Performed from memory, the Kecharhe Alun is a significant death ritual of Assam’s Karbi tribe. The oral epic has never been properly studied, recorded, or documented — until now.
When a neighbour died last week, Kasang Teronpi, was summoned immediately. The news was shocking, but the call was routine.
For years now, the 80-year-old resident of Taralangso village near Diphu in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, has been visiting the homes of the dead— relatives, friends, strangers — on call.
“If we don’t do it, who will?” asks Teronpi.
Teronpi is a charhepi, or a female dirge singer, who plays an important role in the death rituals of the Karbi tribe, one of the largest ethnic groups in Northeast India.
It is something she always wanted to be — ever since she was 10, and she first heard the Kecharhe Alun, or the Karbi funeral epic, when a relative had died. “I never went to school, I never learned how to read or write, so I thought to myself that I must master the art of dirge singing,” says Teronpi.
In Langokso village, where Teronpi grew up, she says that being able to sing the Kecharhe Alunwas an honour for women, almost “equivalent to getting an educational degree”.
After she got married, she went to a master to learn the oral epic, and soon could remember it by heart.
According to the death rituals of the Karbi tribe, it is only when the Kecharhe Alunis performed that the soul of the deceased is able to journey to the village of ancestors (‘village of the dead’) — a mandatoryjourney for the soul to rest in peace. “If not, the soul will be stuck between the world of the living and the world of the dead,” says Teronpi, “That is why it is important we never forget the Kecharhe Alun.”
Over the last two years, Teronpi has been working with a group of people to do just that: record the Kecharhe Alun for posterity. For that, they have traversed into the most secluded forests of Karbi Anglong — the rules don’t allow the dirge to be chanted within the village boundaries — where Teronpi has sung, explained and recorded, the 32-hour-epic from memory.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in September 2019. Full article here.
In Assam’s several citizenship determination processes, some narratives are lost — like that of the Gorkhas, despite a notification declaring them as Indians. And like that of Tara and Maya, now forever bound by two months together at a detention centre
It was on a July morning, outside the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) housed in a pleasant-looking Assam-type cottage in Golaghat, that they first met. Maya, the younger of the two, was short and fair. Tara was almost a foot taller, and frail. Maya was talkative; Tara quiet. Maya liked to sing; Tara liked to cook. But the two women had one thing in common—both had stepped out of their respective villages in Assam’s Golaghat district only once in their lives: as gabhoru (pubescent) girls to visit the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati. And, as they discovered that morning in July 2017, both were suspected foreigners, ‘D-Voters’ or ‘doubtful voters’, living illegally in India, in the eye of the law.
Weeks passed and the two would meet whenever a ‘taarikh’ or a ‘date’ with the FT got them together. Tara would be often accompanied by husband Bipul, a ‘D-Voter’ himself. Maya’s husband never came. Then, one day, Tara recalls, Maya didn’t turn up. “I thought I would never see her again,” says Tara.
A month later, the two met in jail.
***
Like the five other detention centres in Assam meant for foreigners, or those who had “illegally entered after 1971”, the womens’ wing in Jorhat District Jail too was packed with detainees — toddlers with nursing mothers, middle-aged women and some so old they couldn’t stand up straight.
The first night, Tara remembers crying herself to sleep, on a blanket on the floor, near a toilet. The next morning, among the hundreds of unfamiliar faces, she recognised one. “It was Maya from the FT,” says Tara. Maya, who had been in the jail for almost a month, showed her around: where to wash up, how to get to the toilets the quickest, and most importantly, whom not to anger. “The women would fight, about space, soap, beds, buckets, whatnot,” says Maya.
As Tara and she talked, often the conversation veered around to their families. “Maya would tell me about her husband who had left her, about how she sent her seven-year-old to school that morning, not knowing she would be picked up hours later,” says Tara. “And I would speak about my sons — how one had dropped out of school, how worried I was about home.”
Other days would pass in complete silence. “I would cry, she would console me. Then, she would cry, and I would console her,” says Maya. On several occasions, other suspected foreigners would pick on the meek Tara, 47, who would often fall ill. And Maya, 10 years younger, would come to the rescue. “When Maya gets angry she shouts, when I get angry, I cry,” says Tara. Soon, they became best friends, inseparable through the day, parting only at night to go sleep in their respective halls.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in February 2019. Full article here.
Welcome to the hamlets of Mawkyrwat, where everyone has a new hobby: running
Swonding Molong first started running because it made him feel good. Later, he realised that it even helped him work better. Yet, for the longest time, Molong — a 55-year-old ginger farmer from Meghalaya — kept it a secret. “It started in 2015,” he says, “I would be up by 4am, when it was still dark.” A little before 4.30am, Molong would put on his gumboots — the same ones he used in the fields — and set out into the dark.
Over the next hour, the farmer would run up and down the undulating roads of his village, only stopping to catch his breath, or quench his thirst at the little creek he would come by. “It was too early for anyone to see me,” he says, “if they did, they would laugh at me.”
In Molong’s village, Shngimawlein, in the South West Khasi Hills District’s Makyrwat area — running, something that came naturally to most of its residents, was always considered a means to do a chore. You ran to the market to buy something. You ran home from school at the end of the day. When other people in the world walked, in Mawkyrwat, you ran. But you never ran for no reason. “And that was what I was doing,” says Molong.
