until May 3 - the day clashes erupted - when Kuki rioters barged in, vandalised the store, and looted the weapons. Mobile videos and CCTV camera footage from the shop show the mob ransacking the place.
The gun shop owner was detained by the Assam Rifles in June 2019 while transporting advanced rifle scopes from the border trading town Moreh to Imphal.
"It breaks my heart to see my home being blown into pieces. It is not just my home, but memory of my childhood and our forefathers. I have heard about ethnic cleansing, but never thought in my wildest dream that me and my fellow Meiteis from Churachandpur will be wiped out in this manner," Mr Ibomba said in a statement shared by the civil society group Meitei Heritage Society.
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In September 2023 too, visuals had confirmed that an entire colony in Churachandpur where the Meitei community used to live was flattened and any sign of its existence erased. Ronald Meisnam, 38, who lived in Mandop Leikai, was horrified to see a flattened plot of land where his house stood.
Mr Ibomcha alleged the security forces could have easily stopped the mass demolition of Meitei houses in Churachandpur. "What was most heartbreaking was the security forces didn't do anything to prevent this systematic demolition..." he alleged.
"The Churachandpur MLA, LM Khuate, is a former DGP (Director General of Police), and the DGP in May 2023 was another officer from the Kuki tribes, P Doungel. I am sure had they wanted, they could have prevented the demolition of my house and all other properties of Meitei families in Churachandpur," Mr Ibomcha alleged.
While the Meitei community claims nearly all properties in the state capital Imphal, a valley area, owned by the Kuki tribes remain standing under the watch of the security forces, the Kuki tribes and their civil society organisations say their community suffered more casualties, lived through intense harassment and hounding by Meitei mobs when the clashes began. The Kukis claim nearly all their properties in Imphal were destroyed.
Many Kuki houses in Imphal have been occupied by Meitei armed groups, according to Kuki civil society organisations. "The Games Village in Langol has become barracks for numerous Meitei armed groups. We have visual evidence of gates marked with acronyms such as AT, UNLF, etc," a Kuki leader based in Delhi told NDTV, referring to the Arambai Tenggol and the United National Liberation Front, whose Pambei faction had signed a ceasefire deal with the Centre and the state government.
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Mr Ibomcha refuted the Kuki allegations. "If the security forces can protect the houses of Kukis in Imphal and other districts, why can't they protect hundreds of Meiteis homes in Churachandpur?" he said.
An association of hundreds of Meitei families who have been living in Churachandpur since 1953 told NDTV that claims by some "misinformed Kukis" that Meiteis don't have land ownership in Churachandpur, a hill area, is a "blatant lie". The Khumujamba Meitei Leikai Patta-Dar (Land Owner) Association has alleged Meitei families in Churachandpur have been living under conditions of discrimination long before the May 2023 clashes broke out.
"For many years before May 2023, Meiteis and other non-Kuki communities living in Kuki areas were denied their rights, their faith mocked, and their way of life disrespected. Kuki miscreants would call names to Meiteis living in Churachandpur, deny access to markets, not allow Meitei families to run small shops, take goods by force and not pay, apart from two dozen Kuki terrorist groups taking illegal taxes from us," Mr Ibomcha said in the statement.
Land Records
Manipur government records show there are 18 villages in Churachandpur that fall under revenue areas. The Meitei community living in these villages say they hold land "pattas" in the revenue areas, and so claims by a section of the Kukis that Meiteis have no land ownership in hill areas is simply not true since these claims ignore the nuances.
"Meiteis have been living in Churachandpur for decades before the land revenue law came. Their rights as legal patta-dars continue even after imposition of the law. And it happened that the Meiteis occupied the prime locations in [Churachandpur] town, so they were the first target of the cleansing," an expert in Manipur's complex land laws told NDTV, requesting anonymity.
Manipur is geographically divided into hill and valley regions. The land system comprises surveyed and unsurveyed land. All the valley districts are survey land, and the hill districts have both surveyed and unsurveyed land.
"Nightmare All Our Lives"
"No one ever bothered to hear about our plight just because we were seen as the majority community, which is a big lie. All the Chin-Kuki and their ethnically linked tribes combined in the region outnumber every other community such as Meiteis, Nagas, Tamils, Nepalis, Muslims, etc. Being mislabeled as a member of the so-called majority community, but in reality living as a minority in a Kuki-dominated area has been a tragic irony and nightmare for us, all our lives," said Mr Ibomcha, whose family has been living in Churachandpur since the 1950s.
The ethnic violence between the valley-dominant Meitei community and nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis - a term given by the British in colonial times - who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.
The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the nearly two dozen tribes that share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar's Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administrative carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.
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Manipur BJP spokesperson T Michael Lamjathang Haokip, who belongs to the Thadou tribe, says there has been a lot of confusion between the terms Thadou and Kuki, or between Kuki and Zomi or Mizo, or Zo.
"A clear distinction between these terms needs to be made for the sake of clear understanding. Kuki is a colonial terminology, first used loosely by the British colonial power in 1777... Today, the term Kuki, often used out of ignorance, or imposed by the media and others, is rejected by most of the same tribal people who are mistakenly referred to as Kuki," Mr Haokip said in a post on X.
"Since the creation of 'Any Kuki Tribes' and its erroneous addition to the list of Scheduled Tribes of Manipur in 2003, the term Kuki has become even more controversial and unacceptable - even by the Thadou tribe. Other cognate tribes within the broader Zo community do not accept the term 'Kuki' as they claim it is an imposed divisive term, and they even consider being called Kuki disrespectful and insulting," he said.