Lalam Hangshing Speaks His Mind

(June 1, 2023) WL Hangshing, known to everyone as Lalam, wears two hats: the elected chairman, as many of our readers know, of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, he is also the general secretary of the Kuki People’s Alliance, the only all-Kuki party in Manipur’s state legislature. Our Newsletter interviewed him this week about the recent violence in the state. Here are our questions and his answers.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I was born in New Delhi, where my father, Tongkhohao Aviel Hangshing, who later became one of the founding members of the B’nei Menashe community in Manipur, was serving in an administrative capacity in the Indian ministry of defense. Career-wise, I followed in his footsteps by entering the Indian Civil Service. I worked for 35 years in the Indian Revenue Service, including as a Commissioner of the Mumbai port and Chief Commissioner of Taxes and Revenue for Northeast India, a position from which I retired a few years ago. After my retirement, I settled in Manipur, from which my family came, and became active in both the local B’nei Menashe community and the wider Kuki one, of which the B’nei Menashe are an integral part. In November 2020 I was elected Chairman of the B’nei Menashe Council, and more recently, I was chosen to be General Secretary of the newly formed Kuki People's Alliance, which made its debut in the state assembly elections of 2022. The party won two seats.

Lalam Hangshing.

The recent ethnic conflict between the Kukis and the Meiteis erupted in early May this year. How did it begin?

It’s unfortunate that the conflict escalated as it did, but it was building up for many years. While it’s true that the Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, which was a Kuki and Naga protest against the Meitei-controlled state government, may have been the spark that lit the tinderbox, the tinder was already there. During the Solidarity March, Meitei provocateurs had set fire in Imphal to a gateway commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1917-19 Kuki rebellion against the British. Basically, it is and always has been a conflict over land. The Meitei majority has traditionally lived in and around Imphal, in Manipur’s Central Valley, while the Kukis have inhabited the hills surrounding it. In the last few months, the Meitei government tried to invoke various administrative clauses that would have resulted in the expropriation of Kuki lands and their transfer to state authority. Once it was the state’s, the Meiteis could have done what they wanted with it. You might call it a campaign for “Meitei Lebensraum.” Naturally, the Kukis couldn’t accept this. This led to the May 3 march.

What happened next?

The evening after the March, which was peaceful, Meiteis went on rampages in Imphal and several largely Kuki villages bordering the Central Valley, fed by rumors of violence shared on social media platrforms. In all these places, they target only Kuki homes and churches, plus the B’nei Menashe synagogue in Sajal. There were pro-Meiteis who tried to claim that the attackers were no more than rioting mobs that got out of control, but how do you account for the fact that, in neighborhoods and villages in which both groups lived side by sides, Kuki homes alone were targeted with great precision? The whole thing was clearly planned in advance before the Solidarity March took place. I don't see any other explanation. It was premeditated ethnic cleansing.

Why did it take so long for the government to intervene?

The government had no desire to intervene. The police were in cahoots with the rioters. They let the mobs loot police armories and gave them free rein. Videos were freely allowed to circulate on the social media calling for killing Kukis and raping their women. Kuki houses were looted and ransacked even as their residents were fleeing. This is still going on. It’s happening even now as we speak. It’s just happened to a house of mine in Imphal. There are no Kukis left there. The official figures, which are almost certainly on the low side, are of 70 dead, over 200 injured and 2,000 houses destroyed to date. It’s been a complete failure of law and order.

There has been a Kuki demand for permanent separation from the Meiteis. Is there any other solution to the problem?

Separation is already a reality, emotionally and geographically. All it needs to make it final is to have an administrative stamp put on it. There are no more Kukis in Imphal or the Valley, and I don't imagine that

File photo of displaced people heading for safety.

any of those who have fled will be returning. And by the same token, Meiteis living in the hills and in the hill towns -- Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, Moreh -- have all left. There’s no chance of reconciliation in the foreseeable future. All trust is gone.

What would administrative separation mean?

The Kuki areas of Manipur are too small to justify the creation of a Kuki state within the Indian federal structure. This leaves two possibilities. The first would be the implementation of what is known in India as the 6th Schedule. That’s a constitutional provision that allows for regional autonomy, something like a state within a state in which an area has political, administrative, and financial autonomy. Actually, this should have been done in Manipur long ago. North East India is an ethnically fragmented area, and there are 6th Schedule districts in every North Eastern state with the exception of Manipur and Nagaland, where such arrangement was deemed unnecessary.