But things changed for Molong, when in 2015, he participated in his first “professional” run. He had heard about the “Run for Democracy” organised by the Meghalaya Athletics Association in Shillong from a friend. “I didn’t tell many people about it. It was a 10km run. I do not remember my timing but I won,” he recalls.
Post the victorious race, running was no longer a secret Molong had to stealthily indulge in at the crack of dawn. Later, he went on to participate in several marathons across the country: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Manali and most recently, the Mawkyrwat Ultra 2018 — a high endurance marathon across the dense forest of the Mawkyrwat region — which began and ended in Molong’s village, Shngimawlein, itself.
“Seeing me, many youngsters in the village started running too,” he says. For Molong, the best bit was that his wife and kids started running too. On many mornings, Ephenida, a mother of 12, can often be seen trailing her husband, in her traditional jainkyrshahand rubber slippers. “I am not as fast as him. Often I just end up walking. But it still makes me feel good about myself,” she says.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in November 2018. Full article here.
Bereft of a single movie theatre, how Mizoram produces and consumes its films: loud speaker announcements, door-to-door ticket sales, dubbing and directors who double up as producers, distributors and even actors
In Mizo, the word tlangau means local announcement. And every evening, in the neighbourhoods of hilly Aizawl, a tlangau blares out from loud speakers, informing residents about daily happenings: it could be about a polio vaccination drive, a reminder to collect a ration card, or even a death in the neighbourhood. On some days, rare as they are, it could also be about a film screening at a local community hall. For a state that does not have a single movie theatre, a tlangau becomes a crucial device in encouraging the public to watch films, made by an industry so small that filmmakers can be counted on fingertips, and where acting is never a full-time profession, but a side-job, or a hobby at best.
The first Mizo film was made in 1983: a love story called Phuba made by Biakthan Sanga. From then till now, only a handful of feature films have been made.
“It’s not that the public won’t watch. It’s just that very few local films are made. Filmmaking in Mizoram is not a profit-making venture. If you are business-minded person, this is certainly not a career for you,” says Mapuia Chonghtu, whom many refer to as Mizoram’s most “famous” filmmaker. Chonghtu considers his 2010 drama Khawnglung Run, set in the backdrop of a historical event, one of his “biggest hits.”
How much profit did he make? “Oh, I lost around three lakhs,” he says.
In Mizoram, like in the rest of the country, a hit film is measured by the number of shows it runs. However, in Mizoram, unlike the rest of the country, films don’t run in movie halls. There are no film distributors. The filmmaker then becomes a one-man-army: a director, a producer, a distributor and sometimes, even an actor.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2018. Full article here.
Comes after Pitt Rivers Museum in England engaged in an “ethical review” of their permanent displays, with a bid to “decolonise” their collections
On September 14, 2020, the Pitt Rivers Museum in England’s Oxford made a landmark announcement. In a post-pandemic overhaul of its collection, the iconic museum — one of the best-known in the world for anthropology, ethnography and archaeology—would take its collection of “human remains” and other “insensitive” exhibits off display. These items, sourced during the expansion of the British Empire, played into stereotypical thinking about cultures across the globe as “savage” or “primitive”, said the museum’s director, Laura Van Broekhoven.
It was time for them to be removed, and possibly repatriated to their rightful homes.
In another continent, Naga researcher and anthropologist Dolly Kikon read the news with a sense of urgency. Hours later, Kikon, a Lotha Naga from Dimapur, and now a professor in the University of Melbourne, was drafting an email to Broekhoven. She cut to the chase: could the ancestral Naga human remains, displayed in the Pitt Rivers Museum for more than 100 years, be returned to her people back home?
The rest is likely to become history. Kikon’s request has spawned a community-led initiative among the Nagas to bring their ancestral remains home. It is the first such effort to repatriate ancestral human remains of an indigenous community in India, possibly even South Asia.
An ethical review
The Pitt Rivers Museum has a rich collection of 500,000 items acquired over more than 130 years of British imperialism. Part of it is the largest collection (at least 6,500 objects) of Naga material remains in the world. These include items of everyday life such as clothes, agricultural tools, archery and weapons, basketry, ceramics — and human ancestral remains (skulls and bones), majority of which were collected by two colonial administrators, John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills in the early 1900s.
Since 2017, the museum has been engaged in an “ethical review” of their permanent displays, with a bid to “decolonise” their collections. The decision to take off human remains was part of this objective. For Kikon, the announcement hit home. As a tribal anthropologist, she says, it has always been “disturbing” to see Naga objects being displayed as “exotic and primitive” in museums across the world. “
For more than 100 years, museums across Europe have displayed Naga objects …They were taken away as souvenirs and artifacts under duress during colonial expeditions,” she says. That is what led her to reach out to Broekhoven in 2020, who wrote back in two days. The museum director, who also leads the “internal review of permanent displays from an ethical perspective”, says her “heart rejoiced” when Kikon reached out to her. “With the museum’s complicated colonial history, it was important for us not to shy away from difficult conversations,” said Broekhoven in an email to The Indian Express.
