DEEP IN THE CONFLICT ZONE AT LAMKA (CHURACHANDPUR)

Last week we posted a dispatch from Jessica Thangjom, a member of the Degel Menashe aid mission to northeast India, describing its visit to Thingdawl, a displaced persons’ camp in northern Mizoram. This week she is joined by mission member Asaf Renthlei, who describes his impressions of the homeless B’nei Menashe in Manipur’s second largest city of Churachandpur.

(July 6, 2023) After returning from Thingdawl, our Degel Menashe mission left Aizawl for Churachandpur at 7 a.m. on Thursday, June 29. As we neared the Mizoram-Manipur border, Internet reception grew more patchy, the Manipuri government having yet to renew the Internet services that it shut down when the violence in that state broke out two months ago. At Khawdungsei, the last stop on the Mizo side, we said goodbye over our cell phones to those in Israel we had been maintaining contact with, and a little later, as we reached the border crossing at the Tuivai Bridge, we did the same with our friends in Aizawl.

The road to Manipur; on treacherous terrain filled with landslides.

The roads got worse and worse. At many points on the Manipur side, they were paved with nothing more than stones that had been partly pounded into gravel by the trucks passing over them, and they frequently narrowed to stretches that only one vehicle could pass at a time. Although we were already in the monsoon season, it was our good fortune that the preceding days has seen no heavy rains of the kind that can turn such roads into quagmires. Only once did we get briefly stuck, and at 10 o’clock that night we finally reached Churachandpur, having taken 15 hours to cover the 200-kilometer distance.

The next day, we were up early disbursing supplies to the displaced B’nei Menashe in Churachandpur, who are now quartered at two locations – 23 of them on the premises of the B’nei Menashe Council-run Rabbi Avichail School, and a larger group of 105 at the Shavei Israel-administered Beit Shalom Synagogue.

At the Avichail School, where there were two families from Sajal, a heavily B’nei Menashe village destroyed by Meitei assailants in early May, each family had a room to itself and conditions were reasonably comfortable. The situation was different at Beit Shalom, whose population, most of it from Sajal too, is squeezed into a curtained-off enclosure at the foot of the synagogue, each occupant living and sleeping within inches of another. Although the caretaker, Samuel Vaiphei, did not allow us to enter the area, we caught a glimpse of it the next day on our way to Shabbat services in the synagogue. Two Kuki humanitarian organizations, the Kuki Youth Organization and the Indigenous Tribal Leadership Forum, have been, Vaiphei told us, providing the Beit Shalom population with food and water, but the water must be carefully rationed, there is a severe lack of blankets and mosquito nets, and there are only four toilets for the entire group.

While the Beit Shalom facilities, according to Vaiphei, make it “one of the best relief camps in Churachandpur,” Beit Shalom’s occupants paint a different picture of insufferable congestion, inadequate services, and sleepless nights. One family, after two weeks at Beit Shalom, which it told our mission was a “pig sty,” fled to the the Avichail School in desperation. Eight other families, the school having no more room, approached us with the request that we arrange alternative lodgings for them. Soon after our departure, one of Beit Shalom’s occupants, 28-year-old Ronen Thangminlal Haokip, was found dead in a toilet of a drug overdose. Haokip, who had no previous record of substance abuse and was driven to drugs by his despair, left behind a wife and two small children.

The relief camp at Beit Shalom.

It is not just the displaced B’nei Menashe families who need care and attention. With fighting continuing along the demarcation line between Kuki and Meitei-controlled areas, there is no end to the hostilities in sight. Supplies can reach southern Manipur and Churachandpur, where the great majority of the state’s B’nei Menashe live, only from Mizoram, and the local economy is barely functioning, so that most families that have retained their homes are in living in straightened circumstances, too.

The majority of B’nei Menashe in Churachandpur are daily wage laborers and the difficulty of finding work has hit them hard. Employed or not, they have to pay their rent, their food expenses, and their electricity and water bills. The average family’s diet has deteriorated significantly and now consists of rice with vegetable gravy and chillies. Meat, while still available, is off the table, and fried fish is a delicacy reserved only for Sabbath meals, if at all. The local food markets are open only three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and their produce is snatched up quickly.

In such bleak circumstances, it was uplifting to join the community for Shabbat. We ate our Friday night meal with its kiddush and familiar melodies with the families at the Avichail School, and were hosted for a Sabbath lunch by Joel Haokip, a local B’nei Menashe member. Later in the day, the community members cobbled together a handsome se’uda shlishit to which we were invited. For the Havdalah ceremony, a Torah tutor at the Rav Avichail school, Simon Singsit, graciously hosted us in honoring the departing Sabbath with raisins and homebrewed raisin wine.