A second possibility would be the creation of a Union Territory. That’s an arrangement, also provided for by the Indian constitution, whereby a region permanently put under the direct rule of the federal government in New Delhi, which in return respects its ethnic distinctiveness. A Union Territory can have its own legislature and other governmental mechanisms, and would in effect remove the Kukis from the state structure of Manipur entirely.

And then there are talks of a Greater Mizoram. The Mizos are close ethnic cousins of the Kukis and identify with them in their struggle, and it would be far easier for the Kukis to live together with the Mizos than with the Meiteis.

How realistic are these options?

No Indian federal government likes to encourage fragmentation, but the current situation can’t just be swept under a carpet. The hatred now existing between Meiteis and Kukis makes this impossible. Some kind of creative solution will have to be found. .

What happens if it isn’t?

As I’ve said, what’s been smashed can’t be put back together. Even though the Meiteis say they’ll never agree to the dismemberment of Manipur, the Kukis are not going to accept living together after the treatment meted out to them. Let's keep in mind that the hills, in which the Meiteis never lived, were never a part of the erstwhile Manipuri kingdom that the Meitei nationalists long for. They were incorporated by the British into the princely state of Manipur for administrative convenience -- and even under the British Raj, the valley was administered

Driven from their homes, Kuki villagers seek shelter in the forest.

by the Maharaja of Manipur and the hills by a British political appointee. Many Kukis don’t even speak Meitei. We have our own language and use it among ourselves. We already fought for our independence against the British in 1917-19. There is no way we can return to the homes we have been driven from. Either we are allowed to our own way peacefully or we will have to fight for it.

How does all this affect the B’nei Menashe?

The B’nei Menashe, by virtue of being Kukis, have been targeted by the Meiteis too, even though none of the violence has been aimed specifically against them. Whatever happens, the region is going to remain volatile. This is going to be a long and protracted conflict that can explode again and again. The B’nei Menashe community will continue to be in danger, not just of losing its homes, but of chronic shortages of food, medical care, and security. Look at me: I can’t even reveal where I am right now because that might put my life in jeopardy! Degel Menashe, which has been the only organization extending aid to the B’nei Menashe in recent weeks, is doing a commendable job of providing food relief, but how long can it do on doing this? The only real solution is the Aliyah of all of us to Israel. There were good reasons for expediting it even before the recent violence broke out. Now there are more of them.

B’nei Menashe Refugees Reach Aizawl Mizoram BMC Offers Aid

(May 25, 2023) When, during the violent assaults by Meitei attackers on Kuki communities in Manipur in early May, an estimated 600 B’nei Menashe, all ethnic Kukis themselves, fled from their homes in the capital of Imphal and the two villages of Sajal and Kangchup, their main destinations were safer places in Manipur. A few with family elsewhere and the means to get there, travelled as far as New Delhi. None at first chose Manipur’s neighboring state of Mizoram, despite its proximity and its own 1,000-member B’nei Menashe community.

The reasons were several. Despite lying on Manipur’s southern border, Mizoram is not easily reached from there; the only roads are in poor condition, public transportation involves arduous roundabout routes, and air travel is expensive and even dangerous, since Manipur’s only airport is in Imphal, where Kukis venture at their peril nowadays. They speak different though related languages, and have managed their affairs separately over the years. When Manipur’s B’nei Menashe refugees thought of finding a safe haven, their first thoughts were not of Mizoram.

BMC-I, Aizawl visits displaced families.

And yet since mid-May, a trickle of B’nei Menashe has begun arriving in Mizoram’s capital of Aizawl (several families have also sought refuge in the northern Mizo towns of Bairabi and Kolasip), and this shows signs of turning into a larger flow. The overall number has been estimated at 15 families and close to 100 people. Just last week, our Newsletter was told by Asaf Rentlei, a B”nei Menashe communal leader and educator in Aizawl, they were joined by five more families from Imphal, all traveling together.

The route taken by them was not a direct one, although, lately, some have done so, out of desperation. When Meitei mobs rampaged through their Imphal neighborhoods, the first refuge they found was in a temporary shelter in a local army camp. Following the camp’s disbandment, they were given the choice of being bused, with an army escort, to either Churachandpur in Manipur’s south, or to Kangkpokpi in its north, both Kuki towns with sizable B’nei Menashe communities that had not been directly affected by the violence. Along with other B’nei Menashe refugees, the five families chose to move in with relatives in Kangpokpi.