The museum is now actively reaching out to descendants of communities to find the most appropriate way to care for these complex items. In December 2020, Broekhoven made a trip to Nagaland to meet with the stakeholders. “A lot of people might think about the removal of certain objects as a loss, but what we are trying to show is that we aren’t losing anything but creating space for more expansive stories. That is at the heart of decolonisation,”she said.
Recover, restore and decolonise
Following the email, the museum reached out to the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) — a collective which, since 2008, has been a key facilitator in the Indo-Naga peace process — to begin the conversation on repatriation. Now, the collective is the chief facilitator of the process. The FNR, in collaboration with Kikon and Arkotong Longkumer, another Naga anthropologist, based in Edinburgh, formed a Naga research team called “Recover Restore and Decolonise” (RRaD) in 2020.
In the past two years, the RRaD team comprising Nagas from all walks of life are conducting interviews, holding community-facing meetings, and generating public awareness about the initiative on a voluntary basis. It is only the first step before they build a case to make an official claim to the University of Oxford (under which the museum falls), which is now the legal owner of the remains, says Kikon. “Our first step was to lay the truth on the ground, and go back to our Naga people, and ask them what they felt about this,” she says. Most Nagas, they found, had no idea about this.
Reverend Ellen Jamir, a Dimapur-based professor and a psychotherapist, now part of the initiative, says she was “surprised”, when she was going through the excel-sheet of the places the human remains were sourced from. “I saw a familiar name…Wakching…it was the village I was born in, and that is when it hit me. These are remains of my ancestors…my blood…boxed up in a museum in some part of the world,” she says, “How were they taken away? Don’t they deserve a proper burial? Suddenly, I felt a huge sense of responsibility.” Jamir adds that repatriation is an “international, legal matter”, rife with bureaucratic hurdles and challenges.
Most successful repatriation efforts (such as of New Zealand’s Moriori and Australia’s Tasmanian Aboriginal people from the Natural History Museum, London to their native lands) have taken at least two decades. “But it is also a deeply spiritual process… especially for society like the Nagas. Today, we may be living in different parts of the world, in big cities and towns but as a society, we are deeply connected to our roots,” says the 47-year-old.
A time of reckoning
The Nagas have a complicated political history, often animated by violence and conflict. While Naga groups have been engaged in a peace process with the Indian government since 1997, the Naga struggle for self-determination is the longest running insurgency in India. In its heyday, the state witnessed brutal violence and heavy militarisation. The draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act has overridden civil liberties in the Naga areas for decades now.
Longkumer, the Edinburgh-based anthropologist, says that while the repatriation process will take years to fructify, the RRaD has opened up “real conversations”. “The thread that runs through all of it is to heal, to reconcile, to take control of your own history,” he says.
The team has come up with a graphic novel, ‘A Path Home’, on Naga repatriation, to make this complex topic “as intelligible as possible” to everyday audiences, says Longkumer. It uses the example of ‘axone’, the fermented soyabean condiment, crucial to Naga cuisine, to explain decolonisation. The ingredient, because of its distinctive pungent smell, is often a sore point for Nagas living in big metros. But increasingly, axone is part of menus in cafes and fine-dining eateries outside of Nagaland — and this, Longkumer says, is “one kind of decolonisation”. “The point is to take ownership, to be proud of not only our food but the cultural systems that produce us…the same ones that have denigrated us for centuries as primitive or savage,” Longkumer says.
For 33-year-old Zavi-iNisa, also part of the initiative, it’s a “time of reckoning”. “Nagas are often thought of as primitive headhunters, consumers of dog meat…But every practice comes with cultural significance, and ethics. I am not saying it is right or wrong, but the significance of it is lost on most,” she says.
In the past few months, as she has been interviewing Nagas about the repatriation process, she has come across a diverse range of reactions: from anger to humiliation, from surprise to sadness, but rarely indifference. “After all, it is not just about bringing human bones from museums, it’s much more than that. It is about reconnecting with your identity, finding out who you are as a person, and re-telling your own story to the world, which has misrepresented you in so many ways,” she says.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in April 2023. Full article here.
Displaced from their homes following the 2021 Myanmar coup, children find hope across the border in Mizoram
Failure is the pillar of success, the headmaster says. She nods, her eyes downcast. The exam had not gone well.
“She was nervous,” explains the headmaster, as the student walks away to join her friends. “It was her first exam, after all.” The student, who turned 16 last month, is a refugee from Myanmar.
In August, the Mizoram government — which has welcomed the refugees fleeing a military coup in Myanmar, defying a directive by the Centre — announced that schools across the state would enrol refugee children on “humanitarian grounds”. The 16-year-old is among the 2,100 refugee students estimated to be enrolled in schools in the state.
She took admission, along with three other refugee girls and three boys, in Class 9 in a government school in Farkawn in Champhai district. Normalcy has been rare since they fled Myanmar in April, and the school offers that. “It is nice to wear the uniform and attend class,” says the 16-year-old.
The family left Myanmar carrying just a few clothes and blankets, not able to take even essential documents like the 16-year-old’s school certificates. At the Tiau river on the forested international border, the Indian Army shooed them away. But the family managed to find an alternative route, and eventually, a home — a modest one-room rented accommodation in Farkawn, a border town.
