Two years into Manipur’s fractured existence following an ethnic conflict between the majority Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities that left more than 70,000 displaced and claimed 260 lives, a musical project is quietly finding its feet.
Folk musicians from seven communities in the hill districts of Manipur have come together with folk-protest singer-songwriter Akhu Chingbambam's band, Imphal Talkies, and other folk artistes to create a song about coexistence and the shared history of the region.
The project was accomplished in August. Final touches to the song are being given at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under fire for not visiting Manipur during the entire period of brutal violence, is scheduled to visit the state that's currently under President’s rule.
“In the past many decades, Manipur has witnessed clashes between different communities. And I am someone who really gets bothered by all this,” says Akhu, who belongs to the Meitei community and has grown up in Imphal in the shadow of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act aka AFSPA that was imposed way back in 1980 in the state.
AFSPA, which grants the army carte blanche to detain, arrest or kill anyone on mere suspicion, set the tone of engagement for the nation with not just Manipur but several other northeastern states, taking them down the path of endless violence over the years.
Akhu, a post-doctorate in physics, explored protest music during his student days in Delhi, where he sang at protests calling for the release of Dr Binayak Sen, among other causes.
“It began in 2007. I performed India, I see blood on your hands [one of his songs] at Jantar Mantar in 2011,” Akhu says. By 2009, Imphal Talkies had already released its debut album, Tiddim Road. His performances, which addressed state atrocities and championed truth and justice, quickly garnered attention.
In 2015, Akhu initiated a project titled 'A Native Tongue Called Peace' with a team of artistes, teaching music to children at an Imphal orphanage.
Folk musicians from seven communities in the hill districts of Manipur have come together with Akhu Chingbambam's band, Imphal Talkies, and other folk artistes to create a song about coexistence and the shared history of the region
“These were children from underprivileged backgrounds, some of whom had lost their parents to violence. By the end of the project, these children, who belonged to different communities often in conflict with each other, were singing each other’s songs,” Akhu recalls. The project culminated in the creation of five original songs.
Together the children sang:
Teach me how to sing these songs,
songs of love, songs of peace.
Teach me how to stand for truth,
stand for love and stand for peace.
We are one, don’t you know?
Coming down like a rainbow.
In some form or other, Akhu’s relationship with the children continues even now.
“Under the current project — which in a sense is an extension of the 2015 project — where we all got together, I have documented all these different folk musicians. If you listen to all these folk tales, you can dig up so much history about our shared past and shared history. This project had been in the works long before the current conflict erupted," he says.
For the past four years, Akhu has been approaching various institutes to get funding for the project. Finally, he managed to procure some, enabling seven folk artistes from the hill districts of Manipur to travel to Imphal, stay together with everyone else, and collaborate.
The project features folk musicians from the Tarao community, the smallest in Manipur with a population of about 830 people, as well as the Anal, Tangkhul, Kabui, Korieng, Maring and Khoibu communities. With such a diverse group, the project fulfils its promise of bridging the gap between people and reducing the animosity that has long existed between the people of the hills and those in the valley.
Why no Kuki musician in the collective?
Notably, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the project lacks any Kuki folk musicians. This omission creates a significant gap, rendering the effort to bridge communities incomplete. The absence of a Kuki folk artiste raises questions that Akhu can't answer.
The reality is that even now, Kukis cannot travel to Meitei areas and vice versa. The wounds of violence, counter-violence, death, and displacement remain raw for both communities, despite what the government says.
In an effort to document the ethnic violence and help the healing process, the People’s Union of Civil Liberties published an independent people’s tribunal report in August. This serves as the closest publicly available post-mortem on the violence.
It asserts that the violence in Manipur was not spontaneous but orchestrated, enabled by armed groups, and the Manipur state was complicit in it. Meitei groups are livid with the report. They have been vehement in their rejection of it, calling it a one-sided representation of the events and even erroneous in many instances.
“The Centre is talking about peace between two communities and yet the [retired] Justice Ajai Lamba commission tasked by the Centre to investigate the causes and spread of the violence has not been able to file a report in two years," Imphal-based human-rights activist Onil Kshetrimayum tells The Telegraph Online.
"In addition, dialogue and some bridging mechanism must be initiated. There might be political differences but those can be navigated only through dialogue and not through polarisation.”