Relief materials being disbursed at Lamka.

On Sunday morning, we headed back for Aizawl with heavy hearts. The sheer magnitude of the circumstances in Churachandpur which we were already aware of in broad strokes through scattered news reports and social networks but were seeing in person for the first time, was a haunting experience. Yes, people were out and about in the streets, small businesses were open, and water and electricity were more or less available, but in the two months that have passed since the eruption of violence in early May, the complete breakdown of law and order continues.

As the Indian army and the central government in New Delhi go on sitting on the sidelines, the conflict grew ever more vicious. It reached a climax the week we were in Manipur when a Kuki-Hmar village, Langza, was attacked and burned to the ground. One young villager, caught by Meitei militias, was beaten to a pulp, and decapitated, his head impaled on a bamboo stake. In revenge, a Langza defense force attacked the nearby Meitei village of Khoijumantabi, killed several of its guards, and beheaded one of them. The wounds inflicted by the last two months will take a generation or more to heal. The B’nei Menashe of Manipur cannot wait that long for their long-promised Aliyah to Israel.

DEGEL MENASHE VISITS DISPLACED AT MIZORAM: AN ACCOUNT

(June 30, 2023) Some 200 of the 650

B’nei Menashe of Manipur who have fled their homes because of the Meitei-Kuki violence of the past two months are now in northern Mizoram – over 40 families in a government-run displaced persons camp in the location of Thingdawl and another 15 families in the nearby town of Kolasib. Some have come directly from Manipur. Others have been relocated from Aizawl, where they initially sought shelter.

This week, a Degel Menashe delegation made the 4-hour drive from Aizawl to the Kolasib-Thingdawl area in order to visit the refugees and determine what aid they required. The delegation consisted of six people: two, Jessica Thangjom and volunteer Rachel Garrick from Israel; four, Asaf Renthlei, Leah Renthlei, Ben Aryeh Chenkual and local B’nei Menashe Council treasurer Nadav Hranglientawna, from Aizawl; and Ohaliav Haokip, general secretary of the BMC in Manipur, from Churachandpur. Here, with input from Asaf, is Jessica’s preliminary report.

The team with the local Kolasib B'nei Menashe community members at their synagogue.

Rachel and I landed at Aizawl’s Lengpui airport on a flight from New Delhi on Tuesday morning, June 27, where we were met by Asaf, Leah, Ben Aryeh, Nadav, and Ohaliav. From there we set out directly in a three-car convoy for Thingdawl. With us we took a few simple gifts for the children in the Thingdawl camp: notebooks, crayons, and pencils with sharpeners and erasers, and some sweets and fruit juice.

We arrived at Thingdawl at about 4 p.m. Despite it being the week of the year’s longest day, the light was already beginning to wane, since India has no daylight saving time and only a single time zone, at whose far eastern end Mizoram and Manipur lie. Directed to the camp by local inhabitants, we came to three two-story buildings standing on a hillside. In two of them, it was explained to us, the camp’s 300 displaced– half B’nei Menashe, and half Christian Kukis – are housed, while the third served as an administrative center and kitchen for the two daily meals that are served to the camp’s occupants.

A warm welcome at Thingdawl.

The B’nei Menashe of Thingdawl were expecting us. We were welcomed by a group of them, mainly children, and got to work at once distributing our gifts. One of the first things we noticed about the Thingdawl camp was that most of its residents were children and women. The men and older boys, we were told, had stayed behind in Manipur to help the Kuki defense effort. Over 10,000 Kukis have crossed since early May from Manipur to Mizoram, whose government was already coping with over 30,000 refugees from Myanmar fleeing the depredations of the military regime there. One must commend the Mizo government for the generous hospitality it has shown despite the strain on its resources.

A government building utilized as a relief camp.

Each of the two buildings housing refugees in Thingdawl, one of which has been set aside for the B’nei Menashe, has 13 rooms, each room holding up to four families. A communal kitchen on the ground floor serves those who would rather prepare their own food, which consists largely of rice, lentils, potatoes and vegetables procured when possible from the local market. The rooms have practically no furniture. All sleep on the floor with a thin foam mat for a mattress in the best of cases and makeshift pillows fashioned from clothes, bags, and other items. Some of the families have badly needed mosquito nets, either purchased or donated by local Mizos; some do not. Each building has a communal toilet and washing area, but water must be brought by the residents from nearby water tanks in buckets or pots and is carefully rationed.