She, her brother (14) and their parents sleep on the floor on a mattress, and are dependent largely on aid from local NGOs and money from an aunt in Australia. Her father sometimes sells petrol filled in plastic bottles by the roadside.
The mother says uncertainty now marks their life. “We do not know when we will go back home. But at least now I sleep peacefully thinking my child is going to school.”
However, for the children, the transition is an everyday trial. While most of them, belonging to Chin state in northwest Myanmar, understand Mizo, they can’t fluently speak or write it — a hurdle in the classroom.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in December 2021. Full article here.
The white truck, the missing thumb, the cool guy who is now a ‘zinda lash’, the bullet marks — daily reminders in Oting of December 4, 2021, when 13 villagers were killed in an Army ambush followed by a clash. Back to the Nagaland village where it’s hard to move on: “If only it was that easy”.
The white pick-up truck still stands at the spot — its number plate missing, its windscreen pock-marked with bullet holes, its sides covered with the same fraying yellow tarpaulin from the day of the deadly attack, which killed six of its occupants, and maimed two for life.
On December 4, 2021, the Indian Army’s 21 Para Special Force had opened fire at the truck — carrying eight miners from Tiru on their way home to Oting in Nagaland’s Mon district — mistaking them for insurgents of the banned National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang-Yung Aung) group.
The operation – executed by a team of 30 and led by an Army Major-rank commander — was based on inputs that cadres of the NSCN-KYA and ULFA were operating in the Tiru-Oting area. Six had died on the spot, while two survived. In the clashes that followed between villagers — mostly men of the Konyak tribe that inhabits this part of Nagaland — and the security personnel, seven more civilians, and one paratrooper, had died.
Overnight, Oting, one of the many bastis (villages) that dot the remote hills of eastern Nagaland, reopened the wider debate on the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the Northeast. It resulted in the Centre partially withdrawing the Act — often criticised for the unbridled power and impunity it gives to the armed forces to operate in the Northeast — from several parts of the region (Nagaland, Manipur, Assam) in the months that followed. The Act, however, is still in place in Mon district, where Oting falls. The incident led the National Human Rights Commission to take suo motu cognisance of the killings, and the Nagaland government to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to “facilitate free and fair investigation” in the case. In June, based on the SIT’s report, the state police filed a damning chargesheet accusing the 30 Army men, including the commander of Major rank, of “attempt to murder”. To investigate the incident, the Indian Army, too, set up a separate Court of Inquiry, as per the Army Act, 1950.
A year later, the Centre’s Department of Military Affairs is yet to sanction prosecution of the accused, a protocol requirement under AFSPA. In July, the Supreme Court stepped in, responding to a writ petition filed by the wife of one of the accused Army personnel, and stayed further proceedings on the FIR/SIT report. Army sources have confirmed that the Court of Inquiry is complete, but its recommendations are still awaited since the matter is now “sub-judice”. Till such a time, the Army personnel involved continue to be on duty.
It is the white pickup truck — a grim reminder of the deadly ambush — that the villagers now hold onto for “justice”.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in December 2022. Full article here.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in May 2023. Full article here.
With their parents unable to afford private schools, and middle-and high schools too far from the resettlement camps, many children whose families have been displaced during eviction drives have had to drop out of school
At 12, Habija Khatun is sure of what she wants to be when she grows up. Not a doctor, like her friend Narzina. Nor a teacher, like her other friend Siara. “None of that,” says Habija. A “dangor manuh”, she says — Assamese for ‘a successful person’, someone who can stand on her own feet.
It is a simple ask. But as the days pass at the Nakhutia Janju shelter camp in Assam’s Hojai district, her home since the winter of 2021, the possibility seems increasingly remote. “I would have been in Class 6 now,” Habija says.
Like Habija, there are other children at the Nakhutia Janju settlement camp – around 300 of them, some of whom now find themselves out of school.
In January, Habija had to drop out of the local primary school she had been attending for the past few years near the Lumding forest area, around 6 km from the Nakhutia Janju camp. Displaced by an eviction drive and stripped of their land, her farmer parents cannot afford to send her to the private school any more, they say.
The Nakhutia Janju camp is a settlement of tarpaulin-covered shacks that were quickly put together when about 100 families, including about 300 children, arrived here in November 2021. The men, women and children, all Muslims of Bengali-origin, had been identified as alleged “encroachers” occupying parts of the Lumding Reserve Forest, an important wildlife habitat that is part of the Dhansiri-Lumding Elephant Reserve in Assam’s Hojai district.
Over three days in early November 2021, the families had been evicted in the presence of a large battalion of police and security personnel. While for the first two weeks they lived in tents by the side of the road near the Nakhutia market, the authorities later moved them to a 30-bigha plot in Nakhutia village.
“Did you know my daughter finished reading the Quran in one month… by herself?” Habija’s mother Karimun Nessa says proudly. Their ‘home’, held together by bits of bamboo and a tarpaulin sheet, is sparse: bundles of clothes, a few utensils and a schoolbag in a corner.
For almost a year after they came here, Habija’s school had kept her on the rolls — solely on merit, free of cost and on her mother’s request.
However, when the new academic session commenced, Karimun did not have the heart to “beg the teachers” again.
Breaking down at the memory, she says, “My daughter is smart. In Class 1, she got full marks in English… but I am not able to support her education. Every day she asks me, ‘Why can’t I go to school?’.”