Yet there, too, they did not feel truly safe and they soon set about procuring bus tickets for Dimapur, a city in Nagaland to Manipur’s north, from where they traveled to Shillong, the capital of the adjacent state of Meghalaya, and from there, via another long bus trip, to Aizawl. “It wasn’t easy,” says the leader of the five families, Elisha Haokip, “but to be blunt, we have no more prospects in Manipur.” Haokip, an enterprising and well-educated young man who tells a harrowing tale of a co-ordinated attack upon hapless Kukis throughout Imphal, feels that until Israel allows him to make Aliyah, he would be better off earning a living and studying Judaism in Mizoram. The chances of ever recovering his family’s burned and looted property in West Imphal, he estimates, are slim at best. Better to live among fellow B’nei Menashe than in exile elsewhere.

Relief materials donated by local organizations to aid the refugees.

Upon arriving in Aizawl, the five families turned to Lemuel Haokip, a a B’nei Menashe Council advisor who hails from Manipur but has been employed in Aizawl in government service. Haokip found them lodgings to rent, from which they subsequently moved to other rented quarters where a BMC delegation visited them this week and discussed ways of helping them. With the BMC’s help, other B’nei Menashe families from Manipur now in Aizawl have found alternative solutions. Two are staying in the South Aizawl home of long time BMC member Elisheva Khiangte, and some are being housed at the BMC-administered Shlom Tzion Synagogue.

Although the distance they must travel is greater, B’nei Menashe heading for Aizawl from Kangpokpi have in one respect an easier time than those wishing to do so from Churachandpur. This is because in the latter city, which is the center of Kuki life in Manipur and of Kuki resistance to the Meitei onslaught, the departure of able-bodied men who can be conscripted to the Kuki cause has been discouraged by Kuki volunteer groups. Thus when, convinced they would have a better future in Aizawl, Oren and Efrona Tungnung decided to leave Churachandpur with their two small children even though their house there was in no immediate danger, Oren secretly left first while Efrona, pregnant with a third child, joined him only upon hearing that he had safely arrived. Now together again, they are staying for the moment at the BMC’s Shlom Tzion Synagogue.

Asher Chen weds Noami Lhoujiem at Shlom Tzion, Aizawl.

“We are doing all we can to provide assistance and comfort to our displaced B’nei Menashe brothers and sisters from Manipur,” says Mizoram BMC treasurer Nadav Hauhnar, says, “We appreciate what the government of Mizoram has done to aid all Kukis who have sought refuge in the state, and we are adding our own bit for the B’nei Menashe. If more come, we will extend ourselves for them, too. We welcome them in fellowship in our synagogue and at our prayers, and hope they will think well of our efforts.” Asaf Renthlei adds, "We are a small community here is Aizawl. Our numbers have doubled since the conflict began and we are overstretched. Friends, well wishers and organizations have reached out to us with aid but we will be needing every assistance in the coming days. Even if this conflagration were to end tomorrow or in a month, which I doubt, the effects will linger on for a long time to come."

Amid all these travails, the Aizawl community shared a moment of joy in mid-May when the first Israeli-B’nei Menashe marriage ever to take place in India was celebrated at the May 15 wedding of Asher Chen and Naomi Lhoujiem. They had narrowly escaped the violence in Manipur taking the southerly route to Aizawl. The bride, a native of Manipur, has known her new husband since 2019, nor is Asher a stranger to the B'nei Menashe community, having visited it that same year and worked there as a volunteer teacher with B’nei Menashe youth in Manipur. “We all wish them a hearty Mazal Tov,” says Asaf Rentlei.

MANIPUR B'NEI MENASHE FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE

(May 18, 2023) Although the situation in Manipur remains tense, with curfews still in force and a continuing shutdown of Internet and mobile phone communication, the violence of the previous weeks has for the moment largely abated. The state’s Kuki ethnic group of half a million, to which Manipur’s B’nei Menashe belong, is licking its wounds while demanding administrative separation from a Meitei majority that went on a two-week rampage that resulted in an official figure of 60 deaths, 200 injuries, and 1,700 homes and 40 churches burned to the ground. Nearly all of the casualties and destroyed property have been on the Kuki side, and the actual numbers may be considerably higher.

A burnt-out building in Manipur.