All in all, the Thingdawl camp does not give a depressing impression. Its B’nei Menashe live in primitive but not overcrowded conditions . Each family has a corner of a room or more for itself, with cloth partitions sometimes erected for privacy, and a general sense of neatness and order prevails. The children have been enrolled by the government in local schools (though they do not speak Mizo, they pick it up quickly, since Kuki is a closely related language) and the women keep busy for much of the day cleaning, doing laundry (a never-ending task, since the same clothes must be worn and re-worn), preparing food, and fetching water.

Shacharit at the camp.

The chief needs of the camp’s B’nei Menashe residents are mattresses, pillows, and mosquito nets. We slept alongside them in a room above the cooking area the night we were in Thingdawl, and the mosquitoes buzzed around us all night, making it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. We woke early the next morning, groggy and reminding ourselves as we sipped out breakfast of black tea that we had just gone through a single night, while those whose mats and floors we had shared had to endure such nights one after another. As there were not enough men for a minyan, Asaf, Ohaliav, Ben Aryeh, and Nadav had to say their morning prayers individually.

That same day, we also visited the eight displaced families that have been taken in by the tiny Bnei Menashe community of Kolasib, which is a little under half an hour’s drive away. Some are staying with relatives and some have rented homes of their own, either with savings they managed to bring from Manipur or from the work that some have found in local betel plantations. Their situation is better than that of the Thingdawl residents, a program of assistance to whom might include subsidizing rentals in Kolasib. If it was a pleasure for the six of us to be able to rest and wash up in normal facilities, how much more so would it be for Thingdawl’s B’nei Menashe to be able to live that way!

Meeting with the Deputy Commissioner, Mr. John LT Sanga.

After leaving Thingdawl in the morning, escorted by the children who followed us everywhere, we met with the District Commissioner of the Kolasib region, Mr. John LT Sanga. He and Asaf had studied together in New Delhi and knew each other. An affable man with (like many Mizos and Kukis) an identification with Israel, he told us that the area is currently hosting the largest refugee population in all Mizoram, some 17,000 displaced persons having arrived in a steady stream from Manipur in the last 40 days. The previous day, in fact, had been the first in all that time with no new arrivals. When asked how long Mizoram was prepared to continue hosting the displaced Kukis, his answer was, “For as long as is necessary.”

This was reassuring, because the Thingdawl camp’s B’nei Menashe do not on the whole wish to return to Manipur. They do not feel that they have a future there. Their next destination, as far as they are concerned, must be Israel.

We parted from the commissioner and set out on the return trip to Aizawl, from which we planned to continue to Churachandpur. Although this might not seem to make sense when looking at a map, Kolasib being much closer to Churachandpur than is Aizawl, no passable roads lead from Kolasib northward, it already being the beginning of the monsoon season in India, when dirt roads become untraversable. A paved highway connects Churachandpur to Aizawl, and that was what we planned to take.

A glimpse inside the camp:

Wanted: A Mohel and a Name

(June 22, 2023) A week ago, a Jewish boy came into the world in Mizoram. This in itself was not unusual: B’nei Menashe children are born in Mizoram and its neighboring state of Manipur all the time. All the time, too, however, they are given Hebrew names soon after birth. Liansuanlal Tungnung is still waiting for his.

The family waits expectantly for the baby's arrival.

Liansuanlal is – need we say it? – Liansuanlal’s Kuki name. His parents, Oren and Efrona Tungnung, who like most B’nei Menashe are known their co-religionists by their Hebrew names, hail from Churachandpur in Manipur, where, the parents of two small boys, they were expecting the birth of a third child in mid-June. When Kuki-Meitei ethnic conflict broke out in Manipur in early May, they felt sufficiently safe in Churachandpur – both a Kuki and a B’nei Menashe stronghold – to plan on staying there. However, as the conflict continued to escalate with no sign of abating, and Oren and Efrona’s parents in Israel sent them frantic messages pleading with them to leave for somewhere more secure, they changed their minds.

On May 11, Efrona, in an advanced state of pregnancy and with two young toddlers in tow, aged four and two-and-a-half, managed to make her way to Mizoram’s capital of Aizawl. It wasn’t simple. None of the usual drivers plying the 16-hour Churachandpur--Aizawl route that winds through mountain roads wanted to hazard the trip, and renting a car by itself would have cost the young couple an inflated price of 40,000 rupees or $500, an enormous sum by Indian standards. Only when they found fellow townsmen eager to make the same trip were they able to afford the cost of a shared vehicle – and even then they had to pay several times more than tit would have cost them before the troubles broke out.