Seeing her mother, Habija’s large eyes welled up too.
“Worse than a cowshed”
The camp at Nakhutia Janju — one of the many which have come up following a spate of eviction drives to free up state-owned and forest lands from “encroachers” in Assam under the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government — occupies the side of a gently sloping hill.
According to data from the Assam Assembly, at least 4,449 families have been evicted between May 2021 (when Sarma took office) and September 2022. Between December 2022 and February 2023, there have been at least four major eviction drives in Nagaon, Barpeta, Lakhimpur and Sonitpur districts, displacing hundreds of families.
Most of those displaced belong to the state’s Bengali-origin Muslim community, often denigrated as “outsiders” from Bangladesh, and disproportionately affected by the National Register of Citizens exercise to count “legal” citizens of Assam. . Despite Opposition parties and civil society groups in Assam criticising the eviction drives and the government facing backlash for not providing proper rehabilitation, these drives have continued, with the Sarma-led government doubling down.
While there is no rehabilitation policy for “encroachers” since they are “in conflict” with law, the Assam government has a policy of giving land to landless “indigenous” people. However, several others, like Habija’s family, remain out of the purview of this policy.
Landless and with nowhere to go, these families have been occupying temporary shelter camps that have cropped up on plots of land that the government has earmarked for those displaced. Most of these settlements — there are at least 10 across Assam — are in pitiable conditions, devoid of even basic amenities.
In April, an Assamese newspaper reported that 50 children in a shelter camp in Hojai district’s Changmaji, not too far from Nakhutia Janju, fell sick. The Gauhati High Court took suo motu cognizance of the report, registered a public interest litigation (PIL) plea and dispatched senior advocate Bhaskar Konwar for a field visit. Konwar’s 36-page report, as reported earlier by The Indian Express, detailed the conditions of the camp, describing it as “worse than that of a cowshed”.
Hearing the matter on April 21, Gauhati HC Chief Justice Sandeep Mehta came down heavily on the Assam government, describing it as “inhumanity of the highest order”.
“How long can you keep people like cattle in temporary shelters built of tarpaulin?” Justice Mehta had told state government advocate D Nath. “Just think of your own child … living in a tarpaulin … for two years … Can you imagine the plight?”
Out of school, back to work
On an overcast Friday in April, groups of children, barefoot and with tousled haired, run about in the Nakhutia Janju camp.
Many of them have been living under flimsy tarpaulin sheets for a year and six months. “When the sun shines, it shines too hard, burning our skin. When it rains, it rains through, right into our homes. When it’s windy, our roof gets blown away altogether,” says Habija.
But the children are most upset about missing school, she says.
A few houses away, 16-year-old Narzina too found her name struck off the records in her school, with her father unable to afford the monthly fee of Rs 330 for the private school nearby. Sokina, a 12-year-old, who too is now out of school, admits that she flips through her old textbooks on days she has nothing to do.
Activists explain how most evicted communities have long subsisted on farming and agriculture. Says Pranab Doley, a Bokakhat-based political activist, “It took these people decades to form an economy around agriculture to survive. Now, without their lands, they do not have anything… How do you start from zero…how do you educate your children…how do you look after them?”
Take Narzina’s father, for example, who used to cultivate his own land. His skills as a farmer are rendered useless now, he says. “I don’t have land to cultivate and no one wants to hire an old man like me for daily-wage work,” he says. His son was compelled to drop out of school and seek work at a brick kiln in Hyderabad, where he now lives, sending his family money every month.
In the vicinity of the camp, there are three government primary schools.
“But these are already working overcapacity,” points out Manowor Hussain, chief adviser of the Hojai chapter of the All Assam Minorities Students’ Union (AAMSU), which works as a pressure group for the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslim community.
“The parents cannot afford private schools. The middle- and high schools are too far away. As a result, many children have dropped out,” he says. The court’s report from Changmaji camp too had highlighted how it was “beyond the financial capacities of the families” to send their children to school.
Sixteen-year-old Kamrul Hussain from Changmaji camp is among the “lucky” few who have not dropped out. “I am lucky, but many of my friends are not,” he says. “Some who are even younger than me are now employed as domestic helps or work at construction sites.”
Despite his good fortune of continuing his education, Hussain has not had it easy, he says. His camp, located in a particularly low-lying area, is prone to flash floods.
Outside his home, just metres away from a depression on the ground that is perennially filled with water and hovering flies, Hussain speaks of the difficult conditions he has had to live in for the last one-and-a-half years.
“It is cramped and noisy. There is no electricity… water seeps into our homes even if there is a shower, spoiling my books,” he says.
Back at the Janju camp, the girls echo his experience.
“Life is just difficult in the camp,” says Narzina. Now instead of going to school, the girls start the day with household chores — collecting water, washing dishes, and sometimes just sitting around for hours on end.
‘Living like animals’
Following the Gauhati High court’s reprimand, the government has intervened in the Changmaji camp. Two huge tanks providing filtered water now occupy the entrance of the settlement of nearly 350 families.
The district administration has also deputed a medical team, which is present in the camp in two 12-hour shifts a day.
