Dying on These Hills

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VUMTHANG SITLHOU WAS in good spirits on the morning of 13 May. After an early breakfast and prayers, the 75-year-old Baptist priest had set out from the town of Churachandpur, in southern Manipur, to Kangpokpi, around a hundred kilometres to the north. The journey would have ordinarily taken around three hours, but, ever since the ethnic conflict between Kukis and Meiteis broke out three years earlier, the Imphal Valley has been off limits to members of the Kuki communities who inhabit the surrounding mountains, the largest of which is Vumthang’s Thadou tribe.

Despite four hundred thousand people facing severe restrictions in mobility, the state government has not created any alternative routes. Instead, residents of the hill districts have had to pool funds for makeshift roads constructed by various insurgent groups. Vumthang’s entourage—which included five other priests from the Thadou Baptist Association India, travelling in two SUVs marked with TBAI insignia—had to follow a circuitous route, various sections of which are called Tiger Road and German Road, after the noms de guerre of two militants of the Kuki National Front (President). While the Assam Rifles maintain a checkpoint before the road enters Kangpokpi, the route is largely controlled by groups such as the KNF(P) and the Kuki Revolutionary Army, which charge tolls for passage and security. Much of it is made up of mud roads that are impassable during the rains. Commuters travel in groups and are allowed to use the roads only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

On that Wednesday morning, Goumang Lhouvum, who had become a close confidant of Vumthang while driving him across the Northeast over the past five years, hoped to make it to Kangpokpi before nightfall. He had queued up the priest’s favourite gospel songs to make the tumultuous journey less taxing. They reached Jouzangtek, a village in the Noney district, at 8 am and halted there for around forty-five minutes. Once they left, the others in the car dozed off, but Vumthang sat in the passenger seat, humming along to the music.