In June 2021, the Imphal Free Press wrote about a musical collaboration called the Pengkul Project, an initiative by Kuki youth trying to revive their endangered folk musical traditions. Something that resonates with the current Hills-Valley project. But they can't work together. The barriers for now look insurmountable.
The blueprint for intimidation
In the years under the last state government in Manipur, several reports indicated that a climate of intimidation had taken root, sparing few prominent figures in the state. This atmosphere had particularly targeted those with critical and opposing views, as well as those who openly advocated for peace, including journalists.
Speaking to The Telegraph Online, independent journalist Makepeace Sithlou dissects the blueprint of intimidation that has emerged in Manipur over the years: “To begin with, the Manipur government has not tolerated any criticism and has fostered a divisive climate in the state. We know the timeline since 2017. Journalists have been arrested simply for being critical. The state government has also invoked sedition and the National Disaster Management Act against those who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the government.”
Sithlou, from the Thadou community, a Kuki-Chin ethnic group, emphasises that many individuals who would ordinarily be critical of the state government seem to have fallen in line and are caught in a stranglehold of self-censorship.
“There is also a lot of whataboutery. The climate is so polarised that everything written is judged on a scale of whether it favours one community or another. There is also significant deflection away from the facts and war crimes towards the central government.”
She remembers the ambulance — which was carrying the seven-year-old child of a Kuki father and Meitei mother — that was burnt down with the complicity of civilians; the two teenagers who went missing and the involvement of another community in their disappearance; the viral video of two women stripped and paraded naked by a mob.
“Forget peace and reconciliation. There is no justice. There is no conversation. And if anyone speaks out, they will have to sacrifice their liberty, like Babloo Loitongbam has,” Sithlou says.
In October 2023, human rights activist Loitongbam's office was ransacked and destroyed by miscreants. They threatened to burn down his residence. This attack was allegedly initiated by Meitei Leepun, who issued threats and carried out a smear campaign against him. Loitongbam has not been able to return to Manipur since then.
Two months after targeting Loitongbam, armed men barged into Akhu’s home, held his wife and mother at gunpoint, and abducted him. He was later released.
Something changed after this incident. Akhu, whose Pavlovian and musical response is protest folk music, has gone deeper into indigenous lyrics and instruments, an interest that was not alien to him but hadn't been explored. On invitation, he has sung for children displaced during the current conflict. Self-preservation at a time of intimidation has given rise to a new mellow musical self.
What's the point of the song then?
Simoen Ronglo, an 82-year-old from the Khoibu community and a former member of the Naga National Council involved in the Naga nationalist movement, is part of the group of musicians. Ronglo witnessed the brutal Naga-Kuki clash in the ’90s from very close quarters. Left stunned by the brutality, it took him a while before he started putting his thoughts into poetry and then performing for Kukis and Nagas.
“Oh Manipur, the Golden Land
Guarded by nine ranges of mountain
And protected by the highlanders.
I saw the homes of Nagas burnt down by Kukis
I saw the homes of Kukis burnt down by Nagas
Isn’t it the time for you all to ponder?
We are the brothers and sisters who belong to the same mother”
To put a stop to this unending cycle of violence, perhaps these lyrics infuse some hope, a sense of what Manipur is and should be. That's what the group believes in anyway.
The youngest in the group is Meitei musician Naganthoibi Ningthouja from Loktak Lake. Ningthouja tells The Telegraph Online: “Let's join hand in hand, no rich and poor, high or low; we are the sons and daughters of one mother. This part captures best of what I feel about the project, no division between the hills and the valley. This is the message we want people of Manipur to embrace."
Collaborations, with a purpose beyond just music, run in Akhu’s mind these days. For a musician used to fighting injustice, he treads a thin line in Manipur.
In December 2012, the Asian Dub Foundation, an electronic rock band from London, collaborated with Akhu as part of a television series called Dewarists. The song they sang was a version of Akhu’s song Qutab Minar, which he wrote as part of Imphal Talkies. This funny, sad and satirical song is about the strange experiences of a man who decides to take the historic Qutub Minar with him from Delhi to Imphal.
Only that will put an end to the conflict, he thought. In 2025, the idea of that song remains, albeit through newer, careful tunes. But are the people who need to listen to it paying attention?