“It is likely that the children got sick because of the unhygienic conditions — it is obvious that these are not conducive for good health,” says a paramedic on duty in the camp last week.
The High Court report observed that the camp “lacked basic human necessities” like toilets, drainage, electricity and sewage facilities.
“It is no surprise that the children are falling sick … due to these dire circumstances” the report said.
Nur Islam, an elderly man who has been appointed the ‘secretary’ of the Changmaji camp, says they have been “living like animals”. Pointing at what the residents use as toilets — a piece of cloth wrapped around four bamboo poles, right beside each living quarter — he says there is little to separate where “where they eat” and “where they defecate”.
“I am not saying our lives were luxurious where we stayed earlier, but it was not like this,” he says, adding that they had been living on dole from NGOs and civil society groups such as the AAMSU. He said even when 50 children fell sick in April, it was AAMSU that brought it to the notice of the district administration, which subsequently swung into action. “Women… pregnant and new mothers… and children have been affected the most,” he says.
At the Janju camp, 28-year-old Amina Khatun, an infant cradled in her arms, alleges that she and her child have not even received basic postnatal care. “I was eight months pregnant when the eviction happened…Earlier, the ASHA workers (government accredited community-level health workers) would come for routine check-ups. Now, they don’t visit the camps,” she says.
‘A health emergency’
Dr Shanta Sinha, child rights activist and former head of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), described the situation as a “health and education emergency”.
“The children should be given relief as per their entitlements…entitlement to food under National Food Security Act, to education under the Right to Education act…they should have access to anganwadi centres,” she said. “And it is the obligation of the state to protect the children. The government is duty-bound to protect these children.”
AAMSU had submitted several memorandums to different bodies, including the National Human Rights Commission and the NCPCR, as well as the Ministry of Women and Child Development in Delhi in April 2022. Earlier this week, they reached out to the Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, which has now sent a team to the ground to take stock of the situation in the Changmaji camp.
Sinha said such events left “deep scars” and “loss of confidence” among children. Doley, the political activist, said while loss of education was one thing, the government should also address the “trauma and mental harassment children go through”.
The community takes charge
The Assam government has maintained that it is relocating children who have dropped out of school. Responding to a question by Opposition leader Debabrata Saikia in the Assembly last month about the fate of children displaced by a February 2023 eviction drive in Burachapori Wildlife Sanctuary in Sonitpur district, Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan Assam, was undertaking a mapping exercise to enrol the children in schools in the vicinity.
“They are also creating non-residential special training centres to educate the children. Moreover, the children will be given books free of cost,” Pegu had said in the written response.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Pegu said the children “were immediately being relocated” to schools nearby.
“The government is taking steps,” he said, but was unable to respond to specific cases, like the ones in Changmaji and Janju.
In the meantime, community members have taken it upon themselves to educate the children. Take for example, 34-year-old social worker Musabirul Hoque, who runs the “Educare Foundation” trust. Since June 2022, aided by donations, the foundation has been running a school in Dalgaon’s Shyampur exclusively for those children displaced by the Dholpur eviction drive of September 2021. The school, built close to the shelter camp in Shyampur, has seven teachers teaching 200 children from Classes 1 to 5.
In Nagaon district’s Pub Koladoba camp, the local AAMSU chapter is driving a similar initiative for children who were evicted from the Burachapori wildlife sanctuary.
“A day before Eid, a storm blew away the roof of the school. But the local people came together to build it again,” says Abdun Noor of the AAMSU’s Nagaon chapter.
This year, the Shyampur school added 100 more children and extended learning up to Class 6. Hoque said children from minority communities face a number of challenges, such as eviction drives and uncertainty of citizenship status.
“The only solution is education…if the government is not doing anything about it, then we, the community members, must,” he says.
This article was an exclusive newsbreak, with survivors of the 2021 Nagaland security ambush speaking on record for the first time. The story was originally published in The Indian Express in December 2021. Full article here.
On December 5, 2021, six civilians were killed in firing by security forces in “a case of mistaken identity” on their way home from a hard day’s work in Oting village in Nagaland’s Mon district. Two survivors of the ambush spoke to us from their ICU beds.
“DIRECT marise… they shot right at us,” says 23-year-old Sheiwang softly, one of the only two survivors of the Army ambush on a group of eight miners in Oting village in Nagaland’s Mon district on Saturday evening. With bullet injuries on his elbow and chest, he battles for life in the Assam Medical College and Hospital (AMCH) in Dibrugarh, three days after he was shot at in an operation by the Indian Army.
A few beds away is 30-year-old Yeihwang, who was also in the group of eight. Though conscious, he can barely speak. Yeihwang took a bullet near his ear.
On Tuesday evening, The Indian Express met them at the hospital, shortly before Yeihwang was to be taken for a surgery.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah in a statement in Rajya Sabha Monday said the vehicle “was signalled to stop” and was fired upon after it “tried to flee.” However, Sheiwang says: “We were not signalled to stop. They killed us directly. We were not trying to flee…we were just in the vehicle.”
Following the killing, violence broke out in Mon in which eight more civilians were killed in firing by security forces. One jawan was killed and several security personnel were injured. The 13 civilians were buried yesterday amid a wave of anger and grief that has swept Nagaland.
Recounting the incident, Sheiwang says that after finishing work at the coal mine last Saturday, eight of them were returning home in a pick-up truck.