B’nei Menashe casualties have been low. There has been one reported death, that of Yoel Zamkhogin Baite, a 38-year-old member of Churachandpur’s Beit Shalom Synagogue, killed by a Meitei mob trying to storm the largely Kuki-populated city, and one reported injury, that of Binyamin Hangshing, also of Churachandpur, who was fired on by the army while out-of-doors during a curfew. Yet property losses, though limited to three localities, have been high. One of these three was the state capital of Imphal, where dozens of B’nei Menashe homes were burned and looted and their inhabitants forced to flee for their lives.

The other two locales were villages: Sajal, which lies in the Kuki-populated foothills bordering the southwestern edge of Manipur’s Meitei-dominated Central Valley, and Kangchup, right above the valley to the northwest. In the former, an estimated 60 B’nei Menashe homes housing 250 inhabitants were destroyed by Meitei attackers, while in the latter 20 B’nei Menashe homes were razed and 100 left homeless.

Manipur’s estimated 600 B’nei Menashe refugees are now scattered in different locations. Some, especially from Imphal, have fled the state entirely for places as far as New Delhi. Roughly 150 have taken refuge in the northern town of Kangpokpi, half staying with relatives and half in the town’s Beit Shalom Synagogue. Several hundred more have made their way to Churachandpur, where about 70-80 are now housed at the Vengnuom Beit Shalom Synagogue, 15 at the Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail School, and an unidentified number with relatives or in one of several Christian charity refugee camps. Another 10 families have managed to reach Aizawl, the capital of the neighboring state of Mizoram, which also has a large B’nei Menashe community. “It’s difficult to arrive at exact figures,” says Degel Menashe’s managing director Yitzhak Thangjom. “The refugees have scattered in all directions and it’s hard to keep track of them with the communication restrictions now in force.”

The only Jewish or organizations on the ground currently helping the displaced B’nei Menashe, Thangjom told us, are Degel Menashe working together with the B’nei Menashe Councils of Manipur and Mizoram. “It would be nice to be joined by others,” he says, “but right now we’re alone in this. Since the refugees have all found shelter of one sort or another, their most immediate need at the moment is an assured supply of food – which in northeast India means above all rice, the mainstay of every meal. The average person needs about a quarter of a kilo of rice per day, and so far we’ve distributed four metric tons or 4,000 kilos and are gearing up for more. To this we’re adding supplementary foods like lentils and potatoes, plus cooking oil and firewood, since cooking gas in currently unavailable in some places. ”

Food relief being dispensed for the B'nei Menashe at Churachandpur.

The aid, Thangjom emphasized, is not for the refugees alone. “It’s also for the families that have taken them in,” he said, “as well as for the many others in the B’nei Menashe community who are now out of work, because they have lost their jobs or cannot get to them due to the curfews and all the disruption. It’s important to realize that the entire community is in a state of crisis.”

Like all the Kukis of Manipur only more so, being a tiny minority within a minority, Manipur’s B’nei Menashe are fearful for the future. “There is a general sense among the Kuki population,” says our source, who prefers to be anonymous, “that co-existence with the Meiteis is no longer possible, and Kuki politicians are already calling for the secession of the southern, Kuki-dominated part of the state; in effect this would mean joining neighboring Mizoram, whose Mizo inhabitants are close ethnic relations of the Kukis.” This sentiment, Thangjom explained, stems not just from the violence itself, which was almost entirely Meitei-instigated and which the Meitei-controlled Manipuri government made little attempt to stop. “What most shocked people,” he said, “was how Meitei neighbors they had been friendly with collaborated with the pogromists by pointing out next-door Kuki houses for them to pillage and burn. There were many mixed neighborhoods in which no Meitei home was touched and no Kuki home was left standing.”

“It becomes clearer with every passing day,” continues our source, “that what happened was far from spontaneous. The specific events that triggered it were simply a pretext for a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing that had been planned long in advance.

Manipur’s remaining 3,500 B’nei Menashe, all of whom have dreamed for years, and in some cases for decades, of joining their families in Israel, did not need the recent events to convince them of the need for Aliyah. Yet with the growing feeling that there is no longer even a short-term future for them in Manipur, this need now seems more urgent than ever. “For over thirty years,” Thangjom says, “Israeli governments have dilly-dallied on B’nei Menashe Aliyah, opening the gates a crack and then shutting them, opening them again and shutting them once more. It’s time to put an end to this policy once and for all. Let’s bring every single B’nei Menashe still in India home to Israel – and let’s do it now!”

B'nei Menashe women pray for peace and security in Manipur at the Western Wall.