Why did Oren not join his family at this critical juncture? Because at the time a rumor was making the rounds in Manipur that able-bodied Kuki young men were not being allowed by Kuki village volunteers to leave the state, being needed for the fight against the Meiteis. Since all Internet services had been suspended in Manipur and reliable information was at a dearth, there was no way to corroborate or disprove this rumor and the Tungnungs decided it was best no to risk Oren’s possible arrest and detention for desertion.

Yet once Efrona informed her husband that she had safely reached Aizawl, and the worrisome rumor remained unsubstantiated, Oren decided to head for Aizawl come what may. Unlike others he was traveling with, who managed to obtain certificates of safe passage from their local community associations, he boldly boarded the vehicle armed with nothing but the assertion that he was rejoining his family. Nor was there a seat for him. The van transporting him was jam-packed, with three passengers instead of two in the front seat, six instead of four in the middle row, and four more in the last row, half-perched on the travellers’ luggage. Two more men were given space on the baggage rack on the roof.

One of the two was Oren, who literally clung for dear life to the bars of the rack as he was jounced up and down on the twists and turns in the bumpy road climbing to Aizawl. Sleep was out of the question. The lucky thing was that it didn’t rain, it being just before the start of the monsoon season. The ride on the roof cost Oren 2,000 rupees.

On May 13, Oren reached Aizawl. For several weeks he, Efrona, and their two boys stayed in makeshift quarters in the city’s B’nei Menashe Council-run Shlom Tsion synagogue, counting the days until Efrona gave birth. Then, with the help of BMC leader Ben Aryeh Chenkual, who briefly put them up at this residence, they rented an Aizawl apartment paid for by Efrona’s parents. “It was a privilege to be able to extend hospitality to our brethren from Manipur,” Chenkual told our Newsletter. “We’re only sorry that we didn’t see the wave of B’nei Menashe displaced from Manipur coming in time to prepare for it better.”

On June 13, the same day that Efrona was finally admitted to the maternity ward of the government-run Aizawl Civil Hospital, Oren and the two boys moved into the apartment. B’nei Menashe activist Leah Renthlei tended to Efrona from her beside while she awaited labor and concomitantly, Amina Lhouvum, a young lady and former neighbour in Churachandpur now living in a refugee camp in northern Mizoram was brought to Aizawl to assist the young couple when their new child was born.

Finally, on Thursday, June 15, at half-past-four in the afternoon, a beautiful baby boy, Liansuanlal Tungnung,

Proud mother Efrona with newborn, Liansuanlal.

was born. What about a Hebrew name, which every B’nei Menashe has – which is indeed a badge of B’nei Menashe identity? Although Oren and Efrona have decided on one, they were determined to keep it themselves until Liansuanlal’s circumcision, since the Jewish custom is not to announce a newborn boy’s name until then – and a date for the circumcision, which did not take place on the eighth day after birth per Jewish practice, has yet to be set.

Why is this? The reason is that in all of Mizoram there is no mohel or ritual circumciser, the local community being too small to sustain one. Traditionally, either a mohel has been brought from Manipur, where there are several, or else the procedure has been performed by a physician -- and in this case, neither has been possible: the disturbances in Manipur have kept mohalim from traveling to Mizoram and Mizoram physicians are squeamish about performing what they consider an “elective procedure” on little babies. B’nei Menashe boys born in Mizoram who are not circumcised by a mohel from Manipur generally have to wait to have it done until the age of five to seven.

Do many B’nei Menashe boys in Manipur, then, have no Hebrew name until they are five or more years old? No, because in Mizoram B’nei Menashe parents do not wait that long to announce such names. Even if circumcised by a doctor at a later age, the boy’s Hebrew name is revealed after birth.

Well, then – to ask one last question – why don’t Oren and Efrona Tungnung adopt the Mizoram custom and announce Liansuanlal’s Hebrew name now?

Because – to give one last answer – they’re from Manipur, where the custom is to name a boy only at his circumcision.

Efrona was sent home from the hospital on June 22 and was brought along with Liansuanlal by Oren to their new apartment. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the warm welcome that our family has received from the local community in Aizawl,” she says, “and I appreciate all their efforts and the love they have shown us.” Meanwhile, only they know Liansuanlal’s Hebrew name. It will not be made public until a mohel can arrive from Manipur, which will hopefully be sometimes this summer.