“Suddenly, on the way, we were fired upon. I do not remember how long it lasted, but it was for a while. It sounded like bombs were exploding. It was not even dark, they still shot us,” he says.
As soon as the firing started, he recalls, the entire group ducked. “We all fell to the floor of the vehicle,” he says.
“After that (the firing) I was taken into another vehicle,” he says, adding that he “was aware of the others’ deaths, including his brother’s”.
When asked if they were carrying anything, he said they had “nothing in their hands.”
“I worked in the mine for one week… we left on Saturday around 3 pm,” he says. The mine is in Tiru valley, about 6 km from the Oting village.
There are two routes to the mine — a longer, winding, route and a short cut through a temporary road built by the villagers a few years ago. The miners had taken the short cut.
When contacted, AMCH Superintendent Prasanta Dihingia told The Indian Express the two were currently under treatment.
“Surgery, neurosurgery, orthopaedic teams are tracking them constantly,” he said. He said Yeihwang had received injuries in his scalp and eye and would have to undergo surgery. “The other (Sheiwang) has got hurt on his chest and elbow,” he said.
Dihingia said they were dropped to AMCH after midnight on Sunday (December 5). “They were first admitted in Sonari Civil Hospital and later referred here. When they came, we did not know how they got hurt or who they were, but for us they were injured, so we started treatment immediately,” he said.
Dihingia said a team of Assam police was providing security to the two. “Apart from that, the district administration and police officials of Mon have visited them,” he said. On Tuesday night, sources at the hospital said that a team from Nagaland police also arrived to give them security.
Nyemkhah, a relative of Sheiwang, who is his attendant in the hospital, said Sheiwang and Yeihwang recounted the incident to him in greater detail. “On their way back, they had crossed the Tiru bridge, after which the vehicle descended towards a drain (a large depression in the road). It is here that the vehicle, while moving, was suddenly fired upon. The bullets came from the front as well from the back and continued for about 2-3 minutes,” he said.
Nyemkhah said, Sheiwang saw the bodies being “dragged out of the pick-up truck and dumped” on the road. “He (Sheiwang) remembers seeing his brother, Thakwang, being dragged like that. He does not remember what happened after that,” said Nyemkhah.
A doctor at AMCH, who did not want to be named, said the two were “left” at hospital early Sunday morning. “No one knew who they were, where they came from,” he said. Another doctor said that there was a rumour/ suspicion that they could be “insurgents”.
However, as news emerged about the killings, the hospital staff decided to upload their pictures on social media. “That is how they established touch with the village. Otherwise, no one would have known who they were,” said Nyemkhah, who arrived from the village on Monday morning.
Since Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took over on May 10, at least 23 people have been shot at while in police custody, with five dead. They had been held for crimes such as cattle-smuggling, rape, murder, drug-peddling, dacoity. This is apart from deaths of 10 militants in encounters in the past two months.
INCIDENTS ranging from Assam’s northeast tip to its west, and a script that is common — of apprehended criminals “trying to escape” from custody the same day as they were arrested, “attempting to snatch weapons” and police opening fire.
Since Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took over on May 10, at least 23 people have been shot at while in police custody, with five dead. They had been held for crimes such as cattle-smuggling, rape, murder, drug-peddling, dacoity. This is apart from deaths of 10 militants in encounters in the past two months.
As the Opposition raises alarm over the “trigger happy” government and the Assam Human Rights Commission (AHRC) takes up the matter suo motu, Sarma has said he stands by the new approach. On Wednesday and Thursday, he told the Assembly his government would continue its “zero tolerance policy” on criminals, and that he was ready to face “any kind of criticism”. “My clear instruction (to police) is do not break the law, but within the law… you take extreme action, and the Assam government is going to protect you.”
Days earlier, at a conference attended by police officers, the CM had said there was nothing wrong in police firing being “a pattern”, if someone was “trying to flee”. “Police cannot shoot him in the chest, but shooting at the leg is the law.”
He told the Assembly Thursday that “504 persons have been arrested in the last two months for alleged involvement in cattle-smuggling and only four were injured in police firing”; and that police had ensured the accused “the best possible treatment”. On criticism, the CM said, “Sympathy is important, but misplaced sympathy is very, very dangerous.”
On July 7, the AHRC asked the state government to institute an inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death and injuries in police firings. AHRC member Naba Kamal Bora told The Indian Express, “As per news reports, all of them were in custody and in handcuffs… so we need to know what happened.”
The Sarma government has, meanwhile, also declared a ‘War on Drugs’, as part of which 1,897 people have been arrested in the last two months. Increasingly, police are deploying rarely used provisions under which a habitual drug crime offender can be put in detention without trial. At least 15 people have been arrested under it in the past six months.
The Indian Express tracked down families of five of the accused fired upon between May and now. One of them is dead. A magisterial inquiry is on into all the five deaths.
Joynal Abedin, 47, Nagaon; shot on July 11 Charge: Dacoity, armed robbery Status: Dead
Police version At around 2 am on July 11, the Nagaon police went to Abedin’s house to apprehend him claiming a tip-off that an armed gang led by him was planning a dacoity in the Dhing area. “Our personnel cordoned the house and called out his name,” said Nagaon SP Anand Mishra. According to police, Abedin stepped out and started firing. “We never expected there to be firing. So we retaliated and had to shoot him (in the leg). He was immediately shifted to the nearest hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.”
Mishra told the press Abedin was a local ‘muscleman’ and they had FIRs against him in four cases, including an armed dacoity at an NRC Seva Kendra and an acid attack case. But, the SP added, “When we went to arrest him, we only had a tip-off about plans for an armed robbery. Later, after his death, his past records came up.”
Family
Abedin’s brother Imdadul Haque said police “dragged him out handcuffed” and “beat him”. “Then they took him away… we do not know where… and killed him.”
The family says they found out at 6 the next morning when the village headman was informed. “We did not want to accept the body in protest, but we had no choice. This is 100 per cent a fake encounter and my brother was framed,” said Imdadul.
Tapan Buragohain, 26, Sadiya; shot at on July 9 Charge: ULFA ‘linkman’ involved in ONGC staff abduction Status: Admitted at Assam Medical College and Hospital, stable
Police version
On July 9, Buragohain was picked up from his home in Teligorha village by Sadiya police, reportedly on tip-off that he was involved in the ONGC abductions of April. As per Sadiya SP Sumeet Sharma, Buragohain said he would take them to a location where another accused was hiding. “As he was walking with the police party, he tried to escape, to snatch the police weapon,” said Sharma. “When he did not stop, police, to safeguard themselves, fired at his leg.” Sharma said there were 7-8 policemen, but “they were a little spread out… since it was a jungle area… to avoid any ambush”.
Family
According to a close family member of Buragohain who met him in hospital, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, the 26-year-old was first taken to the local police station. Then, around midnight the same day, Buragohain was “blindfolded” and led to what he suspects was an open field. “He begged police to give him a chance… but ultimately, they did not listen and shot him,” said the relative, adding that Buragohain said, “There was no chance I would have even attempted to run because all the policemen were armed.”
Seeking an investigation into the firing, the relative said Buragohain had lost a lot of blood.
Jeharul Islam, 30, Baksa; shot at on July 9 Charge: Trafficking of women Status: In Nalbari jail
Police version Police said Islam, who belongs to South Salamara-Mankachar district, had abducted a woman and her nine-year-old daughter from Baksa district area on April 26 and sold them in Bihar’s Kishanganj. Calling Islam a well-known trafficker, SDPO Rupajyoti Kalita said after they had rescued the mother-daughter, “We traced Jeharul to Goalpara. We then took him to where the crime happened in Baksa. However, he tried to escape and even snatched a police weapon.” Police said they shot him in the leg.
Islam has several cases against him, under IPC Sections pertaining to trafficking of women, abduction, rapes etc.
Family Jeharul’s brother Joynal said police asked them about Jeharul on July 7. “He does odd jobs in Guwahati. We told the police we will cooperate and I went to Guwahati the next day.” According to Joynal, Jeharul agreed to surrender and they met police on a bridge in Goalpara district. “They took him, and that’s when I saw him last.”
It was on the news the next day that he heard that Jeharul had been shot. Joynal claims they are in the dark about his condition. “We have heard that he is in jail. I do not have money to go and find out what’s happening, but if he willingly surrendered, why would he try to escape?”
Akhtar Raja Khan (alias Tiklu Khan), 48, Dibrugarh; shot at on July 7 Charge: Runs a network of cattle lifters Status: In Dibrugarh jail after discharge from hospital
Police version They picked up Khan on July 7 after some cattle thieves whom they arrested “confessed they were linked to him”, said Dibrugarh SP Shwetank Mishra. He was taken to a “chapori (island)” in the Brahmaputra for recovery of cattle hidden there. “However, he tried to flee by making a dash towards the river. In order to stop him… and save him… police fired at his right leg,” said Mishra, adding that Khan was discharged the same day from hospital as “the injury was not very serious”.
The SP admitted Khan’s name does not feature “prominently” in many cases, but reasons this is because “he did not usually commit the crime on the ground”.
Family Khan’s son Jahid said police had found his father’s cows in the Marwari Patti locality and made enquiries. “We had bought these cows and had the papers for them. So my father went to the local police station at 8 am on July 7 to sort it out. When he did not return, Jahid said, his mother went to check and was told “he had been taken away”. “Next morning, we heard he had been shot and rushed to hospital.”
Jahid said he met Khan briefly at the hospital. “He told me he was blindfolded and taken to a chapori. Police told him to run, or they would fire. My father begged with them and did not run. After that he was shot.” Jahid added that they have no idea how Khan is now. “We are very stressed… my mother is ill and keeps fainting.”
30-yr-old; shot at in May (doesn’t want any details revealed) Charge: Drug dealer Status: In jail after spending time in hospital
Police version As per police, one night in May, they went to apprehend the 30-year-old from his home, and he threatened them with a pistol. They say they had no choice but to shoot him.
Family While the family refused to talk, a person aware of the incident said policemen had knocked at the 30-year-old’s door seeking directions to an address. “They did not initially reveal who they were… When he refused to step out, they broke the door open, dragged him out and started beating him.”
The person claims police then warned the 30-year-old to hold a weapon, and shot him when he refused.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in July 2021. Full article here.
